TechCrunch just posted a video of a new user interface concept by Adaptive Labs called Aurora.  I'm a big fan of new and unique ways for humans to interact with computers--I think it's one of the best ways to try to get a handle on where the future of technology is going (see: Apple).  I think it's definitely worth a look, if only to get yourself thinking outside of the box for few minutes.

I love the way communications from others pop up unobtrusively, and seamlessly transition from text to voice.  As I've often said, a message is a message is a message.  This demonstrates that concept well, and is an excellent demonstration of the true spirit of unified communications in my opinion.

The graphic elements are nice and fluid, I really see this as the future of design trends.  Well, somewhere between this and the current Web 2.0 "standards", because I really like the simplicity which is emphasized in the current crop of Web 2.0 applications.  This Aurora concept is FAR too cluttered in my opinion.

"It's gotta be here somewhere" - LOL.  Yes indeed.  Notice that the woman spends about 3 minutes looking for the information she needs.  Although not as pretty, Gmail implements this function right.

I really like the idea of search results appearing in a visual thumbnail tag cloud format.  I think for applications where you know exactly what you're looking for (because you've seen it before) this works very well.  However, if you were looking for a concept ("novel ways to tie my shoelaces"), it would suck.

The mouse interactions are contrived in my opinion.  The weird mouse contraption the woman is using is big and clunky, much less elegant than a Wii-style 3D control.

Not only that, but I fail to see where the 3D capabilities are even being used at all in this video.  It seems like it's there just for the sake of being different, just like this unhelpful "radial" context menu:

This menu, while looking pretty, manages to provide LESS information than the standard context menu we have today.  If anything we need to work on letting browsers provide context menus that actually apply to the application being used rather than letting us view the page source or save the HTML to disk.

One thing I really LOVED was the way authentication was done--via fingerprint on your mobile device.

This is, I think, the way ALL authentication will eventually be done, and I'm glad to see it somewhere, even if it's only in mockup form.  This is the future.

Overall this is a very nicely done mockup, they presented some novel new ideas in a thoughtful way.  The R2D2 sound effects were especially nice :)  I really enjoy videos like this because they force you to think outside the box and ponder a future that might seem far-fetched at the current time.  Plus, they're fun.