Tilt and feel

Shoogle, created by John Williamson, Roderick Murray-Smith, Stephen Hughes at the University of Glasgow, UK, is an interface for sensing data within a mobile device.

It is based around active exploration: devices are shaken, revealing the contents rattling around “inside”. Vibrotactile display and realistic impact sonification create a compelling system. Inertial sensing is used for completely eyes-free, single-handed interaction that is entirely natural.

Download the Shoogle's paper for Chi 2007
Video of Shoogle

Stephen Hughes was previously a researcher in the Palpable Machines research group with Sile O'Modhrain at Media Lab Europe. The group published key papers on vibrotactile display and mobile multi-modal interfaces.


MESH an iPaq running a simple tilt-driven maze game by the Palpable Machines group

Tangible Programming in the Classroom

Tern: Wooden blocks shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces

Created by Michael Horn and Robert J.K. Jacob at Tufts University, Tern is a tangible programming language for middle school and late elementary school students. Children connect the tailored wooden blocks to form physical computer programs, which may include action commands, loops, branches, and subroutines.

Download Tern's paper for Chi'07


Quetzal

Prior to designing Tern, the authors created Quetzal (pronounced ket-sal), a "tangible programming language designed for children and novice programmers to control LEGO MINDSTORMS robots. It consists of over one hundred interlocking tiles representing flow-of-control structures, actions, and data. Programmers arrange and connect these tiles to define algorithms which can include loops, branches, and concurrent execution."

Also Oren Zuckerman from the MIT Media Lab created Systems Thinking Blocks for children to model and simulate dynamic systems.


Flow Blocks for children "to create 3D structures in space, that look like common structures in life"

SuiPo: the interactive poster

The interactive Poster “SuiPo” by Fuminori Tsunoda, Takayuki Matsumoto, Takeshi Nakagawa, Mariko Utsunomiya, East Japan Railway uses a combination of IC card ticket Suica and Internet accessible mobile phone where customers can get e-mail information by touching their IC card ticket on the reader located near the poster.

More on SuiPo

Japanese books

Cute Japanese books I found on amazon.jp!

Another book

Books I bought today ...



Sagmeister: Made You Look by Peter Hall, Booth-Clibborn publisher.



Envisioning information by Edward Tufte


Curious Boym: Design Works The discreet charm of the ordinary by Constantin Boym, Peter Hall, Steven Skov Holt

Refreshing ads

Nice for the summer! Via frederik samuel

In the Ibirapuera Park, there were vaporizers placed to refresh visitors. On the sides of these vaporizers, there is a place designed to propagate publicity. They used visuals of people coughing and sneezing with the message that “the flu is in the air”. Agency: QG, Brazil; Copywriter: Edu Marques; Art Director: Luis Tauffer

The Apple iRack

glumbert.com

More jokes for a sunny Sunday ... the Apple iRack!

When technoloy tries the impossible

Turn off your cell phone, GSM system tracks mobile phone via the GPS-TRACK satellite network! Thanks Josh for the link!
Online software (beta)

Interact 2007

Prototypes of Moving Pictures

Yessss! The full paper written for Interact 2007 with Dr Hiroshi Ishii is accepted! It shows how Textable Movie designed for facilitating video production has informed Moving Pictures. It presents a mechanism to seamlessly interface the various parts in video production and present our observations. The conference topic is socially-responsible interaction. So see you in Rio de Janeiro in September!

Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland are discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform are addressed.

Download the 14 pages paper

Thank you all of you for your feedback!

Flying video-taking pet?

Would you like a flying video-taking pet that follows you around? Here is a fun visionary video on the future of mobile technology for teenagers by Microsoft found on RoomWare


Video: Career in Computer Science - MS Research