It’s not the Flash Player+ Safari combo we all want yet, but it’s a big step in that direction.

Check out the official Adobe Labs post and video here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

As we sat there waiting, I overheard two different people come in one after the other with the identical problem. The cord on their MacBook Pro power adapters had failed. Fortunately, both were promptly given a brand new power adapter and they went happily on their way.

This kind of situation is not uncommon with power supplies on all kinds of electronics. It first happened to me with my Atari 2600 back in the day, and it will probably happen to my MagSafe adapter one day.

While I was glad that the situation had a happy ending for these two customers, I could not help but feel a bit bad for Apple. It seems a shame to waste a perfectly good $80 power supply because of a worn-out cable. Just then, this popped into my head:

Why not make the power cable removable?

That way, when it wears out or if it breaks internally, you can just replace $5 worth of cable and not the whole unit. Simple, no?

Granted, a double-ended MagSafe connector might be overkill, but I’d rather have the adapter and not my MacBook Pro feel the yank when somebody trips over the cord. The basic idea is to separate the cable from the power unit. Any standard power connector on the non-MagSafe side would do.

I love all my Apple toys, but there’s always room for improvement. Can’t wait for Steve Jobs to announce this new feature at the next keynote!

Most “true” multi-touch system out there right now, such as Microsoft Surface or Reactable, use a projector and a vision system built around Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR). This requires a big machine or setup to allow enough distance for the projector to display the image on the screen. The bigger the screen, the farther away the projector needs to be. Of course, you can offset this if your projector has really good optics and can focus-in closer, but most commercial products out there bottom out at around 2′ or 3′ feet.

So how do the iPhone and iPod Touch do it?

Certainly, these devices are way too thin to be doing any kind of optical trickery, so the answer (I think) must lie in a tried-and-true technology most of us have been using for years. I suspect it’s resistive touch screen panels. This is what is used on ATMs and interactive kiosks.

I’ve had a chance to play around with a couple of iPhones lately, and it struck me that all the gestures are either one (tap) or two fingers (pinch). This makes perfect sense, since you really can’t hold on to the device and perform a three-finger gesture. That would be like trying to hit ctrl-alt-tab-shift-F12 on your keyboard using only one hand.

You don’t need multi-touch. It should be more like bi-touch or duo-touch.

I’ve been racking my brain on this one for months, but the final clue came yesterday with this graphic shown on the Apple website. As you can see, it shows two points being touched over two “mystery” layers on top of this cool grid that has two bumps on it corresponding to the touch points. Eureka!!!

If all you need is two touch points at the most, you just throw-on two resistive “layers” over the LCD and you can use either hardware or software techniques to ignore the extra touch points. If the “top” layer senses one finger, the “bottom” layer agrees. If you put down a second finger, the “top” layer ignores it and the “bottom” layer can take over the tracking for it. Shear genius, Apple.

I’m not saying that, yes, this is how Apple is doing it… but at least, this is probably how I would have done it. It’s a tried-and-true technology, it’s inexpensive, and it’s really all you need to do hardware-wise to build such a great product around.

Yet another example of Apple’s incredible vision, innovation, and ability to use current technology and materials in very creative ways. I guess there’s no more need for a transitional product like the “WidePod”.

This means the Zune is done, by the way.

iPod Touch and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc. Image is Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. Zune is a trademark of Microsoft.

I’ve been looking around for information on how to build a setup to do my own multi-touch and interaction experimentation. I recommend you go over to see the reactable project that the “Interactive Sonic Systems” team is working on at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain.

These examples gave the idea to start out with a simple interface experiment. What if you had a circular window that you can manipulate with two fingers? Moving the touch points around would in turn move the circle, and the size of it would depend on how close or far apart your fingers are. Inside the circle you would see that part of an image or video that is “behind” it. It would look something like this:

Building a working multi-touch table will require some fancy fabrication and a chunk of money. so, in order to not get discouraged while that part of the plan comes to fruition I’ve decided to start with the fun part, which is the software. I can always adapt it later once the hardware is done.

When one takes-on a fancy visualization or interaction experiment like this, I recommend you begin by working out a solid mathematical model on paper before you dive into the code. Doing this will save you countless headaches and dead-ends during the coding and will prevent you from giving up too soon. Trust me, I’ve been there. And so, here’s what we have…

Problem: The interface consists of a circular object that is positioned exactly between two control points. The distance between their centers determines its diameter, and moving them changes both the scale and position of the circle relative to the control points.

This lead me to work out the following mathematical model:

It may look scary, but this is good old algebraic geometry from highschool. We know at all times the coordinates of both control points, so we’ll call them X1,Y1 and X2,Y2. To determine the diameter of the circle we are going to draw between them we use the basic 2D distance formula,which we are calling d. And you guessed it, the exact x,y position of the circle is the mid-point between our two controls. I was originally going with some super-fancy trigonometric voo-do, but then I dusted-off the old math book and found this little nugget. The midpoint between two known points is merely the average of their coordinates. That formula is described by C. Having a solid model like this will take care of negative values in the coordinate system by itself. They will cancel each other out. This will save you mad “if” statements.

And here is the first prototype done using Flash Actionscript:

Taking it to the next level, this example is closer to what we are trying to do:

And finally, for those of you who happen to have a webcam, try this one!

If you have any examples, links, or anything else, feel free to drop a comment or two.

