Raffi’s writing again, here about the state of technology in R/C cars – and appropriating it to create what he calls “Mixels” – moving pixels…

“…there is a lot of technology being crammed into $15 dollars (and still leaving room for profit) — there is a DC motor, a few gears, RF receiver, RF transmitter, a few LEDs, gearing, capacitors, charger, etc. i think it says quite a lot about the current state of mass technology production…

…Most real hacking involves research and a budget, but radio shack short circuits that whole curve by providing the user with a hacking kit, effectively.

The most interesting, I believe, is the possibility of using zipzaps as a “platform” for something. what would you do if you had a $10 to $15 “mixel” (for lack of a better name — a moving pixel)? The remote control looks trivial to interface to a PC (and its on my ever-growing list of things to do), but the real question is “If you had a cheap and disposable device that you had pretty fine xy control over on the meter scale (but without positioning feedback), what would you do with it?”

Looking forward to see what Raffi does with it!

» Wasted-Bits: Zipzaps

This last week I’ve been using Last.fm an awful lot.

I know I must be in the tail of the adoption curve on this (hey, I’m an old married man now, I’m allowed!) but I’ve really been enjoying it as a source for new music.

I type in three ‘established’ bands I’ve heard of, and generally the profile radio option returns a continuous stream of acts that I’ve never heard of, or don’t own much of – but nevertheless enjoy.

The interface design makes me wince each time I visit though. I might take a crack at an alternative Last.fm interface in the next week or so, after using it a bit more.

Chris has bought a bluetooth GPS and hacked together a feature on his website which reports his current position via his mobile phone.

Checking this morning it reported this about 30 minutes ago:

Current location is
lat 60.016373,
long 24.916592.
map
Last seen at 05:55 GMT (probably 8:55 local), 05/10/04.
Moving at 1.8 mph.

I loved the fact that I could picture Chris walking at a brisk 1.8 mph… However, clicking on the “map” link gave me pause for thought. It seemed that Chris was in the drink, several kilometres into the Baltic from Helsinki!

I’m about to leave for work, so hopefully I will find a dry and safe Chris to report a bug to. More seriously, Chris makes a good point about his experiment for those working on ubiquitous computing:

“Unless I try it myself, I will never know what unexpected consequences publishing this information will have. Self-ethnography is not scientifically valid, but I think it’s one of the best ways of empathising with the problems new technology creates. If I won’t use it, I shouldn’t expect you to either.”

» Anti-Mega: can we get excited yet?

IM with Kai Turner, ace infomation architect and bon vivant who I had the pleasure of working with at Sapient:

AIM IM with kaiganism
16:34

kaiganism : Do you think there will be a convergence of things like Flickr, Bloglines, Blogger, Friendster (yuck) — ? Or is the beauty of these services that they can stay singular in their focus?

BBJ01: i think it’s not an either/or
you get conFUSION though web services and information exchange formats
then you get some super converged super easy for consumers

kaiganism : mmm.. so give it time, you say

BBJ01: so – people who love the quality will have ‘hifi separates’
all joined by standard interfaces
‘home info theatre’

kaiganism : that’s a nice analogy.. hadn’t thought of it that way.

BBJ01: others will have converged boomboxes
with only a couple of knobs, but pretty lights!

kaiganism : you can be the geek buying all the components, or go straight to dixons… but dixons will wait until the standards have settled down and you have an audio-DVD format, for example.

BBJ01: yeah i guess… although perhaps i am labouring the metaphor!

kaiganism : no — it’s nice. you should blog that
instead of confusing us with ilovebees.com
down here at the consumer-edge of the spectrum.
or maybe i’ll do that… i can turn my blog into blackbeltjones for the masses. Like Scientific American mag.

BBJ01: heh. explaining matt jones since 1999

kaiganism : hahaha

Kai is now producing Design on DVD, a series of DVD monograms on design legends, starting with Saul Bass… Go buy it

Andrew jams on itrip pirate-radio with Hill’s iPod projector photoshopware:

Brings to life some of C. Doctorow’s Eastern-Standard Tribe

“I just don’t get it,” Fede said.

Art tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “It’s simple,” he said. “It’s like a car radio with a fast-forward button. You drive around on the MassPike, and your car automatically peers with nearby vehicles. It grabs the current song on someone else’s stereo and streamloads it. You listen to it. If you don’t hit the fast-forward button, the car starts grabbing everything it can from the peer, all the music on the stereo, and cues it up for continued play. Once that pool is exhausted, it queries your peer for a list of its peers—the cars that it’s getting its music from—and sees if any of them are in range, and downloads from them. So, it’s like you’re exploring a taste-network, doing an automated, guided search through traffic for the car whose owner has collected the music you most want to listen to.”

P17 of the June issue of Wired (with Pixar’s “The Incredibles” on the cover) has an advert for a joint promotion between Wired, W Hotels and Apple:

Plug in and play along to your own digital soundscape from W Hotels and iTunes®, the world’s best digital jukebox.

Your W Wired Package includes:

• High Speed Internet Access
• Wi-Fi Access in Living Room*
• 3 iTunes music downloads
• 3-month WIRED magazine subscription
• Unlimited local and toll-free calls
• Plus, Wonderful accommodations you’ll love

I’ve stayed in a W twice (before the taxman gets excited: one night only each time, as a once-a-year treat!) and they are wonderful little coccoons of unreal, luxurious space. More cosy than a Schrager, with just enough ‘ponce-factor’ to let you pretend you are a rockstar, or a secret agent posing as a rockstar, for one night.

As broadband and wifi become as much as a free, expected part of a satisfying hotel stay as a good shower – the next step has to be stuff like this – creating personal, luxurious, digital media cocoon.