Polycom® & Skype

Much though I hate the idea of plugging an individual product - this handy device is worth saying something about. A Polycom that plugs into my laptop and works with skype for the most amazing quality of audio conferences or calls. And also much handier to carry around than my previous headset - which was always getting in a tangle.

Polycom® Communicator C100S - polycom communicator, communicator, skype phone.

So...to navigate information you move your mouse and click? Think again!!

This is a really interesting set of experiments into a User Interface where the last thing you do is click!

Can you resist it???

:-)

Ms. Dewey

I must be slow because I only found Ms Dewey on the net a few weeks ago. And it was only tonight that I had time to spend with her. (Why does it feel so odd typing that!???).

To quote Marketplace from their blog back in December "Microsoft's trying to generate buzz for its new search engine with a live-action sexy librarian character with an attitude. Ms. Dewey is her name"

Ms Dewey is a real person (played by actress Janina Gavankar) and has tugged at the bits and bytes of many a geek (see I'm in love kinda). She's cleverly integrated into a Flash interface for MSN's search engine. It's done really well, but after a while the novelty wears off.

I am left wondering however what the future holds for avatar interfaces. Ms Dewey is strangely engaging, but obviously a bunch of cleverly stitched together clips. What if she could be generated in real time and "really" respond to user interaction? Would that be a good thing or not?

Everyone needs help with the new system!

Carol, our communications team leader, sent me this today. It's a subtitled clip from a Norwegian tv show and shines a comedic light on human reactions to new technology. I'm quite sure that people have always been the same and always will be the same!


I think this might be pressed into service the next time I have an audience who push back on something new!

When is a kudge not a kludge?

There is a certain snobbery in many business IT depertments that I'm sure didn't used to be there. Perhaps the efforts of SIs and Consultants over the years to "talk up" the "right approach" has rubbed off. Applications development has to go through a number of steps (mostly linear - although every now and again a "fast path" iterative approach makes a bid for respectability. The effect of this is that lots of simple functionality simply doesn't get delivered - there is too great a design, deploy server, test etc overhead.

In my very first job we'd design important systems properly - but frequently would deliver new functionality to people that asked for it on the same day!!

I was thinking these thoughts last week during a very impressive "hands on" presentation by Francis Carden, the CEO of OpenSpan. They produce an excellent tool for creating composite applications that run on a users desktop! I can hear lots of IT Architects saying "NO!" - but, but tools like this really do have a role to play.