Flickr is plotting geotagged photos to generate contours of continents, countries, cities, neighbourhoods with impressive and interesting results. I guess this is just one of many interesting things you can do with 90 million geotagged photos.
New Windows 7 taskbar dock
Early screenshots of Windows 7 (e.g. at ars technica or Gizmodo) suggest some meaningful usability improvements coming up in the next big windows update. These screenshots actually look like something I could enjoy using, something I had not expected anytime soon from Microsoft.
Still, it’s easy to understand why Appleinsider published these screenshots in an article titled “Microsoft’s Windows 7 to bring Apple-tinged design changes”. Little things like how joining a wifi-network is handled are reminiscent of how things have been in Mac OS X for years, but those are just minor details.
The similarities between the Mac OS X dock and the new and improved taskbar really stand out, however:
- Big application icons have replaced the old buttons containing a small icon + text description. Same as the dock.
- There’s only one icon button per application, whereas in the past every single window had its own button. Same as the dock.
- Icons can be rearranged. Same as the dock, though this isn’t so much a rip-off as it is common sense, pressing the question What took them so damn long?
- Jump lists (see screenshot) can provide quick access to common features. Just right-click an application icon and its jump list pops up. Exactly the same as the dock.
There are also some interesting additions and improvements, like the window thumbnails, which pop up when you mouse over an application icon, or the unobtrusive icon borders which indicate the number of open windows, but overall the similarities are striking. It’s hard to imagine that some design team at Microsoft came up with this design without at least faint inspiration from its competitor.
Of course this is only beta and things are bound to change before Windows 7 ships, but I sincerely hope that some semblance of the new “taskbar dock” makes its way into the final product, if only to see the reaction of die-hard classic taskbar proponents.