Joel Orr's World

Where are user interfaces headed? A great survey from Business Week

The Mind-Bending New World Of Work:

Motion-capture technology has burst out of Hollywood and into businesses from aerospace to advertising

In a darkened loft in the industrial district of downtown Los Angeles, Gesture Studios CEO Kevin Parent slips on a pair of black gloves studded with iridescent white, purple, and yellow dots. Standing about 10 feet from a wall-size screen, he lifts his hands like a conductor. With a series of precise gestures, he calls up photos and videos of urban Los Angeles. Raising his thumbs and pointing his index fingers toward the screen as if miming a cowboy with two guns, he swiftly sorts the images, zooming in on certain buildings and playing snips of films depicting various street scenes. To pause the film, he extends one hand like a traffic cop. With other crisp movements, he can spin 3D objects in space or snatch a bullet point of text and drag it across the screen. "You just put on the gloves and go," Parent explains. "Think turbo PowerPoint."