Monday, November 19, 2007

Google shows Android

A new fresh video from the west coast and the Google HQs

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Open Handset Alliance

At last it is official what our friends in the states have been up to! The formation of a new alliance and a new open source platform called Android (http://www.openhandsetalliance.com). So why is this not just another telco alliance? Well, for starters the initiative comes from a different playground than we are used to – the web/internet domain, and secondly the backing of this initiative is massive.

From a general stand point it is clear that open source software will have significant impact on the market. What has been missing in previous attempts is a big backing company to get third party developers integrated in the value chain. Regardless of what position one has been playing in the mobile value chain, the terms and conditions has pretty much been set by the traditional actors. Now the OHA has an opportunity here to open up the mobile market for a much larger group of players, that up till this point has been locked out.

During the press conference Eric Schmidt, CEO and Head of the Board of Google, stresses user interface as one of the most complex and most important parts of the mobile device, which of course is something we agree on at TAT ;)

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gphone/googles-android-team-introduces-the-gphone-318878.php?autoplay=true

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Preserving attention in a car

You could use an eye tracker in a car to avoid drawing the driver's attention to the wrong places.

Click the image to watch the animation

Digital speed representation has the drawback (compared to an analog meter) that the information tend to flicker every time it updates. This can draw the eye from the road to the speedometer, which is bad for driving performance. But if you put an eye tracker in the car, the information will only need to be updated when you look at it.

The same thing applies to tickers and other user interfaces that can be made less distracting while the driver is not looking at them.

Of course, this will have to be tested to see if it works. Does anyone know of any previous research in this field?