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Yesterday
For the past four years, Microsoft Research (MSR) has sponsored a symposium on social computing that “brings together academic and industry researchers, developers, writers, and influential commentators in order to open new lines of communication among previously disconnected groups.” The theme of the 2010 symposium, held at ITP at NYU, was “The city as platform”, which revolved around various sub-topic such as urban informatics, the city as a social technology, pervasive...
Sunday
Niklas Wolkert & Brad Nunnally provide their second report on Johnnyy Holland on the Interaction10 conference in Savannah, Georgia – this time focused on the second day. “After a night of some great parties, and even better conversation, the second day of Interaction 10 began with a preview of the new IxDA.org website redesign. The team doing the redesign covered all the great new features that are coming, and went into detail on how local groups will be able to leverage the...
Saturday
Niklas Wolkert & Brad Nunnally report on Johnnyy Holland on the first day of the Interaction10 conference in Savannah, Georgia. “If one thing had to describe the overall theme of the first day it would be the importance of providing meaning in the work that we do. Below are recaps of the opening and closing keynotes, as well as some of the sessions from the day.” Check their review on presentations by Nathan Shedroff, Dave Gray, Nate Bolt, Matt Cottam, Kendra Shimmell,...
Wednesday
I'm finding that as I sit down to do my weeknotes, it's as much about what's coming up as it is about what I've just done. That's probably to be expected, even though last week was exciting and relaxing and...
There are a lot of sites that cover web design. Some good ones that cover interaction design. There are also a few good ones that cover that cover local design scene. One blog that I subscribe to, and I suggest you do too, is Plus63.net. They post pretty regular articles on Filipino visual designers. Another design blog that seems to beat me in announcing new logo redesigns in the Philippines is One Design PH. So this makes me think of how to position my blog to serve you guys better. I...
February 2nd
Scott Hill of Alternet looks at how technology facilitates “the human sentient understanding of how to take cruel advantage of human weakness”. “Indeed, humans are exceptional when it comes to using technology to prey upon weaknesses, in themselves, their cultures and their markets. But even when technological solutions arise for navigating problems as mundane as they are obstructive, there tends to be some variation of consequence. Let’s just call it...
In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. Continuing a line of investigation she began with the 2008 FRONTLINE report Growing Up Online, award-winning producer Rachel Dretzin embarks on a journey to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. Joining Dretzin on this journey is...
February 1st
Constantine Valhouli, principal of the Massachusetts based Hammersmith Group, which consults to developers on the marketing and branding of luxury properties, and to city leaders on reviving historical downtowns, just published an overview of the potential for connected devices entitled “The Internet of things: Networked objects and smart devices.” It quotes Rob Faludi, Julian Bleecker, Bruce Sterling, Adam Greenfield and covers devices from the WineM to Botanicalls to the Ambient Orb...
On the 4th annual Data Protection day (28th January 2010) the European Commission announced the intention to reform the 1995 European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. “Our privacy faces new challenges: behavioural advertising can use your internet history to better market products; social networking sites used by 41.7 million Europeans allow personal information like photos to be seen by others; and the 6 billion smart chips used today can trace your movements. The...
Stowe Boyd arguest that the metaphors of computing user experience are holding us back from new ways of structuring our interaction through computers. “the thing that is blocking us from moving forward, to a better user experience centered on social interaction and not physical data, are the existing metaphors of OS’s. Since we are living in a world of general purpose computers running Unix, Mac OS, and Windows — and we need to have them interoperate — we seem stuck in...
January 29th
User experience is one of the most important success factors of a mobile application, according to Nokia. Therefore the company created a web section that describes the benefits of a good user experience, which also provides links and resources with more detailed material.
January 26th
Greetings from Mexico City! I'm on vacation, a tagalong for a commercial that Motion Theory is shooting. I keep having dreams about editing and rewriting, but I have nothing to do until February 3, when I have my oral defense....
January 23rd
Ethnographer Tricia Wang wrote an excellent and long comment on why Google is having troubles in China: While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current story: Many Chinese internet users don’t find Google to be very useful. Therefore, a Google withdrawal would not have any immediate impact on the daily Chinese internet user because most people search with Baidu, the reigning search engine in...
January 21st
Nick Marsh of EMC Conchango reflects on the conundrum of ‘front book’ vs ‘back book’ pricing, and the implications for service design. “This is a great example for illustrating the differences between designing for service-centric organisations as compared to designing for product-centric organisations, and it fits nicely with the insight that service design is really an organisational challenge, not an aesthetic one.” Read full story
One of the projects funded by the Danish programme for user-driven innovation (English summary) is DESINOVA (see also this earlier post). DESINOVA’s purpose is to enhance innovation among service and trading companies using the methods of user-driven innovation and service design. DESINOVA develops competences for user-driven innovation in trade and service companies and in design companies. More than 25 companies and organisations are participating in DESINOVA. DESINOVA kicked off in...
Arup Australasia has published a three-part technical overview on its research blog of its ‘urban sensing via mobile phones’ project. The research project, in collaboration with the UTS Centre for Real-Time Information Networks, explores technical approaches to sensing the presence of mobile phones in transit environments (bus, train, ferry etc.) as well as pedestrians, in order to provide real-time data on such activity, potentially informing urban planning and transport planning...
Western companies are struggling to bridge the growing gap created by the evolution of a cyberspace with Chinese characteristics. Kathrin Hille explains some of the cultural (and political) differences in today’s Financial Times. “[Chinese people] tend to roam the web like a huge playground, whereas Europeans and Americans are more likely to use it as a gigantic library. Recent research by the McKinsey consultancy suggests Chinese users spend most of their time online on...
Mobile health is emerging at the intersection of dynamic changes in mobility patterns, health care delivery, and new mobile technologies and networks. New technologies and the services they enable will be just one piece of a larger strategy for engaging consumers anywhere, anytime. Ultimately, mobile health will create more distributed health care systems that will move from an episodic to a continuous-care model, supported by decentralized, integrated care interwoven seamlessly into our...
January 18th
Animism Projections from Muhka Web TV on Vimeo. From Jan. 22nd until May 2nd Extra City and M HKA present ‘Animism’, an exhibition on 2 locations. Outdoor projections in the city of Antwerp (Belgium) offer an introduction and a public invitation. Computational animation by ToDo (Italy), music by Dimitri Brusselmans (Boenox, Monky Pussy). More info: www.extracity.org, www.muhka.be. P.S. And there’s also a clip from ATV television...
