Friday, November 20, 2009
DROID & Interactive Display in Times Square; DROID Voice-activated Search
The video below shows people in NYC's Times Square using their Verizon Droid phones to interact with the Verizon Wireless digital signage billboard:
The Droid offers a voice-activated search feature. Users can ask a question, and the search engine, powered by Google, will provide the search results from the web or from items stored on the phone. One feature I like is that it provides turn-by-turn directions from Google Maps, as well as other helpful geographic information. This would be a great tool for city dwellers and visitors alike.
The video below is a demonstration of how the Google Maps Navigation feature works on Android-based phones:
RELATED
Verizon, Motorola Unveil the Droid
Marguerite Reardon 10/29/09 CNN Tech
Verizon Droid Gets New Google Innovation: Real-Time Internet-Linked Navigation
Michael Hickins, BNET
Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0
Google Mobile Blog
DRIOD by Motorola Fact Sheet
Cross posted - Interactive Multimedia Technology
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Martijn de Waal's Blog: The Mobile City - Locative & Mobile Media/Urban Culture/Identity, his post about Towards the Sentient City
I subscribe to Martijn de Waal's blog, The Mobile City: Locative & Mobile Media/Urban Culture/Identity, partly because of my interest in ubiquitous/pervasive computing (specifically how technology can support interaction and collaboration between people across screens of all sizes in public spaces), and partly because I am interested in looking at the ways different disciplines adopt, adapt, and transform emerging interactive technologies.
Martijn is a writer and a researcher who co-founded The Mobile City conference and blog with Michiel de Lange. He is working on a Ph.D. in new media and urban culture, as part of the New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture research in Groningen. Martijn spent some time as a visiting scholar at MIT between March and June of this year (2009).
I posted about Towards the Sentient City, an exhibit taking place in NYC from 9/17 through 11/7/09 in NYC, a few weeks ago: Towards the Sentient City: The Intersection of Ubicomp and Architecture, and....? I was planning to write another post about my reflections about the exhibit, but I think Martijn's reflections reach beyond anything I could have imagined.
Below is a link to Martijn's recent post about his reflections about Towards the Sentient City, along with a quote:
Three philosophical questions about the "sentient city" - a response to the exhibition Towards the Sentient City
"At certain points in the history of architecture and urban planning, the internal debate on how to apply new technologies surpasses the boundaries of the discipline. At those times, the hopes and fears found in the disputes between architects, policy makers, engineers and planners are extended to a broader discussion about urban and societal change. Then, the central issue is not merely how to solve a specific spatial problem with the help of new technology. Rather, the debate starts to revolve around its possible impact on urban society at large. What does this new technology mean for urban culture, what impact does it have on how we shape our identities and live together in the city?"
Martijn's three questions form the framework for even more questions, all very important:
Who are we and who is acting?
What can we know?
How should we live together in the City?
At the end of his post, Martijn concludes, "Toward the Sentient City thus doesn't give us any emphatic leads about which way the technology will take us. It succeeds in bringing up many important questions and diverting the discussion on the sentient city from a path of technological determinism to an open ended affair, a concern not just for engineers, planners and architects but for all of us."
Martijn's links at the end of his post are worth a look if this is an area that interests you:
(1) Ann Galloway's PhD thesis A Brief History of the Future of Urban Computing and Locative Media is highly informative in giving insight in different discourses around urban computing
(2) See Manuel de Landa A new Philosophy of Society for a theory of assemblage.
(3) In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold has also written about technology and the organization of a commons
Some of Martijn's interesting blog posts:
Picnic 09 Report 2: The City as and Interaction Platform
Storytelling with Locative Media: Michael Epstein's take on "terratives"
Digital Cities 6: urban media/urban informatics and different notions of public space
Mediated Space. Or: How to translate the logic of media into architecture
Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: a matter of "U-City" or "U-Citizens?"
(Refers to the book, Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City Marcus Foth, Institute for Creative Industries and Innovations, Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
The Mobile City website has additional information and links:
About the Mobile City
About Locative Media
The Mobile City Conference '08
(On the site you'll find links to videos and slides from the keynote speakers and additional resources.)
Conference: Connectivity @ IABR (NAi Rotterdam, November 5-12 2009)
The Mobile City's Recommended Readings:
The Architectural League of New York | Publications / situated_technologies publication urban_computing
e-cultuur weblog» Weblog Archief » report: gRig seminar on research in new media (Oslo)
The ghost in the field – Blog – BERG
Beautiful visualization of the active field in which an RFID chip can be read near a transponder
Digital cities highlights by Anne Galloway / digital_city wired
Wired special: "Digital Cities" / digital_city wired urban_design
Total Immersion and the “Transfigured City:” Shared Augmented Realities, the “Web Squared Era,” and Google Wave | UgoTrade / augmented_reality
jnd: An emergent vocabulary of form for urban screens « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird / urban_screens
Martijn also is interested in Digital Media Storytelling and New Media Journalism, topics that I hold close to my heart. I use these techniques in my work with young who have special needs, and also incorporate digital media in my blogs.
