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

4. Mass Niche not Mass Groups

5. Broadcast Control is now Self Scheduled

6. C2C is more powerful than B2C Communication

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 directly for indoor applications? Blight is an optimal indoor lighting solution that is able to replace current lamps without any need of electric supply. With Blight we have not produced a new object; we have just created the design of an everlasting product: the Venetian blind. We use all the current functions of this object and add a little technology to give it a new function – to catch solar energy and convert it into electricity.

This solar blind creates a link between indoor and outdoor, taking the daylight during the day and giving it back at night. The advantage of the Venetian blind is to have a large surface exposed to sunlight in a small, cumbersome object. With the revolving blades we can follow the course of the sun in order to catch a maximum of energy. Moreover we can adjust the position of the lamp to obtain various lighting effects. The produced energy can be used to supply a computer or other devices, by means of an inverter.

The object will combine two newly-discovered technologies: Flexible solar cells, and electroluminescent foil which requires little energy. Blight is durable and ecological because power cables are not needed and solar power is clean. This improved Venetian blind could be used in the household as well as in office applications.

A fantastic use of technology, I think. Also inherently mundane.

Others, it seems, agree, as Blight is among the more popular submissions.

Take a few minutes to head over to the Greener Gadgets page and peruse the astounding array of presentations.

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, and the intersection of these two will be increasingly-defined by applications and tools that are uniquely combined by people to suit their individual needs and desires – not provided from a single, global source.

Helge writes:

The Patchwork implies that it is the combination of intelligence in and sensing by these local applications that the “grand machinery” will be produced. Not by a dumber, global, giant solution.

This is wonderfully well-put, I think.

More:

It’s about understanding my life, the activities I perform, which ones are relevant for your company. And discovering how you can ad value to this based on presence (being accessible when the situation occurs, not on the laptop four hours later), people (person + herd = culture) and place (location + time).

Click through and have a read. While you’re there, poke around. Tenno is right on top of things, and a heck of a good writer.

When Jonathan MacDonald suggests that we ought to be talking about what mobile does, not what it is, he makes a fantastically salient point – a point that people are finally beginning to grasp as the discussion moves from platforms and hardware to a million simple, highly-configurable pieces of software.

• 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 stacked transparency. Beautiful to behold.
  (tags: design drawing graphic typography)
• Putting heads (and computers) together to solve global problems – MIT News Office
  Predictive solutions. Concept is within my grasp, but just barely.
• The Hofmeister Kink: A Lasting BMW Design Detail – New Media Campaigns
  Joel Sutherland on the staying power of little things. Easily one of the most fascinating things I've read in months.
• What Do You Mean? » House of Naked
  Evan at Naked wonders whether enjoyment is necessarily tethered to meaning (or, at least, finding meaning). I'm inclined to think not.
• This Much SADness | Serial Consign
  Greg Smith on a public art installation by Sung Lee Design. Gorgeous (and sad).
• Who Generates User-Generated Content?
  Mark Laporta reminds us that "user-generated content is as much a product of the space it’s created in, as it is of the users who create it". Good stuff.
• News from the Herd: You and me
  Deliciously biting take on youth marketing. Vicious…and dead-on. via Ruby Pseudo.