In the last issue of the ACM Computers In Entertainment, there is a paper entitled PAC-LAN: mixed-reality gaming with RFID-enabled mobile phones (by Omer Rashid, Will Bamford, Paul Coulton, Reuben Edwards, Jurgen Scheible) that I found very interesting. The paper describes how the incorporation of ...
LEGO joystick
An intriguing joystick made out of LEGO: Der Joystick besteht im wesentlichen aus einer Achse, die als Hebel benutzt wird. Sie kann vor, zurück, nach links und nach rechts bewegt werden. Der Hebel wird dabei von Gummibändern wieder in seine Ausgangsposition zurückgezogen. Zwei Rotationssensoren er...
Narrative represented as paths
A representation from "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Oxford World's Classics)" by Laurence Sterne illustrating the Linear Progression of the Narrative: Why do I blog this? I found interesting how a story could be turned into an illustration. Still trapped in timeline visuali...
Serious Game Summit Europe
I'll try to attend the Serious Game Summit Europe in Lyon on December 4 since I've spotted some potentially interesting talks: Ben Sawyer (Digitalmill): Serious Stuff Gamers do (how hacks/tricks/tuned elements gamers are used to deploy can be used to design future applications) Steffen P.Waltz (Pla...
Mass storage stone
I found Michael Leung's "mass storage stone" stunning: Mass Storage Stone - prototype, 2005 A portable 4 GB hard drive that fits into your pocket, and has similar qualities to a stone - textured and slightly cold to touch 53 x 40 x 25 mm - synthetic resin Why do I blog this? I actually like the me...
User Interface Friction
In a short note posted on ACM Ubiquity, Andreas Pfeiffer describes the notion of "User Interface Friction": We use it to describe and quantify the differences in fluidity and reactivity that exist between different operating systems, between software applications, even between different digital dev...
Urbangames: augmenting urban artifacts
Cyril pointed me on Urbangame which does very relevant installations in urban environment: see for instance the existing pieces: the loopingtoboggan is great and the "telesiege" very curious: Why do I blog this? I found very interesting this notion of "extension", how to enhance urban artifacts w...
Berlin: Temporal Topographies
Berlin: Temporal Topographies is a project by the Stanford Humanities Lab that investigates the historical and cultural layers of a city space. The project takes Berlin-arguably one of the most rich, contradictory, and multi-layered cities in the world-as its point of departure and seeks to develop...
A wireless smart ball that senses position, direction, speed and acceleration
Via, this intriguing new device described in the press release as a wireless smart ball that senses position, direction, speed and acceleration : STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM),one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, and Ball-IT Oy, a leading provider of advanced real-time wireless ...
Aaron Koblin's visualizations of commercial air traffic
I was recently stunned by Aaron Koblin's visualizations of commercial air traffic: The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programmin...