Special thanks to Gabriel “George Castanza” Ruiz. Hope this launches his Hand-modeling career.

With that, the conversation shifted to a recent post on appleinsider.com discussing a patent filing made by Apple on a hand-held device (iPod, duh!) that displays its output on a front display screen but receives input through a touch-and-force-sensitive backside interface.

The idea is to free the front of the device from any buttons, clickwheel, etc. and fill all of that space with a nice, bright screen. You don’t really look at the buttons when you use them, so why not just put them on the back? This by the way, is what I think is one of the major design shortcomings of the Microsoft Zune (in my opinion). I like what they did the case, the screen is nice, the interface is good (I guess)… but the buttons on the front are ugly and they make less sens once you turn the darn thing sideways.

Anyway, back to the patent…

Such a device, while super-cool, would probably be expensive and not happening any time this year. Some other cloudy details in the filing mention some elaborate interface tricks that would again delay such a device until that kind of software gets developed.

Then it hits me! What if they use hardware that exists today to pull-off the same tricks?

And so, here is my vision ladies and gentlemen… the widePod

Yes. This is what we all need right now. A big, non-touch sensitive (a.k.a. cheap) wide screen in the same size and form we all know and love. Apple already has this case… all they need is a new front (easy). And throw-in some coverflow goodness. Why not?

But the magic happens on the back.

Yes! Stick a regular clickwheel back there and we are done! The thing is already touch sensitive, and all Apple would need to do is rearrange the guts of the thing and cut a nice round hole in the back.

I would buy it today!!

Would you?

The iPhone is great, but it does have its limitations. I, for example, could not fit all my music in 4 or even 8 gigs of storage that doesn’t even take into account the browser, OS and other stuff that’s already going to be in there. I don’t have $500, $600, much less $700 for a new device. I already have a 3G iPod, two iPod Videos, and a Shuffle (yes, I have a problem). But mostly, I’m stuck with my current cellphone deal where the penalty to drop them and switch to AT&T would add a good $200 bucks to the mix.

So, what do you say Apple engineers? Can you make something like this happen while we wait for a pimped-out ubber-iPod with mind-control, HD video, corkscrew, Wi-Fi and bluetooth?

Let’s hope something like this is this year’s “One more thing….”

Apple, iPhone, Shuffle and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc. Zune is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Please don’t sue the crap out of me.

In the dim light, it struck me as odd how the reflection of the bright screen looked over the keyboard… and then it hit me. Instantly my mind raced from the Nintendo DS in my pocket, to the iPhone, to Steve Job’s last keynote, to the MacBook Pro.

It all suddenly made perfect sense.

The future will bring a product that combines the best traits of at least these three gadgets, and if I could take a look at the Apple site with the “wayforwardmachine”, I would probably bring back a screencap like this:

And yes, Apple will most probably be the company to pull this off. It should probably be called something like: “MacBook Pro DS.”

In his Macworld Expo 2007 keynote, Steve Jobs mentioned that multi-touch has made the stylus obsolete. What better and more intuitive instrument is there, than using your own finger to touch the interface exactly where you want something to happen? In my opinion, he held back the fact that this new method of interaction will eventually do away with the mouse, the trackpad, and the keyboard itself.

The keyboard will no longer need to be a physical hardware requirement in laptop (or desktop) design. In fact, if you make both screens multi-touch, there is virtually no need for any physical buttons at all. The keyboard can become a beatiful, ethereal interface that you can simply vanish down into the dock when you no longer need it, and the trackpad can be a simple square than you can resize and place anywhere, unbound from its historical front-and-center position.

Talk about an illuminated keyboard.

Apple, iPhone and MacBook are trademarks of Apple Inc. Nintendo DS is a trademark of
Nintendo of America Inc.

Since then, many things have changed in the world of the web, except maybe one thing: it has, and will always take more than design to make a great website.

If you want to become a “web designer”, first consider the following:

• Good websites are a balance of form and function. An ugly site will turn off as many people as a beautiful, but useless one.
• A website should be a solution to a problem. The problems that the internet can solve range from selling a product, to distributing information, and even something as simple as having a place to keep all those digital pictures you take. Make sure your site does something.
• If you build it, they will not necessarily come. Sites with no use or purpose will help nothing and no one.
• A website is not the solution for everything. Building a site to solve a problem nobody has or to push information no one cares for is futile.
• Doomed is a site without a plan. Launching a website without a clear plan of action or a viable business plan will most likely fail and result in great frustration and loss.
• Your site is sooo last season. Like any creative endeavor, designing websites will create fashions and trends. Try to lead. It’s ok to follow. Don’t get left behind.
• Sites do not live forever. Both the quality of the idea and it’s execution will determine how long a site will be useful, and your beautiful graphics will inevitably be ruined by someone doing “support” later.

But before this list runs on for another 30 items or so, the point is this: Designing a great website does not end when you close Photoshop. It certainly does not begin with looking at other sites you are considering ripping off.

A great website is the product of among many things a careful process that includes visual design, information architecture, a consideration of user experience, solid software (maybe hardware) engineering, and good business sense.

You might say, a website has to be developed, not just designed.

So, do you still want to be a web designer?

Consider instead aspiring to become a “Web Developer”—a term that is more and more describing a person with the perfect mix of both artistic and programming ability.

This is the path I am taking from now on.