Here it is, the future of UIs (flash 8/9 required). The day that everyone will have a minimum 30″ touchscreen LCD with a minimum of 1920×1080 resolution in front of him is not that far off. I do expect Mac OS X to be the first OS that will push that envelope fully and OS-wide (Microsoft is by nature less attracted to new things because their main market is mostly businesses — and businesses don’t want major changes in the way they work). Of course, the WIMP interface won’t go away completely, you still need a thin-enough pointer for pixel-perfect work (be it a mouse or a tablet).

I decided that I want my (web) peace once more, so this time I am completely distancing myself from OSNews, MoBits and GnomeFiles (as opposed to being half-there in the last 1.5 years). My last day on GnomeFiles is today (new maintainer wanted) and OSNews will be Monday (I have a last promised review to publish). On Monday I will ask for my privileges on the osnews server and CMS to be completely removed. My osnews email address should stop working in a month or so (to give time to my contacts to adjust to my Gmail or Hotmail accounts).

Regarding the fate of the mobile version of OSNews when the new OSNews “v4″ design goes live in 1-2 months time, it is all at Adam’s mercy (Adam is not a mobile web user). Hopefully he will copy the now-updated php files on mobile.osnews.com (with shortcuts for the images/img/files folders instead of full copies) and he will setup the mobile autodetection. OSNews’ mobile version is pretty popular (compared to other sites that also have mobile versions) with about 1% of the overall traffic being mobile or text-based (that equals to about 2,400 mobile/text pageviews daily).

I can never understand how people like Jimmac put vector icons and 3D images together. They look to me so otherworldly difficult to construct. I find it difficult to conceptualize their creation step by step! However, I am not all that useless with graphics. I am a pretty good pixel pusher. I can go pixel by pixel and “draw” an icon or a small graphic (like the ones below that I created last year), or even manipulate existing pictures for web usage (e.g. to be well-optimized for a site). But creating life-alike vector/3D images from scratch still remains a mystery to me on how to go about it.

From left to right: Palm V, Pocket PC, Zaurus 5500