Today participating to the Urban Networks and Network Theory at the University of Lausanne. The seminar addresses two issues: 1) The transition from a network/networks of actors, individuals, firms or institutions to the coherent development of a city or system of cities, 2) The potential transfers...
Location-based game on laptop: Plundr
Location-based games has not really be very surprising lately; this is why Plundr appears more interesting than others. Designed by area/code, it's a game about piracy and trading that one can play on MAC/PC laptop computers by players who are navigating through real-world space. Gameplay is basic ...
Mobiscopes
Vlad sent me this paper yesterday: T. Abdelzaher, Y. Anokwa, P. Boda, J. Burke, D. Estrin, L. Guibas, A. Kansal, S. Madden, and J. Reich, Mobiscopes for Human Spaces, IEEE Pervasive Computing - Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems, Vol. 6, No. 2, April - June 2007 The authors describe the notion of "mobis...
QR code practices in Zürich
Some examples of QR code usage in Zürich, Switzerland (meeting there today). First, you have the formal version... an advertisement for the NZZ (swiss newspaper): Then some more street-oriented practices also take advantage of QRcodes with the nice duct-tape touch: I am however skeptical about th...
Sneakernet...
According to the Wikipedia, Sneakernet: "Sneakernet is a term used to describe the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically carrying removable media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives or external drives from one computer to anoth...
Treating technological innovations in an experimental fashion
Crabtree, A. (2004) Design in the Absence of Practice: Breaching Experiments, In Proc. Of DIS 2004, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, pp. 59-68. While IT research and development is now generally informed by studies of practices, this article raises the problem of innovation and design in the absence o...
Think tank techniques
5 Big Biz Think Tank Techniques by Chris Penttila gives a quick overview of how larger companies are using innovation centers to encourage and implement new ideas. "1. Combine ideas. Xerox Corporation looks for intersections between ideas and how they might merge. “Several ideas could get combined ...
"you can and must understand computers now"
This picture showed up in Michael Curry's talk tonight: It's actually the cover of a book by Ted Nelson: Computer Lib (1974). Why do I blog this? I was impressed by the "you can and must understand computers now" claim there, which definitely show the underlying values that pervaded our culture. ...
Notes from a talk by Michael Curry
Tonight's talk at the EPFL Urban department seminar was "Digital individual: place, memory and the anxiety of reference" by Michael Curry (UCLA). My notes are a bit rough, taken in real time and reshaped in the train... Curry's talk was about the redrawing of the boundaries between the forgotten an...
Folded paper+LEDs
Results from the folding workshop that happened last week at our lab (organized by Mark Meagher). The point for students was to use the laser cutter to create crease lines prior to folding. The folded paper was then used as a diffuser for an LED wall display. I was not part of it. Some picture I t...