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.)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Locative and Mobile Media & The Mobile City Blog
In February 2008, a conference was held at the Netherlands Architecture Institute: The Mobile City: A Conference on Locative Media, Urban Culture and Identity I'll be visiting the site again soon, partly because there are quite a few interesting links. I just visited Christian Nold's BioMapping.net site. Biomapping is a community mapping project in which people weare Galvanic Skin Response recording devices as they explore their environment to create communal emotion maps that include data as well as personal observations. The project has grown and now has several map projects with their own websites. Christian Nold's main website is also worth exploring.
"The Mobile City is an initiative that focuses on locative and mobile media, urban culture and identity. We aim to bring professionals from different disciplines (academics, urban professionals, media designers, artists, telecom operators, etc) together to address the question: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge?"
I think it is important to take an interdisciplinary approach when we think of emerging technologies, especially those that play out in public spaces, especially if we are interested in promoting these technologies for the "greater good".
It is worth exploring the Mobile City Blog. You can link to videos from the keynote speakers, find information about related conferences, such as the Digital Cities 6 Workshop (June 24, Penn State University), and check out the blogroll, which I've included in this post for convenience.
I especially liked the thoughtful review by Michiel de Lange of a chapter of a new book edited by Rich Ling and Scott W. Campbell. "The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices"
Backround
"The Mobile City is an initiative by Martijn de Waal and Michiel de Lange. The first Mobile City Conference was organized with the Netherlands Architecture Institute and the research groups New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture at the University of Groningen, and Playful Identities at the the Erasmus University Rotterdam & University of Utrecht. Tijmen Schep is an occasional contributor to The Mobile City Weblog."
Here is the awesome Mobile Cities blogroll:
‘Playful Identities’ - Michiel de Lange Adam Greenfield Air Roots
Andrea Gaggioli Anthony Townsend ArchiNed - de architectuur site van Nederland
Blog Like You Give A Damn Changeist cityofsound Digital Urban
Digitaler Urbanismus Doors of Perception weblog
Home - Berkman Center for Internet & Society IFTF’s Future Now Informationlab
Institute for the Future - Future Cities Institute of Network Cultures Jan Chipchase
LIFT Conference Blog Mark Shepard Martijn de Waal Mimi Ito -Weblog
MIT Convergence Culture Consortium: Weblog Mixed Realities MobHappy
Mobi Mundi Mobilities neo-nomad New Media & Society recent issues
New Mobilities: Ce-more about what’s happening in the mobile world
Nicis Institute - Nicis Kenniscentrum Grote Steden pasta and vinegar
Performative Environments Planetizen Purse Lip Square Jaw
Relevant History Rhizome Ronald.waag.org Ruimtelijk Planbureau
Situated Technologies Small Surfaces Smart Mobs
Smartspace - Smartspace Journal Space & Culture The End of Cyberspace
The Mobile City The Where Blog thinkwhere Timo Arnall
urbanscreens.org varnelis.net - network culture Villes 2.0
we make money not art weekly INCITE Where
Where 2.0 - O’Reilly Conferences zengestrom.com
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
Friday, June 27, 2008
Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"
My vision for technology supported human-world interaction is much different than what I see cropping up in public spaces, despite emerging technological concepts such as the Internet of Things and Locative MediaIf you are familiar with my blogs, you know that I maintain an on-going quest for off-the-desktop examples for my "Usability Hall of Fame". While I'm out and about, I often meet with disappointment, especially when I come across large displays or interactive touch screens.
The video clip below, taken on June 26th at the Detroit Metro Airport, is an example of what I mean. I was excited to encounter a touch screen information kiosk. I was not impressed with the clunky look and feel of the application. It was more like a point and click web-page than an innovative interactive information portal.
If you look closely, you'll see that the weather posted on the screen did not accurately represent the near 90-degree heat that I encountered that day. The weather information must not have been updated!
This kiosk was located in a new terminal. Although there were many information displays dotted around, during the two hours that I was at the airport, I never once saw anyone use them.
It is sort of difficult to use a touch screen when there is a garbage can obstructing the interaction.
It is not possible to interact with an interactive touch screen that is not working.
