Via supa-cool blog 3Yen, an amazing robotic jacket aimed at giving stroke victims a hand in rehab. A project cariied out at the Kobe Gakuin University in conjunction with Osaka University and Activelink Co., a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. in Seika, Kyoto Prefecture. More ab...
The Economist special issue on patents and technology
There is a good piece in The Economist's special edition about patents and technology. The article entitled "An open secret" (registration required) in particular; it's about the fact that sharing intellectual property can be more profitable than keeping it to the company: Why would a firm that car...
John Maeda + Skateboard
French company Mekanism Skateboards is going to release a model designed by MIT researcher John Maeda. I like this kind of connections: After its collaboration with the artist Invader, French company MEKANISM skateboards is giving carte blanche to John MAEDA for a limited-edition board. This board ...
The usability of MMORPG
Pertinent study about MMORPG usability: The Usability of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games: Designing for New Users by Steve Cornett for CHI 2004 This study examines the usability challenges faced by new players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), one of the f...
DVD with Guy Debord's movies
Read in the french press today: for Guy Debord and situationists fans, the DVD box with Debord's movie is goind to be released on November 12th (french edition), there is also a cinema release (october 8th).More about it on the french wesbite http://www.guydebordcineaste.com. Could be bought on Ama...
Strategy messages model
Just wrote crazy annotations for modeling the use of strategy message during the various phases of CatchBob! The point of this is to define the main categories of messages and when they are used in the task process. The next move is to design specifications for an 'intention-awareness' tool to wo...
From MUD to MMORPG
It seems that the research agenda sketched out by Alan Schwartz in his "Comments On MUD Research" (Journal of Virtual Environments, Volume 1, Number 1) in 1997 still holds for MMORPG • Psychological theories of group behavior, altruism, aggression, spatial representation, and attention. Attention ...
A performance piece using potatoes as power and sound source
(via) A study of the sonic properties of Genetically Modified (GM) potatoes by Alex Berman, David McCallum and Sue Huang A performance piece using potatoes as power and sound source in the service of art and science. (...) The potatoes are used as a power source for the performance by supplying con...
nethnography!?
I was not aware of this buzzword: nethnography (which I found in this article: The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities by Robert V. Kozinets): Netnography is ethnography adapted to the study of online communities. As a method, netnography is faste...
Location-based messages: socialight
socialight is a new location-based service (beta version currently, it actually started out as an academic project at ITP in early 2004): Socialight is a mobile phone and web based platform that allows users to create and share location-based messages called StickyShadows™. Socialight's mobile and ...