January 16th
Here’s a quick video edit (from the nice people at MHKA) of the projection on the façade of the Church on Dageraadsplaats in Antwerp.
January 13th
Been curious about this Weeknotes habit that various people are doing on their sites. Given that it's the start of a year, I figure it's time to write about what I've been up to. I wrote this blog post on Saturday...
January 12th
Some pictures Fabio shot today in Rome. All good in the hood: tomorrow is the opening day and everybody but Carlo (he’ll assist the installations) is flying back home.
December 24th, 2009
Orbita is an iPhone-powered space-lapse installation. More than 3.000 people experienced the system during the Festival della Scienza in Genova. Here’s a short selection of those smiling, happy jumpers. ORBITA from todo.to.it on Vimeo. Tech notes in brief: we developed a custom app/system to shoot in synch wih 20 iPhones. This is what we call a challenging project :) Check our flickr set for some ‘behind the scenes’...
December 15th, 2009
Ricky, Cioni e Carlo left yesterday for  Valencia. They are setting up the new digital-signage system for CAC (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias de Valencia). www.cac.es/
Let’s pretend we are not tired :) http://faketakemake.posterous.com/ If you need to lasercut an arduino holder (picture above), grab the file here http://faketakemake.posterous.com/la-basetta-in-plexi-per-arduino2009
And here’s the name (and the logo) for our first physical computing workshop. The workshop is 2 weeks long (Dec 14-18) + (Jan 25-29) and will be held at the Masters in Design for Communication Environments, University of Siena. The class blog: http://faketakemake.posterous.com/
December 6th, 2009
I did some tweaks on the previous sketches I made before. I was trying to make a “bokeh” effect by blurring the circles a bit. But the filter blur in Processing was a bit too strong and I still don’t know how to control it yet, the result was something far from the original one and still way off from what I want. Sketch 2-1, added some random blur effect. Sketch 2-2, changed colors a bit, still using the follow mouse effect. Sketch 2-3, automated the movement and size of...
December 2nd, 2009
I bought the compilation of The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite a couple of days ago because my wife had a subscription of Archie comics which she had to pick up. I was very happy that I did. I rarely read comics so I may not be the best critic for these things. But a couple of months back, I also bought the first of the series of Blackest Night, so I can make that as my comparison. I finished The Umbrella Academy in one sitting, versus Blackest Night which I just got in the middle of. ...
November 28th, 2009
I find myself going back to learning Processing when I feel the need for fresh air or escape. Someone told me that I was too technical to be creative. Working with highly technical people, this was something new to me. I always am thought of as creative than technical. I guess I am absorbing some new skills by working closely with technical people. But I digress. So I open up processing to see how technical I am or maybe exercise and learn to be more technical and creative at the same...
November 14th, 2009
The GalaxyDress designed by CuteCircuit which is on display in the FastForward gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago receives worldwide press coverage this week. For a brief overview of the press coverage online: Visit the HuffingtonPost and vote in the GalaxyDress poll! The GalaxyDress video was also one of the most watched videos on YouTube yesterday. Also featured at FastCompany, Ecouterre, Wired, Engadget, Gizmodo and FashioningTech. Stay tuned on CuteCircuit for more...
November 11th, 2009
My submission to the TEI conference was rejected, but I wanted to share the paper anyway. Here's an excerpt: Working prototypes have many disadvantages and difficulties. Foremost among these is the time they take to build. In the course, most of the student groups spent fully two weeks (half of the time) constructing their final prototype. Compared to the hours or days taken on most of their earlier prototypes, this was a large commitment. It can also be difficult to estimate the time...
November 9th, 2009
For a project in my group, we needed to talk to multiple XBee radios from a computer. I adapted the XBee API library for Processing by Rob Faludi and Daniel Shiffman, adding methods for sending and receiving serial data (Series 1 radios only). To send data to a specific radio (identified by its 16-bit address), you use the xbee.sendDataString16(int addr, int[] bytes) function. There's a new constant, xbee.SERIES1_RX16PACKET, that's returned by XBeeDataFrame.getApiID() for incoming data from a...
November 5th, 2009
November 4th, 2009
Today I presented our work at the CReATE conference in Torino. Despite my best efforts to lose the audience with some funny jabberwok english… from the feedback I got during the aperitivo, it seems that people actually enjoyed the presentation. I’m sure they were already drunk :)
November 3rd, 2009
Wanna speak at a conference? What if it's about cities and architecture? Not your subject? No problem. It can be with the handy Urban Computing Conference Title Generator.(Brought to you by a brief bout of procrastination as I revise a...
October 11th, 2009
Congratulations to the Winners of last night’s awarding ceremony, Luzon leg. No, unfortunately I didn’t win. But I’m still happy to be a finalist among the hundreds of other blogs. :) Here’s the list: SPECIAL AWARDS Best Blog Design – The Site Guy Best Filipino Blog Abroad – The Warped Zone Best Foreign Blog – My Sari Sari Store Blogger’s Choice – Micamyx Best Filipiniana Blog – Pilipino Komiks TEN BEST POSTS OF THE YEAR Karnabal by...
October 5th, 2009
I rarely come across a website that captures my imagination… and Spectra did it for me. I just saw this site by accident while browsing through another site. Spectra is msnbc’s visual newsreader. So instead of showing text and images, spectra presents this differently, via spiral and colored boxes (according to the category of the news item). But this wasn’t the one that got me hooked. If you go in deeper and look at the other ways they present information, you’ll...
September 30th, 2009
The “Future Tech” episode of The Gadget Show aired two nights ago and featured wearable technology from CuteCircuit! In the episode as Suzi and Jason are discussing the future of technology and the discussion turns to wearable technologies. Suzi models the Kinetic Dress from CuteCircuit saying, “It’s Fabulous! And I absolutely love it!” The Future Tech episode is now available on the web for viewing, so enjoy the show! And let us know what you think :)
September 29th, 2009
MindTrek starts this week in Tampere, Finland. MindTrek is the leading Nordic digital media and business conference, focusing on social media & Web 2.0. At MindTrek you will see the newest trends, innovations, revolutionary business phenomena and hear insights from the most high-spirited visionaries. This year at MindTrek, CuteCircuit is presenting innovations in the filed of Wearable Technology as part of “Visions of Future User Interfaces” at 11:20 on Friday, October...
Please, if you can, try to help out people who were affected by the floods and typhoon. Toni has a very comprehensive list of places that are offering assistance.
