lccarts.org

Tired of looking at Android apps that are decidedly more homely than their iOS counterparts? Google is too ??and it’s finally doing something about it. Today the Android team has launched an official ‘Android Design’ portal, featuring an extensive guide outlining UI best practices that developers should work to use as they’re building their apps. You can find the new site right here. Android’s visual shortcomings have been well documented (you can find a video of me discussing this issue with Android’s Director of User Experience, Matias Duarte, right here). In the old days (say, when the original Droid launched) it really was often downright ugly ??and the apps were even worse, ?with buttons that did unexpected things and UIs that looked generic and amateur.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FwOtT1N2J4o/

jon hamm minority report john paul ii beatification the dark knight jeff beck john paul ii world fair

Each year, CES always seems to circle around a few common themes, and NFC — Near-Field Communication — is getting a large chunk of the spotlight this week, and it’s not all completely about mobile payments. In fact, we’re just scratching the surface of what NFC is truly capable of. We stopped by the NXP booth and found a treasure chest full of the latest innovations in the world of NFC, the first of which is the Cirque Glidepoint NFC trackpad. The company had a fully working trackpad that’s actually built into a laptop, as well as an external model that can be plugged into any USB port (tablets, for instance).

We navigated to Engadget’s home page on our Galaxy Nexus and placed it on the pad, and just as expected, Android Beam activated and our touch initiated the data transfer. Within two seconds, the browser pulled up and loaded the site. We also used a business card with a NFC tag built-in and accomplished the same task. But it doesn’t stop there — the concept can be applied to other NFC applications, such as YouTube videos, maps and even the Activision critter seen above. The unit we demoed was a prototype that’s still a long ways from final hardware, so don’t expect to see them embedded into a laptop until mid-2013. External trackpads, according to Cirque, should be seeing the market in four months.

Continue reading Cirque shows off its Glidepoint NFC trackpad built into a laptop, we go hands-on (video)

Cirque shows off its Glidepoint NFC trackpad built into a laptop, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/ZnYp8sI9Ij0/

jon hamm minority report john paul ii beatification the dark knight jeff beck john paul ii world fair