Every UI platform needs a killer concept.  For the keyboard and mouse it was the Excel sheet.  If you ever watch the rebooted Hawaii Five-0, you’ll realize that for Touch it’s the flick.  Flicking is more satisfying than tapping on sooo many levels.  Birds do it, bees do it, even monkeys in the trees do it.

Gestural interfaces haven’t found that killer concept yet, but it may just be the ability to zoom in on an image.  Like flicking and entering tabular data, killer concepts don’t necessarily have to be clever.  They just have to feel right.

Consider what John Anderton spent his time doing in 2002’s Minority Report.  For the most part, he used innovative fantasy technology (later made real at Oblong Industries) to enhance images on his rather large screen.

Go back even further and you’ll recall Rick Deckard used speech recognition to enhance an image in 1982’s Blade Runner.  This may be the first inkling any of us had of the true purpose of NUI.

It obviously left an impression on the zeitgeist because every movie or TV show attempting to demonstrate technological sophistication on the cheap (CSI being the biggest culprit) managed to insert an “enhance” scene into their franchise somewhere.

And if you happened to have a movie with no budget, there was no reason you should let this stop you.

And while we're getting nonstalgic for NUI, let's not forget to give credit where credit is due. Before Leap Motion, before Microsoft's Kinect, before Oblong's g-speak, even before Minority Report, there was the NES Power Glove:

And in the decades after, all we've managed to do is to enhance that killer concept.

Still not recovered from book writing, I have asked my eleven year old son to provide an overview of what’s going on in YouTube land.  My son spends a lot of time working on his own videos – mostly guides to Minecraft and short Lego stop-motion films – and looks up to the sort of people who have managed to eek out a living doing this.  Here are some of the movers-and-shakers in his world:

Hello audience, I am Paul Ashley; son of James Ashley… I am writing this article because of my epic writing skills I gained at school! Oh also because my dad said to… My Youtube account is PaulVAshley so remember to subscribe to me! Or don’t… Let’s begin our Top 5 Most subscribed Youtubers!

#5: Freddiew (Freddie Wong) 3,022,460(as of now) Subscribers.

Freddie and Brandon are two good friends who enjoy making videos with sweet VFX. I’ve always liked their videos, and I still do. I was first introduced to the channel by my friend ANONYMOUS. Umm… okay… anyway, he wanted to show me a tutorial Freddie and Brandon made on First Person Shooter Videos. I began watching all of his short movies starting with “Mr. Toots.” I have become one of his biggest fans. I also wonder what he has in store for us in “Video Game High School.” He is a great director and he is my role model!

#4: Machinima 4,356,027(as of now) Subscribers.

Machinima is an actual company that employs people to play games all day and occasionally make a “machinima” (A video with voices filmed from a game) from time to time. I think this channel is slightly unfair because they have hundreds of people making their videos. I enjoy certain songs that they make, but most videos I think to be just plain stupid. This is only my opinion though… Overall, I really like them only they sometimes have a video that is “bad.”

#3: Smosh (Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla) 4,464,823(as of now) Subscribers.

Smosh is definitely my personal favorite Youtube channel. They upload new videos every week. Ian has a separate channel for making shows called “Ian is bored,” and “Lunchtime with Smosh.” I was first introduced by a few friends, one of them being Sam. Anyways, we would watch the “Theme song” series (Mortal Kombat, Pokémon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…). That was back in ’07 or ’08. Nowadays, they upload sketch videos. Overall, I love all of their videos except a few crappy ones.

#2: Nigahiga (Ryan Higa) 5,256,220(as of now) Subscribers.

Nigahiga… The most popular, classic Youtuber of all time! He is definitely the most famous among Youtubers. I was first introduced by my friends Shirish, Sam, and ANONYMOUS. We enjoyed videos like “How to be Ninja, Gangster, and Nerd.” My favorite video is “THE BEST CREW: The Audition.” I almost died in laughter. Overall, I like ALL of his videos.

#1: RayWilliamJohnson 5,408,244(as of now) Subscribers.

FINALLY! I’ve been enslaved to write this article for HOURS! So… where were we… Ah yes, lucky number 1. Ray is a Youtuber that makes a web show called =3. I was first introduced by my friend Shirish. Mr. Johnson (hehe) used to entertain me when I was 10, but I’ve grown ever-so bored of his predictable jokes. He also has a channel called “BreakingNYC.” Ahem, now this boy-man is funny to the creepy weirdoes of Youtube. Overall, I hate to sound sketchy but I dislike all of his videos.

YAY! ENDING PARAGRAPH! I like all of the channels I reviewed except RWJ. Okay, bye guys that’s all you get.

-From the insane mind of Paul Vladimir Ashley.

I am now an employee of a digital powerhouse called Razorfish.  I’m very excited about this.  Whereas before I wrote applications, I am now writing “experiences” – which is a hipster way of saying that I get to apply all of my experience writing LOB applications in WPF and Silverlight to making cool UX (my private vice is now my fulltime job).

I’m actually working for a team within Razorfish called the Emerging Experiences Group which does cutting edge development with Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone, augmented reality and other neat toys.  If you have seen the recent WP7 launch (or happened to be in Barcelona when the phone was announced) you will have noticed the EE’s work even if you didn’t know who they are – EE wrote the “BAP”: the giant windows phone display used to demonstrate how Windows Phone works back when there were very few devices to hand out to people.

My first incredibly cool week as a Presentation Layer Architect in the Emerging Experiences Group was taken up with helping to build an application experience to be debuted at the 2010 Wired Store: http://www.wired.com/about/2010/11/wired-brings-the-best-of-what%E2%80%99s-next-to-new-york-city-experiential-gallery-open-for-the-holidays-in-noho-shopping-district/ 

You can check out more work by Razorfish’s Emerging Experiences Group here: http://emergingexperiences.com/portfolio/