C'N'C plug generation asked me to spread the word about the C'N'C Plug Generation Contest, a new graphic design competition for talented graphic designers! Interpret in your own way the slogan C'N'C Plug Generation with a photo, a composite, mural, stickers, video clip or sculpture and send it in!
The best creations will be used as graphics for a series of T-shirts and accessories to be showcased during Milan Fashion Week in February. You’ve got till 30 January 2009 to focus your ideas, create them and send them in! The jury will select three original and unpublished concepts (such as pictures, composites, wall-paintings, stickers, graphics, banner, sculpture) representing in a young and creative way the logo "C'N'C PLUG GENERATION".
Prizes
1st - 1000€
2nd - an iPhone
3rd - an iPhone
+ your winning T-shirts and accessories logo will be presented during Milan Fashion Week this February 2009!
Rules
Read the rules ->here<- Participant must create a concept with any artistic technique, including free-hand drawing and digital art, photography and sculpture. The concept must be sent online to CND in JPG, TIFF, GIF, PDF or PNG format, file of a maximum of 5 MB. The directions on how to upload your creation can be found ->here<-
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Graphic design competition -> A new logo for C'N'C Plug Generation!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
A new social network!
I love testing new social communities, as a way of seeing what features make such a network unique. I recently joined 3GB, the 1st Arabic social community network, and in it, you create a profile, smoothly upload a photo album, navigate through your friends albums within your profile, create a blog, join groups for discussions and so forth. What is unique so far is the possibility to chat within profiles, integrate your friends photo albums into your profile, and listen to a selection of music. The music player is great! The chat application is clean as it runs within the browser fast! It will be great to see this community grow.
A new social network is an opportunity. As someone interested in the web, and where applications on the web are going, when you join a network with 300 people on it, with interesting features and sort of a unique balance between the different features that separate it from the big current social networks, you’re diving into the emerging trends and possibilities of the online social world.
I have been asked to review this social network, but I will surely add it to my selection!
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Blog Jouons 
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Demoing ideas!
Soon my research lab opens its house! It is reserved to corporate sponsors only, but the Media Lab recently started an initiative opened to the public. The initiative, the LabCAST, highlights projects in their latest stages through videos. I recommend watching them!
One of the lab's primary source of funding comes from more than 60 corporate sponsors whose businesses range from electronics to entertainment, furniture to finance, and toys to telecommunications! So we demo our latest prototypes and research ideas ranging from engineering to social sciences.
"Adventures in Science" illustration by Allan Sanders
A very busy time for us bricoleurs-researchers as we need to put together our latest ideas in a demo-able format. We need to reorganize the demo space, clean the old toys, bring new ones, empty the entire floor, use carpet cleaners, basically make the space looks bright and shiny!
I recently reorganized my research area to bring my projects together, start presenting a story about my line of work. From Psychohaptics a set of haptic garments for health care, to Picture This! a new input device for video capturing and editing! Working on the proposal for my general exams for my PhD I am defining a framework for my research that I hope to present at the open house.
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Blog Jouons
Friday, March 14, 2008
Recycle your equipment!
The power of digital technology fundamentally transforms our lives. Materiality is being technically extended. The digital offers another variety of artifacts that impact remembrance. While expanding our experience, some things also get lost along the path to de-materialization.
For the contextual area of my general exams I research on the attachments to physical, digital and virtual objects. I explore the psychological trade-off between what we call virtual and tangible “attachments”: I focus on people’s attachments to things, and through things, their relations to people (virtual and digital).
I investigate the journey of the physical and digital object being appropriated, collected, hacked, transformed, possessed and shared on virtual environments and communities. I review the hacker’ skills in appropriating objects by transforming it: the Nintendo Wii becomes an umbrella with a map to provide real time directions while on the walk. The Roomba becomes a robotic dog, Guitar Heroe becomes Guitaraoke Revolution a learning system!
A hacked Roomba by Hacking Roomba dot com
With the industrial revolution we lost our ability to intervene on the design of our objects. Even if the old paradigm of mass production has been thrown away, dixit Pine, I believe that Mass Customization only allows few parameters in a product to be customized. There is no appropriation of the object as in the artisan-customer relationship. That is what came to mind while I was repairing my old mac, I had so much fun opening the machine, looking for tutorial and guides, ordering missing parts just to give a life to this machine.
A bit of nostalgia maybe, but recycling and reusing laptop parts, computer parts, and any objects in general would not only be good for the environment but also recreate this sense of ownership through creative use and appropriation. That is why I am so fascinated by hackers, custom car designers and also collectors. Everything could be recycled, reused, repaired, reinvented and investigated!
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Blog Jouons
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Wanna get an old new-mac?
Me with my PowerBook G4, on the road from San Francisco to San Diego
Being a big fan of Tim Mott's concept of guided fantasies with the need of rigorous user testing for designing user interfaces, I find Apple computers being all about user's needs.
I recently repaired my old Power Book G4 to give it to my grand ma, who had almost no computer experience. After testing with her different platforms, she prefers working with a trackpad than a usual mouse. She loves the drag and drop and prefers it to the open/close menu. In sum, the mac interface and the macbook pro seems perfect for her. Teaching her using my old mac was so nice combining my knowledge in usability to the love for my grand ma. Now she is on Skype regularly and I can talk and chat with her!
Apple iMac G4
You can get Apple parts for old computers online. DV Warehouse is an avid reseller of used mac. It proposes a wide range of Macintosh computers and individual parts. They have pretty good deals, have a lot of Apple parts, and also nostalgic pieces such as the Apple iMac G4 or the iMac G3. The Apple community needs this kind of single source for used Mac and used Macintosh computers parts. So you can start designing, repairing and hacking old macs!
The Apple iMac G3
I could not find the Apple I, Apple's first product! "Sold as an assembled circuit board, it lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case."
Apple 1 with an added keyboard and a wooden case. Photo taken by rebelpilot
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Blog Jouons
Friday, January 11, 2008
GPS tracking and goggle earth navigation
I've looked for GPS - Global Positioning System- recently. Wouldn't that be awesome for the iphone to have GPS technology integrated while being connected to Google Earth? All in one certainly! One product, the GPS Tracking Key, is a pocket sized device that receives signals from the twenty-four Department of Defense GPS satellites orbiting the earth. And it is ... Google Earth compatible!
"The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Utilizing a constellation of at least 24 Medium Earth Orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, the system enables a GPS receiver to determine its location, speed, direction, and time. Other similar systems are the Russian GLONASS (incomplete as of 2007), the upcoming European Galileo positioning system, the proposed COMPASS navigation system of China, and IRNSS of India. - Wikipedia"
As you might already know, the internal computer accurately determines the GPS location of the device within 2.5 meters and records this data every second. In this GPS tracking device, the Data can be downloaded and view in Google Earth simply by plugging the Tracking Key into the USB port of a computer. It seems that connecting it to the iphone wouldn't be that hard!
Here are a few links shared by Aaron Zinman on samples to code the iphone:
MobileScrobbler -- Last FM client with lots of UIKit use, iPod access & monitoring, Calendar Integration
doom ported
nes emulator home page
svn repo
MAME ported over SDL
bluetooth/wifi access/cell tower
video conferencing
Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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