PSFK recently released a new report called the "Future of Mobile Tagging". Art Loop Open, an IIT ID designed project in the Chicago Loop is profiled as one of the projects in this report. An IIT ID team developed and implemented the experience design for Art Loop Open.
You can see the report here - (the project is profiled on page 76).
Today's amazing animated {CS3} Google Doodle celebrates Jules Verne's birthday. You have to check it out to see how imaginative and beautiful the Doodle is: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en
Art Loop Open is an innovative city-wide art exhibition designed with the intention of mobilizing the general public to engage with art, artists and each other. Modeled on the very successful ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ALO had 200 unique pieces of art juried and exhibited across 13 different venues in the city of Chicago. The venues were selected from the 200+ merchants in the Loop district of Chicago and included high profile stations such as Macy’s Flagship Store, the historic Palmer House Hotel, the Burnham Hotel, the Hard Rock Hotel, Merchandise Mart, among others.
The organizers of the event, the Chicago Loop Alliance, and the Chicago Artists Coalition worked closely with the IIT Institute of Design to plan and implement the experience design for ALO. The period of design for ALO was about 6 months, from beginning (when the project was announced) to end (period of the exhibition). Most of the planning process was conducted during the summer months (June, July, August) in a team of 4 graduate students led by Anijo Mathew.
This is an exciting project which allowed us to develop a reasonably complex interactive user experience using ID methods, tools and most importantly early prototyping.
You can see and vote at Art Loop Open from Oct 15-29. Hub37, which is the centerstage of the event is located at Block 37 (108 North State Street).
via gizmodo.com
Eerily similar to a project done by my students in the Interactive Media Workshop...a great implementation of AR technology in the city.
StreetMuseum mashes Google Maps and geo-tagged content to generate interesting locative media. Such intersections of technology, architecture, and urban space is a very exciting direction for interactive technology and media. Imagine what this will do for learning!
via shakeoutblog.com
One of my students, Raph forwarded this blog post to me and I procrastinated from reading it. Till now!
Click the link for TWO amazing videos - both of which show why Games and Game Theory will effect the way we design...
Good watch (especially the second one - Jesse Schell @ DICE, which is already quite viral).
{thanks Raph}
via www.wired.com
The new Microsoft offering is KIN - a set of two Socialphones - KIN1 and KIN2 + KIN Studio - an online portal where all your information is stored. The KIN is a feature phone that is entirely about your social network. Historically, KIN comes from Project Pink, which in turn started with MS's acquisition of Danger. What is most interesting for interaction design is that these phones follow a trend that MS has taken with regard to phones recently - keep it "information" centric instead of "app" centric.
The approach is both unique and commendable - the question is will Socialphones matter in a world of extremely agile Smartphones?
The end of an era but great news for the Smartphone market. Buyers will be looking to tap into the large portfolio of patents that Palm has horded over the last few decades of it's existence. HTC is listed as one the interested parties - given HTC's connections with Google, that would make them a power player among the top three (Apple, Google, and Microsoft).
Exciting times lie ahead...
So how do I
use cloud computing? Perhaps the biggest hurdle with the cloud is that it is
difficult for most of us to move directly from hard resources to soft resources
and now to the online resources. Eventually, like a Gibsonian dream,
all my instances will be on the cloud. But till then, the primary reason I use
the cloud apps is to sync information stored locally on my hard drives
with information on the cloud.
Here are some
of the cloud apps running in the background of my machines (a Tablet and
Netbook running Windows 7 and an iPhone running MacOS):
Like
everyone, I have much of my information stored on Google. Through a suite of
cloud applications like GoogleDocs, Picasa and GMail {for contacts and
calendar}, I am able to store a lot of information and share this information
with anyone I choose. I dont think I need to explain Google Docs and the
amazing ability to now construct information in real time with multiple
collaborators. You have no idea (or maybe you do) how useful a tool Google Docs
can be when you are trying to co-ordinate information across multiple parties
that are not co-located! In addition Google also has Google Sync which syncs the
calendar and contacts on my iPhone with GMail - all over the air, while Google
Calendar Sync allows me to keep the calendar on my desktop Outlook and
GMail sync'ed.
