Archive for Technology & Effects
November 25, 2007 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
I woke up early for Saturday and went to WorkSpace for MobileCampVancouver, an informal meetup or “unconference” for people interested in the mobile web. I was a little anxious about going as I am not exactly “in” the mobile community if you could say there is one and I didn’t know how I might fit in (coupled with pondering how I might fit in 3, 4 months from now). But the morning started with short and sweet 3 word introductions - great for someone like me who might ramble and easily forget ramblings of others. No really, I was able to see that attendees were from a variety of backgrounds and interests.
This was reflected in the next part of the day, a panel session with 5 people of expertise in varying mobile-related topics. In camp-style, each panelist introduced what they were into and then, choosing which topic you were interested in, we split off into groups for discussion. I joined a group with panelist Dr. Richard Smith from SFU who has interest in mobile social networks.
We talked about creating interfaces for mobile social network applications, whether a mobile version of a “main” application reflects a subset of the main functions or is another “satellite” application targeting what people want to do when they are mobile. There was talk about difficulties in deploying these applications: getting it on the phone, connectivity, access to phone functions, and so on. Finally, I think we were talking about issues of privacy control and such but this part of the discussion seemed a little unfocused. On one hand some people wanted to talk about the basic user needs / desires and how a service can fulfill / respect them, on the other, there was interest in looking at mobile social net applications in the larger, impacting our social world context. Both topics are equally interesting but not always mixed and there was not enough time to go into either that deeply.
Following the panel session people who had something to present or demo “signed up” and these sessions were organized over three time slots and three spaces. There is a complete list of presenters and topics on the BarCamp wiki, including links to some ppt slides and such, but here is what I saw:
John Boxall (Handi) - “Building iPhone-compatible websites with iUi”
- iui is a little javascript and CSS bundle for developing web applications for the iPhone
- it allows you to easily create list-based applications that mimic the look and feel of lists (eg. music menus) on the iPhone and iPod touch
- based on three main objects: lists (defined with ul and li tags and nested), panels (the final destination of a list path), dialogs (for example, a search dialog that is displayed at the top of a screen)
- list structure and navigation style may seem restrictive but there is beauty in its restriction: users are familiar with the navigation model and they can use the web app without feeling like they have “left” their iPhone application space
- someone showed me facebook for the iphone and it is pretty nice, even in Firefox. Check it out - I might start going here instead of the main site. (I am not sure if it was made with iui, possibly not but you can get the idea of designing interfaces using the iPhone list model.)
Dennis Knothe (Nokia) - “Introduction to S60 web-runtime and S60 widget development”
- Widgets are downloadable and installable web service applications for Nokia handsets.
- They are created using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and with support for Ajax. The programming model seems similar to dashboard widgets - you have a collection of html, javascript, css, and image files that get zipped together, the extension is renamed .wgz and that is the package downloaded by the user
- There is access to some basic phone functions, more is to come in the future
- Widgets reminded me of i-Applis which I dabbled with while at NTT but I think that as they develop more they have the potential for more flexibility. From what I remember, i-Applis were pretty restrictive with accessing the web and phone functions.
- Want to test your Widget on a selection of real phones? He told us about the coolest thing - Remote Device Access for testing applications on phones somewhere in Finland. If you are a Nokia Forum Member you can reserve access to a phone and when available, upload and install your application. You can see the screen of the remote phone and view log files. Maybe you knew about this but I didn’t and it’s totally cool.
Igor Faletski (Handi Mobility) - “Developing Mobile 2.0 applications with Nokia WidSets”
- WidSets is a service based on Widgets
- You build your collection of Widgets for getting information from the web onto your phone
- Again, these are similar to Dashboard Widgets and many are very simple games or information displays
- Some nice examples shown: widgets for flickr photo streams, jaiku, and one that I want to explore more: ShoZu
- There is a Mac-Dashboard-like interface for viewing WidSets on your phone (and I think it is also called a dashboard). It is bigger than the screen size and you move around it using navigation pad. You can manage the placement of widgets on the Dashboard through the WidSets site (accessed from your computer)
After these sessions we had lunch followed by a hack-a-thon but I didn’t really know that the hack-a-thon had started. It was more like a lot of standing around and chatting. But it possibly geared up later - I left mid-afternoon to donate some more time to the thesis. But very interesting and I look forward to the next!
