Hands-free phone usage without hands-free kit in Itaewon, Seoul last week. Always impressed by how people trust their phone not to fall down in such configuration. ...
Korean "you are here"
Why do I blog this? the "you are here" sign is a common wayfinding element that is always interesting to observe. Stating where people are can take many forms ranging from ubiquitous red dots (w/o captions) to interactive LED and the context can also influence the signage. Cognitive sciences de...
German status
A korean car license plate encountered last week that features the European Union flag and the "D" which corresponds to Germany. It's of course a german car and I also noticed it on BMW and Mercedes here and there in Seoul. What is intriguing is that the plate shape is also the one from the EU and...
Exploded TV
One hour after being in this tv-enabled taxi in Jeju the other day, I read this quote in Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis: "Think of it as exploded television. Every station has at least one show you want to see, right? Well, on my network, your favorite show is on all the time. Everyone’s favo...
Future numbers, letters and idioms
Weird brand and idioms encountered in Lisbon and Seoul. Why do I blog this? it makes me think about the use of certain letters and idioms that made people think about the future. Numbers like "3000" (now that 2000 is in the rear-mirror) and letters like "X" are still employed nowadays to give a f...
Networked objects session at Lift Asia 2009
The "networked objects" session at Lift Asia 09 was a good moment with three insightful speakers: Rafi Haladjian (in transition from Violet to his new company called sen.se), Adrian David Cheok (from the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore and Keio University) and Hojun Song. My notes from the session h...
Lift @ home
Lift Asia 09 just finished and we're announcing a new side-project to the conference. It's called Lift @ home and is based on community meet-ups. As described by Laurent the other day: "Lifters meetups have been happening around the world. Zurich, Toronto, Lausanne are the few we are aware of, but...
Digital keypads in Paris
Among the various objects that we touch on an everyday basis, the outdoor keypads always catch my eyes each time. Called "digicode" in France (standing for "digital code"), the examples in this blogpost are a small sample that I ran across in Paris last week-end. The first one (above) is definitel...
Lift Asia 2009
Back to Jeju for the Lift Asia 2009 conference. We're in the final rush given that the conference starts tomorrow. We have a fantastic set of speakers from lots of different place, more than 400 participants and we recently added a surprise to the program: "20 years of Korean internet: the pioneer...
Extreme car dashboard
Extreme car tuning of a dashboard, encountered in Paris yesterday afternoon. The owner interestingly added a cockpit GUI, some potentiometers and removed the steering wheel. Given the whole appearance of the car, I am not very sure whether it's still used. Why do I blog this? curiosity towards thi...