A definition of technology s-curves drawn from Clayton Christensen (in this paper): "The technology S-curve has become a centerpiece in thinking about technology strategy. It represents an inductively derived theory of the potential for technological improvement, which suggests that the magnitude ...
Criticisms towards 3D VR in 1998
Kaplan, F., McIntyre, A., Numaoka, C. & Tajan, S. (1998). Growing virtual communities in 3D meeting spaces , Proceedings of the First International Conference on Virtual Worlds, pp. 286 - 297. The paper describes essential or desirable features needed for community formation in "3D virtual world sy...
"Hybrid World Lab" workshop
People interested in the hybridation between the material world and digital representations (virtual environments? second lives?) might check the Mediamatic workshop called Hybrid World Lab. The event is scheduled for May 7-11 in Amsterdam. Mediamatic organizes a new workshop in which the participa...
A very curious plug
(Via j*b), this Plug project by Josh Lifton. He defines it as "A power strip imbued with sensing, computational, and communication capabilities in order to form the backbone of a sensor network". The artifact looks pretty nifty: An example of data that can be extracted is presented: The text that...
Dream-inspired algorithms and robots
Speaking about replay tools and information gathered in the past (see previous post), this paper entitled "What Do Robots Dream Of?" (by Christopher Adami) features this curious bit: "How would dream-inspired algorithms work in terra incognita? A robot would spend the day exploring part of the land...
dataSpaces
Just had a meeting with Marc Hottinger about his dataSpaces project. Marc mapped the interactions stored in his mobile phone (communication with antennas, sms, phone calls) on a representation of Lausanne. What is interesting is the notion of "calendar" as represented on the following picture: Not...
Field research values
Some elements that struck me as very pertinent in Jan Chipchase's slides (from a presentation called "Always-On: An Introduction to Design Research for Everyware" delivered at Ideo, Palo Alto, 5th March, 2007). The elements that interest me are the ones that concern the transfer from field research...
The mapping of playing objects from one game to another
A very intriguing patent filed by 3DO eleven years ago: Networked computer game system with persistent playing objects (William M. Hawkins, Oren J. Tversky, Nick Robins, Stewart K. Hester): Abstract: The mapping of playing objects from one game to another. In one embodiment, generic attributes of ...
About Tufte
The Stanford Alumni has a great overview of Edward Tufte's work (written by Fran Smith). Some excerpts: As Tufte sees it, what makes evidence beautiful isn’t artistry. “It’s all about discovering and telling the truth,’’ he says. (...) AFTER AN ENCOUNTER with Tufte’s ideas, people can never again l...
Contextual note
Typical contextual advertisement drawn from the physical environment. Lots of people thinks this would appear on you mobile device (cell phone) when passing-by. If there is a digital equivalent what would be attention required: receiving a vibration? an sms? a call? The two last options already go...