October 11, 2007 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Art, Technology & Effects
Infosthetics blogs the Google Vanity Ring, a project by Marcus Kison. The ring indicates the number of google hits received when the wearer’s name is queried. The wearer places the ring in a dock at nighttime to update the hit count.
Very interesting concept. How else will we present our online status in the real world? For what reasons would we want to? Online is public but we have ways to control the way we present ourselves and who can see those presentations. Did we have such direct management before? How will this organization translate to the real world? Will I have clothing that reveals some information about me at a bar, different information at a job interview, and possibly none while I am waiting for the bus?
I like some of Kison’s other work, especially “touched echo“. Invisible memorial for the Bruehlsche Terrasse (Dresden), using bone conduction to take visitors back in time. While I am not that into artworks involving participants listening to audio tracks in a place to imagine themselves in that same place but another time, I really like that people can listen using a standing pose natural to the space the work is installed in. (See pictures at above link…to listen a participant stands at a fence around a raised plaza area overlooking a river, they place their elbows on the fence, hands over the ears and can lean in and listen.)
In other news, I want my garbage picked up. Though that’s not the news and unfortunately it is hard to say when garbage pick up will resume. Though parking enforcement will be in full swing. That sounds a little too enthusiastic for me.
October 2, 2007 at 4:45 pm · Filed under Experiences, Technology & Effects
Ok to write about last night’s non-crappy part, a really good experience. I went to my first MobileMonday. For those of you who don’t know, MobileMonday is an informal gathering of people in the mobile phone industry community for connecting and sharing. It started in Helsinki and the concept has since expanded to other cities around the globe. It looks like there are currently a bit more than 50 cities in which MobileMondays are held and that number is likely to continue growing. In Vancouver I think they plan to hold them on the first Monday of every month.
Most interesting thing there for me: the Handi Mobility guys presented their new service for browser based polls answerable through SMS. Extremely quick and easy to set up and designed for public events (imagine large projection/display of the poll). I can’t find the service online yet but I think they just launched…in the meantime, you may know them from the Facebook MyBus application.
I have an interesting in finding out where the polling service ends up being used. If they are public events I want to go check them out to see how people interact with the displays: how quickly do they pull out their mobiles? what triggers them to? the display, an announcement, strangers, their friends? This is related to the QLeaves event I did at the end of August (In the Miraikan museum; people answering questionnaires with their mobile phones.)
I plan to go to the next MobileMonday.
My big plan is, well, school will finish up at the end of December and soon after I hope to join the workforce. I have a strong interest in staying in Vancouver and I have three industries that strongly interest me: mobile, gaming, and tools for creativity and sharing. Okay that last one is a bit broad but think user-generated content / social networking / editing & developing tools. It also feeds back into the first two industries. Creating and sharing through mobile devices and in games.
The thing is I’ve been out of the loop for a bit (this is dawning on me more and more lately as people are rounding my 1.5 years in Japan up to 2 years and making me think “have I been away for 2 years??!”) and I am not aware of which companies in Vancouver are headed in the directions that I am interested in. The fact that there are many and they are small makes it more difficult but, MobileMonday definitely remedies that. There were a large number of different companies represented there but it still felt like a small and friendly community of people.
That and it was held at the Granville Island Brewery. I forgot how delicious a good ale is…although I liked it, I was getting tired of always drinking light beer in Japan.
March 20, 2007 at 5:06 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
One of the projects I enjoyed at Interaction 2007 - this dynamic soft picture book. It is not so much a book but a play area for children. I think the gist of it is that children can play with removal parts, moving them around and placing them in different places on the map. Locations of the (I call them “story bits”) are sensed and a computer application uses this to dynamically create some narrative. I might have that last part wrong. I never got the chance to ask for details and it is possible (if I am to speak honestly) that I wasn’t caring so much about how the system worked. I was mostly thinking “OH sweEET Reeses how I LOVE felt!!!”
No really…this got me thinking about interfaces/toys for children and the difficulties of designing computing systems that will be used in child play. I was wondering how much the dynamic soft picture book relies on a certain style of interaction from a child. Could it handle the case of say, story bits thrown across the room or stashed in a honey pot?
What if a child’s toy could sense these “misuses”? Would the information be used for the child’s benefit (ie. more and better play) or for the parent’s benefit (ie. she’s beheading her barbie dolls again, you might be spending too much time at the office). How could toy location information be used? (Actually screw people finding…thinking back to when I was four I would have LOVED an interactive toy map.) What about the relationship between a child and his or her favorite toy? Which toys get pocket privileges and how could tracking this favoritism help parents understand their child?