I am flattered that I was chosen as one of the finalists for this year’s Philippine Blog Awards. A bit of good news after the tragedy that happened this weekend. Here are the other finalists in the category: Best Culture & Arts Blog Art in Action Bookmarked! Coffeespoons magnetic-rose.net: Japanese Pop Culture for Filipino Fans Perlas Design Studio PinoyTattoos.com – Filipino Tattoo Source SA GUBAT NG NAMIMINTOG NA PATALIM Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy The Spy in the Sandwich Views...
September 23rd, 2009
The Connected Body event will take place in the Conference Hall at the PICNIC Festival on the 24th of September beginning at 3:50 in the afternoon. Topics of interest will include the marriage of Fashion and Technology and what new interface experiences this will bring. It should be a very fun event and we are looking forward to seeing you there! Connected Body: http://www.picnicnetwork.org/page/53116/en PICNIC: http://www.picnicnetwork.org/
September 11th, 2009
How am I supposed to slap a hoe without an essential part of my balanced breakfast? (via People of Walmart - funny images )
August 18th, 2009
I Am Your Child (Reddit Remix) (via TheSifman)
I am your child - T-Pain mix (via chooseoneorten)
August 6th, 2009
In July, out of the blue, a friend's cat attacked my leg, biting and scratching it until my friend pulled it off, without provocation. Later in the month, my bizarre allergy to Princeton's mosquitos returned, causing a full-on systemic allergic...
August 5th, 2009
August 3rd, 2009
Crowdsourced harmony.
July 30th, 2009
Big news abound the internet, Microsoft and Yahoo partner up for 10 years. Yahoo will use Bing search technology while still receiving 88 percent of advertising from its sites. NY Times gives a good review here
July 28th, 2009
I believe that design not only encompasses visuals, in which is what I do most of the time, but also experiences. See this summer hideaway, which looks like it was designed to the minutest detail. It definitely makes you feel like you’re a gypsy living a uninhibited life. My standards for a vacation room is pretty high, and a gypsy caravan doesn’t sound appealing to me. But after seeing these images, you can feel the tranquility and peacefulness of the place. Now I would like to...
July 20th, 2009
Most open-source hardware projects (including Arduino) seem not to have taken advantage of the distributed manufacturing models enabled by the open nature of their designs. Instead, we mostly see two conventional distribution models: centralized manufacturing and artisanal production. The centralized manufacturing model The centralized manufacturing model is a simplified form of the process followed by most corporations. Here a manufacturer (the small red dot) produces the product and...
July 7th, 2009
GH1 with Som Berthiot Cinor 1.4/25mm (via Astroman’s Photo)
June 29th, 2009
June 27th, 2009
View more documents from David Mellis.
Russia’s Got Talent (via proshura84) Live sand drawing, a russian story
June 26th, 2009
Rhymefest - Man in the Mirror (Mixtape) | 2dopeboyz
Muslauf: Hydroelectric power station Avce - Fixed gear heaven
June 24th, 2009
“To hell with all hindering walls and doors! Love’s eye sees as feather and wing, walls and doors. My flooded eyes blur the house Doors and walls becoming walls and doors. There is no shelter: my love is on her way, They’ve gone ahead in greeting, walls and doors. The wine of your splendor floods Your street, intoxicating walls and doors. (Translated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Frances W. Pritchett)” - Spread the word: Obama says he digs Urdu poetry - Abby Phillip - POLITICO.com
In the name of God We will not waste our energy, but act efficiently. We have conveyed our words to the coup-makers to the world in the streets. Now we need to change our strategy. From this Tuesday, at 9 every morning we will all go to the bazaar in our towns all over the country. If they prevent us, the bazaar will close. If they do not, there will be such congestion that the business will get interrupted and the bazaar will close. If they disconnect the telephone lines, again all activities...
Silhouette Masterpiece Theater - DivineCaroline
June 23rd, 2009
“It was in this state, a state of almost complete devotion to hope, that this field recording of a native, running over the credits at the end of an episode of Deadwood, kept me from breathing for the 55 seconds it played. I can’t imagine the state the musicologist was in when he or she recorded this, when they heard it for the first time — it inspires in me something like a longing for deeper empathy, which is the best I can hope for in a piece of art.” - motel de moka » Guest post:...
June 22nd, 2009
Have You Ever Been So Tired?
IE6 denial message for Momentile.com (via John Martz)
“Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check.” Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a read-out?” - “ASPEN 20” – SR-71 – Groundspeed Check
June 21st, 2009
LookBackMaps: The Mission « Mission Mission
June 20th, 2009
Marco Brambilla: Civilization | Motionographer | Motion graphics, design, animation, filmmaking and visual effects: Crazy video collage
June 8th, 2009
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago has published its first Podcast to correspond with the FastForward: Inventing the Future Exhibit and the Podcast is all about CuteCircuit and Wearable Technologies from CuteCircuit that are currently on display in the FastForward exhibit at the museum. The interview with Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz was recorded at the opening of the exhibit in Chicago, is about 5 minutes long and discusses wearable technology and the future of fashion! Download...
June 6th, 2009
There are a lot of people creating value around Arduino: e.g. this experimentation kit from oomlout, tons of videos from Make Magazine, various books, etc. When I see all this activity, two questions come to mind, one selfish and one altruistic. The selfish question is: how can I capture more of this value? The altruistic question is: how can I make these things more accessible and useful to the Arduino community? To rephrase the first question, should I (or others on the Arduino team) be...
May 27th, 2009
What could help people share the models they use for generating data so that others can investigate alternative scenarios or presentations of the model (and not just the resulting data)? For example, in the The Economics of Structured Finance [pdf], Joshua D. Coval, Jakub Jurek, and Erik Stafford discuss the impact on the value of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and CDOs-squared of changes in the default correlation and probability of their underlying assets. They present one graph...
May 24th, 2009
/* * Blink - the basic Arduino example. */ int ledPin = 13; // LED connected to pin 13 void setup() // run once { pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the pin as output } void loop() // run over and over again { digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // sets the LED on delay(1000); // waits for a second digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // sets the LED off delay(1000); // waits for a second }
May 20th, 2009
Rotterdam Event - Test_Lab: Fashionable Technology Update Check it out! Those guys from V2 are way organized! A video stream of the entire event is now available here! (.mov stream) Original Post CuteCircuit designers will be presenting the latest prototype of the HugShirt at V2 Institute for Unstable Media in Rotterdam. The one-night event will focus on wearable technology designs with presentations from CuteCircuit designers Ryan Genz and Francesca Rosella, Sabine Seymour author of Fashionable...
