Google just released the highly anticipated voice search for the iPhone. I must admit, its more fun that most of the other games I have installed.

Sometimes its incredibly precise but most of the time it makes hilarious mistakes: “Cocktail recipes” become “Cocaine recipes”, “Snow Patrol” becomes “low cut throat” …

This experience strongly reminds me of experimenting with the handwriting recognition on the first Apple Newton 15 years ago.

All in all definitely room for improvement, but if one day the quality is right (like the textbased one), it will be a huge helper application …

Presentation for Internet World 2008 by Jan Groenefeld, Dieter Wallach and myself.

While visiting a NFL football game in Tampa two weeks ago repeatedly a phone number was displayed on the video screens. You should call to report intoxicated members in the audience who behaved “disturbingly”.

Besides finding this somewhat ironic since the whole stadium was swamped with advertisement for beer, I also was fascinated from a cultural standpoint …

… how easily some people sitting in my block actually called that number.

… that the behavior of the particular girl (eventually thrown out of the stadium by security) would have accounted to the socially accepted standard in a German soccer audience.

This experience reflects into the design of web communities: It’s a very sensitive part how the addressed culture judges behavior and thus which tools have to be offered for sanctioning it.

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” Betty Reese [via]

In Clay Shirky’s presentation at this year’s Web 2.0 conference he tells a great anecdote (at 14:12 min) that happily reminds me what great changing times we are facing and living in already :

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.” [...]

It’s also become my motto, when people ask me what we’re doing— from now on, that’s what I’m going to tell them: We’re looking for the mouse. [via]

Being a huge fan of live music, I finally had the chance last week to tick off one of the top bands on my must-see list: Sigur Rós, this amazing band of Iceland that provided me a perfect soundtrack for great lenghts of my life. Their show in the Schlachthof Wiesbaden exceeded my expectations with such an intense and perfect audiovisual experience that almost surpassed (the memories of) seeing Pink Floyd’s PULSE live in the nineties.

Definately a must see if they are in your area! As an appetizer, here is “Popplagið” the traditional encore of Sigur Rós shows (recorded in Reykjavik).

Last.fm - my favorite source for new music - just posted some behind the scenery perspective how they practice quality control. It’s funny that in a world with fancy high-tech monitoring dashboard solutions the most tangible interfaces are green/yellow/red bear lamps and a simple analogue meter.

In the videos of the “Brave NUI World” talk (IxDA Seattle June 2008 [via]) members of the Microsoft Surface team are sharing their experiences with natural user interfaces (NUIs).

The first talk (left) by Sabrina Boler exemplifies an apparent core characteristic of NUIs: An utmost representation of real life (physics) preferably without any GUI element.

This got me pondering:

- How coherent can such a NUI user experience be when besides interaction with classic tangible artefacts (like the strained photo shoebox demo) also more complex applications from the GUI world have to be available?

- How fast does the balance between pure “naturalness” and efficiency flip in relation to the time prospective users worked with GUI systems?

- Is it really necessary to avoid “GUI baggage” at any cost? The last point raised in the video is a good example: A scrollbar is not just an instrument for navigation, but also a well-known indication if and how much content is available (and out of sight).

The second talk (right) by Dennis Wixon illuminates the design process of Microsoft Surface from the user research perspective. He also offers a short interesting digression into game design, a field where Microsoft is well known for its innovation. The mentioned MDA method (Mechanics - Dynamics - Aesthetics) method sounds interesting.

This new video of the upcoming “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” game for the iPhone shows (~03:30 min) the disadvantages of having the touch screen as the only way to interact. Although the gesture based controlling seems exceptional, how enjoyable is the gorgeous 3d action when the finger is constantly covering big parts of it?

Interesting concept study by Chris Woebken that extends the current trend (iPhone) of minimizing the (unnecessary) layer of abstraction in interaction. The flexible interface highly resembles physical interaction with artifacts and provides all digital benefits like infinite content. I’d definitely embrace it for lightweight interaction in daily life … [via]