Free Stuff from Matterbox

  Matterbox is a form of advertising brought to you by the Royal Mail. In the world of computers and the google generation we’ve all become accustomed to television commercials, spam and banner ads but most of these we dismiss without even a second glance. Matterbox brings you tangible advertising, giving you items to touch hold and use, straight to your door. Simply sign up on their website and sit back and wait for the postman to deliver you a blue box with some unspecified goodies inside. The contents varies from issue to issue and contain anything from keryings and badges to CD’s and books to chocolate bars and shower gel. 

 The boxes are sent out at irregular intervals and you don’t get every issue, but hey, you do get something for nothing after all.

 

Every mouse has it's day

10/GUI is an interesting concept to find an alternative to the trusty computer mouse, including the new magic mouse from apple. It makes use of multi touch technology found in products such as iPhones to replace the mouse with a multi touch pad with not one, not two, not three pointers but ten pointers on the screen. This is utilised in an organic fashion so that both hands can work simultaneously and independently on different tasks. The result is an input device that is seemingly out of a science fiction move (go watch Minoity Report or Iron Man).

Computer interface from Minority Report

But the innovation doesn’t stop there because 10/GUI proposes a whole new system for organising applications in a move away from the normal windowed desktop. Check out the video to see how the 10/GUI hopes to change the way we interact with the computer.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

 But this could be just a stepping stone, at E3 earlier this year we saw Microsoft's new Xbox showpiece the Kinect, this is an improved version of Playstation's Eyetoy. Kinect offers face recognition aswell as motion capture. But what if Microsoft changed the focus of Kinect from gaming to a home PC interface? Would we get a sci-fi computer input device like in minority report? What if the device could track individual fingertips? Combine that with 10/GUI and just think about what could happen... I think the  era of the mouse could be over soon.

What do you think about this topic? Has it left anything out? Has it raised some questions which need to be answered? Why not share your thoughts and opinions with everyone below.

Please Log In...again

  Aren’t you all fed up of logging into various different accounts on the internet? Think about it, in the last five minutes how many times have you typed out your email address or username and typed a password? I have myself had to sign into at least five different websites in the last few minutes, facebook, GMail, university e-mail, blogspot, eBay, pay pal and my bank. All required me to fill out those little boxes. You may be thinking that sounds like Microsoft's Windows Live ID or one of its’ previous incarnations, well essentially it is but why not do just that? Windows Live ID failed for various reasons, mainly people didn’t trust microsoft with the amount of information they would have access to. But why doesn’t another company with a good reputation, say Google, implement such a system. Many people have a GoogleID already why not extend that to work across other websites. We already see facebook doing something similar, there are several websites now where you can sign in with facebook. So who knows maybe this single sign-in is already creeping up on us?

 What do you think about this topic? Has it left anything out? Has it raised some questions which need to be answered? Why not share your thoughts and opinions with everyone below.

First Blog

Hello and welcome to The Web Nexus blog. This is a brand new blog started with virtually no purpose other than to share the great content available on the internet and get the most out of life in the digital world we live in.


What makes The Web Nexus so special?
 This blog is all about the fantastic content available on the internet and new technology. The blog looks at the ways people use the internet from social networking and communication to shopping, entertainment and how we can make the most of the real world from the internet something which seems to have been lost.

Who is writing this blog?
 The Web Nexus is written by a typical university student, someone who uses the internet for everything but has no more knowledge of computers than most people these days. With this in mind the blog is centred mainly around my own life but in months to come will hopefully have grown to incorporate a family of contributors and guest posts.

So hopefully The Web Nexus will soon be at the forefront of internet culture and have developed a loyal following so stay tuned...