Published Dec 15.09

via Pruned, a Dutch endeavor called Waterpleinen – a now-commissioned set of public spaces that serve both as locales for community gathering/play and stormwater repositories. From the Waterpleinen site:

Most of the year the Watersquare will be dry. It is only during heavy rainfall that the square will be filled with water. Streams, brooklets and ponds will emerge, kids can play in and around the water. In winter it is even possible to skate on the ice! The rainwater of the Watersquare can also serve as a grey-water system for the surrounding houses.

It’s a remarkable concept for mixed-use space (see these diagrams). The below video conveys the idea even better (and yet-still-better if you happen to speak Dutch).

Link: Waterpleinen on Pruned Categorized as: Links, People and Spaces

Published Dec 15.09

via Johnnie Moore, Jack Ricchiuto on potential new models for change in social network behavior:

The possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they can move toward more diverse connections and pragmatic alignments.

Ricchiuto makes these comments in regard to a post on which he collaborated on Network Weaving, exploring the evolution of introduction in social networks:

When we make introductions, and close triangles, we are not doing it to merely create new connections. Network weavers usually have a goal in mind when connecting two new people — a project, a mentorship, a future collaboration.

Fascinating stuff.

Link: Transformational Change in Social Networks on Jack/Zen Categorized as: Links, People and Other People

Published Dec 15.09

via PSFK comes this astounding telling of the history of friendship by William Deresiewicz of The Chronicle of Higher Education, through the lens of contemporary social networks. There’s a lot to digest (and like) here, but this nugget rang true for me:

And so we return to Facebook. With the social-networking sites of the new century—Friendster and MySpace were launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004—the friendship circle has expanded to engulf the whole of the social world, and in so doing, destroyed both its own nature and that of the individual friendship itself. Facebook’s very premise—and promise—is that it makes our friendship circles visible. There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they’re not in the same place, or, rather, they’re not my friends. They’re simulacra of my friends, little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets.

The article makes the point that these networks define a utopian vision of friendship that lies far afield of traditional (and historical) notions of the same. Great great reading, to be certain.

Link: Faux Friendship on The Chronicle of Higher Education Categorized as: Links, People and Other People

Published Dec 15.09

An interesting post last week over at Idea Sandbox on the concept of fallow field farming, and whether brands ought to explore a methodology that halts short-term growth to allow operations/markets to replenish:

What about the notion of letting the business rest for a season to allow it to rejuvenate? Instead of aggressively building new stores or launching new products – why not let that part of the business go fallow?

It’s an interesting notion – a distant cousin of creative destruction. Worth a read, given some free time.

Link: Farming Lesson to Save Your Brand on Idea Sandbox Categorized as: Links, People and Brands

Published Dec 15.09

GOOD has a blurb today on a pilot program in San Francisco that is utilizing wireless parking meters equipped with sensors that can identify vacant and occupied spaces. Here’s the demo:

I wonder what Donald Shoup would have to say about this. Could these sensors drive the kind of elastic-pricing parking policy that Dr. Shoup espouses? From a 2008 interview on the TransLib blog:

So long as cities continue to require ample off-street parking at every site, people will never be weaned from expecting free parking. And unless cities begin to charge performance-based prices for curb parking, reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements will not be politically possible. So I would argue that getting the price of curb parking right is a precondition to weaning people away from expecting free parking everywhere. Therefore, I would also argue that Parking Benefit Districts with revenue return to finance added local public services will create the political demand for more sensible parking prices.

Link: Wireless Parking on GOOD Categorized as: Links, People and Spaces

Published Dec 14.09

via CScout, another great utility designed to enable, among other things, urban exploration.

PicTranslator is a point & shoot app for the iPhone that promises to translate signage and other text content from 20+ foreign languages into English. Check out the demo below:

While I can imagine all manner of applications for the app, the ability to explore unfamiliar spaces with the ability to rapidly orient and guide oneself is chief among them. Very cool stuff.

Link: Point & Shoot Foreign Language Translator on CScout Categorized as: Links, People and Spaces

Published Dec 14.09

Greg Smith over at Vague Terrain has a terrific writeup on a new installation at the Mediateca Expandida de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, entitled PLAYLIST:

The core of PLAYLIST will be the exploration of the “8bit movement”, spread out from the manipulation of obsolete game technologies in order to create new instruments to play music. The show will demonstrate that the retrogaming phenomenon in visual arts can be considered an outfit of a pretty musical phenomenon, that in a bunch of years spread out all over the world through festivals and clubs, occasionally influencing mainstream musicians; and that visual and musical research progressed on parallel paths, in the quest for lo-res sounds and aesthetics, synthetic colors and notes. For the first time, retro-gaming will be explored through the lens of musical production and distribution, displaying not only tracks, but instruments, tools, softwares and hardwares, skins and graphics, but also discographies, platforms and communities.

Looks fascinating. While I doubt very much that I’ll make it to Spain for the exhibit, I offer it up to those who might.

Link: Playlist: Playing Games, Music, Art on Vague Terrain Categorized as: Ephemera, Links

Published Dec 11.09

The good folks at Poke London shut their doors this past week for a day to engage in their first day-long hack around the broad topic of food (this, of course, being an area of particularly English expertise).

It’s a great idea. Color me impressed.

Iain Tait has a rundown of the first hack: The proper cappuccino:

Today’s preliminary investigation and interviews have unearthed a whole bunch of interesting stuff – like more than a few places that basically think a cappuccino is a latte with chocolate on top (and they’ve admitted to that on camera).

