The Puyocon mouse is shown off at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 by students at the University of Tsukuba. Unlike other mid-air input devices, the Puyocon is meant to be thrown either as an input gesture, or for passing from one to another. With 14 pressure sensors in it, it is able to capture with reasonable detail the movement of the ball. It is a bit difficult to imagine it working well with Powerpoint, it may prove very fun in combination with party games in which people toss it to each other. For more visit the Puyocon website.

Luke Wroblewski speaks at Mix ‘09 about the best practices of web form design. Covering everything from flow, layout, error handling, help, buttons, and more… Luke covers everything you need to know to design great web forms. And of course at the end he encourages people to not use forms at all. Overall, Luke presents a great practical guide backed up with lots of research and maintains the audience’s attention with the use of lots of great visual examples of both good and bad form design. Check out his book Web Form Design at Amazon.com.

Doubling up on its bet on tablet PCs, Microsoft is working on the dual-screen Courier booklet. Using both pen and gesture based interaction methods, the technology incorporates many of the interaction models we’ve seen developed over the past 10 years. Most interestingly is the fact that it is the first piece of technology to emphasize the light-weight notebook form factor while utilizing two displays. The potential is imaginative as usual and it will be fun to see where this leads.

Waving hands about to try on clothing at a store? This is how Cisco ushers out their vision for the future of shopping. Overall it just seems pretty far fetched that the main innovation in the experience shown is that of their new business router. On the other hand, Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal may in fact be the technology that leads to such a customer experience. All in all, such an experience would be much better suited for home shopping. The primary benefit of in-store shopping really is the hands on touchy feely aspects… not the fact that they have mirrors.

Aaron Forth, VP of Product at Mint.com, speaks at UX Week 2009 about the importance of user experience as it applies to managing personal finances with Mint.com. Aaron talks about tying the user experience to business objectives and how it influences everything from the people they hire hiring, creating their business model, and all aspects of Mint.com. Through several anecdotes Aaron talks about building the brand, building trust, and how the emotion of personal finances has a large impact on how Mint approaches design. A few of the most important factors have included the name, the light color tones, and framing the topic of finance in the light of ‘hope’. One of the most interesting insights was hearing how Mint.com chose to no longer support Internet Explorer 6.0 after discovering they were spending nearly 20% of their time working specifically to support it.

Noah Zerkin, Augmented Reality Enthusiast, designed and developed the Zerkin Glove, a retrofitted paintball glove to enable computer input of the body’s motions. The sub-$300 DIY project incorporates flex sensors into the glove and arm band to enable control of augmented reality environments. Noah is currently working to develop kits to sell them commercially. Check out more videos of Noah here.

Blending the old with the new, the Chameleon Guitar uses a swappable soundboards to pick up the resonant qualities of various woods, metals, plastics, and well, pretty much anything to produce desired sounds. The boards can be built to mimic guitar sounds from classical guitars to electric guitars, and more. Designed by Amit Zoran under guidance from Pattie Maes and Marco Coppiardi, he is now working on the project as part of his Masters. Amit one day hopes to take the product to market.

Eric Giler, CEO of MIT-inspired WiTricity, demonstrates at TED how wireless electricity works and inspires a vision of the future where devices no longer need to be plugged-in. First explored by Nicola Tesla in the 1890s, in recent years the technology has made great strides and there are many wireless charging pads on the market. The Palm Pre has even made it a showcase feature when marketing its new phone. While the technology has been around for a while, it is taking great strides in efficiency with both increases in the amount of power that can be transmitted, as well as the distance it can be transmitted. WiTricity is attempting to charge everything from electric cars to cell phones.

Slovenian inventor Aleksander Polutnik demonstrates the Enicycle, a motorized unicycle. With two in existance, the unicycle is currently patent-pending and funding is being raised to go into production. Astonishingly the Enicycle manages to pull off a much less nerdy look than the Segway.

Project Natal, a gestural input device, is being promoted by Microsoft this year at E3 is attempting to promote their ubiquitous computing platform. Hot off the heals of several other videos promoting Microsoft’s vision for the future, Project Natal focuses on the video game arena. Nonetheless, the vision is illuminating and enticing.