ReadWriteWeb

Facebook made significant changes to how it delivers your friends' news and updates today by releasing a ticker feature and a news feed format that arranges missed updates in a newspaper-style format.

The move is an improvement in relevancy of information feeds in social profiles and it demonstrates an intelligent system for delivering information and encouraging interaction on the world's largest social network.

The Microsoft Kinect is two weeks away from commercial availability and the company is expected to spend up to $500 million advertising this new touch-free body-as-controller interface for the XBox. Motion control of a computer interface is likely to spread far and wide and today we see the first TV commercials that will aim to bring this kind of technology into the lives of everyday people.

The videos below are compelling. The consequences of a big splash by this $150 peripheral device could go far beyond the XBox, though.

Microsoft plans to unveil the design of Internet Explorer 9 next week, but thanks to a new leak, we now have a pretty good idea of what the next generation of Microsoft's browser will look like. Currently, Microsoft only offers "developer preview" versions of the browser that do not feature the new user interface. The enterprising Internet Explorer 9 fans at IEBest.com, however, managed to get an early copy of the browser and captured the new interface on video.

We've talked a lot on ReadWriteStart about how design is an important facet of the development of a web applications for startups. Last week we provided some advice on how to deal with irate customers who hate your design changes, and earlier this month we talked about how small design tweaks can have big impacts of the use of your site.

If you never saw Minority Report, then we can just tell you - when Tom Cruise uses a "computer" he looks more like a conductor of an orchestra, or maybe a DJ, than your average typist. As he browses through files, he swoops his arm dramatically in the air. He forcefully pushes useless information out of the way and manipulates video with swoops and twists of invisible dials.

If you're anything like us, all you thought was "I can't wait to play with that." Well, your time is coming soon.

Anyone who has been using Facebook for a few years knows that even minor changes to an interface design can cause a wide variety of reactions from a loyal user base. When the popular social network has made design tweaks in the past, there is always some portion of their users that are upset, if not enraged, by the changes made. A couple of weeks ago, we told you how your registration process could be driving potential users away, and a large part of that has to do with the design.

Ever since Jeff Han demoed his Multi-Touch Workstation at the 2006 TED Conference, the world has been waiting for a high resolution sensory work experience. As a generation of hunched night creatures with intimate knowledge of our chiropractors, we've suffered and conformed to our traditional interfaces for too long. Touch was the future of workstations. But as articulated by ReadWriteWeb, the upcoming Apple tablet is not the workstation of the near future. It simply isn't practical. For those of us who still want to gawk at the cool regardless of its practicality, here is an assortment of 2009's most interesting interfaces.

It's rare to look at a bookmarking tool and feel convinced that it's going to win a design award. Pearltrees is such a product. The French site offers us a new way to explore and contextualize the web. In what looks like a mind map structure, users collect "pearls" (links to articles, videos and web pages) and drag and drop them to form a body of knowledge that folds and expands upon itself. In an interview with Pearltrees CEO Patrice Lamothe, ReadWriteWeb found that company already has a loyal user base including our friends at ReadWriteFrance.

Ever since Jeff Han demoed his Multi-Touch Workstation at the 2006 TED Conference, the world has been waiting for a high resolution sensory work experience. As a generation of hunched night creatures with intimate knowledge of our chiropractors, we've suffered and conformed to our traditional interfaces for too long. Touch was the future of workstations. But as articulated by ReadWriteWeb, the upcoming Apple tablet is not the workstation of the near future. It simply isn't practical. For those of us who still want to gawk at the cool regardless of its practicality, here is an assortment of 2009's most interesting interfaces.

FriendFeed, one of our favorite lifestreaming applications, launched the beta version of its new user interface today. The new version adds features that allow for organizing friends into different groups, which makes FriendFeed a lot easier to manage, especially for those who follow a large number of people. Also, you can now easily share photos on FriendFeed directly and see the home feeds of other users, which makes finding new friends a lot easier as well.