As an aside. Poke’s explanation of the idea for Hack Day is catalogued on their website under ‘fun stuff’. I wonder whether Grant McCracken, whose new book Chief Culture Officer is mandatory winter reading (for me, at least) would agree. One might reasonably argue that this program, while certainly fun, is also at the core of a creative enterprise. Best guess: The folks at Poke would agree.

Link: That's a Cappuccino! on CrackUnit Categorized as: Ephemera, Links

Published Dec 11.09

via ChristmasGorilla, a link to a fantastic New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik (@adamgopnik) on the ways in which we use cookbooks, highlighted by this nugget:

Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook’s life. The recipe book always contains two things: news of how something is made, and assurance that there’s a way to make it, with the implicit belief that if I know how it is done I can show you how to do it. The premise of the recipe book is that these two things are naturally balanced; the secret of the recipe book is that they’re not. The space between learning the facts about how something is done and learning how to do it always turns out to be large, at times immense.

I’ve hammered at this point, as well, on a few occasions – usually in the context of process transparency (and frequently in the context of food). Gopnik, however, is far more eloquent in his take.

Link: What's the recipe? on The New Yorker Categorized as: Links, People and Information

Published Dec 11.09

Via Jeff Howard over at Design for Service, a post from Katherine Alsop that explores queuing theory in the context of service efficiency as applied to a supermarket checkout.

It’s a fantastic, well-authored post with implications across a broad range of user experiences, and I’d be loathe to try to explain it in any detail – particularly as Katherine does such an eloquent job – and queuing theory is a generally well-worn and accepted area of study. That said, I thought this to a particularly succinct assessment of the false promise of multiple queues:

The main issues associated with the single queue are that customers may consider the queue too long and decide not to purchase anything, or they may join the queue, then leave if they think it is not progressing fast enough. Having several shorter queues may appear as a faster means of getting served, but queueing theory would suggest that this is not true.

Link: How Not to Re-design a Supermarket Checkout on Katherine Alsop Categorized as: Links, People and Spaces

Published Dec 11.09

Angie Waller posted a collection of her photos a few weeks back that demonstrate a range of playground/playset designs in socialist / non-socialist locales.

I’m not altogether certain that it’s the most objective view on the topic, but the collection is certainly demonstrative of variations in our notions of play (and environments that encourage and shape that notion).

Link: Socialist vs. Non Socialist on CouchProjects Categorized as: Links, People and Spaces

Published Oct 21.09

The Hi-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab has created something profoundly intriguing – a series of pop-up books with an added layer of interactivity.

While the books, in themselves, are certainly something to behold, they hint at a much deeper set of implications, namely: the use of paper-thin electronics that can convey a narrative that responds to either direct or indirect user input. These popables, as they’re named, in combination with technology that reads data from the user’s environment or portable devices, might in the near-term help realize dynamic, customized storytelling – or even something akin to immersive three-dimensional textbooks when integrated with augmented reality technologies.

Until that point, of course, you might simply enjoy them for what they are.

Link: Electronic Popables on Rhizome Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 15.09

10/GUI:

This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers.


via Vimeo

Link: Video on 10/Gui Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 13.09

A very intriguing use of Augmented Reality for content creation, not just informatics and product demonstration. Now it gets interesting.

Link: 5 Gum on YouTube Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 13.09

Zach Taylor created the two above maps to chart the traceroutes from his computer to the 50 most popular sites on the internet. The first traces the routes from his apartment, the second the same routes via the NYU network.

Learn more about the program via Tigoe.

Link: How to get to the Internet on Zach Taylor's Weblog Categorized as: Links, People and Information

Published Oct 13.09

From this very intriguing post:

In order to study the readable volume around an RFID reader, we built experimental probes that would flash an LED light when they successfully read anRFID tag. The readable volume is not the same as the radio field, instead it shows the space within the field in which an RFID tag and an RFID reader will interact with each other.

Link: Immaterials: the Ghost in the Field on Touch Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 12.09

Tactile interfaces are about to get very interesting. Combining this technology with something like Surface could open up all manner of intriguing options, particularly at retail outlets.

Researchers from The University of Tokyo have demoed a touchable hologram at Siggraph 2009. The project, called Touchable Holography, involves the use of Wiimotes placed above the display to track hand motion, and an airborne ultrasound tactile display created in the university’s lab to create the sensation of touch. The result is a holographic image that produces tactile feedback without any actual touching, and without degrading the image itself.

Link: StillOutandAboutTown on YouTube Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 11.09

Nothing terribly profound here, but a gorgeous photography, art and architecture mashup that’s worth the few moments required to view it.

Link: Juan Lau on Vimeo Categorized as: Ephemera, Links

Published Oct 10.09

Despite its inherently ephemeral nature, this sort of exploration is tremendously appealing to me. Taken to a natural end, the data from this project could inform efforts at maintaining biodiversity, underwater mining, petroleum exploration and all other manner of biokinetics and environmental monitoring.

A temporary installation by the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Environmental Health Clinic at New York University.

This network of floating interactive tubes houses a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared ecosystems. Blue lights mean that the dissolved oxygen level is higher now than last week, and red lights mean the reverse. The lower lights turn on when fish are underneath. The upper lights blink when someone is text messaging with the fish.

Link: Chris Woebken on Vimeo Categorized as: Links, People and Devices

Published Oct 10.09

For The Roadshow: Architectural Landscapes of Canada — “a series of linked, broad-based national events that focus architectural discourse in Canada at the level of the public, the profession, and the schools of architecture” — participating architect Marc Boutin designed the Pneumatic Amplifier, a “massive inflatable projection device that [acts] as an architectural propaganda machine.”

Link: Half Dose #68: Pneumatic Amplifier on A Daily Dose of Architecture Categorized as: Links, People and Devices