Sony PS3 and geospatial databases

Excerpts from Ken Kutaragi's PS3 keynote at the Tokyo Game Show (taken from joystiq):

"For us in the entertainment industry the other interesting thing for us is the map database ... including map data and dimensions of buildings and so on. You can use the joystiq to fly through the landscape created by the map database. All those peices of data are available ... all the buildings are actually physically built up ... if you look at the building registration data you have all the pieces of information available. If all the data can be collected ... it's going to be beyond whatever you imagine is possible. The landscape required for Ridge Racer... today the game developers have to do that work [manually]. You have to take photos, pictures." (...) "With the PS3 the next gen platform will have powerful ... users themselves using these platforms will upload their personal environment ... the possibility of creating a GMS, a global map system, users will be invited to upload their data. Users will start with all the pieces of information in their living rooom, their favorite restaurant, their school ... of course you have to think about secrecy, but all of that information can be uploaded realtime. A grassroots initiative to make the GMS a global system. This is not just a pipedream. You can enjoy the data in real time. You can fly through the landscape in real time."

Why do I blog this? so it seems that the industry is now jumping into geowanking applications (with a user generated content twist), nice possibilities here, stuff to keep in eye on.

Mexican standoff

Just ran across this concept (defintion by Urban Dictionnary):

The awkward scenario where one person goes to kiss another on the cheek and the recipient moves for the mouth (or vice versa). This results in a repeated back and forth movement where both parties keep moving to rectify their facial position, creating a kung fu movie visual.

Why do I blog this? in terms of coordination theories (I am interested in coordination as a collaborative processes with social and cognitive processes), this seems to be a failure. This Mutally Assured Destruction is interesting as the a potential miscoordination problem. And of course focusing on problem is a good way to understand how collaboration works.

Handheld printer

Via Mr. Watson, this very curious Handheld printers:

The printer has the length of a normal ball-point pen while its width and height are more or less equivalent to the width of a modern mobile phone. The total volume is less than 300 c.c. and weights around 350 grams. This first version of PrintBrush was designed to fit into a shirt pocket.

Internet content, SMS, pictures and other information is downloaded to the PrintBrush from PDAs, mobile phones and laptop computers via a Bluetooth wireless link. Then, by following the RMPT principle the device is hand operated by sweeping it across any type of print media, no matter what its shape, size or thickness. The printout will then start to appear right behind the sweeps. The device takes into account all the parameters of the hand movement, including rotation and sudden changes of speed and acceleration. The resulting image on the printed media is very much like its digital counterpart.

Why do I blog this? making printing portable is an interesting step towars the mixture of virtual/real world.

Hand gesture interface for Google Earth

Atlas Gloves is a "DIY hand gesture interface for Google Earth":

Atlas Gloves is a DIY physical interface for controlling 3D mapping applications like Google Earth. The user interface is a pair of illuminating gloves that can be used to track intuitive hand gestures like grabbing, pulling, reaching and rotating. The Open Source Atlas Gloves application can be downloaded here and operated from home using a webcam and two self-made illuminating gloves (or flashlights).

The user stands in front of a large scale projection of the earth with a special set of illuminating gloves on their hands. By gently squeezing each glove, an LED turns on, which is translated by the computer into navigational commands. The user is then free to fly above the world, zooming in and out, tilting, rotating at their leisure.

(Picture techepics).

RSS feed reader with pattern analyzer

Excerpts from Attensa: RSS meets knowledge management:

Start-up Attensa has developed a Microsoft Outlook RSS reader with a twist: it analyzes patterns in RSS feeds to see how information inside companies is being consumed. (...) The software has "attention analytics" which prioritize feeds for individuals based on previous patterns (...) For example, reports analyzing tags and forwarded information could indicate that a handful of people are experts in a specific topic and serve as conduits of information to others. In addition, the software can show the feeds which people or groups are reading.

Why do I blog this? I am tremendously interested by this sort of tool; my feeling is that RSS aggregator could be really pushed further than current interfaces. In terms of pattern analysis, informaiton visualization, social sharing, I am sort of dubious about why there aren't more projects about that (no web2.0 rush on this issue?).

Methods for observing and understanding the digital cityscape

Just attended a session about urban computing. The first paper was interesting to me because of its focus on methods: Instrumenting the city: developing methods for observing and understanding the digital cityscape by Eamonn O’Neill, Vassilis Kostakos, Tim Kindberg, Ava Fatah gen. Schiek, Alan Penn, Danaë Stanton Fraser and Tim Jones.

