[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bSh10jvHEQ&w=560&h=315]
Just a quick one today – check out this AWESOME new audio controller.  Stay with it – at first I thought this was the silliest thing in the world – a box of buttons you can wave around on stage – until I realised that: ‘No – waving it around is actually the POINT of this thing!’ It’s internal gyroscope and accelerometer enable you to generate control messages, (for each button!!) by tilting, moving, waving, lurching, and throwing this thing around.  Which is COOL!

I have long maintained that audio technology is really pushing the boundaries of interface design in it’s search for ever more expressive ways of interacting with our machines.

Furthermore, for me (and I would suspect many others) touch screens are missing a vital component of effective interaction and will forever be a little bloodless until we start delivering real haptic feedback about the elements we push, stroke and drag around.  Thus electromechanical polymer looks so exciting!  When we finally get those buttons to raise up off the screen I think our devices will really start competing in immediacy and richness of ‘neural signalling’ with our physical tools.

Coz, you know… buttons are cool.  Witness this nuclear power station control room!!  Just makes me want go running around twisting dials and pushing things.