There are heaps of creative, innovative, and perhaps useless ways to present data to users. Walking the design tightrope isn't easy, there's a lot of considerations that need to be mixed together in order to provide something that not only motivates the user to engage the interface, but also deliver the data in a way that is clear and accessible in the least amount of interactions possible.
Many books have been written on the subject, and a lot of those books are rewritten with the advancement of technologies. These are the same technologies that have challenged the days of hacking commands into a console box somewhere for many years. But it begs the question
a) Is it good idea from a design perspective to move users to a point & click interface, and
b) Is it what users really want?
It depends how you look at it really. Even recently when I went to a travel agent to book some plane tickets, they were still smashing the keyboard with their alien F7 -> T -> comma -> F3 + F3 commands. The learning curve to become familiar with the set of commands would have been a nightmare, but after that initial hump, the rate information was pulled back was extremely fast.
Goodness of a quick, simple CLI interface
Same goes for any system really. Users will typically like the friendly UI with big buttons and "?" help buttons littered around the screen. Though once they've become acquainted with the system, those things get in the way when the user really just wants to get down to business. It's a shame so many systems come with just the single standard interface. Some developers do put the effort in to create a "Standard" and "Expert" user experience, but oftentimes these things are seen as a luxury with users being forced to settle for one or the other.
Web pages are no better. If anything they're essentially the domain of the mouse. If you've ever tried tabbing to the text input box you're after, you have to put a paperweight on your tab key, walk away for a cup of coffee, come back and pray that it's cycled through however many controls there are both on the web page and the browser itself. What's worse is it seems Silverlight can not be penetrated with the same Tab/Shift+Tab methodology. It is a pure mouse-only domain.
Pretty, but pretty useless interfaces
The point I'm getting at is that as developers are getting more and more creative with the user interfaces of their software and catering to the masses, useability on the high-end users side of things is suffereing. For me the keyboard will be the fastest input device for a good few more years at least, so being forced to use the mouse is something that is not only slower, but also somewhat painstaking to use. It's great that everyone can use your system, but why not help them use it to do what they want to do as quick as they can?