the new Desktop

i always like to keep the desktop of my machines as clean as possible, just because i love the sparse but classy look. but then ur desktop is the one place you keep on coming back to always, its is the always there 'page' and frankly the starting and or return point for almost everything on a machine. think about it, the one shortcut (in addition to Ctrl+C/X/V) everyone knows is Win+D.

so why not use it more...but in a fashion where its is useful.

Think about a real world desktop, one of those maghony study tables, with a thick glass put on top of the table. Under the glass are things like calendars, reminders, important numbers. Over the glass, you continue with your work.

in a device, thats what desktops should be like. an underlying layer over which the UI of every other app runs - Win7 i think. It should be called up with a touch, or a simple voice command.

The desktop should have give views of the most important things you would want, time & calendar of course, news feeds, match scores, and ur most used services...FB for example. So basically a collection of gadgets, which can directly lead to the web page with more detailed information.

Continuing the my vision of future machines...their will be multiple desktops, or as i like calling them 'interfaces to spaces', an office space, a home space, a personal space. as you switch between the 'interfaces' you will get automatically logged into that space, or maybe ur presence will change and you will become active in that space. shifting between the interfaces could be like the Iphone (boring) or like rotating a cube, or a hexagon or something. not only will the interface change, but along with it ur entire machine will change.

now this doesn't go with my vision of being everywhere at the same time, being omnipresent across all the spaces, for that there will be a default screen, which is basically a summary screen. which helps you keep an eye on every space ur in, but in a very read only manner, a very non interactive manner. if u need to go interact, activated urself into that space.

for multi users devices, each face will be for a different users. of course all faces will be just another different type of portal, pulled from the cloud, so once u authenticate and as long as u are continuously authenticated on the device, you will keep on getting your screens.

For office devices, there could be controls such as if you walk into office, u cannot go to the home screens.

thats desktops. from a UI point of view, they should be crisp, info packed, but still sparse, non-intrusive.