General

BTW WHY "PASTA and VINEGAR"?

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Some people are wondering about the name of this blog, some others are going further, trying to think about which blog title might be the best (descriptive blog name, named after the author, something linked to the subject or off-the wall like here). Maybe it's time to tell you the story of this blog's name. Actually I did not think about it myself. It's more related to my weird foods habits: I used to cook some pasta with vinegar (+ tuna). At that time, my italian roomate/colleague Mauro Cherubini was so scared that he ended up running around in our former flat praising the Lord about this bloody french eating his country's pasta with aceto (i.e. italien for vinegar). Then it struck a chord. I was certainly not about to quit my odd food habit. However it reminded me the content of this blog: both serious stuff (about human-computer interaction, user expirience, locative media, tech stuff, futuristic trend, innovation) and weird things (about digital culture, street art, pictures, crazy toys or things...).

So that's the story I think the title matched pretty well the content of the blog... Sometimes I a bit pissed by this mix and I want to create different blog about each of the topics but I feel like it's funny like that. I am just wondering about how people make sense of all this mess.

On a personal note, it's a long time I have not cook pasta with vinegar.

BTW WHY \"PASTA and VINEGAR\"?

in

Some people are wondering about the name of this blog, some others are going further, trying to think about which blog title might be the best (descriptive blog name, named after the author, something linked to the subject or off-the wall like here). Maybe it's time to tell you the story of this blog's name. Actually I did not think about it myself. It's more related to my weird foods habits: I used to cook some pasta with vinegar (+ tuna). At that time, my italian roomate/colleague Mauro Cherubini was so scared that he ended up running around in our former flat praising the Lord about this bloody french eating his country's pasta with aceto (i.e. italien for vinegar). Then it struck a chord. I was certainly not about to quit my odd food habit. However it reminded me the content of this blog: both serious stuff (about human-computer interaction, user expirience, locative media, tech stuff, futuristic trend, innovation) and weird things (about digital culture, street art, pictures, crazy toys or things...).

So that's the story I think the title matched pretty well the content of the blog... Sometimes I a bit pissed by this mix and I want to create different blog about each of the topics but I feel like it's funny like that. I am just wondering about how people make sense of all this mess.

On a personal note, it's a long time I have not cook pasta with vinegar.

Analysis of mold annotations

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Another interesting and somehow improbable research project: Annotations of Prostheses (still at the University of San Diego):

The orthopedist annotated this mold of a polio patient’s right leg to represent areas from which to refrain from filing. This mold goes on with a form to a fabricator. The shape and markings on the mold, with the form, allow the fabricator to create a custom-made brace from patient-specific physical information.

The fabricator is preparing a mold to fit an orthotic brace, filing it to a shape similar to the patient’s leg. He is also providing information on where the orthosis should apply pressure for support, considering the texture of flesh at different points. The ink of the pen is well suited for deep penetration into the mold, avoiding loss of information through filing.

The reason why they are interested in this is that they work on annotations. They're point is that annotations are of communicative and cognitive importance (as aids in information movement, memory, attention, and organization). Now it would be nice to find sociological research about mold annotations practices!

Johnny jetpack

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Do you know Johnny jetpack?

Johnny Jetpack is a 7 and a half foot tall puppet/dummy attached to a giant water rocket backpack. When launched, he obtains heights of 70-90 feet and speeds of 50+ miles per hour in about one second. He then plummets earthward in a dramatic fashion. This plummet includes a complex system of "parachute for Jetpack", pilot ejection, screams and flailing limbs, and on-board explosion with head detachment. The crowd is then welcomed forward to the safety line to inspect the wreckage.

They also did an Air Witch and a Johnny Non Ambulatory which seems interesting. Besides, the way the jetpack works is amazing:

A nice brush

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Just ran across this: I/O Brush, did by Kimiko Ryokai, Stefan Marti, Rob Figueiredo & Hiroshi Ishii at the Tangible media group (MIT).

I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special "ink" they just picked up from their immediate environment.

[VideoGames] Friendship formation in MMORPG

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Nick Yee conducted a project about friendship formation in MMORPG. It seems pretty interesting and well documented on this website.

While there are many factors inherent in MMORPGs that facilitate the formation of relationships online, it is also equally clear that not all players choose to do so. There are players who consciously do not bring their real lives into the game. Another way to look at the phenomenon is to ask whether certain individuals are more predisposed to these online relationships. One group of such individuals might be teenagers who are struggling with identity and acceptance issues in real life. Many teenagers feel they have no one to talk to because it is their peers and family who are part of the issue they are trying to deal with, and the online environment might present itself as a way to talk about them with someone else. But approval and acceptance are needs that everyone requires to sustain a normal level of self-esteem. Individuals struggling with self-esteem issues might therefore be more likely to form relationships online.

[Space and Place] A cultural use of space

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Discussion with my adviser a bout the role of space. If you're asleep in an airplane, you wake up and you don't know where you are. Then check the light on the ground, it can depicts the urban structure/organization. If the repartition is like the picture on the right, it could be the UK; if it's messy like the picture on the left, it might be some latin area.

[Video Games] French video games companies are struggling

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Since Electronic Arts took a 20% shared of Ubi Soft (a french video game editor), there has been huge complaints from the french government/industry. I think the NYT made a clear point about this:

Splinter Cell, a popular video game based on Tom Clancy's action thriller novels. Would-be Sam Fishers, joysticks at the ready, may be surprised to learn that the company that developed and published the game is based in France. Even odder, perhaps, is the notion that a game celebrating the free rein of United States secret agents may be seen as a French cultural treasure.

