some more sugar notes

Tom Hoffman has an article up that includes screenshots of the sugar interface that I posted the other day. He touches on some of the underlying technology as well. There are a couple of interesting things in that screenshot that I would like to expand on.

First, the ability to draw in chat. This laptop is first and foremost a tool for expression. For kids, that means being able to express with text, but it also means drawing, music, whatever. We want to make sure that we have a more rich experience than just text can deliver. So we’ve been experimenting a bit with allowing drawing in chat. As time goes on we’ll start to add other interesting types to the chat. We hope that it will be possible to share music that kids have created as well as images that they find. This isn’t as far fetched as it sounds – there’s already a music activity in the works.

Second, the concept of presence. Sadly, Tom is alone in the world so other people on the network don’t show up. So he’s missing the most important aspect of the interface. We want this interface to be social. This means that kids can communicate in every app, that they can show each other things, that they can take each other on tours of the web and many other ways of collaborating.

For example the [Share] Button that he mentions doesn’t just share a link with another person. When that person opens the link he or she can optionally follow you as you travel from web site to web site. This ability to take someone on a tour could be used by a teacher at the front of a class or it could be used by two kids who might want to show something to each other. But the point is that they are working together, no matter who they are.

The [Share] Button is just a sample, though. What we really want to do is to make sure that the concept of presence and that the ability to share anything with other people on the network is available throughout the interface. That presence is the fundamental driver for the interface instead of being just another program that you run.