Announcing the "Natural User Interface" group (room) on FriendFeed

In case you haven't figured this out already, much of my blogging and other writing is devoted to things I know nothing about. Since, as I say, "I am not trendy," there are a lot of things that I know nothing about. My blogging/writing is often the process that I use to learn about these things.

So anyways, this morning I was approached by one of my co-workers who asked me if I was familiar with the term "NUI." I wasn't. The co-worker then explained that "NUI" stood for "natural user interface," then gave me a quick thumbnail sketch of the idea.

Obviously this sounded like something that I should educate myself about, but how? I decided that this would be a good job for a FriendFeed group (also known as a room), for the following reasons:

• FriendFeed would allow me to create self-populating feeds that were relevant to the topic at hand.


• FriendFeed would allow me to share other items that I found that were relevant to the topic.


• FriendFeed would allow me to collaborate with others who knew more about the topic than I did, and/or wanted to learn more about the topic.

As you can gather, this is very different from the lastfmfeeds group/room that I set up some time ago. That group/room is purely recreational (although it provides a source of information for my Empoprise-MU music blog). This natural user interface group/room, while it could be recreational for those who are merely curious, could also serve business purposes, both for people who hawk NUI solutions, and for those who wish to adopt them.

So I went ahead and populated the room, added a few feeds from places such as the NUI Group and the Microsoft Surface project, and manually posted a couple [1] [2] of YouTube videos that touched on the subject.





The next step is to evangelize the group, which is why I have written this post (and am doing some other related activities). If you have any knowledge or interest in natural user interfaces, I strongly urge you to join the group, read the group, and contribute to the group.

This post is being written while the April 2009 FriendFeed beta is still in progress. At this time, there are two URLs for the group, depending upon whether or not you are actively using the FriendFeed beta.

FriendFeed beta users can access the group via the http://beta.friendfeed.com/natural-user-interface URL.

If the FriendFeed beta makes you sick, you can access this as a traditional FriendFeed room via the http://friendfeed.com/rooms/natural-user-interface URL.

I'm not sure how these URLs will resolve when the beta becomes the standard for FriendFeed - if you're reading this message after the beta and the two URLs above don't work, try http://friendfeed.com/natural-user-interface and see what happens.

Again, I strongly encourage you to join the group, whether you're part of the large group who knows more than me about natural user interfaces, or the small group who knows even less than me on the topic.