With Vista’s Aero and the Beryl Project moving along, user interfaces are clearly the next arena of improvement in the computer industry. Beryl and Aero are the newest breed of UI advances to hit the general public, and are what’s called a composite manager. Here’s a video of some of the effects that Beryl can do (Aero’s features are similar).

Wiimote and Linux

Apparently a linux user was able to connect his Wiimote to his PC and is able to get all 3 gyroscopic readings from the control. What this will mean is that your television remote for your digital cable box may be replaced by a mouse-like pointer, and the remote will no longer have 50 buttons, most which you’ll never use. This will become much more important as media centre’s become mainstream. Anyone who is familiar with playlist generation on a media centre knows how awful a regular remote is. In fact, that’s why I looked into installing MPD to manage my music. Anyways, here’s actual proof of the Wiimote with linux.

Google Earth and Warcraft 3

If you think the next step of UIs involves cool hand held gadgets, think again. Basically, some PhD students set up a voice and optical command system. Take a close look at the table they’re working on. That’s a completely normal table.

Minority Report Arrives

If you remember from Minority report, Collin Farrell zips through video and still images by making gestures on the actual screen. This technology was also seen embedded into the desktop in The Island, where the director was also working with images and managing documents. This is already partially simulated if you’re using a touchpad on your laptop. Many laptop touchpads have zones so that you can scroll down just by closing your fingers in them. This hands on technology has taken great steps, and although it’s not ready for consumer use, but it’s definitely here:

Conclusion

These new interfaces are completely amazing. Hopefully, these advances don’t see the same fate as the attempts to replace the inferior QWERTY keyboard layout with the clearly advanced Dvorak keyboard.