Anyone interested in the relationship between technologies and contemporary cities followed the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer recently interviewed Aaron Garbut from Rockstar. The following part sparked my interest: "We never reproduce real world locations. We take inte...
Carriers, privacy and location-based social networking services
LBS 360 has a good overview of European Mobile Mapping Trends summarized by Michael Fisher. The whole piece is about how Mobile Network Operator (MNO - or "carrier") perceive the field and will be likely to shape it in the near future. I was mostly intrigued by that part: "Privacy issues, as you wo...
About an intriguing urban computing assemblage
The recent story of Google cars causing stir in Rome still makes me wondering about the perception of so-called "urban computing" and citizens. To put it shortly, the problem was basic: Google recently brought in black cars in Rome that take pictures for the Google Streetview project (yes at some p...
Evolution of game controllers
Recently, I've been involved in a research project about game controllers, comparing different peripheral (gestural or not). This led me to investigate the evolution of game controller over time, a topic already addressed by others. For instance, Damien Lopez made this insightful mapping (.pdf) for...
Interview on Infonomia
Been interviewed recently by Alfons Cornella and Doris Obermair for spanish website Infonomia, the conversation is here. A short excerpt where I make my point (about the near future of urban computing) that the important thing is less about technology than human needs: "¿Cuál es el futuro en este c...
"Deer Blogger"/"Deer Tracking via e-mail"
Via, geolocated animals are now more and more common (after pigeon blogs back in 2006), the most recent example is this deer named Thor that blog his own position on Google Earth. What is interesting in this case is not the animal blogging meme (although it's yet another example) but the underlying...
Disinhibition with virtual partners, chatbot, and robots
Given that we spend more and more time communicating with non-humans, the topic of politeness with bots, robots, virtual characters, non-playable charcters in video games has always struck me as intriguing. Few months back, I mentioned the chatbot technology and call centres where "it will be also...
Vending machine proxy/broker
Right after reading Dan Hill's recent post about transport fare system this morning, I had to bring a friend to a tram stop here in Geneva and I had an interesting discussion with what I would call the local "vending machine proxy/broker". Transport ticket machines in Geneva are actually a bit comp...
NewBraveWorld: ubicomp workshop in Brussels
People interested in locative media and ubicomp in the Brussel area (or in Europe!) might be willing to attends NewBraveWorld: "An “Internet-of-Things” is under construction with technologies for unique digital identification (RFID), geolocation (GPS), embedded computing (ubiquitous or pervasive c...
"Lost futures" as traps
Still gathering stuff about "failed futures" for a project, I ran across this interview of Matt Jones by Adaptive Path peeps that is very insightful. Some excerpts I found relevant for my project: "RF: You’ve mentioned the danger of “lost futures,” based on the success of a given device. One model ...