The Installer writes "Researchers from the University of Washington have managed to add customization and accessibility options to proprietary software without ever touching the source code. Rather than alter program code, Prefab looks for the pixels associated with the blocks of code used to paint applications to a screen, grabs hold of them, and alters them according to whatever enhancements the user has chosen to apply. Any user input is then fed back to the original software, still running behind the enhanced interface."

An anonymous reader writes "The CEO of Unity discusses 'gamification' — applying game design and technology to real-world applications beyond 'gamespace.' The military is using game design theory for some training programs — not just 'the 3-D, realistic, virtual world experiences, but also the built-in use of frustration and reward.' (And similar training packages were adopted by Unilever, the giant corporation which owns Ben & Jerry's ice cream.) Medical professionals have licensed a 'Google Earth for the human body,' and game design is also being used to build tax software. ('It has to be the most boring field, but I mean that's the point. You can make it slightly challenging and give people little reasons to play these tax tools — beyond, you know, not going to prison!') While some companies conduct team-building exercises using Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, others use game technology to standardize their in-house employee training programs. The interviewer adds, 'I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.'"

Apple's much-awaited iPad officially launched today, and iFixit has gotten their hands on photos from the FCC teardown. They've done an analysis of the internals and provided directions on doing it yourself, if you're so inclined. Predictably, it's a hot topic in the media. Cory Doctorow wrote about why he won't be getting an iPad, complaining about the closed, hacker-unfriendly design and what he calls the "Wal-martization of the software channel." Daring Fireball's John Gruber disagrees, pointing out that enthusiasts — even kids exercising their curiosity — are still quite capable of playing around with the iPad through app creation, and with much more of a chance to compete with big companies than in the Apple ][ days. Similarly, others are referring to it as the "bedtime computer" — technology that has a reasonable shot at expanding into completely new areas of use, like bedtime reading for kids. Such a device was predicted in 1972 by Alan Kay, the PARC scientist credited with the epigram "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." His hypothetical DynaBook bears striking similarity to what Apple finally came up with. So, those of you who have picked up or received an iPad already: how do you like it?

ApolloX writes "Adobe has released its new version of the Flex Builder, now renamed Flash Builder 4. This version is radically different from previous versions of Flex, introducing the new Spark architecture and theme support. While I am pleased Adobe has finally added support for Eclipse 3.5, I am disappointed with some of the new architecture changes that make doing simple things, such as skinning a button, now quite cumbersome."

Hypoon writes "The GNOME project is proud to release this new version of the GNOME desktop environment and developer platform. Among the hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements, GNOME 2.30 has several highly visible changes: new features for advanced file management, better remote desktop experience, easier notes synchronization and a generally smoother user experience. Learn more about GNOME 2.30 through the detailed release notes and the press release."

harrymcc writes "Microsoft Bob — still synonymous in the tech industry with 'embarrassing flop' — shipped fifteen years ago this week, on March 31st, 1995. When the Windows interface featuring animated cartoon helpers was announced, it was hyped to the heavens and briefly accepted as a breakthrough that showed where software was going. Instead, dismal reviews and poor sales killed it after only a year on the market. At Technologizer, we're marking the anniversary with a complete look at how it came to be and why it failed so resoundingly — and how Microsoft tried again with Office's 'Clippy' and other attempts to revive the basic idea."

forgot_my_username writes "The MIT Media Lab is developing a motion screen computer. It looks back at you. It measures light and gestures, and uses those to control the interface. 'Imagine every pixel on your LCD screen emitting light could also be receiving light,' said Ramesh Rakar, an Associate Professor at the Media Lab. They even mention the health benefits of not touching displays."

itwbennett writes "A recent kerfuffle within the Ubuntu community serves as a reminder of an inconvenient truth: open source is not a democracy, writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'The discussion started innocuously enough, within Bug #532633 in light-themes (Ubuntu) on Launchpad, where the order of the window controls within the Light theme were requested to be re-arranged to be on the upper right side of any given window. Light, it seemed, now placed the buttons on the left side, similar to the Mac OS X interface.' The discussion turned into an argument and culminated in this exchange in which Mark Shuttleworth lays down the law: 'It's fair comment that this was a big change, and landed without warning. There aren't any good reasons for that, but it's also true that no amount of warning would produce consensus about a decision like this... No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on design decisions.'"

Crazzaper writes "When the iPad was announced, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad rumors even started. This article gives an interesting perspective on why this happened, and argues that there's five big reasons why more powerful tablets exists but no one cares."

this_boat_is_real writes "Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see — and avoid — problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog."

scumm writes "This year's Turing Prize has been awarded to Charles Thacker, whom they describe as (among other things) the 'creator of the first modern personal computer.' From the ACM's announcement: 'ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Charles P. Thacker the winner of the 2009 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his pioneering design and realization of the Alto, the first modern personal computer, and the prototype for networked personal computers. Thacker's design, which he built while at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), reflected a new vision of a self-sufficient, networked computer on every desk, equipped with innovations that are standard in today's models. Thacker was also cited for his contributions to the Ethernet local area network, which enables multiple computers to communicate and share resources, as well as the first multiprocessor workstation, and the prototype for today's most used tablet PC, with its capabilities for direct user interaction.' For further reading, the Wall Street Journal has an article providing more background about Mr. Thacker and the Turing Prize. In the spirit of full disclosure, the submitter feels compelled to point out that this Mr. Thacker is his uncle, and that he thinks this is really cool."