I update
files all the time, and not always on the same machine. How do I make sure all
of this information is properly synced across different machines? Surprisingly
the answer comes from a company you probably weren't expecting -
Microsoft!
Microsoft has
made a host of new acquisitions to move their operations to the cloud. One such interesting acquisition is FolderShare (bought
from ByteTaxi in 2005 and now called Windows Live Sync). This is a free service
that allows you to sync the files in 2 or more computers. Live Sync allows upto
20 folders (or "libraries") and each library can contain a maximum of
20,000 files and each file cannot exceed 4GB. You will not believe how useful
Live Sync is - I can now make a change on one machine and expect to see the
same file when I open up the other one. All over the air! Microsoft also
offers a second service that is extremely useful - Skydrive. Skydrive is part of the Live suite
and offers you 25 GB of access-anywhere-as-long-as-you-have-internet space (for
free)! Of course to compete with Google, Microsoft has now taken their
Office suite of products to the cloud - called Office Live, it offers pretty much
the same as Google Docs - except that if you have Windows and Office 2007 or
later you can save directly from your desktop to your Live folder.
Dropbox is another app I use frequently.
The great thing about Dropbox is that it sets up a folder on your desktop and
has an app for the iPhone. What this means is that I can drag upto 2 GB {for
free, more if you pay} worth of files and documents into the Dropbox folder -
and it will be sync'ed across all Dropbox instances (including my iPhone).
After a recent upgrade cleared out all my contacts on the iPhone - I decided that my contact list was too valuable to lose. So I decided to do another search for a cloud app to store my contacts - and surprise, surprise, I found one. Soocial is a cloud app that allows you to store your contacts and sync it across multiple connections. So Outlook on my Tablet and Netbook as well as my GMail contacts are all connected to Soocial - such that if I make a change in any one of these, that change is {nearly immediately} reflected across all the others.
So far my schizophrenic lifestyle has been great - thanks to these and other purely-on-the-cloud apps that make my digital life so much easier. What cloud apps run in the background of your machines?
In this month's WIRED magazine,
there is an article about cloud computing - like all good ideas it starts with
one man who is just simply so pissed off with another, that he wants to beat him up with a club (or hard drive, you pick)! In this case, the angry man is Larry Ellison {the man
behind Oracle} and the person he is angry at is Bill Gates {the man behind
Windows 95, the reason Ellison is angry!}. Out of this rage, came a
"vision for Oracle that would neutralize Microsoft’s main advantage: the
dominance of its operating system. They imagined a simple machine that would
eschew software installed on a hard drive in favor of accessing applications
online. Data — videos, documents, pictures — would be stored in Oracle databases
instead of on the computer itself."
What a
brilliant idea! Except it wasn't Oracle that finally did it - it was Google!
Merely 2 years after Ellison and his brilliant vision, two young Stanford
graduates set up a company that would redefine computing forever!
But cloud
computing is older than Google or Oracle. John McCarthy as early as
1960 suggested that "computation may someday be organized as a public
utility". In 1999, Loudcloud, founded by Marc Andreessen, was one of the
first to attempt to commercialize cloud computing. {see the Wikipedia
entry on cloud
computing}. Amazon and IBM's work on significant technologies for data
services led to many of the revolutions in cloud computing. Macromedia (before
they moved to Adobe), AutoDesk, and Dassault Systems have all tried out various
trials to move thinner versions of their software to the cloud. But in the end,
it was Google with their Docs, infinite storage, and near free digital
connection tools that made cloud computing truly accessible to everyone.
This year, with their announcement of the Chrome OS, Google is redefining the way we access and store our information forever. Cloud computing is here to stay - now if only everyone could just catch up!
via www.nytimes.com
Bill Moggridge, a friend of the school and one of the founders of IDEO has found a new calling. With the lifetime achievement award at the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards and now this appointment, it looks like its going to be a good decade for Bill.
Congratulations Bill!