Last summer I planned a self-training, self-inspirational trip around the United States to keep my self up with creative, technology, design and interactive issues related to my work. At the beginning of this month I started that learning experience that included MVP Global Summit in Seattle, South By Southwest in Austin and the upcoming MIX in Las Vegas.

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Among the latest enhancements in technology it's possible to highlight multi-touch interface as the most widely accepted as innovative. It started a lot of time ago, near the 80's, but it's been through Job's iPhone since it got hit by mainstream public and media. Nowadays every single device, from mobile phones to laptops, is implementing multi-touch interfaces in some way. Is there anything to learn from this, as said by Nintendo, Touch Generation?

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As every year, next week TechEd Developers 2008 will take place, for European audiences, at Barcelona's Convention Center. This event is the Microsoft premier technical education conference just for developers. For five days, more than 4,000 of your peers have countless opportunities to explore about the latest cutting-edge technologies from Microsoft related to embedded devices, web 2.0 and upcoming or existing developer tools. I'm sad they moved the conference from Amsterdam to Barcelona like 3 years ago (being a Spaniard I preferred traveling Amsterdam than Barna) but the same learning opportunities are offered.

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After spending last week at SHiFT'08 Conference in Lisbon I must say that it surprised me a lot being surrounded by such a great amount of people and speakers. I participated in the conference delivering a workshop about DeepZoom during the first day of the conference, the presentation is also uploaded to my Slideshare account and the content used in PhotoSynth was uploaded to my synth account.

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There's been a lot of buzz around creativity and the process of creation, since Da Vinci people think that creativity is a gift given to some human beings, an special brain full of original ideas previously canned ready to be used. Nowadays, this feeling is extremely increased and promoted by art schools and ad-agencies, who treat art directors as the true kings of the creativity kingdom crowned with originality and freshness. But is it that real? Do we have to be special in order to be creative? Is our brain fated to mundane tasks if not gifted with the seed of creativity?

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Designing a product that connect with users is the cornerstone of the whole User Experience field. It means that features and quality are no longer the only required aspects to succeed, it's more about connecting to underlying emotions and desires, fears and hopes, connecting with the real persona behind. The term product is wide-open used here, so it doesn't only refer to a physical tangible product but also to software, webs, design, brands and even individuals. In this product context, how to arise a higher and deeper connection is, actually, occupying most of my thinking. So, are there any tips to help increase this kind of emotional connection?

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It seems that nowadays we have two big players on the RIA framework/tools market willing to win the battle: the older and experienced Adobe and the newer but powerful Microsoft. Sometimes it's quite difficult to see the differences in both of them, but it's even harder when they have more than a single framework tool for it. After looking through my visitor statistics and search keywords I've decided to write a bit about some of the differences and how I see them so it may keep simpler for some of you to decide or clear your mind.

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I've just finished my presentation at CLM.NET User Group and I've uploaded the presentation to SlideShare so all of you can enjoy it. It would also be uploaded to the Presentations section of this web (when I finish it) with the video, audio, slides and demos all together in a pack.

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I've been thinking about how we, engineers and computer related people, design products and software. Usually we have what we think are great ideas, we tend to create create a kind of business strategy and then start developing. Usually, when things has gone this far we almost have a prototype or design to show off and start a process to enhance interaction and improve usability. In terms of thinking about a new product (let it be software, a book, a drawing or anything we can create) we should always think on the users and how will they really be using product. It's not only much smarter than simply adapting users to the product, it's a matter of simplifying the experience so learning is not required to use it.

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