The point of the paper was to develop methods to investigate urban computing. To do so, the authors proposed to understand urban computing as system (its physical and digital forms and their relationships with people's behavior in the city). There is a need for methods: observing, recording, modeling, analyzing. Their point was to use the space syntax methodology and digitally augment them. They then presented how they "combined scanning for discoverable Bluetooth devices with two such methods, gatecounts and static snapshots".

A Bluetooth gate with a Bluetooth scanner placed on the inside of a window:

Why do I blog this? I found pertinent to combine Bluetooth scanning and conventional observational techniques. It helped them to get interesting patters of usage (gate crossing in this case); they presented very meaningfull visualizations showing both patterns of copresence and timeline view: visualization of location. It basically shows how people behave there (who appeared where):

Virtual hole

Virtual Hole by Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec:

By employing digital technology, a virtual hole is created in the roof, through which the rain is allowed to fall through. The installation also allows the visitor him/herself to create rain inside the building, by dripping water drops on rain sensor, installed in the middle of the installation.

Virtual Hole is addressing dynamic duality of protection and exposing in a playful, naive and totally unpractical, absurd way. By doing so, it aims to create a short circuit in reasoning and therefore give space to more poetic interpretation of this ongoing duality."

Why do I blog this? I like this project as a metaphor of flows (be it water or information); the absurdity is quite good and pertinent in the sense that a passersby is immersed into a world of flows

Spime meme map

A quick overview (transcribed from the slides) of Bruce Sterling's "Spime Meme Map" he presented yesterday at Ubicomp 2006 (I just copied his slides):

It's basically a map of the characteristics of a spime, with different examples of bricks available today (web2.0 but also others) that would enable to design such a thing.

Quali-Quanti discussions at Ubicomp

Here at Ubicomp 2006, there was a very pertinent discussion yesterday (instead of having a talk that everybody was awaiting: "No more SMS from Jesus? Ubicomp, religion and techno-spiritual practices" by Genevieve Bell) about methodologies to study mobile technologies (by Beki Grinter and Ken Anderson). First, one of the remark was about the inherent problems of ethnographic studies to study artifacts that go everywhere (and even more likely to be used in toilets, as opposed to food).

But the most interesting part (to me) was the discussion about the bridge between qualitative and quantitative methods. Yahoo/UC Berkeley's Marc Davis advocated for a new "computational social science" that would use mixed-methods (quali-quanti), aka "the new social science of the 21st century". His point was that we have access to an incredible quantity of data (ranging from interview to logged actions) that would allow us to gain information about different layers: from micro scale cognitive insights to large group processes (social groups, national issues...).

Unlike Anne which states that "quantitative methods are still being trotted out to save qualitative methods from their perceived inadequacies, a.k.a. "Real Science To The Rescue!"", I haven't felt that. Given the fact that the conversant were largely qualitative-data oriented, he tried to summarize the advantages of bridging both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis:

• Large datasets can enable us to know who to talk to (who to interview, or with whom to deepen the study with ethnographic methods): who are representatives (or not) in the groups
• It can allow to reveal unconscious behavior (that users cannot state)
• A nice avenue of research they're pushing forward in his team is to compute visualizations (based on quantitative data) and then get back to the users to discuss with them. This is exactly what I am doing with CatchBob! visualizations of coordination as well as presenting the players a replay of their activity. This provides a basis for the discussion about "what they did" and "why they did it" (with of course some different "epistemological levels").
• Qualitative analysis can also allow to redesign the sensors and the logged information that would be better suitable/more interesting.

He said that we're going "From what to why" to "From why to what"

Jeff Axup, as a follow-up, explained how different methods can be apply to different moment in the conception and that it's an iterative process: quanti can help provide focus for quali, then it allows to discover new dimensions in which quantitative methods could be applied.

(See also Joe McCarthy's thoughts)

Why do I blog this? because I am right in the middle of this discussion. In my study of how people use location-awareness in the pervasive game CatchBob! I encountered the same issues. What is curious however, is that the discussion stayed at the data level and did not address the theoretical assumptions from all those methods.

Provocative design process?

Talking with Steve yesterday about Design, I was interested in the whole process. We compared the approach between research in my domain (cognitive sciences, hci) and user experience research/design. What I was mostly interested in was the main process: how from the same premices (roughly speaker: collecting data about users and their context) the design process evolves, how data are parsed/analyzed/presented and what's the use. Speaking about rigor and methodologies, he pointed me on this stunning description coming from Design Observer that I found revealing (and quite provocative to some extent):

"When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know...trust me?"

