The last issue of Ambidextrous has been released. Among the different articles, there is a relevant interview of Dr. Mizuko Ito (the interviewer is Danah Boyd). Some excerpts I like: DANAH: Fabulous! Can you tell me more about what how you see anthropology being relevant to design? MIMI: I think th...
Wearable gaze detector in the form of headphones
Via, this "Full-time wearable headphone gaze detector" by DoCoMo seems to be curious (ACM subscription required). A paper by Hiroyuki Manabe and Masaaki Fukumoto submitted at CHI2006. It actually describes a full-time wearable gaze detector that does not obscure the user’s view in the form of a hea...
Codechecking products
Via [telecom-cities], codecheck.ch described by ars electronica as: The Codecheck project is an effort to create an informed “community” of consumers who are able to critically assess products prior to reaching their purchasing decisions. Whereas certain initiatives pursue this aim primarily by con...
Spatial technology workshop at UpFing06
(sorry bad english below, I took notes in real time and recomposed them quickly) As I mentionned earlier, I had to manage a workshop about "locative media" and spatial technology today. What was interesting is that attendants had quite different ideas in mind when attending it: some were concerned ...
Finding a location for a pervasive game
Kuan Huang sent me one of his piece, which seems to be quite intriguing. His project entitled "Space Invaders 2006 (done by Computer Science Department and Interactive Telecommunications Program). The project page is informative and explain the whole process (I like when people explain how they are...
Wiki science, zillionics and AI
Few quotes from Kevin Kelly's thoughts in Edge (it's called SPECULATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE); it's mostly about "the evolution of the scientific method" as the author precise. Some of the examples are interesting and curious (I don't agree with the novelty of all, like pattern recognition... ...
Turning vacuuming robots into pets
Via THE PRESENCE-L LISTSERV, it seems that Roomba vacuum robots are more and more complexe: myRoomBud allows to personalize iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robot. Since 2005, myRoomBud™ has been selling RoomBud™ costume covers to the owners of the 2 million Roomba robots and turning their vacuuming robots ...
Workshop about spatial technologies at UpFing06
Currently a Université de Printemps de la FING 06, which is a big gig organized by la FING, a french think tank working on innovation and IT. The venue is quite nice, an old catholic mansion: The reason why I am here is because I have to take care of a workshop here about spatial technologies, in...
Stuff on the street
Things on the street around my place in Geneva are more and more curious, look at that one I saw yesterday: Might be a mixer or something that is able to rotate. Why do I blog this? even though this is garbage I am always intrigued by this sort of thing dropped here and often think about what was ...
Concerns about what anthropology brings to companies
ComputerWorld has an article about anthropologists working in IT department, which raise quite interesting issues: Bringing such practices to IT fits in with the overall push to align the tech world with the business realm, Mack and others acknowledge. But even given this alignment trend, Sachs say...