I think his points are particularly relevant as we move into an age where many traditional desktop apps are being converted to web applications. I see an increasing trend in web applications of people trying to recreate desktop applications like interfaces in a browser-based setting. Aza urges us to rethink what we know about computer interfaces and to come up with exciting and innovative alternatives.

Traditional applications have had more and more functionality added to them to an extent that they have become “a portmanteau of all possible features”, again it is worrying that many of today’s successful web apps could suffer the same fate. The speaker encourages open APIs and Mash-ups as an alternative and a may to combine applications without having to switch between multiple programs/services.

One of the most interesting parts of the talk for me is when the speaker demos some systems that he’s been developing himself, one is a command-line interface for launching applications that uses almost real language commands and auto-complete. The other is an interesting zoomable desktop, which is much more work orientated than the traditional model, it also centres around the concept of “content as content”.

At nearly an hour and a half the video is quite long but I found it extremely interesting, the speaker also looks a bit like Rick Moranis of “Honey I shrunk the kids” fame, which has got to be a good thing.

# Pete Graham