Sometimes, the environment encourages you to ask questions: Three taps are generally uncommon, I've actually rarely ran across such an installation; that one has been spotted in Geneva, in a restaurant close to me block. So, three handles: one for the hot water, one of the cold water and the third...
Some examples of hybridization
Most of the attention in this domain has started from the research in Augmented Reality in the late nineties, leading to lots of prototypes allowing user to access digital textual or audio information that “augment” physical artifacts and places by showing additional information, hidden objects or ...
Augmented stairs
Spotted in Lausanne this morning: Is this what people have in mind when they think about interactive billboard? Anyway, I found intriguing the use of the stairs infrastructure and shape as a way to present information. ...
Vocabulary of hybridity
Some vocabulary definitely of interest to describe the Internet of Things: "linkage, hybridization, merging, fusion, linkage, interconnection, binding, assemblage, amalgam, amalgamation, blend, blending, coadunation, coalescence, coalition, commingling, commixture, compound, immixture, integration,...
Two or three buttons, but will not carry more than four
Read in the NYT (1996): On the eve of the Wright brothers' historic first flights in 1903, Simon Newcomb, an eminent United States scientist, predicted that the first successful flying machine would be the handiwork of a watchmaker and would carry nothing heavier than an insect. Later he increased ...
About Jaiku and intentional communication
Some excerpts of an interview of Jaiku's co-founder Jyri Engeström in 606tech deals with very relevant aspects about the intricate relationship between technologies and the pragmatic of communication: "We believe that online social behavior as a whole is moving towards groups who are in a state of ...
Pervasive Computing, space and infrastructures
Dourish, P. and Bell, G. (2007): The Infrastructure of Experience and the Experience of Infrastructure: Meaning and Structure in Everyday Encounters with Space, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. This paper interestingly explores the implications of computing getting off the desktop t...
Mr. Watson and spatiality
1876: Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you". 1915: the replication of the very same venerable lines at AT&T (as described in "Engines of Tomorrow: How the World's Best Co...
Interaction design for blind people
Two interesting examples of interaction design targeted at blind people: This virtual mapping project by greek researchers (lead by Konstantinos Moustakas) allows to "convert video into virtual, touchable maps for the blind. The three-dimensional maps use force fields to represent walls and roads ...
Grid computing and non-intentionality
Interesting conversation today with Xavier about the "grid computing" as a new social paradigm. According to the Wikipedia: "Grid computing is an emerging computing model that distributes processing across a parallel infrastructure. Throughput is increased by networking many heterogeneous resources...