Steve Jobs was a big deal because he changed the way we interact with devices. The tech industry is in a very exciting time because of the explosion of interactivity, both on your computer and your mobile devices.

Six of us are at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this week trying to stay ahead of the curve of these great changes. We'll be tweeting all week when we hear a quote or see a tip of interest.

What's most exciting about this conference is how user interaction is evolving thanks to the iPad and the continued growth of smartphones. You fundamentally interact differently with these devices because they are "touch" devices instead of using the mouse to point and click. We have all grown accustomed to drop-down menus and buttons, but there is no shared concept yet of how a mobile website should work, what a two-finger pinch does, or what other finger gestures will do.

Some apps have taken the approach of showing an instruction sheet the first time someone uses their mobile website. This does not work for the same reason that printed manuals do not work. Most people do not want to read...they want to do something. They're unwilling to invest time in learning how to use something if they don't know if it has what they're looking for in the first place.

To illustrate this point, a famous interface designer created what one of these instruction sheets would look like for a magazine:

The trend these days is to coach users through the interface, giving them very brief tutorials as they first start to use a feature, and then provide additional tips from time to time. You'll probably recognize how Facebook and Google do this every month when they launch a new feature or layout. These strike a balance between helping the user out and making the user spend a lot of time learning before using.

Here's one last sarcastic clip that we saw in a presentation. Subtitles are provided for those who don't speak Norwegian.