The evolution of objects through ubicomp

Bits from Appliances evolveby Mike Kuniavsky (Receiver), which describes the advent of ubiquitous computing applications: "We are on the cusp of another profound change akin to that seen by the Baby Boomers. Ubiquitous computing appliances will change the fundamental nature of the home and our expe...

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Designing for deterioration and the affordance of aging

Via Experientia, this very interesting blogpost about "designed deterioration by Khoi Vinh. Taking the example of a cast iran skillet that had developed a coating from oil and food (called "seasoning" by manufacturers), Khoi Vinh shows how it's a beautiful piece of design and "how its very deterior...

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"Digital entertainment and mobility" seminar

A short of summary at the "digital entertainment and mobility" seminar I attended yesterday in Lyon, France. My notes about what I found relevant for my work. The event was organized by Imaginove, a cluster association representing video game companies such as Atari, EA as well as animation/audiovi...

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[near] futures of digital entertainment

Yesterday I gave a talk in Lyon for the video game/mobile game industry about the "near futures of digital entertainment". Slide are available here (english) and ici (en français). The talk started by a quick overview of research projects about mobile/pervasive gaming (location-based games, mobile...

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IEEE Pervasive Computing about Urban Computing

The last issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is devoted to urban computing (edited by Tim Kindberg, Matthew Chalmers and Eric Paulos), a topic defined as "the integration of computing, sensing, and actuation technologies into everyday urban settings and lifestyles". What is interesting is that it giv...

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Gaming in South Korea

In SFGate, there is a great forecast article by Jeff Yang about MMO evolution and South Korea. He basically describes the success of MMO in Korea, showing how this "american invention" has been turned into a "a $15 billion market cap" due to two main reasons: "the nearly universal availability of b...

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William Gibson's interview

Some excerpt from an interview of William Gibson that I found relevant: "trying to get a handle on our sort of increasingly confused and confusing present. (...) when I started, one of the assumptions that I had was that science fiction is necessarily always about the day in which it was written. A...

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Taskscapes

Tried to dig the notion of taskscape lately as described in Ingold, Tim. (1993) "The Temporality of the Landscape", World Archaeology, 25(2): pp. 24-174: "Just as the landscape is an array of related features, so -by analogy- the taskcape is an array of related activities. (...) In short, the tasks...

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