May 18th, 2009
A New York Times article entitled For Urban Gardeners, Lead Is a Concern, talks about, well, lead in the soil and how it affects urban gardening.
Ran across The Food Project this evening while looking up bioremediation for lead in the soil.
May 17th, 2009
This is something that Simona asked me recently. To be honest, I'm not sure what the answer is. I don't expect that a large portion of the population will ever design a circuit or even assemble a kit. But perhaps it can provide for the creation of many products that would not otherwise have existed, and which have the potential of mass consumer appeal. The possibilities for industry are also fascinating, but something I know very little about. I hope that in a few years I'll have a better...
April 29th, 2009
April 28th, 2009
CuteCircuit founders Ryan Genz and Francesca Rosella were in Helsinki Finland this week to give a Keynote Speech at the Ubiquitous Computing Summit 2009. The field of Ubiquitous Computing deals with how computing and human-computer interaction is accomplished when computers no longer reside on a desktop in a home or office, but literally reside in every product that we interact with on a daily basis. And of course, Wearable Technology is a key component of this new technological landscape....
April 25th, 2009
Recently, I've started running. I've never thought of myself as an athletic person at all -- my parents tell stories about me, age 3 and 4, hiding behind the gymnastic mats in the gym of my nursery school, reading books....
April 20th, 2009
Ogni giorno le nostre mailbox sono inondate da poco gradite offerte di materiale pornografico, di software pirata, di viagra senza prescrizione, di infallibili strumenti di seduzione e di schemi finanziari truffaldini: molti ne farebbero volentieri a meno, a noi piace da morire. Uno sguardo alla cartella dello spam porta sempre nuova meraviglia: titoli dalla bizzarra sintassi ci guidano nella ricerca della risposta definitiva ai problemi fondamentali dell'essere umano. C'è la crisi, urge...
April 17th, 2009
Just call me Fallopia. In early March, I gave an Ignite talk at eTech about pneumatic tubes-- a five-minute talk where the slides advance every 15 seconds. It's shot its way around the Internet, but I haven't yet posted it...
April 11th, 2009
Open-source hardware raises a number of economic questions. Primarily: how do unaffiliated individuals collect and spend money? Presumably, this applies to other endeavors, but what are they and how does the answer differ?
March 23rd, 2009
My dear friend Spiro Pina passed away on Tuesday, March 17, after fighting a Type IV glioma, a very aggressive form of brain tumor. He leaves behind many people who love him, not the least of which include his...
Just wanted to note that I've not forgotten to post a recap of the Tangible Interactions in Urban Spaces panel we put together at SXSW. A few life things (see next post) have happened. I'll post this week....
March 17th, 2009
Com'è consuetudine ormai da alcuni anni, le conferenze di TOP-IX si aprono oltre i confini della sala, per consentire anche a chi non è fisicamente presente di seguire gli eventi attraverso lo streaming video sul web e la trasmissione tv satellitare. In occasione della sua IV Conferenza Annuale, TOP-IX era alla ricerca di un format che consentisse di coinvolgere maggiormente  il pubblico, trasformandolo da mero fruitore passivo in soggetto partecipante e attivo. Un contesto ideale per...
Il Cucchiaio d'Argento è un'applicazione per iPhone che raccoglie 250 ricette tratte dal noto libro di cucina italiana, suddivise in categorie e strutturate in un formato grafico di facile consultazione, suggerisce gli accostamenti di vini più adatti per determinati piatti e consente di salvare gli ingredienti in un'apposita lista della spesa. ToDo ha ideato e disegnato l'interfaccia grafica dell'applicazione, con particolare attenzione alla semplicità e immediatezza d'uso, ma senza...
Il progetto Deco-Code nasce dall’esplorazione delle nuove possibilità creative che scaturiscono dall’incontro tra strumenti di digital fabrication e strategie generative basate sul codice, con l’obiettivo di sviluppare un sistema intelligente per generare modelli in grado di riconfigurarsi e crescere in modo dinamico ed unico a seconda del contesto. Attraverso l’analisi e la definizione dei volumi, dei contrasti e in generale delle qualità fisiche di un determinato spazio, il...
Un esperimento per insegnare calligrafia e buone maniere al computer, un'esplorazione delle potenzialità espressive di elementi geometrici elementari per dare ai glifi un corpo plastico e dinamico. La ricetta: definisci i glifi con una semplice combinazione di tracciati di base, scrivi un software per percorrerli da cima a fondo, a questo punto memorizzi una lista di punti con densità variabile a seconda della curvatura della linea e, per finire, associa a ciascun punto un rettangolo...
TECH STUFF, ideato e prodotto da Tobor Experiment con il supporto di QOOB, è la prima produzione nata direttamente da qoob.tv. Un documentario a puntate sulle tecniche, gli artisti e gli strumenti più bizzarri che hanno fatto la storia della musica elettronica: immagini rare, performance e interviste montate insieme in pillole video divertenti e informative. Un lavoro che QOOB e ISBN Edizioni decidono di pubblicare, abbinando al dvd video anche un libro che ne riprende e approfondisce i...
Per l'edizione 2007 di BIP, Building Interactive Playgrounds, abbiamo pensato di affiancare all'exhibit delle installazioni anche un workshop gratuito di physical computing applicato ai controller per videogiochi. I venti partecipanti selezionati sono stati introdotti ai principi del keyboard hacking e invitati a ripensare gli strumenti esistenti, per immaginare nuove forme di interazione fisica. Immersi nell'atmosfera particolare del festival, in mezzo ai soundcheck e alla musica proveniente...
Per l’Associazione NADA, abbiamo ideato e realizzato un sistema dinamico di identità visiva che incarnasse i concetti di innovazione e cambiamento: un logo in continuo divenire, sempre diverso, disegnato da un processo/script generativo. Le regole definite nella scrittura del programma danno vita ad una identità riconoscibile anche nella molteplicità delle forme che il logo può assumere di volta in volta.
Zygote è una sfera interattiva che reagisce al contatto illuminandosi dall'interno. L'interazione è semplice ed intuitiva: colpiscila, lanciala o falla rimbalzare e il computer al suo interno risponde in tempo reale illuminandola di luce colorata. Ideato dallo studio canadese Tangible Interaction, Zygote è un format per concerti ed eventi ad alta concentrazione di pubblico: i palloni lanciati sul pubblico trasformano l'ambiente coinvolgendo attivamente gli spettatori in una esperienza...
