aza raskin, superman for UI

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Aza Raskin, the boy-genius son of famed "human-computer interface" developer Jef Raskin--responsible for Apple Pascal and the Macintosh Project for Apple Computer (and a few other remarkable things)--has struck a chord within the relationship between language and the Web. He has created an interface that allows you to use natural, informal language to call upon certain Web services in a very organic fashion. "twit this," "map this location," "translate this," "highlight." Very good stuff.

Aza, by the way, gave his first UI talk when he was 10 years old. He dropped out of middle school and high school, went to the University of Chicago to study math and physics, and researched Dark Matter (which he followed into an ultimately abandoned PhD program at CalTech). He also studied at the University of Tokyo, though U. Chicago was his only fully completed stint. He is also the founder of Algorithm Ink and Songza. Yeah, he's kind of a big deal.