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      *In opening this week’s column, the whole paradox theme seems to be running rampant. After a couple of week’s absence it certainly does feel good to be back in the saddle.

      I was writing an article on user interface design and started thinking about the recent release of Windows Vista and how it is playing out in the market.

      Looking at where the world of software development is going along with other technology developments, the idea that Windows Vista may be the last desktop operating system that Microsoft ever releases is not a far stretch.

      No, I don’t have access to any inside information, but it is a pretty reasonable assumption – especially given the amount of time Microsoft spent (5+ years) going from XP to Vista.

      I already did a review of Windows Vista in a previous column, so I won’t go into that again other than to say if you haven’t bought it, wait until at least the first service pack is released before you buy it. Looking at Windows Vista, its most significant developments have to do with its user interface engine, which is called Aero. One neat feature about Aero is that the user interface is rendered through the graphics card instead of in the main memory, which frees up more system level resources to do other things.

      And it’s those “other things” that are the rub. One of the other things that Microsoft did with Vista was to make it easier [notice I did not say easy] to search through files and locate information based on the use of text tags. If you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, there is a component on your system that if you turn it on, will slow your computer to almost a grinding halt. That component is the Windows Indexing Service, and fixing that was task number one for Microsoft’s desktop search development team. In Vista, the problem isn’t that desktop search takes too long, it’s that the user still has to jump through too many hoops in order to use it.

      For years now, the guiding principle that I base user interface design on is the acronym, AFCDI, which stands for “any fool can do it”.  Arguably the biggest problem facing the software industry is that developers are producing programs capable of doing amazingly complex functions. The sad fact is that many of these programs are also a real pain in the butt to use -- which brings me back to searching for files in Vista.

      Desktop search is a great thing conceptually, but it doesn’t help you very much if you have to provide the system with a set of tags to drive the search engine (like you do in Vista). Of course, you could use the same technology that search engines use (crawlers) to siphon tags from all your files, but that doesn’t give you the ability to do really detailed searches (think about all the crap you had to wade through the last time you used Google). One thing you could do is to get rid of files altogether, and build your applications such that they store everything in a database. Then, the database could be accessed using all kinds of queries, allowing the user to organize information in any way they see fit. Finally, freedom from the desktop!

      But wait a minute. Isn’t that already possible, sort of? If you’ve ever used the Google Spreadsheet, Writely, or any other web based productivity applications, where do you think your files are saved? They aren’t stored directly on a disk. Rather, they are saved in a database keyed to your user account. The thing is, if they can do it on the web, why not on your PC? Because your PC, as you know it is about to change.

      Herein lies the paradox of complexity. As hardware technology advances, it has become possible to present [display] information in richer formats than what was available previously. However, the emerging trend to provide software as a service (SaaS), means that the PC becomes a client, as all of the processing of data takes place remotely, and all of the data is stored remotely as well. The ability to use advanced technology to display data means that client programs can be developed that could allow you to do desktop publishing from your cellphone (don’t laugh, you can already run PowerPoint from a smartphone).  While the new hardware makes it possible for PC software to do more complex tasks, high speed internet communications coupled with the faster hardware will eventually make localized PC software irrelevant; turning the desktop operating system primarily into a graphics rendering engine with a networking layer attached. This phenomenon leads to a number of wildly interesting, potentially disruptive possibilities. Maybe Einstein was onto something when he said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Ah, the paradox of complexity.

Russell de Pina is a Principal for n2active, a technology consulting firm located in Houston, TX and Long Beach, CA. Russell can be reached by email at rdepina@n2active.com