Realizzato da Eataly in collaborazione con i Servizi Museali della Città di Torino e le Distillerie Fratelli Branca, il museo, dedicato alla storia del marchio Carpano e del vermuth, guida il visitatore alla scoperta delle materie prime che compongono il prodotto, delle spezie e essenze utilizzate. Per trasformare la visita al Museo Carpano in un'esperienza sensoriale completa, ToDo ha progettato e realizzato degli olfattori che nella forma e nei materiali impiegati evocano in modo ironico i...
Se ti piace pensare a progetti che mettano in gioco lo spazio, il tempo, le persone e le tecnologie, se ti piace sconfinare e curiosare in situazioni inconsuete, se sei dell’idea che gli spazi possano essere programmabili, se i social patterns sono il tuo pane quotidiano, se non hai paura di un pubblico giovane, divertito e ubriaco, se passi il tempo a spiegare ai tuoi amici che gli ambienti non sono scatole passive ma processi attivi, se la tua percezione delle cose si modifica di continuo,...
"next level: 5 a 4 al novantunesimo!" "dalla serie B alla nazionale è next level" "divano e pantofole è next level" Un'affissione interattiva per la campagna Next Level di NikeFootball, a due passi dal Duomo di Milano, attiva tutti i giorni per 3 settimane, fino all'inizio del Campionato Europeo di calcio. Un invito ai passanti a contribuire in modo creativo alla campagna, inviando un sms per proporre la propria personale versione del concept "Next Level". Un'azione di...
Artificial Dummies costruisce una relazione tra i movimenti disegnati da algoritmi delle sue creature e lo spazio pubblico di una facciata, un edificio o un monumento, adattando l'animazione in tempo reale alle specifiche caratteristiche architettoniche della superficie di proiezione. Strani animali prendono vita, si riuniscono in branchi e fluttuano, esplorando il nuovo territorio in cui si trovano, evitando ostacoli e nemici. Come se fossero appena migrati in un nuovo habitat, le nostre...
March 11th, 2009
I'd been chugging along, updating Girlwonder frequently and then school started up again. Somehow, I'm now midway through my final semester of coursework at Princeton. This month is the month of conferences... today at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference, I present...
March 9th, 2009
Again this year CuteCircuit will be giving a talk at the Smart Fabrics conference. This year’s conference takes place in Rome, Italy from March 10th to the 12th. Differentiating this year’s talk, the presentation will showcase new products from the CuteCircuit label and give key insights in using “beautiful design” principles as a tool for creating value and appeal in the creation of wearable solutions, including how the emerging market for Wearable Technology sits at...
Commissionata per l'edizione 2008 della mostra Incognito, l'installazione interattiva è stata realizzata a Parigi presso il Palais de Tokyo nell'ambito del progetto di rilancio del marchio Persol a livello internazionale. La multiproiezione su un unico tavolo interattivo lungo 10 metri sensibile al tocco racconta l'evoluzione del mondo Persol: la qualità della manifattura e dei materiali, l'unicità del design dei prodotti e delle collezioni, l'evoluzione tecnologica e i brevetti esclusivi...
March 7th, 2009
Organizzato, prodotto e curato dall'Associazione NADA, avatar culturale e no-profit di ToDo, C.Stem è un evento dedicato all'esplorazione delle applicazioni dei sistemi elettronici e computazionali nell'ambito della cultura, dell'arte e del design. La terza edizione del festival, "C.Stem 2008 - Breeding Objects", presenta un gruppo eterogeneneo di ricerche, processi e prodotti accomunati dall'applicazione di strategie e metodi di progettazione computazionali e dall'uso di tecnologie di...
March 6th, 2009
DesignMe è un’installazione interattiva progettata per raccogliere e spettacolarizzare le opinioni e la voce collettiva del pubblico. Il sistema acquisisce le foto dei partecipanti e i disegni da loro realizzati direttamente sul touchscreen e in tempo reale genera dei composite che vanno a comporre un mosaico collettivo dinamico, proiettato su maxischermi led. La partecipazione del pubblico diventa un racconto visivo corale che, per l'evento inaugurale di Torino World Design Capital, mette...
March 5th, 2009
Commissionato da Eataly e realizzato in collaborazione con Slow Food, il progetto nasce dalla richiesta di una visualizzazione innovativa dell'alternanza di frutta e verdura durante il corso dell'anno. Il calendario della stagionalità è stato concepito da ToDo su un layout circolare, un flusso senza soluzione di continuità come il tempo agricolo, per suggerire in modo rapido ed intuitivo cosa conviene consumare, mese per mese, per valorizzare le qualità nutritive degli alimenti e poterli...
March 3rd, 2009
QOOB lancia il suo nuovo sito e cambia faccia! Per i party di lancio del nuovo sito abbiamo quindi pensato di creare delle maschere per portare la nuova identità grafica di QOOB in mezzo al pubblico e al dancefloor. Siamo quindi partiti da alcuni tratti distintivi della nuova veste grafica del sito e abbiamo scritto un programma che li rielaborasse per generare un set di grafiche su diversi layout di maschere. Ne abbiamo poi scelte 12 da stampare e produrre in migliaia di copie da...
March 2nd, 2009
Leggera, semplice, economica e low-fi: questi gli ingredienti dell'installazione luminosa ideata per il meeting point della Regione Piemonte al festival francese Chalon Dans la Rue, che con più di 400.000 visitatori e 1.000 artisti invitati è l'evento dedicato al teatro di strada più importante in Europa. Un 'pergolato' di grappoli che evoca al tempo stesso forme naturali e strutture artificiali. I suoi frutti di notte si accendono di luce verde trasformando la struttura in un landmark...
February 28th, 2009
Bittogrammi è una video installazione proiettata sulla facciata della Permanente di Milano in occasione dell’inaugurazione della mostra "Cina: artisti della nuova generazione", curata da Guido Oldani e promossa dalla Fondazione Giorgio Correggiari e dalla Fiera del Levante. Dodici ideogrammi si formano, scompongono e ricompongono attraverso un flusso particellare di simboli. Un intervento di urban design in cui segni e significati della cultura cinese emergono dalla ricombinazione di...
Ogni progettista ha il proprio medium: per un product designer può essere la plastica, per un architetto il mattone o il cemento. Software ed elettronica sono il medium dell’interaction designer. “The Interaction Ivrea Prototyping Toolbox” è una mappa che illustra il lavoro che professori e studenti dell’Interaction-Ivrea hanno svolto, nei 4 anni di vita dell’istituto, per creare nuovi strumenti per rendere accessibile la progettazione creativa con il medium digitale.
