This one here looks nice. The NXT is a interactive, programmable system to develop robots with Lego Mindstorm components. The NXT can be programmed by a drag and drop interface and you can use various sensors to control your robot. There is also the possibility included to operate the NXT via remote by bluetooth mobiles. I think this will be pure fun, not only for children. The NXT should be in Germany released in october 2006 and will cost 279 EUR. You can look at nxtbot-blog for examples.

Lately I found another interesting programming language for children, called Blopp. You program your Blopp in a patch-like way to find your way through a maze and interact with others. Blopp is in-between games and learning. The goal of this project is, to teach children “socialized coding”. Computers are more than just inserting a DVD for a computergame. Coding is also more than stupid algorithms. It’s a way to get your ideas realized.

¿Que prefiere usted: la Música o la Charcutería?
Parece que es una pregunta que tendría que hacerse a la hora de los entremeses.

[Erik Satie. Simple pregunta, Memorias de un amnésico]

Which to choose when you are truly hungry. A beautiful painting by Monet of an apple? Or a real apple that is bruised and ugly? The choice is simple for anyone I think.

[John Maeda. Process vs outcome]

VisualID is a very interesting research study. They used automatic generated icons for new created files in addition to the filename. The idea behind it is, that people can recognise forms and shapes more easy than filenames. At the first sight this approach might seem arbitrary and confusing, but if you work in a workspace, you will get a relationship to the symbols.

The FAQ says:

“A major principle underlying this work is that, while ‘meaningful’ icons would be ideal, people actually have little trouble learning to recognize arbitrary icons and their relationship to content. Learning and recognizing somewhat arbitrary appearance and associated information is something that is often done instantly and effortlessly in the real world, and learning icon appearance does not appear to be an exception to this phenomenon.”

[via infosthetics.com]

Last.fm hat seine Seite verfeinert. Optisch kommt das ganze jetzt typisch zweipunktnullig daher, sprich Farbverläufe, Schlagschatten und runde Ecken. Das sieht alles sehr schick aus und lässt sich gut bedienen. Aber das wesentliche passiert hinter der Oberfläche. Als Einstieg gibt jetzt das Dashboard, mit einer Übersicht über zuletzt erschienen Artikel und Formuposts, Online-Status von Freunden und Nsachbarn und was sie gerade so hören, 10 Songs die mir gefallen könnten zu anhören undundund.

Auch der player wurde überarbeitet. Schon bei der Installation wird nun das audioscrobbler Plugin für iTunes etc. installiert. Danach gehts aber erst richtig los. Wie bisher kann man die Sender nach Künstler oder Tag auswählen. Zu jeder Anfrage werden einem automatisch gleich eine Handvoll alternative Vorschläge gemacht.

Zu jedem Titel gibts wie vorher auch schon Titel Albumname und Interpret, alles natürlich schön mit der last.fm Seite verlinkt. Neu sind die Angaben der tags für den Titel , ein Shopping-Link, ähnliche Künstler, und was das beste ist, die Wiki Einträge zu dem jeweligen Künstler.

War das taggen von Titeln vorher doch recht umständlich, ist es auch das mit dem neuen Payer ein Kinderspiel. Einfach den Tag-Button gedrückt und dann den Titel, das Album oder den Künstler getaggt. Auch schön der Recommend Button mit dem man Titel seinen Freunden empfehlen kann. Unter “My Profil” gibts unter anderen Infos zu den zuletzt gespielten, geliebten und gebannten Songs und die Möglichkeit die Stationen von Nachbarn, Freunden oder bestimmten Tags auszuwählen (allerdinsg nur für zahlendes Publikum).

Alles in allem ein großer Wurf.

technorati tags:music, radio

Here I am with my first experiment with physical computing. It has been very tough as start, especially with the shopping, lots of stuff bought wrongly not there being a cool shop where they can assist you on that here in London (Maplin sucks).

Being quite a fanatic on digital interfaces and usability the first one couldn’t be something related to that.

Depth Sensitive Billboard is just a very simple experiment based on a very strong concept in Infovis: different layers of information help to provide optimized information to the user based on his interest.

Schönes Video zu einem schönen Lied von Sarah Assbring alias El Perro del mar.

technorati tags:music, video, indiepop

As someone may know I always liked to talk about interactive design projects, I did it in different web magazines so taking advantage of my new html based blog I was definitely going on doing it here. But then I thought that maybe it was better to keep my personal stuff separated and also that someone could be interested in joining me writing some small stuff. By the way, here you can find the new tiny blog I just launched and will follow a small description grabbed from the first post.

—– start copy —–

In the last few years there has been an increasing consideration of new topics in design that were previously ignored. Technology has brought with it new potentialities but also new issues and new challenges. The experience of the user while reading and browsing digital information is of key consideration. It is vital that the user understands the data in the easiest, maybe most intuitive, way possible. Considering that almost every data can now be digitalised – even our DNA – the way we use this information and refine it according to user interaction becomes fundamental.

Everyday designers face these new challenges when trying to explore new ways on interfacing people with themselves or with data. Given the quickening evolution of technology, the “perfect” solution doesn’t exist, or at least can’t exist for long. So there is a continuous need for thinking.

