Melted Barbies by David Kime

I recently discovered the work of David Kime through the great blog strange new products. I like this DIY vision: His sculptures, made of chicken wire, yarn, melted crayons, shredded plastic buckets and aluminum cans, doll heads and other found objects, represent a kind of exorcism of the demons wh...

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Taking users' needs into account and not giving them sth useless

Lars Erik Holmquist's column in ACM's interactions is always very refreshing. This month he's tackling an interesting issue in designing applications for a certain niche: policemen and he is wondering about people who found it useful and effective to give them computers in their cars. It seems the ...

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More about the tech conference we organize

As already mentioned here last monday, Laurent, myself and others are working on a Lift (Lift06). There will be plenty of interesting persons like Cory Doctorow (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Robert Scoble (Microsoft), Euan Semple (BBC), Xavier Comtesse (Avenir Suisse), Régine Debatty (WMMNA), J...

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Teen Content Creators

The latest report from the Pew Internet, which deals with 'teen content creators', is very insightful. It reports that more than half of online teens have created content for the internet; and most teen downloaders think that getting free music files is easy to do Some 57% of online teens create co...

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Expected generalist book about Ubicomp

I am looking forward to read Everyware : The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Adam Greenfield (released in february 2006). Judging from I've read on the author's blog/website, there seems to be compelling concepts like ubicomp as "information processing dissolving in behavior": Some of what y...

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Weird drawing by Paul Cox

I cannot help posting this drawing by artist Paul Cox: Here is what he meant by that: Voici mes premières esquisses pour la couverture. C'est un peu trembloté car j'ai écrit et dessiné tout ceci en voiture (je vous rassure: ce n'est pas moi qui conduisais!). L'idée date de ce matin; ce soir je me ...

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Studying Technology Use in Hybrid in Hybrid and Undisciplined Place

There is currently an compelling event in Tokyo: FIELDWORK UNTETHERED: STUDYING TECHNOLOGY USE IN HYBRID AND UNDISCIPLINED PLACES (I put the emphasis on a sentence I like): This two-day workshop will explore and document methdological frameworks and innovation in the study of portable ICTs outside ...

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Fragmentation of attention in mobile interaction

An interesting paper I perused recently: The fragmentation of attention in mobile interaction, and what to do with it by Antti Oulasvirta, interactions, Volume 12 , Issue 6  November + December 2005, pp. 16 - 18. Some excerpts: Our goal has been first to understand how serious this "multitasking ...

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