February 25th, 2009
ScreaMS, piattaforma di interazione via sms con visualizzazione dinamica generata in tempo reale sviluppata da ToDo, diventa uno strumento di scrittura collaborativa nell'evento di presentazione alla forza vendita e alla stampa della nuova Fiat500. Al pubblico viene data la possibilità di contribuire via sms alla definizione dei valori e dell'identità della nuova Fiat500: ogni testo ricevuto genera una nuova 'stella' a formare costellazioni di pensieri, commenti, ricordi ed emozioni. Man...
February 23rd, 2009
BARCELONA – Wearing the HugShirt and smiling broadly, the Minister for Trade and Investment, Lord Mervyn Davies received a tele-hug transmitted from across the pavilion. The latest prototype of the HugShirt was unveiled last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the worlds largest trade fair for the mobile telecommunication industry. The Minister was not the only one to try the HugShirt in Barcelona where all of the 45,000 visitors were invited to the CuteCircuit booth to try it...
February 8th, 2009
Some general principles for the development of open-source hardware that I hope to elaborate on in the future: Use common components Use standard layouts and connectors Provide clear instructions Distribute widely (especially internationally) Introduce in person (workshops are good) Grow your community Meet a real need Help others make money Build a brand Keep innovating
January 19th, 2009
....and she's off. My best friend, Jennifer Bove, is moving across the country. She's joined Kicker Studio, a design consultancy that says, "We do interaction-infused product design for: consumer electronics / appliances / mobile devices /kiosks and touchscreens / interactive...
January 14th, 2009
On Active Social Plastic, I wrote about Maxi, the pop culture feminist webzine I co-founded with Janelle Brown, Heather Irwin and Rosemary Pepper in 1997. When we launched, it met with both acclaim and criticism. We were too feminist, we...
January 13th, 2009
Yesterday, I woke up to a bunch of comment notifications on a post I'd written about pneumatic tubes and the postal service in France on Active Social Plastic, my other blog. My first thought was, "Uh oh. Spam." (There's an...
As inspired by Jason Kottke (and as reported previously on this site about 2005 and 2006... 2007 skipped because it was an awful December and January), my 2008 year in cities. A * means multiple, non-consecutive trips.I traveled a lot;...
January 11th, 2009
The way things work in my PhD program, we have a 12-week semester and then we write research papers. The papers aren't generally due within the semester. In the winter, we hand them in in January, during the reading period....
September 22nd, 2008
September 15th, 2008
Get a glimpse of the Future in Chicago! An exciting new semi-permanent gallery has opened at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, called FastForward: Inventing the Future and it includes amazing and entertaining innovation from all over the world. Included in the exhibit are the forward thinking wearable technologies of CuteCircuit. The exhibition also includes the specially commissioned GalaxyDress. Designed by CuteCircuit the GalaxyDress is the world’s largest full color...
August 7th, 2008
If you’re a fan of Slow Food, or just interested in checking out the scene, then consider Slow Food Nation ‘08. It’s going to be held in San Francisco over Labor Day, and visitors will get to enjoy live music, taste testing, a lecture and teaching series, and live music, among other things. What’s more, if you’re willing to pony up $2,500 and become a Patron, you not only help underwrite the event but also receive a special package as a thank-you. This package...
A very cool cooking video, though not at all what you might be expecting to see:
August 4th, 2008
"I posit that the usability and elegance of any product, software or hardware, tends to reach and seldom surpasses the level that satisfies the taste of whoever is in charge of the product. This applies universally, not just to free and open source software. For example, it explains why Microsoft produces such crummy software even though the company employees thousands of talented programmers and even designers — Microsoft’s decision makers have no taste. But the problem is endemic to open...
July 12th, 2008
Open-source hardware requires money. This fundamentally distinguishes the nature of its participants from those of open-source software. In open-source software, the fundamental contributor is the developer, many of whom collaborate in order to create a single software application. In open-source hardware, the fundamental contributor is the entrepreneur, who builds on the work of others in order to offer his or her own products. Open-source software is collaborative; open-source hardware is...
"Education ran riot at Chicago, at least for retarded minds which had never faced in concrete form so many matters of which they were ignorant. Men who knew nothing whatever – who had never run a steam engine, the simplest of forces – who had never put their hands on a lever – had never touched an electric battery – never talked through a telephone, and had not the shadow of a notion what amount of force was meant by a watt or an ampère or an erg, or any other...
When we contemplate the effects of technology on urban life, our thoughts first turn to its visible manifestations: the commuter with his headphones, the pedestrian on her mobile phone, the café dweller and his laptop. But these are only surface traces: the stuff of the times, as the newspapers or briefcases of yesterday. The primary impact of today's technologies of instant communication and digital creation comes instead from the changes they effect on the nature of business and work (among...
June 9th, 2008
We’ve written about Rouxbe before (Rouxbe), and it looks like they are set to unveil a new cooking school for members in June. Using a curriculum developed in partnership with the Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver, the Rouxbe cooking school begins with foundational lessons on kitchen equipment, knives, and techniques and terminology. Having completed those courses, a wide range of courses will cover everything from sauces to legumes, eggs to pork, and custards to cakes. There are...
June 8th, 2008
Salon.com has a review of the book Bottlemania and an interview with the author, Elizabeth Royte. I’d always taken to heart the X glasses of water a day rule (even if I didn’t follow it) and I suppose it comes as no surprise that, having never investigated the origin of the rule, there’s more to the story than a simple equation. Why do you think that water in single-serving sizes became so popular? Marketers hammered home this idea that we need to stay hydrated, and...
June 1st, 2008
A NYTimes article highlights a growing rift between the traditional chefs in Spain and the more avant-garde among them: Santi Santamaría, one of the country’s most prominent chefs, has directed bruising public attacks at his avant-garde counterparts, accusing them of producing pretentious food they would not eat themselves — and potentially poisoning diners with chemicals that he says have no place in the kitchen.
May 20th, 2008
An article on the New York Times website (Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables) suggests that it’s not only what kinds of vegetables you eat, but how you prepare them, which influences their nutritional benefits. In some cases it’s better to cook fruits to release additional nutrients than to eat them raw. In other cases, raw is the better way to go. The confusing bit is that there are no hard and fast rules. Generally, we’ve seen a shift over the years from the...
