Seen in Geneva (Rue de Carouge, for those in the know) this afternoon. Although the power plugs had a protective cap, I tried that and it worked out. Convenient but definitely not targeted at passers-by though. ...
Spatial evolution in MMOs
Closely related to my earlier post about the evolution of space in multi-user environments, Richard Bartle commented about a paper he wrote on that topic. The author's starting point is that there is less discussion about virtual worlds ARE than WHY people play them, and he claims that VW are place...
Bike services in Lyon
Velo'v is a bicycle rental service run by the city of Lyon, France, in conjunction with the advertising company JCDecaux. Bikes can be borrowed at something like 350 stations such as the following one. Access is via both credit card and a subscription system (card purchased on-line or in some shops...
Questioning the unfolding of technology in Ubicomp
Read "Questioning Ubiquitous Computing" by Araya this morning on the train. Although the paper dates from 1995, it's still highly relevant considering how it gives a critical analysis of the technological proposals of ubicomp. The author aimed at criticizing the "technical thining", i.e. the kind o...
Open positions in Lausanne
The CRAFT (EPFL, Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne), the lab where I did my PhD research from 2003 to last spring, has open positions for PhD and an engineers: "- A PhD student for a NSF project on analyzing gaze patterns recorded by eye tracking machines when two people collaborate on-line. ...
Defining glitches
Reading Glitch aesthetics by Iman Moradi (mulimedia design dissertation - 2004), I was intrigued by the definiton of glitch in that work. The author starts by describing how the dictionary definition of the word “glitch” would be too narrow, especially because it does not consider "the different wo...
Ben Cerveny's talk at PicNic 2007: "Gaming the system"
Last bit from Pic Nic: my notes form Ben Cerveny's talk: "Gaming the System" Ben started his talk by claiming his main hypothesis: game can be thought as a way into thinking how to approach not only entertainment but also computer-human interactions as a whole. Acknowledging the breakdown of the "...
Looks like Braille podotactile
These podotactiles, found on the subway platform in Lyon, France (metro station "Jean Jaurès" direction Charpennes) look quite funny, as if they had been stuck and removed: As the color shows, they have been removed over time (one can see the mark of previous podotactiles) but what if this could m...
Granularity of maps
Toying with Facebook apps this week-end, I ran across the "where I've been" application; the one that allows you to store the countries you have visited. Here's a screenshot of the world map: What's interesting is the level of granularity the map depicts: as one can see, every nations are represen...
Rob Shields on 'the virtual'
Read "The Virtual" by Rob Shields this week-end. In 230 pages or so, Shields interestingly debunks the notion "virtual" that pervades the discourse about technologies. Although, the book is made of 9 chapters, it's definitely the first three chapters that I found the most interesting. He basically ...