Statistical Graphics and more

It is now almost 10 years ago that I asked a friend to bring me an iPod Touch along when he was visiting NYC. I was thrilled and curious to see this new interface Apple did introduce with iOS. Since then, smartphones and tablets are everywhere and the touch-interface is here to stay. Even the surface […]

Programming a VCR was the classical example of failed user interfaces. Given that the only thing that we need to specify for recording a show on a VCR is the starting date and time as well as the running time, it is hard to believe that it is really that hard. As summer finally seems […]

Mac OS X Lion is now the 7th incarnation of Apple’s new operating system. Each of the version upgrades had minor additions to the graphical user interface (GUI). None of the increments did really have a big impact on how we used the OS – at least for me, things like Exposé, Spaces or the […]

The gap of the new “digital divide” between those who only use computers when they are as easy to use as iPads and smartphones and those who like (or at least accept) to type commands to perform jobs, seems to get bigger and bigger. R – the lingua franca of statistical computing – is exactly […]

This is the ideal post to combine Infographics/Visualizations with the user interface aspect. I found it on Kaiser’s Junk Charts. Having spent only a few years of my life in the US and being inculturated in orderly and standardized Germany, I can tell that most faucets here come pretty close to the “should be” situation. This […]

It is the silly season aka as the “Sommerloch”, or the “morte-saison”, so there is time for this post. We all know the legendary “Mac vs. PC” spots, which Apple aired between 2006 and 2009. The underlying idea was the smart newcomer Mac attacking the bold and not always very smart acting established PC. So […]

When Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPad, many of us expected some disruptive move regarding the user interface. In fact, there was nothing revolutionary new in comparison to the iPhone – yes, the iPad is bigger. There is one thing to keep in mind, though. The computer in its current form is a general purpose […]

Pretty hard to get any attention while Steve is presenting the iPad 😉 , but nonetheless I like to point to the new version 1.1 of Mondrian. Here are the most important new features: Load data directly from R workspace files New color schemes Compatible with Java 6 on all platforms Very many bug fixes […]

On Wednesday, January 27th, (not only) the IT-world will be looking westwards to what is coming from Cupertino. Apple will reveal their “latest creation”. Nothing new regarding the staging: rumors are piling in blogs and news lists for months, analysts predict the dark or golden future of Apple and their competitors (depending on who pays […]

The last post on the Palm Pre internationalization was a kind of a funny embaressment we all could have a good laugh on. Well, Palm did start to fix it and the current version looks like this: It is hard to translate a typo into a foreign language (especially as a non-native) but the “2.5 […]

There is no doubt, the PalmPre is the only competitor for the iPhone that can be taken seriously, i.e., which has a user interface which is really optimized for small screen devices. Palm was doing a great job – not only in hiring developers from Jobs – but also in getting the phone to a […]

Matt pointed me to this nice report on Bill Gates trying to download one of “his” products. Here is the e-mail, he sent to some of his staff. Make sure not to miss the performance from Dave Ross of KIRO-AM/710 when reading this e-mail – very nice. I wish this Bill Gates would have been […]