Can we have your Attention please?

I stole this headline from Media Guerrilla but I am hoping you/they will forgive me because I want to both discuss their article and reference something we are working on right now.

The article talks about a growing 'Attention Deficit'. The idea that with a growing number of information sources that our Attention - which is actually a finite resource - will become saturated.

This is interesting to me because yesterday I was writing our 'manifesto' for Touchstone and the first word I used was 'attention'.

When we started Touchstone, Attention was just one reason I thought it might be a necessary and successful tool. Over the last couple of weeks though, the growing attention deficit problem is quickly becoming the number one reason to build/install/use a tool like Touchstone.

I really feel like we can chip away at this problem by engineering creative ways to help people focus their attention at the right time, without becoming overwhelmed.

I will post the manifesto soon for all to read. Of course it will just be a draft (beta?) - but it's something we can work on together.

Alerts are alarming

Today we are working on alerts. Sort of working backwards from the UI, to the alert queue, to the 'new item' event.

We thought we would post a picture of what a Touchstone alert might look like in the alpha version.

So here it is! Isn't the transparency and fancy font layout beautiful. We thought so.

v0.0.1

Well, thanks to Chris and his intrepid suggestions, we have chosen to build v0.0.1 as the first client build for the project. The process has been very interesting.

In this build we have elected to shelf the marquee for the time being and work on the far easier messengeresque style alert UI system - and the results are fantastic. The _event form spawns each time that an alert is received and it has built in functionality that enables each alert spawn to determine when and where it should appear on the screen.

Technically speaking the 0.0.1 build isn’t much at all, but its a valid proof of concept that has shaped the way the TouchStone UI will operate.

The Current List of Problems (what we are so cutely describing as the CLOP):

We are having troubles with alerts overlapping each other if alerts are terminated as a new one are spawned. To combat this we have developed the TouchStone Alert Buffer - a subsystem that queues up Alerts that are unable to be displayed at the screen immediately.

Displaying alerts on any screen is going to be a problem, but for the time being, the screen is going to be divided up into "slots". These slots will be defined by a member of a UI class called clrGlobal. The array will store which slots are filled and which are empty. Events will be launched into available slots or be moved to the buffer subsystem. The number of slots will be derived later to accommodate screens of any resolution.

Apart form this, things are actually moving far faster then I initially thought possible. More importantly though, things are fun - so it makes the journey all the more rewarding.

Information Overload

This is an interesting post about RSS overload. The premise at the end of the post is an interesting one - having 'editors' sort the news for you and deliver just the best information.

At the end of the day though, the author recommends a 'tabloid' view. Interesting idea hey?

I am not sure how we, as a community, will solve the information overload problem. Perhaps Touchstone, as a discrete information delivery mechanism can bring us some way along the path of measuring attention, interest and context and only deliver the news that matters to you, at the right time.

Also the author mentions a 'tabloid' view as the viewing/reading model. I am interested in that idea too.

Check out the full article 'Feed Reading Lifecycle'

Hello World

Welcome to the TouchStone development Blog – This is our first post!

“Hello World” (har har)

We will use this blog to keep all those who are interested up-to-date with our ideas, thoughts, explanations of new features and decisions as well as general musings from the development team.

Stay tuned for more information!