The last issue of The Economist has a good article about the phone of the future. Some quotes of this compelling overview: The chances are that phones will not only look very different—they may not even be seen.(...) And even if they are still called “phones”—a word derived from the Greek word for ...
ITU report about digital life
The ITU will issue its new 2006 report of the "ITU Internet Reports" serie: Prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World (December 4-8 2006 in Hong Kong), the report begins by examining the underlying technological enablers of new digital lifestyles, from upgrading network infrastructure to value...
Representing alternative paths on a timeline
Thanks J*B for pointing me on this awesome timeline of timelines. One of the timelines that struck me was the chart by Charles Renouvier's that depicts "the theoretical relationship between the actual course of history and possible alternative paths": Why do I blog this? I am working on a chapter ...
“Moving with a magic thing”
Finding Uses for New Technology: Moving with a Magic Thing by Anu Kankainen. The paper describes a user research method called “moving with a magic thing” proposed by Giulio Jaucci for "discovering appropriate markets for technology-pushed mobile products" as it says. “Moving with a magic thing” is...
Pervasive gaming challenges
The iperg newsletter features a good overview of the field of pervasive gaming called "Highlight: Challenges of Pervasive Game Studies" by Markus Montola. It basically describes the challenges encountered why working on this multidisciplinary project. For those who are not aware of it iPerg is an E...
About video game space and architecture
In a very old issue of icon, there is an article about the rules of architectures and gamespace by Alex Wiltshire. Some excerpts I found relevant: Designers consider where the start point, or tee, in a level is. They must think about all the things that the player can see from that point, decide on...
Webkinz: real and virtual dog
Judging from the press release, Webkinz is a curious game that connect first life and second life environment (take 2nd life as a general world referring to a virtual world): Webkinz are a line of stuffed animals that come with a secret code allowing the purchaser to enter into an online fantasy wo...
A visual code for Google Earth
Hello, world! is an installation for the virtual globe of the software Google Earth (carried out by students from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany): A Semacode measuring 160 x 160 meters was mown into a wheat field near the town of Ilmenau in the Land Thuringia. The code consists of 18 x ...
Mobile LBS failures to meet expectations
Via Fabien: Mobile LBS Market by C. Desiniotis, J. G. Markoulidakis from Vodafone, and J-Fr Gaillet from NAVTEQ. The paper describes the mobile market of location-based applications (as opposed to web-based LBS for instance). Overall, it interestingly describes a more down-to-earth vision of the pr...
Game Boy Terminal Server
Game Boy Terminal Server by Pascal Felber, Reiner Ziegler and Michael Hope: gbts was designed under contract to Invention City as a way of using a Nintendo Gameboy as a cheap intelligent display for some other system, for example a PC or an intelligent cartridge. gbts provides on the Gameboy side a...