Why do I blog this? I am interested in how people do what they do, that's why

Unknown unknowns

Interesting chat yesterday with Bill and Tamara about (among other stuff) "unknown unknowns" concept propelled by Donald Rumsfeld (taken from Slate compilation):

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know —Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Represented on a 2x2 matrix, it goes like that:

Why do I blog this? the concept is pertinent to Knowledge Management (and hence discovery) because it's the dimension that we're looking for: it's often through serendipity that implications are created/dots can be connected. Rumsfeld is refetring to the unforeseen contingencies of situations. And this, whatever one might think of Mr. Rumsfeld; it shows the guy's background, very well oriented towards "Decision Theory".

RhNav: Rhizome Navigation visualizations

Walter Rafelsberger is working on pertinent visualizations that he called RhNav (which stands for Rhizome Navigation). It's actually a visualization application framework meant for "building Navigation Interfaces based on Attention Data and User Behavior Analysis" (online demo here):

RhNav - Rhizome Navigation provides 3D navigation interfaces to explore and manipulate various data sources like access logs from web servers, aggregated attention data, file systems or databases.

Why do I blog this? it gives some relevant ideas for my visualizations of catchbob coordination between players.

"a satellite for the stomach": interdisciplinarity in research

Carefully reviewing the huge sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, I ran across this relevant article by Carrie Sturrock about "odd couples" in research: " odd couples doing extraordinary research: Gastroenterologists are working with aerospace engineers, geophysicists with pediatricians, radiologists with philosophers". Some excerpts:

The buzzword in higher education is "interdisciplinary," and at many research universities, professors are no longer judged primarily on how expert and rarefied their knowledge is in a particular area. Rather, they're expected to bridge fields to remain relevant in a world with increasingly complex problems -- from global warming to the spread of infectious disease -- that demand interdisciplinary solutions.

Stanford is among those at the forefront of this shift. It's pulling professors from their insular domains to work together in ways that could not only hatch profound new discoveries but also may create novel fields of study.

The articles also describes, how it can filter into the undergraduate education, how it can work out (not only buildings but also money) as well as the inherent difficulties; for instance:

Interdisciplinary work does have pitfalls if executed poorly, said Diana Rhoten, program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York. Some observers fear the movement could lead to an erosion of expertise in individual fields. And if it's going to succeed in the long run, universities must change how they reward young academics. Historically, promotion and tenure are based on individual projects, and if young professors take the risk of working with people outside their department, they need to be rewarded, she said.

Why do I blog this? working in interdisciplinary research, I am in a similar situation (working with a social sciences background in a computer science department).

Insectopia: context-aware gaming

insectopia (developed by the Game studio, a lab of the Interactive Institute in Sweden) is a mobile phone game that rely on context-awareness:

insectopia is a new kind of cell phone game where the real world spills into the game world. Players roam the cityscape searching for and catching a multitude of different insects. Each insects in the game world is generated by using the available bluetooth devices available in the player's vicinity. By catching insects and trading them with other players, players build their own collection bigger and better. The current status of the game is displayed on various highscore lists both in the phones and online.

See also geoquiz, a location-based mobile game in which players create and answer questions related to their current geographic position (kept track of through the GSM network).

Why do I blog this? though both quite new, the design concepts (collect stuff, search for things in the vicinity, get questions at specific location) seems more and more simple to implement (given the quantity of games of that sort); whereas few years ago the seminal Mogi Mogi was heavier.

Anti-skateboard devices on the Embarcadero

Anti-skateboard devices are now very common features of urban space. Following the "Defensible Space" concept (the idea that crime and delinquency can be controlled and mitigated through environmental design), some physical elements popped up and reshaped skateboarding practices. What is interesting is that to follow it evolves over time. The Embarcadero, in SF, is interesting for that matter. Relying from my experience of skateboarding and observation of space here are some quick thoughts: First, skateboarders do jump (ollie, but let's stay simple) on sidewalks, banks or benches and handrails; a specific trick done after jumping is to "grind": i.e. to slide on the hangers of the skateboard trucks on any urban element that may fit between the space between the wheels where the truck meets. Proponent of 'defensible space' started by adding metal plates on benches or concrete elements:

But the problem is that it did not prevent skateboarders to do "wheelie" (which is called "wheeling" in french): jumping (Ollie) onto an obstacle and rolling all the way with the back or nose wheels (nose = front). So a new kind of elements popped up (I've never seem them apart from today in SF, never saw that in SoCal or European cities): bigger metal plates covering the whole obstacle:

