hello.

Here’s a handy little data source, probably fun for webscraping and visualizations: http://www.worldometers.info/. Thanks to Kristin O’Friel for the link.

Shaping Things Bruce Sterling, Boston, MIT Press, ©2005, ISBN 0-2626-9326-7.
Bruce Sterling’s take on a plausible future in which everything made has a network address, and therefore a documented and documentable history. He takes this vision to its extreme, showing how it changes everything from design to manufacturing to consumption to disposal of material goods. An inspiring read if you’re interested in networks, material or information design, or sustainability.

Technorati Tags: design, environment, law, networked objects, networks, pcomp, philosophy, physical computing, RFID, sociology, sustainability

IWAR - the Information Warfare site. A frightening read.

Technorati Tags: infrastructures, networked objects, networks, sociology

Some notes on AODV - An Ad Hoc Routing Protocol, from Ahmi Wolf.
From the intro page:
“The Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing algorithm is a routing protocol designed for ad hoc mobile networks. AODV is capable of both unicast and multicast routing. It is an on demand algorithm, meaning that it builds routes between nodes only as desired by source nodes. It maintains these routes as long as they are needed by the sources. Additionally, AODV forms trees which connect multicast group members. The trees are composed of the group members and the nodes needed to connect the members. AODV uses sequence numbers to ensure the freshness of routes. It is loop-free, self-starting, and scales to large numbers of mobile nodes. ”
This could be very useful for certain types of networked objects, when spontaneous and casual connections are needed, along the lines of edström, Holmquist, Dahlberg and Ljungstrand’s Ad Hoc Information Spaces, among others.
The Mobility Management and Networking Lab (MOMENT), home of AODV.
Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer, who worked on AODV.

Technorati Tags: networks

Brian Jepson and I will be giving a workshop on Making Things Talk at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology conference in the first week of March this year. It should be a lot of fun. We’ll be teaching participants to make a physical game controller for a networked game of pong. The controller is a variation on some of the projects in the book, and should enable a very special activity that’s not always seen at E-Tech…

I finally got my hands on an Openmoko Neo1973 phone tonight. Not sure if it’s ready for primetime. A few notes:

It took me an hour and a half to flash the root file system and kernel on it. The getting started page and the Mac OSX page were helpful. I used this version of the kernel from buildhost.automated.it and the 2007.11 snapshot of the rootfs.

The operating system takes longer to load than OSX 10.4 on my macbook.

There are a couple things about the UI that bother me:

• It’s not obvious how to answer or hang up a call
• There’s no obvious way to access system settings through the UI, including things as basic as ringtone or volume
• It’s apparently not yet possible to send or get text messages.
• There’s no way to turn it off when the OS hangs, other than removing the battery.

I hope it gets better. It’s a nifty-looking phone.

From the Chaos Communication Camp comes Open Beacon. It’s basically an open design for actrive RFID:

“OpenBeacon is a free design for an active RFID device which operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band. The device contains a unique serial number, but may have other information. OpenBeacon is designed as a transceiver device and therefore both transmits and receives radio waves. The intention of this project is to offer a wide range of use cases such as visitor or item tracking and wireless remote control with a free self-contained and low-cost RFID design.”

Thanks to Massimo Banzi for the link.

Technorati Tags: electronics, networks, open source, RFID

Johanna Brewer sent this to me. Looks like a fun workshop, I wish I could go.

A Public Inconvenience
The 3rd workshop in the in-between-ness series.

Subterranean, ceramic-tiled bathrooms, plastic temporary urinals or compact, metallic washrooms in transit spaces; public toilets are an often-overlooked space in our urban environment. Technologies designed for the city often try to abstract away from the inconvenient necessities which our bodies require; or, when they are designed explicitly for public toilets, the focus is on supporting the cultural values of hygiene and privacy. What do we miss by ignoring the fact that public toilets are also the site for a variety of social practices?

‘A Public Inconvenience’ will explore the experience and affect of public toilets in an urban environment, in this case Amsterdam. Through observation and engagement we will consider how public toilets are shaped by, and themselves shape, cultural practices, values, and attitudes. And further, how this essential part of the urban fabric contributes to the everyday experience we have of our cities.

‘A Public Inconvenience’ is the third in a series of workshops exploring in-between-ness in urban environments. That is, the places and times that are often on the periphery of everyday life - the journey to work or the time spent queuing in a shop.

To be considered for participation, researchers and practitioners are invited to send us a compelling public toilet story (see The Stories section of the website for inspiration), an optional toilet photograph, a brief biography, and a short rationale outlining your interest in the workshop. This document should not exceed two pages.

Submissions:
Send to karen.martin@ucl.ac.uk by 21st September 2007
Acceptance Notification is 28th September 2007

Further Information:
http://www.inbetweeness.org/apublicinconvenience/

Place and Time:
26th & 27th October 2007
Waag Society, Amsterdam

Organisers:
Arianna Bassoli (The London School of Economics)
Johanna Brewer (University of California, Irvine)
Karen Martin (Bartlett School of Graduate Studies)
Valentina Nisi (Fattoria Mediale)
Martine Posthuma de Boer (Fattoria Mediale)

Technorati Tags: cities, conferences & workshops, design, environment

…at least, my favorite examples of physical computing.

Durrell Bishop’s Marble Answering Machine - A really nice example of using tangible elements not only as memory tokens, but as physical interface. This image has been quoted in many different papers on the web, but curiously, I couldn’t find a link to Durrell’s own version of it. This one comes from a link on Sriam Subramaniam’s homepage, but I think they may have gotten it from Rachel Abrams’ paper.

Toshio Iwai’sPiano - As Image Media - The interaction is quite simple, and even traditional, in computer interface terms (a trackball), but the effect is beautiful.

Tad Hirsch’s TripWire - I love the fact that it’s relevant to the city it was designed for, and attempts to address real political issues in that town with just the right level of seriousness and humor.

Maywa Denki’s BitMan - The behavior seems entirely natural when you play with it, as the little man moves from one side to the next as you rotate the object. The quality of the animation, despite the low resolution, is what makes it work so well for me. They pack so much character into very few bits. Scott McCloud would be proud of them.

Nabaztag is a networked toy rabbit. It talks in response to email messages, it wiggles its ears, and it lights up. Similar to Mark Argo’s mobjects idea. The nifty thing: they’re a product, and they’re less than $100.
Thanks to Alexander Grunsteidl and Doria Fan for the link.

Technorati Tags: networked objects, networks, pcomp, physical computing, puppy, toys