John Maeda is offering some limited edition prints on his site to raise funds for victims of the South Asian tsunami. I’d love to buy one, but unfortunately he is only shipping to addresses in the USA. Would anyone in the US being willing to buy one on my behalf and send it on to Helsinki? (I would pay the additional postage, of course)
UPDATE: thanks to Ben Cerveny, who is sortin’ it for me…
More ding-dong on the authority of Wikipedia recently, with much of the debate swirling around Many-2-Many.
Clay Shirky posted something that caught my eye there today, which is to side-step the argument with information design.
He proposes a ‘dashboard’ for each entry, allowing the browser to make his or her own mind up to the veracity of the information by making transparent the contributions and changes to that entry over time.
This, to me, was precisely what Martin Wattenburg was exploring with his History Flow project for IBM, but using visualisations to allow one to assess the ‘shape’ of the entry’s evolution quickly.
Teaming this up with Edward Tufte’s Sparklines concept i.e. visualisations of supplementary information inline to the main text led me to mock-up something that gives the user Clay’s “trust profile per item” married with Martin’s visualisation effect to give a quick idea to the user of the entry’s history.: Historyflow sparklines.
Andrew Losowsky has posted the full, unedited version of an article he wrote for The Guardian last year on Eyetoy and embodied interaction, including comment from Ludology.org’s estimable Gonzalo Frasca and an interview with Richard Marks – who pioneered the tech behind Eyetoy for Sony – and what he’s doing next: The Clam…
Some excepts:
"EyeToy relies on the most basic interface ever invented – the human
body. Graphics may get photo realistic, but there’s nothing real about
bashing X to run faster, or clicking the mouse to jump. If your
character needs to run faster, run faster. If it needs to jump, jump.
The interface gap is suddenly made all but irrelevant. Look at the
screen. You see you? That’s you, that is."
and… The Clam!
"The Clam a single U-shaped squeezable piece of fabric you put in
your hand and when you squeeze it, it changes in aspect ratio very
fast. So you can use it as a mouse cursor. You squeeze to click and
drag, and then let go to release. Because you can monitor the direction
of the aspect ratio, you can also use it to rotate objects.""His lab has developed a simple photo storage/manipulation program to
use The Clam with – and it works so simply, it seems almost too
obvious."
And finally:
"Touch is one of Sony’s four Interface Research Areas (the others
being Inertial, Video and Audio – the EyeToy has an in-built
microphone, by the way). Tilt-based gaming, through handheld games such
as Wario Ware, are also becoming successful. And there’s potentially
much more within our grasp."If you look at mobile phones now," says Ron Festajo, "practically
every one has a camera. You can take photos and use it as an input
device. It’s very exciting."People understand cameras. And cameras open up all kinds of possibilities. The revolution is already upon us, comrades."
A great article, and a good intro to the already-happening-ness fun of tangible computing.
Start-of-year mapping of my del.icio.us
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.
As 2005 begins, my brain looks like this.
What does yours look like? Go to http://kevan.org/extispicious.cgi type in your del.icio.us username, then post it to the extispicious group on Flickr.
Priya Prakash, who I used to have the privilege of working with (She was part of the awesome design team I got to work with on iCan) has come up with a useful wap hack to help those affected by the South-Asian tsunami disaster.
This from Smartmobs:
Tsunami Helplines is the mobile WAP site for all the emergency numbers and has been specifically designed for mobile use. It has been put together for easy mobile access in situations where people have no access to computers and don’t know who to call for medical aid or for fieldworkers wanting to find out consulate/local hospital/authorities emegency helplines to give to victims/relatives.
The Tsunami Helpline WAP service is at: http://www.priyascape.com/helpline/index.wml for WAP browsers.
Good on you, Ms. Prakash.
Desktop disaster
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.
For the last few days, my desktop has been a sad reminder of what’s been happening in South-East Asia.
I run OSX Planet, a small Mac app that shows the globe, with live satellite weather images, and seismic activity – showing stark data around Indonesia – a huddle of high Richter readings, with 9.0 in the middle.
to paraphrase Satre…or their digital detritus, their links and pictures are heaven anyway.
Caterina kindly quoted something I said two years ago now (although it feels longer, now I am far from London, and not making web apps) about “social software”: that it’s software that is better when there are other people ‘there’, inhabiting it.
This is certainly the case with del.icio.us, and although useful as a personal linkdump and lightweight way to spool things to the web; I am really missing the other people there in my inbox.
I’d hoped it would reappear over Christmas, but Santa didn’t get my wishlist. Ah well. Hopefully Joshua had a good break and can find the time soon to fix it.
Heaven is other people, and great social software temporarily without them is purgatory.
iheartyou
Originally uploaded by ebb.
Webb got the ‘airtexting’ snap-on active cover for his Nokia 3220.
I talked about the mass-market fun of embodied interaction in my Design-Engaged talk, and this photo sums it up nicely.
After ‘Mind Hacks’ perhaps he’ll write ‘Embodied Interaction Hacks’ with Paul Dourish and Tom Igoe…
Image(285).jpg
Originally uploaded by twhume.
These are my imagined favourite projects from the ITP Winter Show based on the project descriptions.
Imagined, as I won’t be able to go, but you might.
If you do, tell me your favourites.
Petafloptimism 