Bill tries his hand at a little comedy
At Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting last week, Bill Gates elicited chuckles when describing the possibilities of “natural interface” - the idea of working with a computer through means other than mouse and keyboard.
Touch, of course, is a big one. He noted how the Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface have brought that technology to consumers.
He also talked about how screens will become bigger and cheaper, and appear in lots of different places.
“Your whiteboard will be a computer-controlled thing that will have rich software in it,” Gates said.
But the real value will be when computers can improve your physical appearance. “Even your mirror at home could have software adding value to the image there,” he deadpanned.
Microsoft is investing heavily in this area, Gates assured investors.
Social anonymity
Could unsocial networking be the next trend?
For those who long for anonymity in a MySpace world, there’s experienceproject.com. Instead of broadcasting personal identities, the site forges a new niche sharing deep secrets in an anonymous setting.
The site’s 250,000 users talk about everything from health issues to loveless marriages.
Founder Armen Berjikly says his contrarian approach was inspired by a friend and developed with the help of doctors. But how secure will people feel revealing their private lives when advertisers can target their every wart with laser precision?
“A hypnosis clinic can quickly reach 25- to 30-year-old women who live in California and are trying to quit smoking,” says the PR pitch.
Being there anyway
When Google co-founder Larry Page gets married next month to Lucy Southworth - Dec. 8 is reportedly the date - the guest list is sure to be high-powered and well-heeled.
But at least one person who fits that description has sent his regrets. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, former Vice President Al Gore was invited but is attending to a bit of other business. He’ll be in Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize around that time.
Gore told the Chronicle, however, that he was hoping to make a technology-inspired appearance through video conferencing.
Let’s see, video conferencing at weddings. Sounds like a business plan to us.
Maybe one that Gore, in his new role as a partner at venture capital biggie Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, may want to consider investing in.
Excuse my typing
If you receive a text message and it has a typo in it, chances are better that it came from an Apple iPhone than a phone with a numeric pad or a Qwerty keyboard.
Now, we can hear you saying: “Duh! What text message comes without a typo? That’s part of the charm, right?”
Actually, User Centric, a usability consultant in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., conducted tests among the three types of cellphone input and found that the touch screen of the iPhone evidently was not as conducive to typing accuracy as the hard-key Qwerty keyboard.
In the testing, iPhone users made an average of 5.6 errors per message, compared with 2.1 among Qwerty keyboarders. The iPhoners also left an average of 2.6 errors per completed message vs. 0.8 in the other group. (Speed was not an issue; both groups had similar rates of entry.)
Gives the term “touch typing” a different dimension, doesn’t it?
On the record
New products: Redmond-based Concur Technologies, a business-expense software developer, launched Concur Travel & Expense on-demand service.
Download, a column of news bits, observations and miscellany, is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.