Kinect built into every Windows machine:
At CES this year, Steve Ballmer showed off new ways to use the Xbox 360 Kinect camera peripheral. Using arm gestures and voice commands, players can now use applications on the Xbox and play media. The demonstration shows only a fraction of what Kinect-like interfaces will be capable of in a few years. While it is an Xbox exclusive at the moment, why not integrate Kinect technology into all Windows devices? Imagine being able to gesture or tell your laptop to open up different apps and control many onscreen actions directly with your hands. It could finally give laptops and desktops an interface that could compete with the direct-touch interfaces of tablets and smartphones. And on touch devices, enhanced gestures and voice commands would also come in handy in many ways. Kinect with its infrared camera is a huge potential advantage for Microsoft should they choose to liberate it from the Xbox.
Live tiles and new proactive interfaces:
Kinect offers a lot of opportunities, but so does Windows Phone. Rumor has it that Microsoft is already adding Windows Phone Live Tiles to Windows 8, with the option to turn them off. This is a great idea and I hope Live Tiles are used for tablet devices as well. However, I’d like to see the team in Redmond take it a few steps further. Microsoft has been experimenting with some cool new bubble-like interfaces (seen below) that attempt to predict and make the computing experience far more proactive than it currently is. For example, if you’ve booked a flight and the weather has gotten bad, maybe Windows would proactively notify you that things aren’t looking so good for that flight on Tuesday. Or perhaps your computer or smartphone Cloud account may remember that you always participate in March Madness and notify you of unique opportunities.
A new Explorer for a new age:
Understanding navigation and storage is also something many Windows users don’t get. They know what a My Documents is, but 20 years into the concept of folders and a significant number of users don’t understand directories and how they work. Manipulating directories is the key to knowing how to fiddle around in Windows. I’m not sure if Microsoft needs to eliminate folders entirely, but people need to know where their files are. The differentiation between the Desktop homescreen, My Documents, and C: Drive is too complicated for many users to understand. It should be better explained, or the Explorer should be replaced with a system that is more effective. Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie hinted at this in his farewell letter last October. With the Mac App Store, Apple has already begun to better hide directories from the end user’s view.
Windows 8 Forum Note: Hi Guests, Members! Have you registered? Don't miss out on the benefits membership offers. Hope to see you soon...Team Windows 7, 8, 9 News Info
