"Robo-Teddy: Today’s Stuffed Toys, Tomorrow’s Intelligent Agents by Benjamin Alfonsi. It seems that some folks move beyond the WiFi rabbit Nabaztag. This computerized plush squirell answers cell phone calls, takes messages, and alerts its owner to important calls or new voicemail. The good old-fas...
Usability of video-games HUDs
In Gamasutra, there has been a good article about Heads-Up Display last week. It adresses the topic of HUD usability. As they say, the developer's challenge is the following: how do you convey necessary information to the player without utilizing a traditional HUD?. A HUD is simply a collection of ...
Ubiquitous Computing and RSS
In his post entitled "grazing", Danny Ayers shows a comment by James Corbett who claims that ubiquitous computing might rely on a RSS infrastructure with regards to information flows: As Zigbee sensors, RFID chips and GPS trackers proliferate we’ll be drowing in an RSS-everywhere world if we don’t ...
How will computation transform the new spaces that it comes to occupy
Williams, A., Kabisch, E., and Dourish, P. (2005.) From Interaction to Participation: Configuring Space through Embodied Interaction. Proc. Intl. Conf. Ubiquitous Computing Ubicomp 2005 (Tokyo, Japan). This paper addresses this very important question: how will ubiquitous computing transform the ne...
Articulating residents' design priorities
In the last issue of Metropolis Mag, there is an intriguing article entitled "Found in Translation: Laying the foundation for more sensitivity within a community's public spaces". It's mostly about how urban designer can articulate residents' design priorities. What is interesting, is this project ...
Chuck Norris-esque Wow items
The Wow item creator (designed by Krigaren) seems to be a good way for Chuck Norris fans to express themselves in MMORPG worlds. There are indeed various norris-esque tool such as: The Orange dagger of mighty Norris: Use: You become famous, shiny and every female elves all around just take their c...
Jan Chipchase and blogjects
Jan's blogpost about Traces of events is very well-connect to our blogject workshop: In our perfect future we can accurately track everything - the exact location, temperature, who and what is in proximity for how long, the information that was exchanged - every last minute detail. Some of this dat...
Channel of communication and location-based services
http://www.bernhardseefeld.ch/archives/000112.htmlBernhard Seefeld blogged a relevant question he asked to usage watcher Stefana Broadbent at LIFT06: After a data-rich and fascinating talk about the specialization of communication channels at LIFT yesterday someone asked if the introduction of posi...
A machine to do dreadlocks?
There are some good folks who are designing a machine to do dreadlocks using mechanical engineering. It seems to be a university project. The first step they choose is to run a quick survey about the need for this. I did not find any picture of this device, only a bunch of dread tools like the one ...
Amateur content creation
The IHT has an interesting article about the pro-am debate. It starts from the rise of the amateur digital content producer and the corollary problem that this situation fosters: regulation are quite difficult to create. Some excerpts: Established media companies that have already seen their busine...