“The next disruption will come with big advances in UI because that’s all you have,” he said. Behind the scenes, computers and networks are still abstract machines that essentially flip switches, but people don’t think in the abstract. So the user interface is a way to turn the abstract into concrete efforts that humans understand. How does one “de-abstract” the machine?

The biggest clue, Underkoffler says, is space, and pointing is the simplest human gesture that applies to space. We point for the benefit of others, who can determine what space we’re trying to reference. Applying that idea to computers is what Oblong does, and the key is giving tangible space coordinates to every pixel on any screen in a room. Essentially, an entire room around you can be a desktop.

But you can’t drive three dozen screens with a single piece of hardware, so Oblong is focused on the operating environment to create a user interface that works across networked computers in a way that multiple workers can collaborate. This “removes the tyranny of meeting rooms and conference rooms where one person owns the experience,” according to Underkoffler. Screens for input and output — such as an iPad – can be used as a two-way screen to control main and add data.

We might be using one or two screens today in a desktop environment, but in the near future, every available screen in a room could extend our workplace beyond the constraints of an old user interface.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Luckily, Facebook recently opened up its API to allow third-party developers more access to core features, which gives them a chance to rework the web app and deliver something a little easier on the eyes and potentially less frustrating. That’s exactly what Microsoft’s done with its new Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook, available for Windows and Mac. It’s also demonstrated that Microsoft can sometimes make something I actually like.

As you can see from the screenshots below, the Silverlight Facebook client does something visually striking with the content it pulls from Facebook itself. It uses a fairly sparse dark theme with big, easy-to-read type that borrows just enough from the standard web-based Facebook layout that you won’t find yourself hunting for commands and interface elements.

Your main view shows your news feed (the live feed, not the “News Feed,” which is completely useless and should not be the default for any reason). You can filter your news feed results using the same filters you’d find on Facebook.com, which appear down the left-hand side. Commenting and “liking” is enabled in the news feed, and you can post status updates by clicking the “what’s on your mind?” link at the top. Clickable selections from your friends’ photo updates appear slightly blurred on the right-hand side, providing even more functionality.You can also switch to either “grid” or “photos feed” modes. Grid displays your news feed in a columnar view, so that you can see more at once. Photos feed brings the partially-obscured photos backdrop to the fore and displays a mosaic of your friends’ recently uploaded images. It’s quite nice looking, and it provides a way of looking through your contacts’ images that’s far more appealing than Facebook’s standard method.

The photo browsing in general is very cool, and it feels much better checking out albums than it does on the web. The only downside I’ve found is that some albums, for whatever reason, aren’t browsable in the app, because of some setting the uploader has used in creating them.

What really puts this client over the top, in my opinion, is that it gives you access to both Events and your messages. Thanks to the inclusion of both of those features, I no longer have to visit the web-based Facebook at all. You won’t be able to use Facebook chat through the Silverlight app, but there are other solutions for that, too, including some web-based clients and multi-client apps like Beejive for the iPhone (which is what I use).

Other limitations include some control issues –you have to click on a column’s arrows to scroll, instead of using a mouse wheel, for example. This may be a limitation of Silverlight itself, or it could just be because the client is still in an early beta stage at this point, but it does get a bit annoying. You also can’t hide things you don’t want to see without visiting the Facebook web site, and some types of links will take you back to the web, though I didn’t encounter this very often because those are mostly Facebook app links, which I don’t generally use anyway. There are also some obvious bugs, but again, this is an early beta.

By far the most useful aspect of the Silverlight Facebook client is how it treats Facebook more like a CRM system and less like something to use for idle distraction. For example, whenever you view messages between yourself and someone else, it populates the right-hand side of the app with the latest updates, links and photos posted by that person. That way you can refer directly to that contact’s recent activity. It isn’t providing you with any information you can’t get on the web site, but it is combining and presenting it in much more useful ways.

It’s a solid Facebook client, and it makes the service feel much more professional. If you use Facebook during the course of your work, and you aren’t happy with how it works on the web, the Silverlight Client is definitely worth checking out.

Post your thoughts on the Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook below.

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Free Web Desktops

If you’re not interested in hosting your own virtual desktop or are not quite ready to invest in an expensive corporate class solution like the ones offered up by Microsoft, WMware and Citrix, then you might be interested in some of these free web desktop offerings. These services provide extremely easy do-it-yourself solutions that even the least technically-savvy individuals can set up.

iCloud from Xcerion provides a super-slick web desktop that you can set up in a few minutes. Its free public version provides 3GB of online storage for files and documents, and plenty of free applications such as a Twitter client, instant messenger for many services, email, calendar and much more. You can also add free widgets to your desktop, just like your regular one. It’s a neat product, but one issue that Simon highlighted when he wrote about it earlier this year is a lack of browser support.

