An avatar, in this case, is a projection of someone’s own identity or their experimentation with a new identity. We see them online in places like Second Life, where they take the shape of a 3d character, and on messageboards where each user has their own small icon. It turns out, these digital representations might reveal some useful information about their creators.

Mac OS X’s weather widget does a good job of showing current weather conditions, and what information it doesn’t show, you can get through its link to the Accuweather website. It sounds good, but I really hate having to leave my dashboard to get to that information, not to mention that Accuweather’s information design isn’t exactly stellar.

If you follow any tech blogs, you’ve probably been coming across a lot of things multi-touch interface related. I was introduced to the idea of a multi-touch interface when I saw a video of Jeff Han demonstrating his own display at a TED Conference. But, it wasn’t until I found this short description some time afterwards that I became enamored with the thought of building my own. It was all I could think about for awhile, so much so that I took the leap into the unfamiliar world of physical computing to build my own.

Last week I made the move out to California to begin my winter internship with Yahoo!. I know it will be an interesting few months. I’m listed as an interaction design intern and I’ll be working mostly on conceptual prototyping projects. I think the work will be a good fit with the skills I’m trying to improve, mainly high-level conceptual sketching, and product development.