February 23, 2007 at 11:42 am · Filed under Technology & Effects
I love Jan Chipchase’s work and try to keep up with his site. He is a researcher for Nokia: travels around the word, observes mobile phone culture and takes a lot of pictures. What I love the most is his honesty. He brings to light interesting trends, habits, etc. but notes when there might be a bias:
Despite the rear area often being considered, in the words of a female clothing designer we interviewed, a ‘problem zone’, in Tokyo mobile phones and music players like the iPod (pictured above) are increasingly making their way into the back pockets of women. (…) Of course this ‘trend’ could merely be a result of me seeing what my male brain is hard-wired to see.
To note on women carrying their mobile or mp3 players in their back pockets:
1) The back pocket is used to state the worth of a pair of jeans. It is indeed a zone for personalization, for advertising, for expression. The mobile adds to this expressive zone - people will be looking there (for reasons other than hard-wiring in the male brain…I would be lying if I said I did notice back pockets).
2) Are women more attentive to things in their back pockets? Possibly due to self-consciousness (”is there something on my butt?”). I put my mobile in my back pocket when I am expecting a phone call or email that I cannot miss.
3) A mobile phone or mp3 player in the front pocket of women’s jeans/pants? No that doesn’t work.
September 25, 2006 at 6:59 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
Via Popgadget, this is the most hilarious thing:
the half suit by businessbib
slip on for your video conferencing meetings.
The thing this find is revealing to me more: I want to show people I work with but can’t for the life of me speak up “hey you wanna see something hilarious”. If I had coworkers on IM I could send them the link and they could have a look when they please…but I don’t want to interrupt them.
I know that I can though. That they wouldn’t mind being interrupted for something lighthearted and funny.
But I can’t…why not?
Am I shy or just used to the ease of IM?
August 24, 2006 at 7:49 pm · Filed under In the News, Random Thoughts, Technology & Effects
I don’t post many pictures of myself. Maybe because I also don’t take many pictures of myself. But other people might have some of me like Kelvin seen below:
He is another intern from Vancouver…SFU I think…but different company. Click on that pictures if you want to check out his flickr account. He is young and energetic so gets around Japan a lot and has taken some good photos. This was taken when we went to a festival at the temple in Kawasaki Daishi. (Update: I meant to add…if you want to see me in yukata then you can explore his photostream.)
So what am I thinking today…? Well, did you hear about the Report Abuse button for Windows Messenger? I like that they are looking for ways to solve the predators problem, but I wonder how the button model will work. Buttons are so easy to press. 9-1-1 is easy to press but a real person answers your call and you have to either hang up or say something. What happens when people abuse the abuse button?
On the lighter side of the news is the Llama on the loose in the Vancouver area. The article picture is gold:
I might have to print and frame it. Put it by my bedside. Llama on the loose…heh…album name.
May 6, 2006 at 5:41 pm · Filed under Art, Technology & Effects
Yes, I realized that if I didn’t make a few posts before the weekend, by Monday I would have forgotten everything I did this past week so here I am, hitting the Internet cafÈ. Not actually there yet…but writing at home before I go. The first thing to talk about, and the subject of this post, is that I went to the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park (a big famous park in Tokyo) last Tuesday. I went with a group of people from work specifically to try out an information delivery system being tested at the museum by the Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory (short – UNL).
UNL was testing the use of these handheld devices + RFID (I think) to deliver extra information and some videos on a few pieces in the special Rodin exhibit currently on display. The idea is that being equipped with this handheld, people can tour the museum and use tags at each piece to bring up information particular to that piece.
Unfortunately, they only had the system set up for three larger sculptures outside and extra-unfortunately, it was raining so we couldn’t try it outside anyway. We were given the handhelds and were allowed to sit inside on chairs, facing outside with no direct view of the sculptures. Hehe…and another unfortunate point for me (I guess) was that the content was only available in Japanese. Oh well, I played.
The devices we were given were pretty cool but there were too many functions given their purpose. Of course, this was just a test and if such a system were actually implemented I think they would redesign the device (hopefully) to better suit the museum environment and its goers. What I was thinking about more is how the availability of this manner of information delivery would affect 1) the relationship between people and the artwork and 2) the interaction between people.