EyeOS is another cloud desktop, but it’s a little different because it’s an open-source platform that you can either install and run on your own server, or you can create a free hosted account. One of the big advantages this one has — besides being able to host your own online desktop — is that you can actually create Word documents and spreadsheets with the included web applications. You can save your documents on your virtual desktop or download them to your local computer. Another interesting aspect is the fact that you can even build your own EyeOS web applications thanks to its open-source development platform. There is a helpful wiki for developers too.

G.ho.st stands for Global Hosted Operating System and it also offers a web desktop where you can run applications and store files that you can access anytime from anywhere.

One of the best things about G.ho.st is that it offers live connection to Google Docs and Zoho Office apps which means you can work on your word documents, spreadsheets and presentations all from your web desktop. There are also many other slick web apps and widgets that you can add to customize your desktop. You can save files on your 15 GB G.ho.st drive and even share files or folders with others. I especially like the ability to share files with non-G.ho.st users by making them public.

There’s also a G.ho.st lite version which is actually a mobile device version of the platform. This is exciting because it means you can access your files on your virtual desktop from your smartphone.

Self-Host Your Own Virtual Desktop

The concept of self-hosted virtual desktops isn’t new by any means, but the technology has matured over the years and has now become more affordable for smaller firms. The biggest self-hosting desktop solutions were originally from Citrix and Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services. Thankfully, the incredible expense involved with establishing virtual desktops has steadily declined through the years.thanks to newer services like like VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Citrix has also unleashed its own open-source virtual solution with its Xen Hyperviser product line.

What web desktops have you tried? Please share them in the comments.

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Twitt is a new, lightweight Mac Twitter client that has some interesting features I haven’t yet found elsewhere. Can it compete with perennial favorites Tweetie and TweetDeck, though? Using both those programs regularly has set my expectations fairly high, but Twitt definitely counts some surprising twists among its repertoire.

Good Things

Twitt displays your Twitter stream like an iChat conversation. It’s an interface that’s familiar to Mac users, and it fully supports themes, including user-generated ones. It comes with two, the default iChat style and an iPhone theme that is much darker. I still prefer the look of Tweetie overall, but having options is always nice, and some users will value it over other UI considerations.

I also like that there’s a compose window at the bottom, which you can optionally hide. It’s preferable to me to always have a field for posting in view, since I find it actually makes me much more likely to actually tweet on a regular basis, something which I find myself doing less and less of since I started using Tweetie as my main Twitter workhorse.

Filters is another thing Twitt has going for it. The app allows you, via a preference panel, to specify terms that Twitt will then look for in your stream. It’ll then automatically hide tweets containing said keywords, effectively enabling you to filter out annoying trending topics or ongoing conversations you aren’t particularly interested in.

Not So Good Things

I’m hesitant to say “bad things,” because none of Twitt’s features are set in stone, and these can still be changed in later editions, but as it stands, there are a few failings the program has mean I won’t be changing horses anytime soon.

First of all, Twitt only supports one account at a time. That’s good news for people who want to keep things simple, I suppose, but if you have more than one Twitter account to monitor or manage, you’re out of luck with Twitt. For my line of work, that’s a dealbreaker. You can log out of your current account and sign in with another easy enough, but why bother when other clients offer much simpler account switching mechanisms.

Second, there isn’t any mechanism for in-line viewing of conversations that I can find. Nor is there a means to view profiles, follow, or do any of the other fun stuff that I’ve come to expect after using Tweetie and TweetDeck for so long. Without these features, I’m afraid Twitt will remain little more than a quaint alternative for Twitter amateurs, instead of a fully-fledged professional tool.

Conclusion

If you’re using Twitter as more of an IM client and less of an RSS replacement and/or brand management outlet, then there’s definitely something to be said for Twitt’s simplistic approach. Things work as you’d expect them to in an IM client. Clicking on someone’s portrait enters their username into the compose field, so that you’re automatically having a conversation with that person. Ongoing conversations between others are highlighted (orange, by default) and stand out from the rest of your stream.

For my purposes, and I suspect for a lot of other web workers, Twitt just isn’t powerful enough to play with the big boys. But it does have the advantage of being free and easy to learn if you’re just starting out. Once you get your sea legs, however, I highly recommend stepping up to Tweetie or TweetDeck.

