interface

The other day a visiting relative asked if he could use my laptop to check his Facebook account. He couldn't make it past the desktop. "Hey, don't you have Firefox on this machine?"

"Press the Windows key, type f, and press Enter," I told him.

I had been using Windows 7's Start menu search box to launch Firefox and other apps for so long I neglected to add a Firefox shortcut to my taskbar. (I prefer to keep my desktop clear of icons by placing my desktop shortcuts on a menu that pops out of the taskbar, … Read more

Smartphone interface is very often the cover by which we begin to judge the book. The layout, designs, and color scheme play a heavy role in how easy it is to navigate and customize the phone; but we also can't underestimate the UI's emotional connection.

So let's not. Instead, let's have an interface-off that lines up ten smartphone interfaces for scrutiny. Six platforms are represented--iPhone, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry OS 6, WebOS, Android, and Symbian 3 (we rate four different Android "skins,") and we'll spill our guts on exactly what we think of … Read more

Japan's Keio University has seen the future of touch interfaces, and it looks to be disposable. A research group at the school has its finger on a touch interface that uses paper as the point of contact. You could one day touch a museum ticket to the curved display, for example, to learn more about a piece of artwork.

What's more, because it uses shape deformations, the display can be operated by blowing or shaking rather than actual touch. A projector and camera create active 3D images, so the processing speed is fast, and input is immediately returned as output.

But don't take our word for it. Check out the paper interface in action in the video below. … Read more

editor's notebook The future just keeps getting closer and closer these days. Not only do we have iPhones with FaceTime--which, when combined with the iPod Nano (as I'm sure they will be before too long) will come pretty close to creating a mass-market version of Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV--we've also got robot cars and, ahem, robot journalists (which I'm trying to keep at bay by way of this terribly sophisticated and never-ending sentence--apparently the roboscribes have trouble with such Proustian gymnastics: Quick! They're coming for our jobs! Hand me another semicolon and an … Read more

Imagine if you could pray to your computer to stop the beach ball of doom from spinning, the blue screen of death from staring you in the face.

Perhaps someday sooner than we think, such a simple, palm-to-palm gesture might actually serve to trigger a series of operations that would lead to an appropriate fix.

As reported by Engadget and Read, Write, Web, a group of students at MIT's Media Lab has hacked around with Microsoft's Kinect gaming technology, Google's Chrome browser, and Javascript to allow Web surfers to manipulate a browser with nothing more than gestures. … Read more

For about as long as there's been a Windows, developers have been targeting the disk defragmentation utility for improvement. JkDefrag is a free, open-source defragmentation utility; JkDefrag GUI is a graphical user interface version that makes the powerful tool as easy to use as the built-in Windows feature and its many competitors.

JkDefrag GUI opens with a compact properties dialog that serves as a primary control interface. We selected what Actions we wanted JkDefrag to perform and which of our drives to check from drop-down menus and started the program. A compact view opened, displaying the program's progress … Read more

The browser wars have extended to mobile devices, and that's good news for consumers.

Last week, Mozilla released a second Firefox beta for Android. Yesterday, Opera released its first Opera Mobile beta for Android. Neither is ready for prime time, much less used on more than a tiny fraction of phones, but already I see them as a step forward.

Why? Because now there's an important new front in the browser wars.

And while that means more stress for browser makers and more testing for Web developers, it holds the potential to dramatically improve browsing for the rest … Read more

Just about every Windows feature is bound to disappoint some users at some point, since it obviously can't be everything to everybody but has to try. Take the Windows Search feature: Does it always find exactly what you're looking for the first time, and quickly? Didn't think so. Many third-party apps tout enhanced search capabilities that go beyond what Windows offers. InSight Desktop Search is a free search engine for Windows that can quickly find what you're looking for anywhere in your system or network, and can also fetch information online from Wikipedia and other sites. … Read more

Mercedes entered the race to integrate Pandora and other streaming-media applications with its Media Interface Plus (MIP) accessory, enabling users to control smartphone music apps through its vehicle infotainment systems. But how much functionality you get with MIP depends on the device you're using.

The MIP is an accessory that plugs into a Mercedes' media interface outlet (available on most Mercedes vehicles since 2009) located in the glove compartment or center armrest. On its most basic level, the device makes it possible to stream audio tracks from a Bluetooth enabled device, eliminating the need to carry around cords for … Read more