Although Comic Sans is typically misused when trying to make signage and flyers appear friendlier, I actually love it here in this ATM interface. The user experience of most ATMs is so poorly designed that the fact that this ATM’s creator gave at least an ounce of thought to typeface selection (even though they went with old C.S.) gives me hope. (Plus, the transaction fee is only $1.49 — a steal!)

Since posting on the origin of the Apple key, I dined at an establishment that found a completely new use for that command propeller symbol:

I was about to run out to the store for some tomatoes, hoping to make my first batch of summer gazpacho, when I remembered the salmonella outbreak. I checked the FDA’s website for the status, and encountered these photos:

The first thing that I noticed is that these look like perfectly normal tomatoes. Salmonella, a bacterium, is invisible to the naked eye. So why is the FDA showing me absolutely useless pictures of infected tomatoes?

The second thing I noticed is that the captions seem to attribute blame — and, therefore, agency — to the tomatoes themselves, as though they actively conspired to spread disease among the human population. The images now look more like police lineup photos, like something on the FBI’s most wanted list:

I’m sure everyone and their mothers have already blogged this, but here are the lingering questions I have following today’s WWDC keynote:

• A new remote “erase” feature was alluded to during the enterprise portion of the presentation. How will this work, and who controls it? If I’m late paying my AT&T bill, try to break my contract, or try to unlock the phone for use with another carrier, will the phone self-destruct?

• Apple announced a new push notification service for developer use, but I’m guessing it ain’t free. How much will it cost, and who can use it? Will small, independent developers be priced out of the picture? And is it part of the new Mobile Me service, or can it operate on its own, serving users who don’t have $99/year Mobile Me accounts?

• How much will my monthly 3G phone bill cost? (More, presumably.)

• Is 3G service even available in my area? How can I find out before purchasing a new phone?

• Will Mobile Me’s push email service work only with me.com email accounts? (I’m guessing yes, which means I wouldn’t be able to use it with alignedleft.com.)

• How does the new Mail app’s UI for multiple-message delete/move work? This is new functionality for iPhone, but it won’t be useful unless it’s also usable.

• Same question for the multiple language support: How does the UI work for switching languages/keyboards? And can the handwriting recognition used for Chinese character input be expanded for use with other alphabets?

Also, Jobs mentioned that the audio quality had been improved significantly. It will be interesting to hear if that’s really the case.

Update: I also want to add one observation that I haven’t seen made elsewhere yet:

• It looks like iPhone 2.0 supports multiple iCal calendars, which was not mentioned in the keynote (nor on Apple’s site). This will be great, as it brings my iPhone calendar more in line, visually, with my desktop iCal calendar. (I hope this also eliminates the bug/feature of having new events entered on the phone sync unpredictably into the last calendar in iCal’s list.)

My last project of the semester was a response to the concept of gesture. This is my second-ever installation-ish piece, and it was well-received. When someone moves in front of the camera, the motion is detected and represented on-screen as the spinning of hundreds of tiny discs. Faster motion makes the discs spin faster and change color more rapidly. The effect is even more interesting when using a projector to cover a whole wall with the spinning discs.

From watching people interact with this piece, I learned that everybody loves to see their actions interpreted and expressed in an alternate form. Although I find this project visually interesting, I was concerned about the fact that it doesn’t communicate any explicit information. That turned out not to be a problem from the user’s perspective, as everyone I’ve shown it to immediately starts waving their hands around, jumping up and down, and making all sorts of strange motions, becoming entranced by the patterns that “they” are creating on the screen.

After a couple minutes, though, the colors become such a hodgepodge that they cease to exhibit interesting patterns. So, following one of the great pieces of feedback I received, I added a timer that resets the grid once a minute. That reset encourages further experimentation and allows people to “take turns.” Users seem to get more invested in their motive experimentations when they can claim full ownership of the visual result, as transient as it is.

Watch a video here: