250 prepared electro hub magnets | Untitled Sound Objects
Pe Lang + Zimoun 2006
I love this artist. Not just the aesthetics of the work but the self-organizing and pseudo AI principles behind it.
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All posts tagged technology
ZIMOUN
Augmented Reality Goes to the Ballgame
Photo: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
What’s your dream project? I asked this question to a former employer of mine and was told the following, “I’d love to do something with hockey… Some sort of augmented reality that compliments the at-game experience.” This wasn’t so surprising considering that his firm is always at the cutting edge of design, technology and creativity – and he’s a hockey nut. Funny enough though, this exact project was happening at the time for the NFL and the New York Giants – must be something in the air.
This article touches on how the NFL is rolling out some new weapons in the arms race between the at-home and at-game experiences. The NFL (rightly) feels that being at the game, while more expensive and ostensibly preferable, actually offers the consumer less than the alternative of watching the game at home. Reason being that Hi-def TVs have crisper pictures than watching live, instant replays slow down the action and provide a blow-by blow visual of what happened, announcers provide contextual analysis of key situations, your laptop or iPad are with you to accommodate any social communication (read: venting) during the game. Not to mention if you have DirectTV, their RedZone updates allow you to see “all the action from around the league.”
When I go to the game, I’m frequently left up in the nosebleeds wondering “what happened?” when action abruptly stops – or “how close was he to catching that?” It looks like someone heard me.
It’s a great sign to see that the NFL recognizes the need to suppliment the stadium experience with some of the info-comforts of home – and they’re being proactive about it. One of the major criticisms going around the MLB this year is that the newer stadiums offer too many distractions from the game. That they’ve become a theme park of sorts where you and your family can do everything but watch the game. At CitiField alone I can go get food from around the world, see the Mets Hall of Fame, take my kid to hit a wiffle ball (and potentially win prizes). At other ballparks there are water slides and carnival games. Sometime during the course of a baseball game Astroland broke out.
This would be my only statement of caution, keep the focus on the game. And it seems the NFL understands this. According to the article they’re working on a smartphone app that will offer secondary views of action, deeper on-field analysis, stats, social games based around fantasy football and so on. Old-timers at MLB games may take a moment away from their scorekeeping to shake their head at the new generation’s focus on everything but the game. I don’t think the same will happen for the NFL.
Lastly there’s the (possibly unintended) future benefits of all this serving to further entrench fans into the league. The more investment individual fans make in the sport now, the harder it will be for them in the future to break away. This “funnel” argument was the basis for my work with a major fantasy sports project I worked on in 2009. You’re never going to lose the attention of stat-heads and die-hards. But like anything addictive, if you can deliver it to the casual fan in a way they find palatable (the wide-mouth of the funnel) and slowly intensify the offering as they get deeper (moving down the funnel) – offering deeper levels to drill down into – you’ll make lasting relationships and habits that are hard to break. The type and kinds of ancillary coverage and information on offer at the new Meadowlands leads me to believe the NFL understands this as well.
Study: The Problem With Mass Adoption of EVs in China
From Autoblog:
This study, conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory and China’s Tsinghua University, specifically focuses on China and concludes that mass EV adoption could lead to tremendously higher emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide due to the country’s widespread use of coal as a power source.
Here’s the skinny from the study:
China currently utilizes Euro III emission standards throughout much of the nation, though Euro IV is in use in some larger cities and will slowly replace the older standard within ten years. If charged by the current coal-heavy electrical mix displayed in the table above, EVs would double the nitrogen oxide emissions of Euro III gasoline vehicles.
EVs will not reduce carbon dioxide emissions in China unless coal technologies are improved upon or a shift towards cleaner power generation occurs in the future.
Mass adoption of EVs in China will cause sulfur dioxide emissions to increase by three to ten times the current level. Even advanced technologies such as coal washing cannot reduce sulfur dioxide emissions of EVs down to gasoline-powered vehicle levels.
Great Read
Fantastic essay by Steven Johnson on the value of keeping text/information linkable:
Ecologists talk about the “productivity” of an ecosystem, which is a measure of how effectively the ecosystem converts the energy and nutrients coming into the system into biological growth. A productive ecosystem, like a rainforest, sustains more life per unit of energy than an unproductive ecosystem, like a desert. We need a comparable yardstick for information systems, a measure of a system’s ability to extract value from a given unit of information. Call it, in this example: textual productivity. By creating fluid networks of words, by creating those digital-age commonplaces, we increase the textual productivity of the system.
…
The reason the web works as wonderfully as it does is because the medium leads us, sometimes against our will, into common places, not glass boxes. It’s our job—as journalists, as educators, as publishers, as software developers, and maybe most importantly, as readers—to keep those connections alive.
More On Courier
From Engadget:
the interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments
This is a fantastic idea. I’d imagine the same thing is possible with an iPhone or iPad via an “app”. However the lack of pen support makes the idea of the iPad replacing my moleskine rather unappealing.
I could do without the page-flipping, but I really like the ability to zoom out to go to a page at a macro-level. I’m also digging the positioning here that this thing is geared toward creatives who sketch, collect mood-art and ultimately create things. I could see myself benefiting from a device like this for sure…
Make Any Surface Multi-Touch
Transparent polymer film that can be applied to non conductive materials and turn them interactive. Very thin, it uses projected capacitive technology, making it possible to apply on the back of a glass and detect finger touch on the front of the glass.
Just thinking about re-imagining the interaction relationship between input and view. Right now (on a touchscreen device) you touch the thing you want, which blocks some other interface items from view. You’re also probably holding the device at the same time which makes managing all three difficult (how many times do you drop your phone?).
On the other end, keyboards, mice, pen-tablets, etc. are so rigid in their form and force the user into a certain mental and physical context in order to use them. Can applying this film to any surface open up the door to more ergonomic and smart view/interaction paradigms, such as touching directly behind the screen or on the side (to target different Z-depths)?
I can also see a future where non-traditional materials become candidates for use in technology implementations due to this film being applied (wood, fabric, etc.).
Approaching it From Both Ends
So if this:
had a large touchscreen instead of physical keys would it be a killer tablet PC?
I look at this and think of a point Marshall McLuhan made in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man: that just before a new medium arrives, the older medium mirrors some of the behaviors of the new one. My point isn’t that this idea can be correlated 1-to-one. but there’s something to it. Are tablets really going to take off the way we all think they can (finally)? This eee Keyboard is essentially weirdly formatted laptop (with no on-board battery I presume). Why not go all the way here and merge the Optimus Tactus with the eee?
=
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PAD++ Reborn
While at NYU I had the pleasure of attending a guest lecture by Ken Perlin. During this talk about non-linear thinking he demoed a very old program he called Pad++. It’s unique hook was that it had the ability to infinitely zoom in or out, thereby allowing you to organize information spatially. So, for instance, you could organize an entire encyclopedia around the alphabet and each level of zoom into the letters could reveal more detail. We’ve seen this UI treatment a lot lately everywhere from Photosynth to the various Wefail “zoomer” sites.
Now there’s a mind-mapping software called Prezi that also employs this metaphor. Positioned as a web-based alternative to Powerpoint, the unique differentiator lies in it’s inherent non-linear structure. I’m kicking the tires on this a bit now and can’t wait for an opportunity to give this a try. Check it out.
AR is Everywhere
And I like it…
AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.
It’s Getting Interesting
It’s getting interesting:
The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google’s Web site, will be based on the company’s nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.
Like I’ve said for a while, all you need is “browser” and a low-level way to control physical compute resources local and remote.
Someone explain to me why I need Windows/OSX and all of it’s power if I’m hitting the same 10 “websites” (read: RIAs) over and over to write documents, email spreadsheets, edit and share photos, etc.?