I knew about the concept but I was unaware of how it was referred to.US cartoonist Rube Goldberg gave his name to the incredible machines that perform simple tasks in indirect ways. See for instance the "Keep You From Forgetting To Mail Your Wife's Letter" As described by the Wikipedia: "The term ...
Good reads on Ubiquitous Computing
A reader of this blog recently asked me if I had tips about relevant paper to read concerning Ubiquitous Computing that has been released in the last 2 years...I made a quick list of the ones I found really interesting lately and that I rely on when doing presentations about critical overviews of t...
"Google novel aura"
Interesting interview of William Gibson on Amazon. An excerpt that I found pertinent: "Amazon.com: How do you research? If you want to write about, say, GPS, like you do in your new book, do you actively research it and seek out experts, or do you just perceive what's out there and make it your own...
Variable_environment booklet
The report of the "Variable_environment" project, a joint project between EPFL and ECALhas just been released. Although it's in french, this 19 Mb. document is full of great content, material and insights (some parts are in english). With principal textual contributions by Patrick Keller, Philippe...
Recursive manhole cover or urban crop circles ;)
Spotted in Geneva, summer venture through the city, curious encounters. What's interesting here? the affordance of the object? Which circle is more removed the internal or the external? ...
Information management techniques and other species
Ann Blair (from Harvard University), in her review of "Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages" (by Alex Wright): Wright draws from sociobiology the suggestion that evolution has favoured the development of particular human cognitive behaviours in managing information, such as the drive to cla...
Fixed keyboard mapping
What happens when keyboards have different mappings... and need to be fixed right away. (Observed at a lab meeting this morning). I am not really into research about topics such as "repair" but I find it very intriguing, in terms of User Experience, as well as the history of interaction people ha...
Location awareness affordances
Brown, B., Taylor, A.S. Izadi, S. Sellen, A. Kaye, J.J and Eardley, R. (2007). Locating Family Values: A Field Trial of the Whereabouts Clock, Going to be presented at Ubicomp 2007, Innsbruck. The paper reports the study of long-term trails of a location-awareness system I a have already mentionned...
Using movements from real sharks in a digital game
Sharkrunners is a new game designed by Area/code that seems to be compelling. Based on what is said on the website, the gameplay is very straight-forward: players, involved in an oceanic mission: "take on the role of marine biologists who seek to learn as much as possible about sharks through adva...
Richard Bartle interview
There is a very long and comprehensive interview of Richard Bartle on the Guardian games blog, which addresses lots of different topics. Some excerpts I found interesting: "MUD has little that today's virtual worlds don't, but it lacks something they do have which makes it worth looking at: baggage...