I couldn’t get the full experience because I was confined to a chair and I could not understand the content, but I imagined myself walking around the museum with this, looking at pieces but also reading, listening, and watching videos. Would this be a distraction to fully appreciating the art? I guess it depends on the person. I work with what I see presented to me in a painting and I like to make my own emotional associations and stories whereas other people might be more interested in the real, historical context of a piece or how it is related to the artist’s life. So given your interests, extra media can be appreciated or annoying. I wonder how different types of information can appeal to the different types of people? Hmm…I wouldn’t mind hearing music at each piece – music nominated by other visitors.
Related to the second point above, I was initially concerned that using such a device would create boundaries between people in the museum space. Well, I think those are already there. My visit felt very personal. I was in my own space for the majority of the time. Using these types of technologies only enhance my existing experience (I tried a similar system at the Van Gogh museum). On the other hand – when might I want to step out of my bubble? At times I wonder how my friends feel: are they bored, what are their favorite pieces, are they being inspired…? With some people I have no trouble interrupting them and asking but with others I am worried I might disrupt a flow they have going on. What about strangers? What are they thinking and do they have insight that I would like to hear?
I hope that (if) as more of these information delivery systems become available in museums, they will be more than just “information delivery systems”…perhaps by allowing more collective knowledge, more sharing (when desired of course) :p
April 17, 2006 at 7:47 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects, Thinking
(Related back to my own self of course.)
The other day I read this chapter from Geography and Technology by Matthew Zook, Martin Dodge, Yuko Aoyama, and Anthony Townsend: “New Digital Geographies: Information, Communication, and Place”. They talk about the initial utopian vision of the Internet as seamless and uniform connectivity all over the world - something surpassing space and geography. In reality how people connect and what they connect for has been dependent on financial and cultural factors. Differences in accessibility and use among countries, cities, neighborhoods, and people has created a form of digital geography which is very interesting to study.
I recommend reading the chapter…right now I am going to continue talking about myself as I always do. I read this and something struck me. Here I have access to the same content online that I did when I was in Vancouver. Content that is produced mostly in various parts of the US or Europe…far from Vancouver. But now that I am here, I feel so far away from it. I feel like besides having travelled far, shifted days, changed time zones, and become an alien, I`ve also entered another info-sphere. What mattered and what was interesting to me before has changed. It`s not that I am getting my content from Japanese sites because I cannot read the majority of them, it`s more like…
…it is like when you are at a party and you`ve been sitting at this one spot on a couch for a long long time. Overall, you are enjoying the going-ons around you and the conversation, but you are starting to nod off from the sitting and the alcohol consumed. You decide that it`s time to move around. You get up and walk to the kitchen where people are laughing. You missed the joke so, still standing, you focus your attention back to the area around the couch you were sitting on, this time with a different perspective. Party geography would be interesting to study.
February 2, 2006 at 4:52 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
Phillip emailed me this article on researcher Beatriz da Costa and her pollution-blogging pigeons. Custom backpacks equipped with cellphone technology, GPS, and pollutant sensors will be placed on the birds before their flight on August 5th. The sensor data will be reported back to a pollution blog and displayed on an interactive map.
Although it poses some questions on ethics and avian ergonomics, I think this is the right direction to go. People take in media so, well, why not give the medium to our animal friends so that they can let us know what’s up with the world. We already have cancer-detecting dogs, why not racoon police to detect recyclables in garbage bins. Equipped with cameras and sophisticated imaging technologies they could find the glass bottles, paper and cans and then search further for identifying articles such as addresses on envelopes and photographs. Maybe that’s stretching it, but you get the general idea.
I was going to highlight this post with a picture but instead, I encourage you to go outside and find your own pigeon imagery. I am trying to convince Phillip to join me in a photoshoot by the health sciences buildings as he wanted to find something that would capture “pigeons blogging”. All we would need is a keyboard and some bread crumbs…
December 8, 2005 at 6:56 pm · Filed under It's Science, Technology & Effects
Jose Carmena at UC Berkeley is working on brain-computer interfaces. So think a surgical implant with hundreds of tiny electrodes placed in the frontal and parietal lobes (motor regions) of the brain. A version of the implant was tested on monkeys and they were able to learn how to operate a robot arm. There’s more to it than what I’m saying, but think - this could be the future. BRAIN IMPLANTS! The possibilities…the possibly evil possibilities.
