Ephective Ephemera
Project Natal Xbox 360 Announcement:
“When the Wii entered our lives and living rooms, it completely transformed gaming into a rich and more social experience. Project Natal is another revolutionary development to the gaming industry. It starts to break down the barriers between generations (even more so than the Wii), and between gaming and entertainment.”
via Nicola Davies
When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that already exist in New York City, and already explore methods that can offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.
(via Inhabitat » Crowd-Sourced Initiatives to Create a More Livable New York City)
Jonathan has an interesting set of ideas about where things are heading. Each is worth a read:
1. Corporate Technology in the hands of Citizens
2. Physical is increasingly Virtual
3. It’s about Distribution not Destination
I awoke to a fantastic post on Make this morning about Youth Music Box – an installation at the Royal Music Hall in London that allows kids to construct their own original composition in a few short minutes.
Youth Music Box is a free, interactive musical experience, allowing you to create your own unique track and [...]
As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve grown quite interested lately in the spread of mobile networks within Africa – and the odd marriage of technology and infrastructure that inform this growth.
With mobile phone penetration and use skyrocketing, users on the continent are faced with an interesting dilemma, namely: a significant number of these mobile users live [...]
Two completely different perspectives on independence and telephony:
First, this today on Ars Technica:
Two UK mobile operators are reportedly fuming at Nokia for including a mobile version of Skype on its N97 handset. Both Orange and O2 are so terrified that the popular VoIP service will siphon away profitable cell minutes by allowing users to make [...]
The perfect manifestion of my oft-repeated mantra that great change is more likely to arrive via the mundane than via the spectacular:
This entry from Vincent Gerkens in Core 77’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition, called Blight (terrible name, great idea):
from the Greener Gadgets site:
The sun provides us with energy every day. How can we use it [...]
It’s astounding, is it not, that not so far in our distant past technology was a novel topic – something to latch on to in an ephemeral manner (as in the above video for Kraftwerk’s ‘Musique Non Stop’?
GigaOM reports that, by 2013, video will comprise 64% of all mobile traffic. This is an astounding figure [...]
Helge Tenno, always about six hours ahead of the rest of us on 180360720.no, has a great post today summarizing a panel from the PSFK Salon this past weekend focused on the mobile user in which he relates a discussion about a patchwork approach to location-based solutions.
Put more eloquently: Mobile is about people, not technology, [...]
cellar door: Demure Optimism
Acknowledgement v. Optimism through the prism of fashion – though I think it reaches well beyond.
“Technology” is the problem
Helge Tenno follows up on McCluhan and Davies.
Open plan vs. open to distractions « (almost) always thinking
A strong argument in support of open floorplans for creative organizations.
The Well-Constructed Document | Serial Consign
Michael Place and [...]