Friday, August 7, 2009
Play Foursquare?! Interactive Local + Social Media Coming to a City Near You.
Foursquare is a locative-mobile system/game/social media game/activity that is starting to grow in popularity in a number of urban settings, such as NYC. It hasn't arrived in Charlotte, so I can only share what I've gleaned about it from the Foursquare website and a few reviews:
"We're all about helping you find new ways to explore the city. We'll help you meet up with your friends and let you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people."
"It's foursquare! Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game. We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways. There's a lot of experimenting here, so bear with us as we try to figure it all out (and thanks!)"
"We have an iPhone app, a mobile-web site (Blackberry! Treo!) and an SMS shortcode (50500) that you can text check-ins to. For more info, look here." (For more information, visit the Foursquare NYC website.)
RELATED:
Foursquare: Check In, Tweet....Money on Beer (Jennifer Van Grove, Mashable, 8/7/2009)
"Foursquare is poised to be a prime player in the location-based social networking space."
Forsquare: Why it May Be the Next Twitter (Jennifer Van Grove, Mashable, 7/25/2009)
"The Game: To those of you not playing, it may sound like a joke, but don’t knock it till you try it. You earn points for every check-in — unless of course you check-in at the same locale all the time. You’re rewarded with more points for being adventuresome (exploring different parts of the city), for hitting up multiple spots in one night, and eventually for the tips other people try and the to-dos you complete."
Screen-shot from Jennifer Van Grove's Foursquare App:
Building an Army of Hyper-Local, Mobile-Connected Advocates: Or, Why Marketers Should Pay Attention to Foursquare (Allison Mooney, Ad Age Digital, 8/5/09)
"Co-founder Dennis Crowley puts it this way: "I think Foursquare found some kind of sweet spot between the intersection of social utility (Hey, I know where my friends are), sharing/oversharing (I log everywhere I go/everything I do) and gaming/rewards (every check-in gives you a little piece of candy)."
Foursquare is designed with these game dynamics in mind, and it's the absurd appeal of its reward that makes the service so "sticky.""
Naveen Selvadurai (Foursquare Co-Founder)Cities: Amsterdam, Atlanta,Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, NYC, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Franscisco, Seattle, Washington D.C.
(Also posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.)
Friday, April 17, 2009
Daniel Michelis: Interactive Displays in Public Spaces Blog
Daniel Michelis recently completed his Ph.D. dissertation on a topic that is dear to my heart. Information about his research can be found on his Interactive Displays in Public Spaces blog.
Here are links to a few of his posts:
Interactive Displays: Perception, Awareness, and Interaction
Evaluating Interaction with Display Applications in Public Space
I especially like the diagrams Daniel uses to depict zones of interaction:
Figure 3: Four-phase Model
(Source: Daniel Michelis (2009), according to: Vogel and Balakrishnan, 2004)
(Author: Daniel Michelis, Institute for Media and Communications Management, University of St. Gallen)
Figure 1: Perception and Usage of Interactive Displays
(Source: Daniel Michelis (2009), according to: Brignull & Rogers, 2003)
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