So after thinking about what my head mods would look like for a while, I went back to the question I have whenever I hear about this implant business (see this post from a few weeks ago). What happens when you sleep? Maybe implants will not become mainstream until I’m well dead because they are likely to be attached to computers and complications for a while. But someday everyone will have their implants and you will be able to choose what do to with the signal. In the end that’s all it is isn’t it? So you program your implants to operate or control various things. It will replace the clapper, be used for security messages, and enable T9-ed mind messages.
So when you sleep, and those implants are still there, and you involuntarily use a motor function…ok maybe you could turn it off, but pretend you can’t because it’s more interesting to think about. I’ll let you think about that one…
November 30, 2005 at 5:47 am · Filed under Technology & Effects
At yesterday’s meeting we talked about image recognition, organization, browsing, and searching. New techniques often require the “seeding” of metadata by humans before recognition can take off on its own. This ties in with thoughts on tagging (mostly stimulated by our Tag-Guru Phillip): what happens when you get a lot of people tagging, how can this new metainformation can be used, what is “good” and “bad” tagging, and what does “bad” tagging do to the system? For example, what happens when I tag a photo of my laptop with “waffles”?
In some arenas tagging like this might be okay because I can personally filter content returned from a tag-based search. But what happens in the work world? Or what about reliance on other applications (I’m trying to avoid saying “agents”) for searching and even possibly decision making? Who will be the tag-police?
That term makes it sound nasty and controlling. Though I do think that we will see the emergence of tag “moderators” once the idea of tagging crosses over to non-personal and social domains. OK but really, these “moderators” have been around for a while. Think librarians, knowledge managers, etc. People who study and work at the classification, sorting, indexing, searching, retrieval of information. Only now they have to deal with an added variable: you and me and our ability to help with that classification.
Think of the library scenario. Imagine that you are able to personally tag books, articles, journals, magazines, etc. found in the library. Monitoring these tags would be a fulltime job. That brings me to what I was thinking when I started writing this…a new job market of people who monitor and balance the metadata or metainformation of the world’s content. Can you imagine that too? Does it already widely exist and I clued out on something?
October 13, 2005 at 11:16 am · Filed under Reflection, Technology & Effects, Toys
Today I took my ipod out for its first walk. I forgot how much music just makes me want to wander. How it shapes the way I perceive my surroundings outdoors. Suddenly fall, golden leaves, cordoroy and old men in grocery shopping all seem so deep and musical. Is this me controlling my environment or my music controlling me?
Wonderful though. Now I won’t have this thing anymore where I can’t leave my apartment because I need to listen to that one last song.
Every time someone got on the bus this morning I noticed whether or not they were wearing their earbuds/phones. I was acutely aware of this because today I was in their world, or not so much their world but I was within the same space floating in my own personal bubble. Part of me felt guilty. I felt guilty because I was thinking about all the articles warning of detachment between people in public places due to all these personal technologies creating boundaries between the people. Guilty because I try to develop ways to bridge those boundaries yet here I am making them?
Hmm…maybe I need a transmitter / receiver for my ipod. Could I open up my music to the few around me. Let them connect to my bubble and perhaps it could be broken or we join personal spaces.
August 27, 2005 at 9:22 am · Filed under Technology & Effects
Blogged by Techie Diva and then by Popgadget, this Telegraph article discusses the imbalance between male and female users of technology. They specifically mention that (in Britain), 96% of tracks are downloaded by men (I’m not sure where those are downloaded from). Now I can take the fact that yes, there are more gadget geeks then geekettes out there and men are often more willing to spend time figuring out how their technologies work. What I can’t handle is the manner in which they present these facts, as well as how companies are trying to market towards women. They make women appear incompetent and unpatient when it comes to technology. A few quotes:
Would you rip files at a high or low bit-rate? Do you prefer AAC, WMA or MP3? If you are completely baffled by these questions, you are probably a woman.
However, like HMV, electrical goods manufacturers seem determined to turn women on to cameras and computers. Apple launched a mini version of the iPod in pastel pink last summer, and this season’s desktop must-have is a Hello Kitty mouse.
“It’s easy for women to say they don’t understand and ask a man for help,” says Tom Stewart. “As the saying goes, boys play with toys, and girls play with boys.”
Gawd…could they make the dividing line even thicker?
I guess the reasons why I might get impatient with technology are that its not always social, there are thick manuals, sharp edges and it fails to be associated with men. I never knew…