Which desktop Twitter client are you using, and why?

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I thought I’d share some tips gleaned from my latest move to a new desktop. My way isn’t necessary the best way, but it may give you some ideas when it comes time for you to make the switch. Here are the steps that I took.

1. Back up your data. Use an online backup service like BackBlaze or Mozy. (Solo web workers should have an offsite backup solution, anyway) I also have an external drive that does nothing but back up my computer’s data. The free built-in Microsoft Windows Synctoy took care of my syncing. Make sure you synchronize everything, including the data on any mobile devices.
2. Take a computer inventory. Run System Information for Windows (SIW), Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder and Belarc Advisor.  Save the output files in Gmail or someplace where you can access it from any computer. These free applications create a list of installed software, license keys, hardware inventory, network information and other details. These apps are all free.
3. Put the computers near each other. This makes the move easier and allows you to check what’s on the old computer and install it on the new PC and compare the setups. It’s also worth checking which apps are used frequently. While the inventory software lists all the installed applications, you might not need to exactly duplicate your setup. The key is to get the important and most frequently used tools and software installed so you can get up and running on the new machine. Then, if you find you need one of the apps you didn’t move over to the new machine later, you can install it. Don’t pressure yourself to get everything installed.
4. Install the applications and tools. Dig up all your software, download the ones that don’t have a CD/DVD and download updated software. Some of my software (Palm Desktop, for example) is so old that I didn’t bother using the original CD/DVD to install it. Instead, I went to the companies’ web sites to download the latest versions.
5. Share folders over the network. Turn on network file-sharing by opening Explorer. Find the folders you want to copy to your new computer, right-click the folder and select “Share.” Look for the option to share the folder (it’s different in Windows XP and Vista). Doing this, I shared the folder with all my work documents so that I had instant access to the documents I needed without waiting for the online backup to do its job. The online backup application then restored the rest of the files.
6. Copy the data from old to new.
7. Start using the new computer. I plan to keep the old computer nearby for a little while so if I run into something I need to customize or verify, I can look at it and update the new computer accordingly.
8. Set up a backup system. Whether you used one before or not, put a backup system in place. Even new computers mess up and you never know when some disaster decides to make life harder for your home. It can happen. I was in my grandparents’ house when it caught fire.

Having many of my applications and data in the cloud made this the easiest and fastest desktop transition ever.

What other ways can you ease and speed up the transition from old computer to new?

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AIR app or not, the real question is: Will this bring Facebook back into my daily professional life?

Facebook has fallen out of favor with me. Sure, I still check it occasionally, but mostly I find myself hiding poll and survey results from my stream, rather than actually interacting with people. Twitter is by far my weapon of choice when it comes to social networking, owing partly to my ability to use it without actually paying a visit to the web-based app. I have lots of Facebook-only contacts that I’d like to interact with more, but the drawbacks of the site prevent me from using it with any real frequency.

With Facebook Desktop, I partly get my wish. Because the interaction I’m after from Facebook is based on my stream, Facebook Desktop gets the job done. Truth be told, I don’t miss having access to the rest of Facebook’s features, since I hardly use them anyway.

Thanks to Facebook Desktop, I now find myself viewing Facebook almost as a more exclusive Twitter user group. I can stay in touch with professional and personal contacts with whom I have deeper and more meaningful relationships, without having to filter through all the distracting stuff that’s almost inescapable on Twitter.

Does it mean Facebook will remain professionally relevant to me? It’s too early to tell for sure. Suffice it to say, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Do you still use Facebook for work? Will the new API or Facebook Desktop app affect your Facebook usage?

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Things started off well, since Tweetie offers a full-featured, ad-supported free version in addition to a $19.95 (currently on sale for $14.95) ad-free version. I can live with one ad per hour in my tweet stream in exchange for a great free program. Heck, half of the tweets of those I’m following are probably ads anyway.

Let me just say right away that Tweetie’s interface is gorgeous. It looks and feels like a Mac app, and it has a commitment to minimalist design that I very much appreciate. If you’re looking for desktop eye candy, Tweetie is definitely your client. I especially like the scrollbar and the way it handles multiple accounts in the left-hand sidebar. There are lots of other advantages as well:

Global Shortcut for New Tweet

Another big plus is the ability to set a global shortcut for composing new tweets. My MacBook is now set to open the composer whenever I press Shift+Command+T, which helps me get tweets out much faster than with any other program.

Easy Image/Link Sharing

I also love that you can drag image files to the composer window and Tweetie will automatically generate yFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo or Posterous links for it. You can also set your URL truncation service, with the ability to choose from five different providers.

