People not supposed to use a PC

Recently I had to introduce the PC to a complete newbie; since the person is a 60 yo person with little digital education I looked for the easiest and fastest way to get her browsing, mailing and chatting.

I found Eldy, a basic sw interface intended just for these purposes. In 5 minutes I had my mother (the “student”) looking on the web for recipes or for weather forecasts. The program is free, available in Italian and English, and includes the following functions:

• Browsing
• Mail
• Chat (also Skype)
• Text editing
• …

All function are provided through a very simple, big-scaled interface, requiring only left-mouse button to navigate.

I haven’t had the chance to test it thoroughly but so far I’m very satisfied, it seems to go really in the right direction of what older (and younger?) people may need to approach the web.

As a final note I may add it would be nice to have Eldy as a standalone OS working on a basic and cheap PC (the Nettop?)

Tired of the mouse

I recently watched a demos in TED about Siftables, small computing blocks manipulated in a really intuitive way. I’m very hopeful regarding future electronic interfaces.

Image by simonsmith001 via Flickr

I believe computer interfaces will change dramatically in the next years. We are already using devices with new kind of sensors (the most famous example, the iPhone, is sensible to touch and acceleration) but these innovations haven’t really gained a share of notebook and desktop pc.

Image via Wikipedia

Rather than being confined in videogames consoles and mobile phones these new input devices should replace the old and (let’s face it) unnatural mouse-pointer metaphor. I personally would consider a thin tablet pc, with wireless capability and a multitouch screen the perfect companion for everyday task and I hope we will see more and more of those in the future. I also imagine future desktop PCs as multitouch screens controlled by real, everyday objects (e.g. pens, rulers, post-its, …), becoming “simply” an extension of the desk.

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