April 27th, 2008
Some quick items of interest: FoodCamp: The description’s in Italian, and the event itself is in Italy, but it looks like there’s a BarCamp for food, wine, the internet, and big and small distribution of food. A New York Times article (Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World) describes how the transportation of food has traditionally not been taxed. Now, the European Union has announced it will begin to taxed under an emissions trading program by 2012. The goal...
April 24th, 2008
On Wednesday, May 21, I'm going to be the Design Remixed speaker with the AIGA New York chapter. It's from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Apple Store in Soho. I'm going to be talking about my life as a...
April 21st, 2008
Years ago (maybe 1999?), Maggie sent me this poem, "Errata" by Charles Simic, who is the current American Poet Laureate. I believe it was published in his first poetry collection, What the Grass Says. ErrataWhere it says snowread teeth-marks of...
April 20th, 2008
Found via Engadget Mobile: "Enkin" introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices. This project is a submission for the first round of the Google Android Developer Challenge and should not be...
April 19th, 2008
Malcolm McCullough once said that he liked to recreationally reprogram his thermostat. I wonder whether he knows that he has this in common with the Swiss architect Philippe Rahm, who told an audience at Princeton last week, "When you create...
April 16th, 2008
The Small Planet Institute recently launched a new project called Take a Bite Out of Climate Change, which connects food with climate change and presents a way to take action: Take a Bite plunges into the heart of the [climate change] debate with a powerful message: If we are serious about the crisis, we’ve got to talk about food. With nearly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions coming from the food and agriculture sector, we at Take a Bite are here to help you learn about the...
April 13th, 2008
Based on this talk, THAT would be a company I'd love to work for: Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo
April 12th, 2008
A heated post-pub debate last night on the potential of mass customization and the echo-chamberness of these little micro-communities on the web took an interesting turn when the good Mr. Sparks and I found ourselves veering into the land of television. So for the last 50 years or so, we've seen the rise of weekly media moments. Those water-cooler, event television moments, where instead of gathering around a warm fire, we all huddled round the blue glow of our TVs. But now that broadcast is...
April 10th, 2008
Via DefenseTech.org One might think that the United States' nuclear weapons — the cornerstone deterrent in the country's arsenal — would be treated with the utmost precision. This comfortable illusion was shaken on Aug. 31, 2007, when crews loaded six live nuclear warheads onto a B-52 bomber and flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, cruising over the nation's heartland. Each warhead was 10 times more powerful than the atomic...
April 3rd, 2008
Yesterday, I was at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC (both the lovely, huge Dulles hangar and the nostalgically tatty one on the Mall), where the second Apollo Lunar Module is displayed. ... which brings us to...
March 31st, 2008
Ralph Rapson passed away this weekend at the age of 93. He left a 70 year legacy as an architect. Rapson studied at Michigan and Cranbrook (under Eliel Saarinen), went on to teach at the New Bauhaus at the Institute...
March 28th, 2008
It struck me I've not posted the talk I gave at IxDA's Interaction 08 conference, titled Strategic Boredom. Some of what I had to say I'd published in an earlier blog post. Here, you can see the video....
March 25th, 2008
Today's delight is musical. This is my muxtape...Archers of Loaf, "Web in Front." Circa late 1994, Spiro and I drove around listening to this, and I've always loved the lines "There's a chance that things could get weird/Yeah it's a...
March 16th, 2008
On the heels of the iPhone SDK announcement, growing interest in Google’s Android and a whole host of other recent developments, Dan Appelquist of Mobile Monday London and Ian Forrester of BBC Backstage have been organizing a new hybrid conference/hackday for the mobile set here in London. Like Mobile Camp London, this event will be entirely free to attendees. We’ve got a great venue over at Imperial College London, and room for 400+ participants. For those of you who wanted to...
March 6th, 2008
Greetings from Austin! I've just arrived for South by Southwest Interactive. This marks #11 for me and the 10th year I've attended (as well as my 10th on the advisory board). It is my favorite time of year -- I'm...
March 4th, 2008
Letting the data do the work for you. Image models:: James Hayes and Alexi Efros: Scene Completion, here, they created a 10k library of images, and used that to mask and replace parts of images. This didn't work so well till they had Millions of pictures. Finding Canonical Images: Jing, Baluja, Rowley @ Google: Most image searches use key words from meta data. In this case the algorithem looks for like features in images over thousands of images, and asks which features are most like the...
Live, Vast & Deep: Visualization on the Web, Not from the Web Going over Repeatable Actions, Patterns & Processes Show everything Collecting until there is a pattern: - In the News: Grabbed news from google 4 times an hour, and show changes over time - Oakland Crimespotting: Oakland's GIS only stored info for 30 days, so Stamen started caching it for longer periods to get better understanding - Dig Ark, keeps the center clear for the subject, the information flows around, to...
I'm in San Diego for ETech this week and have been hanging out with Michael Shilo from OpenMoko. Those of you who came to MobileCampLondon will remember Michael as the man who took a 30 minute presentation and sparked debate over the possibilities of Opensource mobile tech that raged for two days. Over our pre-session caffine boost, Michael let me know of a new development in the progress of OpenMoko that was announced at 6 am today. OpenMoko has just released the CAD files for the physical...
March 3rd, 2008
Appearing to have something one doesn't, or to not have something one does: this is the art of the bluff. The bluff is the bigness of an argument, backed up by a certain fear on the side of the adversary....
February 16th, 2008
Barack Obama's just resonating with me lately, and having the attention span of a gnat, I'm loving the video feeds on Mr. Obama's web-2.0-tastic site.
January 7th, 2008
Via Digg, and served up by YouTube, this BBC story on a car that runs on nothing but compressed air with a 200km range. I don't even drive and I want one:
October 12th, 2007
I’ve now uploaded the slides I recently received from Peter Bond to go with his presentation on Otodio, and updated my post containing the videos of his talk and live Otodio demo to embed the slides. You can alternatively view the slides direct.
October 7th, 2007
I’ve processed and put up all the videos I recorded now - sorry I didn’t manage to record more! Some were on Blip.tv and some on YouTube, so the full list of the lot is here (my post on the weekend from a girl geek perspective!). Or you can see just the blip.tv videos. And I’ve also taken the liberty of making up my own laws of mobileCamp! Many thanks to everyone involved. Imp.
