Gizmodo: cover flow

"Uffizi in a Touch" Brings Cover Flow to Renaissance Masterpieces

Kyle VanHemert — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST

The central guideline of museum going has long been "do not touch." Soon, the Uffizi will flip that rule on its head by allowing visitors to flick and pinch their way through the museum's works of art.

The Uffizi Galley, a museum in Florence boasting one of the world's most famous collections of Renaissance art, is readying touch screen stations where visitors will be able to browse the museum's collection in a Cover Flow-esque format. The stations, dubbed "Uffizi in a Touch," were developed by an Italian company called Centrica and will be loaded with 100-megapixel shots of the Uffizi's most famous works which include Boticelli's The Birth of Venus and Titian's Venus of Urbino.

The novel technology, rolling out in December, will presumably have one of two effects: cheapening the Uffizi's masterpieces or elevating the elusive properly tagged iTunes library to work of art status. [CultofMac]

Now This is How the iPhone Should Handle Multitasking

Chris Jacob — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:50:00 EDT

I really hope someone at Apple sees these concept interfaces from Ocean Observations. They've taken the best elements of the Pre's card system, combined them with Cover Flow, and created an awesome vision of multitasking on the iPhone.

The designers also have an idea for managing the mess of home screens that comes along with app hoarding. Tapping the home button would bring up a paneled Exposé page. From there, you could easily jump to a specific page, rather than swiping a hundred times to find Peggle.

Hopefully someone at Apple is keeping up with this page to see what else these guys come up with. [MobileCrunch]

iShelf Brings Cover Flow to Real Life, Makes Profound Statement About Something or Other

John Herrman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:59:12 EST

Designer Li Jianye's real-life Cover Flow shelf is just like the actual Cover Flow, except for the fact that it can't move, only holds five albums and doesn't let you play music.

In other worlds, it's better to view the iShelf as an artistic statement about digital music or interface usability, or something, because that's pretty much what it is. It's still in concept limbo at the moment, but even if it doesn't ever see production the concept is good—it wouldn't be that hard to make your own iShelf with room for seven, nine, or—YES—eleven(ELEVEN!) albums. Or you could just not worry about it. [Yanko via Crave]

FluidTunes Lets You Frantically Flail Through Your iTunes Library

John Herrman — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:56:51 EST

Mgestyk's system-wide camera control system looks fun, but FluidTunes, a simple program that lets your toss around your iTunes library via your iSight, has two important things that it doesn't: free-ness and out-now-ness.

Available now as a free universal binary, FluidTunes is a simple creature; despite what looks to be a solid gesture recognition engine, it can only control iTunes, and only in a specific Coverflow mode. Still, if all you want to do is indulge your moderately lame futuristic interface fantasy for a few minutes, well, FluidTunes can probably grant you that. [Cult of Mac]

BlackBerry FlowBerry Theme is for Closet Mac Admirers Who Can't Pull the Trigger

Jack Loftus — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EDT

The brand spankin' new FlowBerry theme is full of icons for the BlackBerry owner who really wants to own an Apple product, like the iPhone or MacBook Pro, but can't quite commit. As you'll see from the video, there's a pseudo Cover Flow quality to the latest effort from bplay, but that's about it. And, just like the iTunes Store and other Apple products, the theme's home screen icons are locked in, giving you that DRM feeling without actually having to deal with DRM.

Bplay says FlowBerry is compatible with all device software, but works best with version 4.3 or higher. The unchangeable home screen icons are: Messages, Calendar, Address Book, Media, SMS/MMS, BlackBerry Messenger, MemoPad, and Keyboard Lock [Bplay via CrackBerry]

Contacts With Coverflow Concept Kind Of Cool

Matt Hickey — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:00:52 EDT

Coverflow isn't my favorite feature of OS X, but I have to admit it is neat, but that's about it. There are more efficient ways to organize pretty much any data you can think of, but this idea of applying the technology to your iPhone's Contacts list intrigues me. Nothing fancy here, it would likely be a piece of cake for Apple to throw together, and I'm a little mystified as to why it hasn't yet. It wouldn't be the first time photo browsing for contacts has been used, but it would be the coolest. And yes, I really have Kevin Rose's contact info on my iPhone, and no, he doesn't know about it. [TechAu]

Windows Mobile Face Contact Plugin Adds CoverFlow Contacts

Jason Chen — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:40:00 EDT

CoverFlow may be only semi-useful on your Mac, but imagine what it would look like on a Windows Mobile phone. Actually useful! The Face Contact plugin, which costs $14.95, displays all your contact photos in a CoverFlow-esque way in your home screen, letting you flip between people and even directly dial, text or send emails from their photo. Cool for sure, but is it worth $15? Probably not. Plus, are all your contacts actually good looking enough that you'd want to stare at them every time you pull out your phone? [Cnetx via Just Another Mobile Monday via PhoneMag]

Exclusive Video Leaked: iPod Firmware Coming, Enables Cover Flow

Charlie White — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:15:00 EST

A little birdie told us that a firmware update for iPods is coming soon, giving you that same Cover Flow view that you've grown to love in iTunes now. See it in action, right here.

The tipster also tells us that we won't see any new-generation iPods before the iPhone debuts, either. But to us, with the scrubbing of the scrollwheel and the coverflow not quite lining up, it seems that this whole thing could be a fake. We're keeping our eyes out in any case. – Charlie White