ID-Review is born with the aim of encouraging thought and discussion about the new solutions thought-up by designers. We don’t propose to come up with finite solutions ourselves, but merely examine, evaluate and anticipate potential solutions as part of a collaborative process.
—– end copy —–

I hope to see you there soon!

Today I was stepping into the latest version of MaxMSP 4.5.7 and then I figured out, that they have now javascript integration on board. You can do crazy things in maxMSP now like you used to do in processing. It really seems, that javascrips is becoming more and more an interesting extension language. Not only the rants about AJAX here, but the capability to enhance web scripting to do websites very close to applications. I mentioned earlier before, that you can also extend Adobe Illustrator with Javascript. This seems fine to me and I think I will spend more time coding Javascript than any other scripting thing. When will vvvv extend its scripting facility?

Just back from Prague where the beer is far too cheap. But I have have an array of notes on a variety of subjects that have lots of urls in them - day 1 (Julian Oliver of Select Parks), day 2 (Cyril Brom - A.I.), day 3 (Louis Bec and Christina Sommera - digital life forms), day 4 (Cory Ondrejka of Second Life and Eva Petersson & Tony Brooks - EyeToy and related work for the disabled). All in this folder.

Feeling inspired I’ve started on learning Python, I steered clear before thinking it looked too much like Lingo but I found I’d misunderstood how efficient it was to work in. Blender comes with a Python interpreter built in and can even take OSC messages. Top Dollar!

If you’re in Second Life at all I decided to set up an account. I’ll be the odd looking short white racoon in black called Robotacid Yin. From the talk we got in Prague there seems to be a whole new audience in there and Cory was quite insistent that they’re letting the users decide the direction of Second Life, and it seems to be more about creating your own objects and scripts than some version of the Sims (which the site seems to suggest).

Blprnt has linked it already but I’m linking it again for my own referencing: Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Brevity has been mentioned in the forums and looks like one to watch. Everyone I think would like the option to straight code Flash.

A cheap solution to a conference camera.

An entertaining bit of 3D and After Effects usage (movie).

For those of you who use MySpace like I barely do, you might be interested in customising that dreadful layout - this is a rather good example.

Una película de cuyo nombre no me acuerdo: Un hombre mayor y acomodado, con una inmensa colección de libros de gran valor decide un buen día venderlos al primero que se los compre. Cuando su hija, bastante preocupada, le pregunta por la razón, éste responde sin darle mayor importancia: “Tenía que deshacerme de ellos. Ejercían una presión invisible, como si tuviera que leerlos todos…”

Un amigo solía llamar a sus favoritos “páginas que nunca volveré a ver”. Y en cierto modo, es común que sea así. Salvo los recursos más o menos técnicos que enlazas para tener siempre a mano, hay muchísimas páginas que guardas (o bueno, al menos yo) que probablemente nunca revisites. Puede (suele) pasar también con la música, con pdfs, con fotos, con software, con tipografías… En el mundo digital es tan fácil guardar que en muchas ocasiones ni siquiera nos planteamos si servirá para algo o no… “por si acaso”.

Sin embargo, no creo que al acumular nos hagamos la vida más fácil, ni tengamos las cosas más a mano. A mayor cantidad de información, más difícil es recuperarla, por lo que muchas veces acabaremos haciendo una nueva búsqueda fuera de nuestros archivos cuando algo nos haga falta.

En cualquier caso, guardar y acumular parecen comportamientos bastante naturales. Yo no puedo evitarlo… ¿Por qué lo hacemos?

Du bist zu faul zum mp3 bloggen, du hast gar keinen blog? Macht nichts. Picksstation hat alles was du brauchst. Die Oberfläche ist einfach gehalten: Link zum Titel, Name von Song und Band, Tags (klar), und Kommentar eingeben und das wars. Die Songs können dann von allen bewertet werden und die höchst gewerteten erscheinen auf der Startseite. Was aber auch nicht so wichtig ist weil man sich das ganze auch in allen möglichen Varianten als rss in seinen Reader holen kann oder noch besser gleich in iTunes importieren. Das ganze ist natürlich beta (was sonst).

technorati tags:music, blog

Daniel Shiffman has been hacking a Color Kinetics LED tile and documenting the process.

By packet sniffing the data from Color Kinetics software to the tile enabled Daniel to figure out how it worked. He has now created a Processing library that reads the pixels of the display window, converts them to a 12×12 matrix, and writes them out as UDP packets to the data/power supply for the LEDs.

I imagine that the Color Kinetics software and hardware is closed source, so I hope that if they see this work they will encourage such use of their products.

Video 1, Video 2, Video 3 (requires latest Quicktime player). Photos on Flickr.

Related posts: Lightspace Corporation, DIY disco dancefloor, Kabarets Prophecy.

Ok my last multi-touch post for a while. Jens Wunderling, a student of digital media class UDK Berlin, had also been creating a multi-touch surface for a community noticeboard project.

Jens began his project quite some time ago, but has had to put it on hold to complete other university work. The whole process has been documented on his blog, from buying the right cameras, hooking up the infrared LEDs and vision tracking software.

Whilst there are no examples of interaction techniques, the technology works and Jens has provided all Processing source code, Eyesweb and VVVV patches. If anyone else out there is working on multi-touch interaction, let me know.