While communiting between Geneva and Lausanne, this morning I read Avoiding the next schism: ethnography and usability by David Siegel and Susan Dray (Interaction 12(2), pp.58-61, 2005). It's about the growing schism in organizations between proponents of usability and supporters of ethnography. S...
Joel Garreau on human enhancements
GBN offers a quick review of Joel Garreau's presentation on the future of human nature. It's mostly about human enhancement. Some excerpts I found interesting here: The first scenario is called Heaven, and its “poster child” is the much decorated entrepreneur and technologist Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil...
Augurscope: a portable mixed-reality interface for outdoor environments
The Augurscope: a portable mixed-reality interface for outdoors. The augurscope consists of a tripod-mounted display that can be wheeled to different locations and then rotated and tilted to view a virtual environment that is aligned with the physical background. Video from an onboard camera is em...
Electroscape 004: A.I. versus A.I.
Electroscape 004 by fabric.ch: electroscape.org is a platform set up by fabric | ch to conduct experiments on contemporary space. electroscape.org is an open and ongoing project/playground, where different modes of creation can be experimented. (...) Electroscape 004: A.I. vs A.I. // in self-space ...
No room in game-space apart from WoW
A pertinent account of a recent phenomenon in online-game space: the fact that Worlds of Warcraft is 'completely owning the game space right now', leaving no room for competitors as accounted by this article in the IHT/NYT. Now, the broader phenomenon is that so many contenders, including Matrix On...
Serious Games Modding
An interesting new concept: Serious Games Modding. Coming straight from a Serious Games Summit talk: Healthcare and Forestry - Half-Life 2: Meet Serious Games Modding. Modding is "a slang expression for the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software to perform a function not intended or autho...
Soil Moisture Monitoring
This device seems extremely interesting in terms of potential (WEIRD) uses: ECH2O Dielectric Aquameter: The ECH2O Dielectric Aquameter is a new, low-cost sensor for measuring volumetric water content of soil and other porous materials. It uses new technology and durable materials to enable you to ...
Weird pyramidal keyboard
An impressive list of weird keyboards can be found here. My favorite is definitely this one (patent here), it's crazy!!! An ergonomic, efficient unitary pyramidal-shaped data entry device includes left and right hand members separated from each other by a thumb control surface. Each hand member is ...
Pillcam: a video capsule to view the esophagus
My oh my: Pillcam, with this kind of stuff I really feel like living in 2005, do some people think about deviant usage of this?! The PillCam™ ESO video capsule is specifically designed to view the inner lining of the Esophagus. The capsule is equipped with miniature cameras on both ends and is...
Biofeedback game: bioplay 5000
bioplay 5000 is a biofeedback game used at ETHZ, Zürich for a course taught by Steffen Walz about Serious Game Design for CAAD (Computer-Aided Architectural Design)Lead: Steffen P. Walz, Philipp Schaerer "lightFight" is a simple game illustrating the technical possibilities using the biofeedback h...