Dale Lane walked away with our final prize for the Hack Challenge: an OpenMoko Neo 1973 handset. How did he achieve such a feat? Oddly enough, by developing a series of plugins for Windows Mobile that allow him to search Google, create TinyURLs and post to Del.icio.us: The aim was to find some more small ways to improve usability in Pocket Internet Explorer - the web browser on Windows Mobile. Anything that we can do to cut out a step, or save the user having to input something, all helps with...
October 6th, 2007
In addition to the Orange Code Camp happening November 6th and 7th and the Future of Mobile occurring the following week here in London, October and November will be busy months for mobile events. Just a quick scan of Barcamp.org’s homepage reveals several mobile camps happening around the globe: Oct. 13th - MobileWebCampParis Oct. 28th - MobileCampLA Nov. 3rd - MobileCampSF Nov. 10th - MobileCampNYC2 If anybody is going to any of the above and blogging, please let me know, it would...
October 5th, 2007
Sam Machin walked away from Mobile Camp London with a shiny new Nokia N95 thanks to his weekend effort - creating an app that pushes notes he writes on his phone, out to his Tumblr blog: I use tumblr for noting down ideas / urls etc when at conferencing events and some one says check out this site… The app was designed so that I could note it down quickly on my phone and then when I`m sat at my PC later I can look at my tumblr feed and find all the links & notes I made during the...
Simon Maddox - our first place winner in the Hack Challenge, and soon to be proud owner of an iPhone, created an amazing way to find television content and then get it streamed to your phone: My hack: TV Shows is an easy way to watch TV shows (such as Heroes, Prison Break etc.) on your mobile. Show details are pulled from TV.com and displayed on the mobile. When you choose a show / season / episode, the system will go off to a video sharing website and pull the content to the server. Once the...
October 4th, 2007
On Saturday, Jure Sustersic gave a talk on Nokia’s LBS services and how developers can access them:
As part of Mobile Camp London 2007, we offered a little design/hack challenge to create a mobile mashup in a weekend. Five teams took the challenge to heart and built some interesting apps, ranging from a way to pull tv-shows from the web to using Tumblr and an N95 to take notes. We taped the presentation for your viewing pleasure:
Two OpenMoko Neos calling each other at mobileCampLondon.
August 31st, 2007
What space does drawing occupy within architecture? Does it exist to support the eventual building of an idea? Or is it something more? Basic architectural education places a heavy emphasis on drawing, on translating an idea out of the...
Not much has been published about Cedric Price's Generator project. In fact, not much at all has been published about (or by) Price (1934-2003), an architect who understood architecture as that which set the conditions for interaction, as opposed to...
Boredom is a provocation. But what kind of provocation is it? It is not the existential state of eternal ennui or depression-- if it were, it would act like the dejected robot Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....
August 29th, 2007
It is 11:56 p.m. and Haruki Murakami begins his novel, After Dark, as follows.Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep,...
August 1st, 2007
I just started working at the Mobile Experience Lab at MIT. It’s been a while since I’ve had to fill in governmental-type forms, and it was slightly shocking to see my options as listed in one of their forms: I live a multi-ethnic life every day, so why do I have to choose a single ethnicity for the convenience of this form’s creator? And it’s not about how I self-identify versus how others see me: even if I see myself as multi-ethnic, this form dictates that I can be...
May 27th, 2007
Last night I had a conversation with some friends about the iPhone and whether it will have as big an effect on the cell phone market as everyone else seems to think. Sure, it’s got a cool UI and the touch screen doesn’t hurt either, but I wasn’t so sure there was really that much more to make it stand out from the competition. The ability to play music has made its way into a number of other phones, so that’s not a differentiator. And the Prada phone shows that others...
March 12th, 2007
Following up on an earlier post about the Wii and energy consumption, I ran across the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR or “Producer Takeback”) on the SVTC site: In May of 2001, the European Union (EU) Parliament adopted a directive that requires producers of electronics to take responsibility – financial and otherwise – for the recovery and recycling of E-waste. Right now, EPR is aimed at E-waste, but one could imagine this extended to include all...
March 11th, 2007
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Last week I was in San Francisco for CookCamp and Calls For Change at ETel. Now I’m just getting back from a two-day, last-minute trip to Switzerland. I’ve written about my experiences at CookCamp over at Tasty Thinking, but in brief: we pulled it off without a hitch, and more importantly there’s interest in taking CookCamp forward in a variety of directions. One possibility is a larger event in a few months. Another possibility is a...
March 2nd, 2007
February 27th, 2007
I’ve had the chance recently to see a lot of live music (or at least what constituted “a lot” for me) and on each occasion I’ve found myself really thinking hard about the experience. As the Music and Memory project demonstrated, music is more than just a sequence of noise. It can conjure emotions and memories and literally transport you to another place and time. Most of my experience with music has been through records, tapes, CDs, and digital files (MP3, AAC, etc.)....
February 22nd, 2007
February 8th, 2007
I always forget this, so I’m recording it here for future reference and for the benefit of any other lost souls who are looking for this particular key combination. It’s too late for me, but hopefully it will save someone else from wasting several minutes of their life looking for this information…. To get a line break within a cell in Excel X for the Mac, use the following key combination: Apple-Option-Enter You’re welcome….
February 7th, 2007
Straight from Wired (IPod [sic] Will Be the New CD – the “I” in iPod should never be capitalized, since it’s a trademark, but what do I know): Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists’ catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs. Flash-memory drives are now so cheap,...
February 6th, 2007
I just ran across a company called Recordant. They use microphones to capture conversations between salespeople and customers. Those conversations can later be analyzed to determine which specific words used at specific times in the course of a conversation led to a sale. From their FAQ: 2. Do you have to tell your customers they are being recorded? Recordant™ is a competitive advantage for your business. It tells customers that you are serious about giving them the best possible shopping...
February 5th, 2007
A flurry of comments attached to this image posted on Flickr caught my eye (via Macrumors). The subject involves a forged Apple event invitation, and I found the depth of analysis contained within the comments to be fascinating, if slightly…well, let’s just leave it at fascinating. Put it this way: when people start talking about the invitation’s kerning, or how the stars in the background are “ugly”, or even how the choice of words is “NOT...
February 4th, 2007
That would be billions of dollars. One amount is how much the United States of America has annually spent on programs or initiatives which address global warming (to be fair, they qualify the amount with “almost”). One amount is this year’s annual budget request from the Pentagon. Or maybe it does. Not that a couple of misplaced billions here or there makes that much of a difference I suppose1. Guess which story was on Page A1 of the New York Times today? Guess which story...
January 11th, 2007
November 9th, 2006