Anti-skateboard devices are now very common features of urban space. Following the "Defensible Space" concept (the idea that crime and delinquency can be controlled and mitigated through environmental design), some physical elements popped up and reshaped skateboarding practices. What is interestin...
Teddy: a Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design
via: Teddy: A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design (by Takeo Igarashi,a Java-Applet Drawing Program that takes the 2D images you draw and renders them in 3D. The commercial version can also be found here. Video there (32Mb). The user draws several 2D freeform strokes interactively on the ...
ubicomp
I'm heading to California for a week end in San Francisco and a week in Los Angeles area (Orange County) for Ubicomp 2006, to present my research on CatchBob!. Ubicomp 2006, the Eighth International Conference of Ubiquitous Computing, will be held in Orange County, California, September 17-21, 2006...
Gummi toys
Few ago, wandering around in Zürich, I ran across curious boxes in a chupa-chups store, it occured that it was super-nice toys meant to create special "dishes". For instance, take a look at the Fruchtgummi Yummi Gummi Maschine (TOGGO): First the name is great and second the object is marvelous. Th...
Frisbee-shaped robots
Via: among some curious new defense technologies, there is this "lethal frisbee" Triton Systems, Inc. of Chelmsford MA proposes to develop a MEFP-armed Lethal Frisbee UAV, whose purpose is to locate defiladed combatants in complex urban terrain and provide precision fires to neutralize these ho...
IEEE forecast survey
In the last issue of IEEE Spectrum, there are results from and IFTF/IEEE survey about what developments IEEE Fellows expect in science and technology in the next 10 to 50 years. It's called "Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon" and was written by Marina Gorbis and David Pescovitz & IEEE Fello...
Neuroergonomic workshop
As a weak signal about the growing importance of neuropsychology in human-computer interaction, design and ergonomics, there is a workshop called "From Neuropsychology to Neuroergonomics: the Cognitive Continuum" (part of the 2nd Meeting of the European Societies of Neuropsychology), in Toulouse, F...
Relevance in telling the time
In Truthfulness and relevance in telling the time, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Laure Carles, and Dan Sperber (Mind and Language, vol 17, No 5, November 2002, pp 457-466) examined an intriguing phenomenon: "Someone approached in the street and asked "What time is it?" at a point when her watch read...
Title mania
The NYT has a piece about title-mania and what it might mean: “group idea management director”? / “chief transformation officer” / “marketing evangelist” / “chief consumer officer” / “vice president for stakeholder relations” (...) Experts say the unconventional titles are intended to signal a real...
Vernor Vinge's insights about the future of ubicomp games
An excerpt from Vernor Vinge's talk at the Austin Game Conference (transcribed by Mark Wallace): If you take together all of the things I have been pushing here [augmented reality through high-resolution HUD, geolocation, smart tags...], there really is a situation where cyberspace has leaked into ...