Touch screens aren't the only way of doing this. Shillito is leading a team that has developed software that allows artists to receive physical feedback when designing virtual 3D objects.The team's approach uses a haptic device called Falcon, which vibrates and moves to allow users to "feel" virtual objects. Originally developed for 3D gaming, Falcon is a cross between a joystick and a mouse. As the user moves the controller in three dimensions, its movements are mirrored by a cursor on the computer screen.

• Over at the shifted librarian, she has a nice blog post about the new startup project, bibliocommons @ the Oakville, Ontario library, to build a library catalog interface from scratch. The interface includes things like reviews, tagging, faceted searching, etc.