The expanding world of interfaces

USB, WiFi, Webcams...these technologies are all making increasingly creative interfaces possible. On the output side of things, here is a toy rabbit that uses WiFi to wiggle its ears when you have email. For input, here's a demonstration of using play-doh to control the playback speed of a video.

This reminds me of Durrell Bishop's marble answering machine (Ctrl+F and search for "marble") , in which marbles (real, physical marbles) are used to inform the user how many messages they have and to, by dropping the marbles into a hole, playback the messages.

This trend of using physical, tangible interfaces to control non-physical events (email, video, voice messages) is really exciting, especially for those who don't want to let computer programmers and graphic designers have all the fun.

Usability sells?

Nintendo thinks they'll be able to market the usability of their new video controller to help sell their next-generation video console.

"We thought about how everyone in the family uses the TV remote, but some people don't want to even touch the game controller," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said. "We want to set a new interface standard for games."

Neat.