CWmike writes "Canadian interface design firm MetaLab has accused Mozilla of stealing user interface elements for a development tool in the browser maker's Jetpack project, which aims to simplify add-on making. MetaLab leveled the charges on Tuesday when the 11-person firm's founder, Andrew Wilkinson, blogged about the similarities between his company's designs and those posted by Mozilla for FlightDeck, a Jetpack editor. 'What they did was pretty ridiculous,' Wilkinson said on Thursday. 'There's a difference between inspiration versus ripping something off,' he said. 'The measurements of the graphic elements [Mozilla took from us] were the exact same, the very same pixels. When someone takes your images from the server hosting them, that's crossing the line.' Mozilla apologized to MetaLab on Wednesday, saying in a blog post, 'While the design direction being implemented does not utilize these design elements, we inadvertently included the early mockups in our blog post and video announcing the next phase of development for the Jetpack SDK ... We sincerely apologize to MetaLab for incorporating design elements from their web site in our early mockups and for posting them publicly without proper attribution.'" Alexander Limi of the Firefox User Experience Team points out that MetaLab has accepted the apology, too — worth bearing in mind.

Barence writes "A debate that crops up time and again is whether it's better to have a dedicated keyboard on your smartphone or whether an on-screen keyboard with text correction is adequate. Some phones with screen-based keyboards have started to provide tactile feedback, either using an ultra-quick spin of their vibration alert or, like the BlackBerry Storm2, using clever piezo-electric technology to simulate the feel of a button press. But which system works best? PC Pro's Paul Ockendon gathered six of the most popular handsets around and put them through a timed typing test to see which proved quickest and most typo-free."

kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."

andylim writes "Separate teams at Oxford university and Zentium, a South Korean company, are working on next-gen augmented reality solutions, which make it possible to fuse real and 3D computer-generated visuals on the fly using mobile phones. The team at Oxford university has named its solution Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) and it has licensed its technology to QderoPateo LLC, which has ambitious plans to grow the mobile augmented reality market and create an augmented reality search and gaming engine running for its 'Ouidoo' smart phone. Zentium's solution is called D-Track and is being used to develop the first markerless mobile augmented reality pet, called iKat. D-Track's mapping technology is very similar to PTAM and allows your phone to recognise the space in front of the camera and create an appropriate space for an augmented reality object or pet."

buntcake writes "Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, 'light' is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the 'human' concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information."

brothke writes "In aviation today, technically advanced airplanes present a unique paradox. Technically advanced airplanes, in theory, have more available safety, and the outcome should be that there are fewer accidents. But without proper training for their pilots, they could be less safe than airplanes with less available safety. The FAA found that without proper training for the pilots who fly them, technically advanced airplanes don't advance safety at all. The reason is that technically advanced airplanes present challenges that under-prepared pilots might not be equipped to handle." Read on for the rest of the review.

A BOFH writes "The longer I do desktop support, the more it becomes obvious that my users don't read anything that appears on their screen. Instead, they memorize a series of buttons to press to get whatever result they want and if anything unexpected happens, they're completely lost. Error logs help a lot, but they have their limits. I've been toying with a few ideas, but I don't know if any of them will work and I was hoping my fellow Slashdotters could point me in the right direction. For example, I was thinking about creating icons or logos to identify specific errors. They might not remember that an error is about 'uninitialized data' but they might be more able to remember that they got the 'puppy error' if I showed a puppy picture next to the error message. Or for times when finding images is too time consuming, you could create simple logos from letters, numbers, symbols, colors, or shapes, so you could have the 'red 5' error or 'blue square' error (or any combination of those elements). I've even wondered if it would be possible to expand that to cover the other senses, for example, playing a unique sound with the error. Unfortunately, haptic and olfactory feedback aren't readily available. I like to think that my users would remember the error that caused them to get a swift kick in the balls. And if they forgot it anyhow, I could always help them reproduce it. Does anyone else have experience with ideas like these? Did it work?"

donadony writes "Last Monday PC-BSD 8.0 was released. PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD and uses KDE as its default desktop environment. PC-BSD is designed to make BSD much easier for desktop use. The 8.0 release includes support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64 and improvements in the USB subsystem. The PC-BSD team has also developed a friendly package manager system with a simple-to-use GUI tool (see the screenshots tour). For a full list of changes, refer to the changelog."

A post up at Gamasutra complains about the lack of effort put into the PC ports of some console games. The author picks on the unimpressively-reviewed Ninja Blade in particular: "Just as a quick guide to what we're dealing with here: when you create a new save file at the start of Ninja Blade on the PC, it warns you not to 'turn off your console.' Yes, Ninja Blade is one of those conversions: not so much converted as made to perfunctorily run on a different machine. In-game, you're asked to press A, B, X and Y in various sequences as part of Ninja Blade's extraordinary abundance of quick-time events. Whether you have an Xbox 360 pad plugged in or not, the game captions these button icons with text describing the PC equivalent controls. Only it doesn't always do that. Sometimes, you're left staring at a giant, pulsating, green letter A, and no idea what to do with it." What awful ports have you had the misfortune to experience?