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Bill Gates just unveiled some of the few features of Windows 7, due out sometime in 2009-2010. One of more intriguing features is new “multi-touch” functionality that allows users to interact with the screen similar to the CNN Magic Screen or iPhone interface. The video below shows a demo of the Windows 7 functionality.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Multi-touch certainly has a lot of promise and a clear “cool factor”, although it’s difficult to imagine how this technology will actually be useful to the majority of users. I mean, how many times can you resize a photo?

I stumbled across this very interesting video while researching some of the new stuff Microsoft is doing in the multi-touch interfaces realm (check out Bill Gates’ keynote and the ‘Touch Wall’).

This video, which is from the team at Office Labs, provides some innovating and exciting new concepts in healthcare technologies, as well as some other tidbits like digital wallets and flexible displays. Well done!

HTC’s recently announce Touch Diamond smartphone is touting a new 3D interface that looks amazing.

Check out the demo:

The TouchFlo UI sits on top of Windows Mobile and offers a number of multi-touch features like list grabbing and “flicking” to control screen scrolling. The graphical styling looks top-notch.

There appears to be a number of functions and features “inspired” by the iPhone. The UI is presented in layers, allowing for some innovative techniques for screen maximization. The interface advances are enabled by a VGA screen.

Apple is not the only company creating innovative small-screen UIs.

There’s an interesting presentation from Mule Design on how a designer’s approach and strategy for copy can make or break a digital interface.

For a lot of projects, copy and wording are considered “icing” or an element of the design process that gets fitted in later—often with little or no involvement from designers. While many user interface experts believe that digital interfaces cannot support copious amounts of copy (the concept that users scan rather than read), the trend in UI design is more copy, not less. Wikipedia and Facebook are both great examples of how text can be used as the core of the user experience.

The presentation also discusses new communication and expression trends that are evolving as aspects of Web 2.0 – the concept that “We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text.”

The presentation, Copy as Interface, is embedded below.

There’s a nice article on the Google Blog that lists the company’s user experience design principles. The principles are broad, but do a great job summarizing how Google addresses the fundamental usability and experience inherent in their products. I love this approach!

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These principles are defined in depth here.

Popular Mechanics has an in-depth article and video about the latest advances with Microsoft Surface.

Jeff Han from Perceptive Pixel talks about the benefits of multi-touch interfaces used by products like Surface.

It looks the project has evolved quite nicely since the initial announcement. The interactions with other devices are especially cool.

According to Digitimes, this year marks the sounding gun for global flexible active matrix displays, meaning that this year we may see bendable, thin high-definition LCD screens. New technologies and materials are the base of the technology, and recent advances may result in real products in not-too-distant future.

The New York Times Online recently launched a neat online tool – The TimesMachine – that lets you browse their issue archive stretching back to the 1850s. You can see the newspaper layouts in their original format (something Google news doesn’t offer).

I did a look-up of October 25, 1872 – one hundred years before I was born. It doesn’t seem like too much was going on outside of the Horace Greeley campaign, although it’s hard to tell because there are no real headlines! I suppose the headline is an invention of the modern newspaper…

A couple of weeks ago I posted about CNN’s use of the Perceptive Pixel’s magic wall. The Wall has created quite a buzz among interaction design geeks and there’s been quite a bit of coverage since.

Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Post has a nice article about the wall, calling it the “gee-whizziest TV-news gizmo since the animated weather map”.

Some more good links:

• All things CNN
• Gawker Readers Don’t Get It
• NY Times Calls Super Tuesday Night of the Touchscreens

CNN’s election coverage is boasting some cool new technologies—specifically the new “Magic Wall”, an interactive Touch-screen provided on Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel multi-touch technology. According to this article from Broadcast Engineering, Perceptive Pixel developers created customized software for use during the election coverage.

CNN reporters have been using the Magic Wall to toggle between screen views and zoom-in on data sets. During the Iowa coverage, they also had a slick “delegate-sorting” interface. Last night, one reporter used the multi-touch resizing to show some campaign picture. Overall…very cool stuff and, like any design geek, I can’t wait to get my hands on one those (although I hear they go for a cool $100,000.00).

As they cool as the screens are, watching a reporter interact with them feels broken – there’s an unevenness watching them work with the device that doesn’t translate well to TV coverage. The screens also create some challenging body positioning issues. Reporters have to face away from the camera to interact with screens, creating some choppy communications. This is similar to some of the problems people have when presenting projected PowerPoint presentations.

All in all, it’s great to see nifty new technologies like multi-touch interfaces being put to practical use, but there are some clear kinks that need to be worked out…