Take a Leap into the Future

Have you seen Minority Report? Well it features Tom Cruise using a pretty futuristic user interface on a curved glass transparent computer screen. This is often  referred to as the future of computing technology, but what if the future was even cooler? What if you don't need to where a weird glove with two finger nodes and thumb node to control the PC? Well now you're talking.

Introducing Leap Motion, the most futuristic computer interface since voice recognition and Microsoft's Kinect. It's been showcased on their site for quite sometime, but the shipping date has now been publised as Early 2013, and with the new year just days away it's getting difficult not to pre-order this! It's priced at $69.99 plus shipping. The video speaks for it self, this looks like incredible technology and will no doubt inspire new applications dedicated to this interface.



Currently compatibility is with Mac and PC, so it should keep most users happy!

Find out more at www.leapmotion.com

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Microsoft have released Windows 8 Consumer Preview for developers, enthusiasts and curious consumers to try. The next version of Windows build's on both the popular and stable Windows 7 and the Windows 8 Developer Preview released a couple on months ago.

The differences from Windows 7 to Windows 8 are around a new user interface called Metro. The Metro display replaces the traditional "start" menu. Many apps are then optimised for the Metro UI which brings larger buttons and more intuitive menu options to reduce clutter. This is far better for touch operated devices such as touch screen laptops and tablet devices. The classic desktop and windows explorer UI are still there for desktop users.

Is this release of Windows trying to be all things to all devices? Perhaps Android will be a better OS for tablets as it's optimised to touch screen operation from day one. To decide yourself you can download the developer preview to run on and old machine, or as a virtual machine.

No +"new tab" Button for Chrome 17

The latest public release of Google Chrome, version 17, features a streamlined "new tab" button. This is only a small change to the already sleek UI. Google have simply removed the "+" label from the button. This has been a feature of Google Chrome Canary (the development version of Chrome) for some time. The images below show the old and new "new tab" buttons.

Old new tab button, complete with a +

New button, without the +

Let's Fly - Twitter Update

Twitter are updating their UI (user interface) across the board and a preview is available now at fly.twitter.com. Twitter's blogpost has all the detailed information but essentially the new experience is broken down into 4 sections: Home, Connect, Discover and Me. These are the new symbols for these areas:

The mobile website is up and running and the main site will following in a couple of weeks. The new experience is also filtering down onto smart phone apps and is available as an update on iOS devices now (Twitter v. 4.0).



 Video Preview:


Image from blog.twitter.com