I like Paul Saffo's take on forecasting: I'm a forecaster, which means I'm not a futurist and I do not predict. My job is to map a "cone of uncertainty" that spreads out from the present at any given moment of time or any given topic, and say what lies within it. The reason why it's forecasting and...
Weekly research meeting
In my weekly research meeting with my Ph.D. advisor this afternoon today, which should be considered as the first achievement of my thesis (or second if we take the literature review into account). In this first experiment, we found that an information about spatial position explicitly communicated...
Using kite surfs sails to bring wind propulsion to ships
(Via the paper-based version of The Economist), Skysails is a german company that sounds quite innovative: they use giant kites that act like sails to bring wind propulsion to ocean-going ships. This is meant to reduce emissions and savings on fuel costs. More about it on Gizmag ...
Knowing where you walk to
From the Ubicomp 2005 demos, there is this extremely cool feature: GETA SANDALS: KNOWING WHERE YOU WALK TO by Shun-yuan Yeh, Keng-hao Chang, Chon-in Wu, Okuda Kenji, Hao-hua Chu (National Taiwan University) The GETA sandals are Japanese wooden sandals embedded with location tracking devices. By wea...
Interesting work by Jon Orwant
Jon Orwant's Ph.D. thesis is quite interesting to skimmed through: EGGG: The Extensible Graphical Game Generator: This dissertation is part of an ongoing project called EGGG, the Extensible Graphical Game Generator. As its name suggests, EGGG is a system that creates computer games, and the thesis ...
Tangible interactions to promote collaborative learning
Ely the Explorer, Interactive Play System is a project carried out by the Umea Institute of Design: In the search for more intuitive user-interfaces appropriate for young children, we have proposed a play system featuring a set of physical and virtual tools, which explores the qualities of differe...
David Weinberger on organizations principles and knowledge
David Weinberger's next book seems to be a compelling essay about organization as he mentions in his newsletter and on his blog. working all summer on Everything Is Miscellaneous. It's due into the publisher in July'06 (...) Rather than doing the usual merchandising thing of using the limitations o...
Recursive ergonomics
Found here, a recursive ergonomic sign: ...
Between the virtual and the physical
The International Journal of Design Computing has a special Issue on the Space Between the Physical and the Virtual. This special issue contains research which navigates the territory between the real and virtual world through metaphor, cognitive model, data stream and a designer's synergy. (...) I...
A live-action Scotland Yard in Bern, Switzerland
A game presented at the workshop about pervasive gaming at Ubicomp: "The hunt for Mr. X: Bringing a board game to the street" by Niklaus Moor (Swisscom Innovations). It's basically an adaptation of the board game 'Scotlan Yard' to the real city level. „Mr. X“ moves hidden through the streets of Lo...