interface

The stable version of Google Chrome received multiple security fixes this week, including four rated as "high," while the developer's version adopted an interface tweak to create more room for extension icons.

Google Chrome dev 6.0.453.1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux consolidates the former page control menu into the customization menu that's accessible from the wrench icon. This clears space on the toolbar for an extra extension icon, as well as giving a stronger visual presence to the cut, copy, and paste options, page zoom controls, and the full screen view toggle. Other … Read more

Google has released a tool to let command-line aficionados use several of the Net giant's services with the full glory of a text-based interface.

The tool, called GoogleCL, offers commands to control the contents sites of YouTube, Blogger, and Picasa, and the Google Apps sites of Docs, Calendar, and Contacts.

For example, people can create a photo album, change a document in a text editor, delete all blog posts mentioning a certain word, list all videos, or add a calendar appointment.

Command-line tools aren't for most folks--do you relish the prospect of typing "google youtube post --category … Read more

The market for personal finance software has exploded in recent years, and the quality of these programs varies widely. We're happy to report that Simple Home Budget is one of the better budgeting programs we've come across; the program didn't blow us away, but it's easy to use, and we couldn't find any major faults with it.

The program's interface is well-organized and intuitive, with a helpful calendar in the upper left corner and its major features--transactions, recurring transactions, categories, and overview--arranged in tabs. Simple Home Budget easily passed our primary financial software litmus … Read more

Monkey see, monkey do. And if monkey is a cyborg with a massive robot arm, monkey will do anything it wants.

University of Pittsburgh researchers led by Andrew Schwartz have made a monkey control a seven-axis robot arm and manipulator with its thoughts alone by implanting sensors in the simian's brain.

Like Honda's brain-controlled Asimo experiment, the research is aimed at developing better brain-machine interfaces to give disabled or paralyzed people greater mobility.

The researchers inserted two implants in the animal's motor cortex, covering the arm- and hand-controling areas. The video shows how the monkey controls the … Read more

The venerable dialog box, long a staple of software design, faces extinction or at least endangered-species status in Firefox.

Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander has published Firefox interface mock-ups that illustrate how the browser could look with some options set through a preferences tab rather than through a preferences dialog box.

The designs are experimental, but some of the work is proceeding already. For example, Firefox's new interface for managing add-ons uses this "in-content" interface, and Firefox's about:config controls have appeared in a browser tab for years.

Moving away from dialog boxes is by no means … Read more

In a feature I'll likely find useless, Google has added the ability to drag images directly into e-mails written in Gmail in the Chrome browswer rather than rely on a dialog box to select them as an attachment.

It's a nice idea and I'm all for it, but here's why it's not for me: screen real estate. For most programs I use, they're set to fill the entire screen, so to drag an image into Chrome, I'd have to resize the browser, position it to one side, position the image elsewhere, and then … Read more

With a new version of Chrome, Google has taken a second crack at shielding users from a technical detail that browsers traditionally show: the "http://" in the browser's Web address bar.

Did Google just do us a favor and free up a few pixels in the ever-more-crowded area around a browser's viewing area? Or did it hide some genuinely useful information?

I'm inclined to think the former. Many people don't know that HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and that there could even be something else there, such as "ftp://" for File Transfer Protocol. … Read more

When we learned about an experimental technology earlier this week that turns your skin into an interactive surface, our collective skin crawled with delight. Skinput, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft, is an acoustic bio-sensor armband that picks up sound patterns created when tapping a forearm or palm.

Specific acoustic signatures from different areas on the hand or forearm can be linked to functions like dialing a phone, operating an MP3 player, or playing Tetris. Pinching and flicking gestures can also be used for commands, and adding a pico projector to the armband can display menu selections … Read more

What if your skin could serve as an interactive surface? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have produced Skinput, an experimental device that turns the body's largest organ into a touch screen.

CMU's Chris Harrison and colleagues at Microsoft rigged up an acoustic bio-sensor to detect sound patterns created when tapping a forearm or palm. Each area has a specific acoustic signature that can be associated with functions like dialing a phone or playing Tetris. Pinching and flicking gestures can also be used for commands.

The video below shows how the system works. A bulky armband array … Read more