I recently ran across this (I don't know where, maybe at WMMNA): Powered Shoes, a project carried out by Hiroo Iwata. It's basically a "wearable locomotion interface that enables omni-directional walking while maintaining the user's position" A locomotion interface using roller skates actuated by t...
The importance of the "body" (the why of tangible computing?)
I am sure this paper is interested for Adam Greenfield's next book ("The city is here for you to use"):How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design by Scott R. Klemmer, Bjoern Hartmann, and Leila Takayama For DIS2006: It discusses how "our physical bodies play a central role in shaping hum...
Veejaying: a new form of dubbing
The Christian Science Monitor has a piece about this curious socio-cultural practice in Uganda: veejaying: the act of translating in real-time foreign movies for the audience: "Veejaying" is now a central form of local entertainment. But the art involves much more than translation. Part sports anno...
"Extreme Users"
Lars Erik Holmquist defines what he means by "extreme users" in his paper: User-driven innovation in the future applications lab: users that have very particular and perhaps peculiar requirements. We believe such specialized groups are more likely to put our technology in a new light, thus giving r...
Ubiquitous versus Pervasive Computing
Visualizing the usage of these two terms with the new Google Trends tool: I don't know to what extent the tool is reliable but the search volume is decreasing over time and there are some variations where ubiquitous is more searched than pervasive and vice versa. Why do I blog this? just wanted to...
Distorted maps, check the royalties/fee one!
Worldmapper offers some exquisite "anamorphosis" (maps where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest). What is great is that their data are also available. Some of the distorted map are utterly crazy, look at this one: Royalties And License Fees Exports: Territory ...
Sensecam, Collaborative Reflection and Passive Image Capture
This afternoon at COOP2006, I enjoyed a short paper by "Supporting Collaborative Reflection with Passive Image Capture" by Rowanne Flec and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. Her PhD research is about how the a technology such as Microsoft's Sensecam can support reflective thoughts in different situations (tea...
Paper presentation at COOP2006
Today, I presented my PhD research at COOP2006. It as called "The Underwhelming Effects of Location-Awareness of Others on Collaboration in a Pervasive Game" (Nicolas NOVA, Fabien GIRARDIN, Gaëlle MOLINARI and Pierre DILLENBOURG). Abstract. In this paper we seek to empirically study the use of loca...
The "cluster effect"
According to the Wikipedia: The cluster effect is the effect of buyers and sellers of a particular good or service congregating in a certain place and hence inducing other buyers and sellers to relocate there as well. For example in the mid- to late 1990s, several successful computer technology rel...
Reading notes about "Get Back in the Box"
I just finished reading"Get Back in the Box : Innovation from the Inside Out"by Douglas Rushkoff. To me, it was a very clever book, easy to read and the author's point is quite smart. Rushkoff advocates for a new move: instead of thinking in terms of "out of the box experience", manager and ...