We led the design for a large company's first steps in tackling the Internet appliance market. We designed a desktop and application framework for a simple, consumer-oriented computer-like device, one that emphasized extreme ease of use, and implemented it on top of Linux. The intent here was to cover the basic information tasks of a household — web browsing, e-mail, calendar, address book, and some simple word processing — without dooming the user to the complexities of a multi-windowed, general-purpose PC. The buttons on the left side of the screen activate their corresponding applications, and slide their windows in and out of view. Since the buttons themselves always remain in view, a needed window never gets lost behind another. Web capabilities are also easily accessible.

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