Threaded Conversations

Quick and easy access to threaded conversations, both public and DMs, is another nice feature. Clicking on an @reply will show you that public conversation thread, in the same window and without any other tweets. DM conversations look like iChat sessions. I appreciate the visual distinction between the two because it helps me know what kind of conversation I’m viewing at a glance.

Despite these and other things to its credit, Tweetie just doesn’t have what it takes to replace Nambu as my primary Twitter client from a web working perspective. The reasons are many, and though some might seem minor, taken together they draw a clear distinction between the two apps:

No User Groups

Tweetie 1.0 doesn’t support custom user groups, which is a must for a Twitter client if you’re following more than 100 people, especially if a fair number of those people tweet with any kind of frequency. Without dedicated user groups, you’ll miss out on important stories and links, and you’ll have a much harder time compartmentalizing your Twitter usage.

No Copying Text from Tweets

This might only be handy if you’re a blogger or writer looking to collect quotes from Twitter, but I’m sure there are other reasons a professional might want to do this. Having a built-in retweet button is great, but I want to be able to select text from directly within my Twitter-stream and copy that so that I can save it to another source. Ironically, I realized I was missing this feature while preparing to write this article.

No Column View

One thing that I got used to when using TweetDeck, and was pleased to find Nambu also maintained, was a column view option that let me organize different types of filtered tweets next to each other in the same window. Sure, with Tweetie, you can view searches (though not @replies, unless you search for your own @replies) in a new window, but it lacks the clean organization of a multi-column setup.

So what do I really think of Tweetie, in the end? The design snob in me wants to love it, declare my devotion to it, and never look at another Twitter client ever again, but the pragmatic web worker in me can’t justify using it for more than casual purposes. If you’re only following a few people, and you use Twitter for personal rather than professional purposes, then by all means, get Tweetie. But if, like me, you care more about what’s under the hood than the bodywork, stick with Nambu for now.

Have you tried Tweetie? What did you think?

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I was impressed when Exalead detected and offered to index my Thunderbird mailbox during the first run setup wizard. If there’s one thing I shy away from more than desktop indexing applications, it’s the various incarnations of Microsoft Outlook. Of course, Thunderbird’s latest beta allows you to index your accounts for use with Vista’s built-in search, so it’s not critical functionality. Still, better available than not.

I was using my Eee PC as the test device for Exalead, and it wouldn’t proceed with indexing until I connected with a power source, which is something I’m not used to doing, with the eight hour battery on my 1000HE. Still, I suppose they have the user’s interests in mind, so it’s not really that big of an issue. Indexing didn’t take long, although I honestly don’t have much stored on my netbook, aside from my overgrown inbox archive. I also didn’t notice much slowdown of other processes like Firefox, though my usage was admittedly light. It might also help that I’m using a 4GB SD card as a dedicated device to speed up my system with Windows ReadyBoost.

Like other indexing apps, Exalead places an icon in the notification area of your taskbar. Left-clicking once will activate a search, while right-clicking will bring up Exalead’s settings. Back when I was using Windows Desktop Search, I never liked having the search bar in my taskbar, so I don’t miss it here, although some might. Instead, when you click on the icon, you open up a new browser tab or window that shows a search bar page with a local address. You can also search the web, images and Wikipedia from this launch page, among others.

Exalead’s decision to use the browser is both its biggest advantage and most significant drawback. It keeps the app lightweight, ensuring that it won’t hog system resources like Google Desktop and other more cumbersome programs. On the other hand, it also feels a little clunky and slow, taking away from the advantage of having a desktop indexer in the first place.

On the other hand, the results page is very thorough, with your results on the right occupying most of the page, complete with links, dates, brief summaries, associated locations, authors, recipients (for emails) and thumbnails (if applicable). On the right, you can narrow your search in a number of ways, by isolating different sources, searching within your returned results, choosing different file types, dates, sizes, etc. If you don’t like the default view, you can switch to text-only results, too. And all the while, I didn’t hear the engine rev once, which is what keeps me away from these apps in the first place.

If I had to use a desktop indexing and search program (and the more work I do on Windows, the closer I get to that day), I would probably use Exalead now that I’ve tried it out, because it least resembles other resource sapping apps I’ve used in the past. If you’re looking for a lightweight alternative to the main competitors in this space, give it a shot. Best of all, it won’t cost you anything for the free version, although professional and white label versions are available if you want to deploy it enterprise-wide or are shopping for a custom-branded solution for a client.

Do you use a desktop indexing search app?

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