Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Great Blogs about Natural User Interfaces: Joshua Blake Deconstructing the NUI & Jonathan Brill : Multitouch Maven_ (Point and Do)
Josh Blake is a .NET, SharePoint, and Microsoft Surface consultant for InfoStrat, located in Northern Virginia. If you are interested in natural user interfaces, you'll appreciate his blog, Deconstructing the NUI He posts only a few times a month, but what you'll find is thoughtful insight regarding natural user interfaces that rely on multi-touch or gesture interaction.
Here are a few of Josh's posts:
The Natural User Interface Revolution
Pleasing the Brain with Magical Interfaces
Deconstructing: SilverPAC's Multi-Touch Website
Limiting the Multi-touch Vocabulary
Jonathan Brill is an independent consultant who focuses on multitouch product strategy, design, and development, and previously served as an embedded consultant at Microsoft Surface. His blog, Multitouch Maven, provides a wealth of information regarding multi-touch and gesture interaction and interfaces.
Here are a few of his posts:
New Multitouch Interface Conventions
Creating Intuitive Gestures Using Object Orientation
Using Auras to Maintain User Orientation
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wow! A view of the ClustrMap of my blog visitors from around the world
I have a ClustrMap widget on my Interactive Multimedia Technology blog- I forgot all about it until today, when I noticed it it was getting pretty full.
So I clicked on it to get a better look:
The world map above represents 24,254 visits between December 2008 and May 2009. I am amazed. My on-line file cabinets really are open to the world!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
ElderGadget Blog: Useful Tech and Tools
Today I came across the ElderGadget Blog when I was searching for technology that might be helpful to my father, who recently spent the last few weeks in an intensive care unit.
Here are a few things I found on the blog, including what I found when I followed a link to the bindependent website:
Smart Table: A Broadband Communication System for the Elderly
ID Studiolab, Delft University of Technology, NL
"The smart system is aimed to prevent possible social isolation between elderly people and their social contacts. It consists of the Smart Table and the Smart Messenger, which provide easy and intuitive way for elderly people to benefit from the advantage of communication technology and improve the satisfaction of their social activities."
"During the design research, a working prototype is made and evaluated by a user test. The Smart Table offers people a way to use broadband communication without the need for a computer. The television will be used for video communication (web-cam) and the table as user-interface. On the table contact persons can be selected and images and video can be shared. The elderly person can capture images that will be shared instantly. The contact person can select images from his or her computer, which will be projected on the table of the elderly person". (TU Delft - Faculty Industrial Design Engineering - Master Design for Interaction - Project Interactive Technology Design - Vincent Steurs & Juin-Yi Huang) 
Demy Kitchen Safe Touchscreen Reader
Photo Watch
Clarity-C900: Amplified Big Button Cell Phone 
911 Guardian: "Tiny wearable speakerphone"
Extra Large TV Remote Control
SmartShopper: Electronic grocery-list maker
Bierley's ColorMouse Video Magnifier
RELATED
Live from CES - Dakim's Brain Fitness Keeps Seniors Sharp
Previous post: Ubiquitous Computing - Grandpa and grandkids use a webcam and Skype across the miles
YouTube Vlogger: Geriatric1927
Geriatric Gripes and Grumbles
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media: Ann Galloway's Ph.D. Thesis
The purse lip square jaw blog was one of my favorite blogs. The author of the blog, Ann Galloway, focused on "critical social and cultural studies of technology and design", and published the blog from 2000-2008, as part of her Ph.D. work at Carelton University in Canada.
Anne recently completed her Ph.D. dissertation, which is available on-line. (pdf)
If you are serious about issues related to pervasive computing, related technologies, and the "bigger picture", Anne's dissertation is well worth reading. For those oof you who have less time, visit the archived blog. It is conveniently organized by year and month. I encourage you to take some time to browse around.
Fellow bloggers and future historians of blogging/Web 2.0 will find that Anne's reflections and participation in the blogosphere over the past years enlightening. Here is one of my favorite quotes from her blog:
"But I started to rally for multiplicity instead of homogeneity. I wanted to belong to "the race of words, which homes are built with" and to "get free of myself". I chose to be guided by Deleuzian ethics. I recognised writing my blog as a method of inquiry and began to see my dissertation as writing to get free of myself."
Excerpt from Chapter 3:
"Emphasising how blogging is simultaneously private and public, individual and
collective, I raise a variety of questions about authorship, audience and authority
in contemporary academic knowledge production. Beginning with a discussion of
blogging and affective politics, I use excerpts from my blog and the comments
people made there to draw attention to the more physical and emotional,
financial and political, aspects of intellectual labour. They may be excluded from
our formal work, and often even from the classroom, but they can nonetheless
find a place online—where we and others can engage them in new and productive
ways." - Anne Galloway
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Who studies ubiquitous/pervasive computing?
Last year I took a course in Ubicomp, and as I delved into the research, I learned that people from a variety of disciplines are involved in this area.
I didn't return to school until mid-life, after working for many years as a school psychologist. My second major as an undergraduate was social science, and it's exciting to see what people in the social science are doing in this forward-looking, interdisciplinary field.
I've come across a few more interesting researcher-bloggers, and I'd like to devote some of my future posts highlighting some of their work and accomplishments.
I mentioned in a previous post that Sam Kinsey, a PhD candidate in cultural geography at the School of Geographical Sciences in the University of Bristol, is focusing his research in Ubicomp.
Sam Kinsey's current proposed thesis title:
"Practicing the technics of disappearance: emergent spatialities and the experimental development of ubiquitous computing."
Anne Galloway is a Ph.D candidate and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada. Take a look at her Purse Lips Square Jaw and Space and Culture sites/blogs.
Anne's blog statement:
"My research interests can be found at the intersections of space, culture and technology. I particularly enjoy critical social and cultural theory, social studies of science and technology, design and new media studies, material culture studies and qualitative methodologies."
More later!
