There were apparently over 400 concept sketches shown off at the MIX conference, an event for developers where Microsoft spoke on the development process for Windows 7.

Bat Signal was a taskbar thumbnail preview that projected the window you mouse-hovered over up onto the desktop like a spotlight. Aero Peek, as you may know, now just pops up directly above the taskbar, with a much smaller thumbnail.Another feature, Aladdin, was the inspiration for Aero Shake, and essentially let you preview a background window by rubbing it with the mouse cursor.

There were other tweaks made as well, like scrapping thumbnails in the taskbar how they finally decided to make Jump Lists a right click function (they conducted user testing). It’s a pretty neat article, all in all, and you should check it out at [TechRadar via Neowin]

Kardos created this and other pieces in the Brushes iPhone app and has since posted them to his Flickr account.

But not to be outdone, there’s an equally impressive demonstration clip of Brushes by David Onze. While I know better than to try my own hand at the program, it’s pretty remarkable how deftly some artists can handle the often finicky medium of the iPhone’s touch display. For the rest of us, I guess we’ll always have iFart. [Flickr via Trendland and Notcot]

The crew would live in the top sphere of the craft, which would have five floors for cockpit, research labs, and observation decks. von Braun created this sketch (along with 35 others) for a group of articles he was working on for Collier’s Magazine titled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” He was famous that year for predicting that man would soon visit the Moon. [TierneyLab via Super Punch via Neatorama]