"Information is not organised like that online and there's nowhere where that's all put together, and certainly not on an interface that's so intuitive to explore, " he said.

BBC: Virtual worlds with real purposes

As part of the alliance with Pecan Street, OnStar will make its smart grid interface available so researchers can develop new services and gather data on driver and vehicle behavior.

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You can see with a single swipe the messages that are waiting to be read, and having your incoming messages (be they email, text, BlackBerry messenger, Facebook, and so on) in one consistent interface makes them much easier to handle during a busy day.

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In contrast, BlackBerry's bread and butter is the smartphone, and so much attention was clearly paid on delivering a user interface that could cram key information on the limited screen real estate without disrupting other apps.

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"Apple is brilliant on interface and usability, but in Europe, phones are so heavily subsidized, there's a perception that they're worth nothing, " says Boris Nemsic, chief executive of Telekom Austria Group, a European telecom company with 11 million mobile customers.

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With the picture snagged, a simple art interface comes up, with options for colors, pen types, undo, save and so on.

ENGADGET

Microsoft wants Windows to be hip and enjoyable to use, so it has come up with its own tablet-style interface and tried to make it work on tablets as well as PCs.

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"The challenge is that the interface on a cell phone is so poor that anything you can do to reduce the number of keystrokes and the number of menus is a plus, " Parr said.

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