(of course some folks removed these plates), so skateboarders were left with lower urban elements (not benches) like delimitations of space (for buses or bicycle tracks); then the marvelous urban planners heightened them with weird plates and cylindric stuff:

Why do I blog this? user/activity-centered design of skateboarding practices may have been conducted to come up with these solutions. Of course, this raises the creativity of skateboarder who will use them to create new skateboarding tricks, but that's another story. In the end, the average pedestrian might be intrigued or pissed by all those elements that prevent him/her just to sit properly:

On a different note, I blog about that because this is important today. There are two forces at stake: one that drives urban space into this crappy defensible direction and another that tries to create more playful environments.

Teddy: a Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design

via: Teddy: A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design (by Takeo Igarashi,a Java-Applet Drawing Program that takes the 2D images you draw and renders them in 3D. The commercial version can also be found here. Video there (32Mb).

The user draws several 2D freeform strokes interactively on the screen and the system automatically constructs plausible 3D polygonal surfaces. Our system supports several modeling operations, including the operation to construct a 3D polygonal surface from a 2D silhouette drawn by the user: it inflates the region surrounded by the silhouette making wide areas fat, and narrow areas thin. Teddy, our prototype system, is implemented as a JavaTM program, and the mesh construction is done in real-time on a standard PC.

Why do I blog this? even though it's a bit old (1999), it's quite relevant to some other projects today concerning simple 3D modeling of simple objects.

ubicomp

I'm heading to California for a week end in San Francisco and a week in Los Angeles area (Orange County) for Ubicomp 2006, to present my research on CatchBob!.

Ubicomp 2006, the Eighth International Conference of Ubiquitous Computing, will be held in Orange County, California, September 17-21, 2006, hosted by the University of California, Irvine. Ubicomp is the premier international forum for research in ubiquitous computing, bringing together designers, computer scientists, social scientists, and artists, to discuss recent developments and future advance.

Anyone in SF or OC area ping me on email if you'd like to have a coffee or sth.

Gummi toys

Few ago, wandering around in Zürich, I ran across curious boxes in a chupa-chups store, it occured that it was super-nice toys meant to create special "dishes". For instance, take a look at the Fruchtgummi Yummi Gummi Maschine (TOGGO):

First the name is great and second the object is marvelous. The "Kellogg's Cereal Bar Maker" is curious too, offering an interesting user interface:

Finally, Sweet eat (what a name!?) has this "marshmallow maker" and a "schokamell"

Why do I blog this? because the toy industry seems to design very pertinent "user interfaces" for tangible and "creative crafting" activities (not linked to digital world interaction though, but this is not my point). No mention of some underlying culture assumptions at stake as well (that I find less interesting). I put creative crafting into brackets because it's of course limitative but it might be funny to have this sort of user interface to create stuff in a "virtual world".

Neuroergonomic workshop

As a weak signal about the growing importance of neuropsychology in human-computer interaction, design and ergonomics, there is a workshop called "From Neuropsychology to Neuroergonomics: the Cognitive Continuum" (part of the 2nd Meeting of the European Societies of Neuropsychology), in Toulouse, France, October 19th, 2006 - 2.30 PM - 7.00 PM.

Neuropsychology and Neuroergonomics share: - The same core, the uncovering of the neural substratum of cognitive and/or sensorimotor performance and the investigation of the cerebral mechanisms underlying the performance, and - The same goal, the design of better cognitive rehabilitation protocols or training strategies, and/or better human-machine interfaces through the integration of knowledge on cerebral mechanisms.

Neuropsychology is an approach for more "cerebrally inspired" design and HMI. Looking beyond a discrete view of Neuropsychology and Neuroergonomics, the workshop's goal is to highlight the convergence and cross-fertilization of the two disciplines,

Frisbee-shaped robots

Via: among some curious new defense technologies, there is this "lethal frisbee"

Triton Systems, Inc. of Chelmsford MA proposes to develop a MEFP-armed Lethal Frisbee UAV, whose purpose is to locate defiladed combatants in complex urban terrain and provide precision fires to neutralize these hostiles with minimum hazard to friendly forces or bystanders. (...) Both tele-operated (man-in-the-loop) and autonomous modes of operation will be provided, through wireless links to standard tactical data systems. Range, payload, and maneuverability will be tailored to the missions defined during requirements studies

Why do I blog this? curious leisure objects can give rise to big weapons. Is it the future of drones?