[CRAFT] Our lab has 4 opened positions

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Our lab has 4 positions. If you're interested email pierre dot dillenbourg at epfl dot ch.

  1. Designing and testing collaborative technology-enhanced furniture, such as noise-sesntive tables. Looking for a creative techie having done his PhD or willing to do a PhD in the field of roomware, tangibles and augmented reality. Duration: 2-3 years. Start: ASAP
  2. Design a high level language for modelling CSCL scripts. Scripts are generic scenario that structure teamwork with roles, phases, etc. Looking for a computer science PhD student with an interest for abstraction. Duration: 3 years. Start: ASAP
  3. Designing and running experiments on mutual modelling, i.e. the representation that team members have of each other. For this NSF project, we are looking for two cognitive science researchers, a postdoc and a doctoral student. Duration : 3 years. Start: spring 2005

[Tech] A short history of buzzers

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Boxes and Arrows on sound design. The best part of the paper is about the history of buzzers.

There were many innovations in electronic sound during the early 20th century, but until the 1950s it was impractical for any product that wasn’t a radio to produce an amplified, electronically generated sound. Reproducing even the simplest electronic tone required bulky and expensive vacuum tubes, transformers, and speakers.

We also learn that "current research is focused on understanding people’s assumptions about what their environment ought to sound like". That kind of research is funny!

[Future] A Classification-Based or Community-Based WWW?

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I came across this interesting debate while reading a paper by Andy Oram:

Two ideas, diametrically opposed in philosophy and approach, have seized the attention of Internet companies and technologists over the first few years of this century. (...) But these two ideas are attracting both money and attention. One stresses classification, the other community. Neither has borne much fruit yet. (...) The first idea goes by such names as the "semantic web"—coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web—and "Web Services." It leads to infinite meetings of standards bodies, taking up hours of valuable technologists’ time, who report year after year on the tremendous progress they are making toward ever receding and ever more audacious goals.

The other idea goes by the name "social networking," and brings out breathless talk of a revolution in social relationships, supposedly to be opened up by "frictionless connectivity": the ability to find almost instantly the person who can meet your specific personal or career-related needs. After several years of experiments in each area, outlines are emerging for the domains where each idea may prove valuable.

The article also expresses critics about social software: "The public has mostly lost interest with the first wave of sites that offer social networking, probably because what they offer seems to add little except extra overhead to current Internet services such as email and newsgroups.". I think it's definitely true, my ultimate social software is my blogroll. I like this kind of statement: "I expect most members of online social networks are as inactive as I am, having tried them out and been unimpressed." because it definitely summarizes what I felt after trying those tools.

But the author is still positive on it:

These criticism apply to social networks they way they’re currently implemented. Because viral marketing and new media have an excellent possibility of becoming important social movements, I think online social networks will grow in importance, and at some point somebody will make one that works. We can also move to yet another stage where we statistically measure our network and learn from aggregate facts about the people we know. There’s plenty there for a century of innovation

[Locative Media] Location Based Services scenarios

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Have a glance at some location-based services scenarios in geo-community. It's a bit rusty and cliché, but it appears to be a good summary of what was expected in 2001. Applying LBS to people alwas tend to lead to safety applications. I think it's a pity, there would be more interesting scenarios (not only with game). Mobile learning would be a nice direction.

GeoModeTM (www.geomode.com) or miniature GPS technology can be imbedded into items of clothing and footwear to support child-tracking services i.e. “Tell me if my child strays beyond the neighbourhood.” (...) Other similar personal and commercial examples of people tracking, where the person being tracked provides tracking permission, can improve customer service and public safety.

[Research] Location and activity

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Just few notes taken while dreaming: Location Awareness in Mobile Collaboration

  1. some activities are carried out by different persons at different locations
  2. location of others, tools, material, resources is meaningful for the participants
  3. participants can know that partner A is at location X and partner B at location Y (question here: how?)
  4. THE QUESTION (I have to investigate): what do A infer from B's position?

[Research] Workload Evaluation

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I am considering using the NASA Task Load Index (NASA TLX) to get some insights about our tool in CatchBob!. It's not the core aspect of my research but it might give us some insights about the subjective perception of the workload.

The NASA TLX is a multi-dimensional rating scale for operators to report their mental workload. It uses six dimensions of workload to provide diagnostic information about the nature and relative contribution of each dimension in influencing overall operator workload. Operators rate the contribution made by each of six dimensions of workload to identify the intensity of the perceived workload. The dimensions are 'Mental demands', 'Physical demands', 'Temporal demands', 'Performance', 'Effort' and 'Frustration'.

[Research] A new lab we should keep an eye on

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Rochester Institute of Technology's Lab for Social Computing is a new lab that seems promising. They already set up a wiki with links on private lab andacademics working in the field. Their PR is nicely done since I saw many posts in my aggregator talking about it :)

Cyberinfrastructure has been defined by the NSF as a tool for building digital environments that support collaboration and interaction among people, data, information, and tools. Social computing is an emerging cross-disciplinary field focused on the use of computing tools to facilitate these social and collaborative interactions. It is concerned with the development, deployment, and assessment of tools ranging from e-mail and IM to weblogs, wikis, and collaborative information management systems.

Research activities in the Lab for Social Computing will focus on the development of new collaborative tools for use in research, education, and industry, as well as on the adaptation, use, and effects of collaboration and communication tools in these contexts.