This week, Tthere is an interesting article in The Economist about the limits of leapfrogging. As you may know, this term refers to technologies that allow to skip another tech generation (for instance cell phone allow to skip the introduction of huge landline infrastrucures). Based on a recent rep...
Two design approaches: Disney Theme Park and LEGO
Not really a pattern, but I ran across two articles about design process this morning. The first one (found here) is about the design of a new ride (Toy Story Mania) at Disney theme parks: "BUILDING elaborate models is among the first formal steps in creating a Disney attraction. Engineers, paying ...
LIFT2008
A truly good year/millésime, loads of work and passion, perhaps more professional this year. Colorful and lively, an incredible crowd, lots of trust, present friends/online friends who could not attend. Lots of traces, cheese and duct-tape. Still need to parse all I learn, discuss and digest. Than...
Bamboos to reveal urban wifi
An intriguing new "urban computing" in the form of "communicating bamboo" has been developed by Orange Labs (A France Telecom R&D subsidiary). The point of such urban devices is to make WiFi hostpots more visible in public spaces and to access push-based services (mp3 download, vocal announces, etc...
Bruce Sterling, black swans and goldilocks
Being an organizer of the LIFT conference is also tricky and often lead you to avoid attending the conferences. That said, I managed to watch Bruce Sterling's introductory keynote. Bruce addressed what was important in 2007 that may shape 2008. In a sense, looking out in the rear mirror to see the ...
Recursive affordances
These two ash-tray found in Geneva and Lausanne are two impressive examples of an object affordances: Why do I blog this? This is utterly curious from a design perspective. the artifacts designed to received trashed objects looks like the object itself. A sort of recursive affordance to some exte...
Steve Portigal on scanning/meme-broking
There is a great interview of Steve Portigal in influx. Some excerpts I found relevant: "A great design strategist (...) someone who has had a few different professional identities and gets excited by the spaces where disciplines, schools of thought, and methods overlap. They are curious and easily...
Spam Subject: D entists Database in the US
I am the LIFT conference and I just received this nice spam: "Just Released: Directory of Dentists in the United States + 164,071 Dentists with City, State, Zip + 158,162 Addresses + 163,596 Tel #'s + 77,694 Fax #'s + 45,072 E-Mails Until Feb 8 the reduced price is $297 (reg $397)" Why do I blog th...
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan, 1967 "I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybern...
Latour on traceability/massive data
Fabien dug out an interesting paper by Bruno Latour about the implications of digital traces entitled "Beware your imagination leaves digital traces. The article, published in Times Higher Literary Supplement (6th April 2007) addresses the increasing traceability and how it will open up new inquiri...