I did see people take a look at the more traditional, non-interactive displays that were located in the center walkways:
Last week, when I went to find my baggage at the Detroit Metro Airport, I noticed three kiosks on my way to pick up my luggage. At the time, I didn't know where I needed to go to retrieve my bags, and I wasn't sure where I needed to go to take the shuttle to the rental car lot. I was a bit puzzled to find these kiosks in this spot, since they did not provide the kind of information that most people coming through this section of the airport would need.
The above information kiosks were situated in a row of three, one representing each of the counties that make up the Detroit metropolitan area. Since the kiosks were located at the foot of the escalators leading to the baggage claim section of the airport, people stopping to interact with the kiosks would most likely cause a minor traffic jam. Although the kiosks were in plain view, it was not difficult to see why they were not used, or even noticed.
- Most people who are on their way to the baggage claim area are focused on getting their luggage and heading out. They may not be in the mood to learn all that they can about the finer points of Macomb, Wayne, or Oakland counties from talking head infomercials.
- Although the kiosks provided a reasonable amount of screen "real estate", the design of the applications allowed for no innovative touch-screen interaction. The applications were displayed on touch-screen surfaces, with the upper section dedicated to video and the lower section activated for touch. This design provided only one type of touch interaction, a small area to touch in order to activate the video.
- The displays with information about baggage carousels were located in a spot out of view from this location.
Since I'm obsessed with displays, as soon as I found my bag, I walked up closer to see what was so important about this huge sign. Not until I got right up to the surface did I notice that it offered some interactivity:
If you happen to have your cell phone handy, you can get free sync ringtones from the display area while you wait for your bags, if you happened to notice this at first glance. Since I was carrying my purse and pulling a suitcase and smaller carry-on bag, I was in no position to fumble around for my phone to get a new ringtone. It wasn't a convenient location. Where could I set down my purse? What if I had kids in tow?
Obviously, the designers of this set-up thought that it would be a good idea to offer people the chance to download ringtones as they waited for their luggage. What did the designers forget? Perhaps they did not look at the bigger picture long enough to think through a workable, useful user experience.
It would make better sense to provide ringtones at a more convenient location in the airport, such as the waiting areas or around the food courts. A thoughtful re-design of this display would encourage this interaction in a way to let people know intuitively that a ringtone service was available.
After I left the baggage area, I headed to an information display that consisted of a small touch screen, an array of small lighted displays, and phones to find out how to get to the shuttle to the rental car lot. Again, I was not impressed. The applications were a bit more visually appealing than the displays in the terminal, but the touch screen interaction was clunky.
Related:
To get a better understanding of my message and the importance of looking at bigger picture issues such as user-experience, user driven design, and emerging off-the-desktop technologies, take some time to look over the work and writings of people like Julian Bleeker, Chris O'Shea, and others who are thinking along similar paths. Also check the resource links on the sidebar of this blog.
Below are a couple of interesting quotes from Julian Bleeker:
(Julian Bleeker is from the Near Future Laboratory, a design, development and research consultancy.)
"Forget about the Internet of Things as Web 2.0, refrigerators connected to grocery stores, and networked Barcaloungers. I want to know how to make the Internet of Things into a platform for World 2.0. How can the Internet of Things become a framework for creating more habitable worlds, rather than a technical framework for a television talking to an reading lamp? Now that we've shown that the Internet can become a place where social formations can accrete and where worldly change has at least a hint of possibility, what can we do to move that possibility out into the worlds in which we all have to live? " - Julian Bleeker, Ph.D: Why Things Matter: A Manifesto for Networked Objects: Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things (pdf)
"At its core, locative media is about creating a kind of geospatial experience whose aesthetics can be said to rely on a range of characteristics ..from the quotidian to the weighty semantics of lived experience, all latent within the ground upon which we traverse". -Julian Bleeker; Jeff Knowlton Locative Media: A Brief Bibliography and Taxonomy of GPS-Enabled Locative Media Leonardo On-line Electronic Almanac
Coincidence?
Julian Bleeker spends time contemplating interactions while he's in airports: Time Spent, Well
Chris O'Shea's blog, Pixelsumo, "is a blog about play, exploring the boundaries of interaction design, videogames, toys, and playgrounds. Chris is a resident of somth;ng labs, a shared studio space full of creatives who incorporate technology into their work.
- SURFACES: Chris O'Shea's posts and links pertaining to interactive surfaces, displays, touch-screens, and multi-touch.
- PLAYGROUNDS: Posts and links about technology-supported playgrounds
Airport Technology for the Usability Hall of Fame!
Embedded Information: Airport
