SpacePlace
Fishpong is a nice kind of roomware that aims at "stimulating informal computer-supported cooperative play (CSCP) in public spaces such as coffeehouses and cafés". It consists of a tabletop tangible user interface that allows users to control a fish-themed video game using magnetically tagged coffee cups. It a kind of “icebreaker” technology to encourage spontaneous social interaction among coffeehouse patrons.
HEREgame is a location based game. The website does not seems a lot informative... Some cool pictures anyway attests that it might be a spatial annotation software.
GeoSim is "n agent-based computational environment that simulates geopolitical processes". The output of a GeoSim simulation exhibiting that rebelions in weak states and mountainous area are more frequent than elsewhere:
If you happen to be -like me- a fan of crane pornography, Barcelona offers an interesting opportunity to discover how crane and monuments can be mixed into a nice piece of art:
There is currently a nice discussion on slashdot (as far as discussion can be nice on slashdot) about the usage of video game stats. I am interested in them because it can be useful for players' behavior analysis (to some extent).
"In almost every new multi-player game there is a way of keeping statistics about the games that are being played. Whether it's fan-based services or a service created by the game creator. Unreal Tournament 2004 can write nice HTML files for you, Bungie keep an insane amount of stats about games played over X-Box Live. For my favorite shooter - Enemy Territory, there is an application called Enemy Territory Teamstats and I wrote this little script to keep track of my games. Are stats any important to the average /. reader? Is it interesting how many times you shot 1337h4x0rg4m3r in the head, or is winning all that counts? Do you even want people to know if you lost 14 games in a row?" (...) Its interesting to see how your performance changes over time, and what metrics you can use to measure it (accuracy, kill/death ratios, etc). There are also stats that have entertainment value, like who killed you the most, and what your favourite weapon or map is. As well as in objective based team games, stats on how many times a player has done certain objectives are nice to know - eg flag caps, bombs placed, tanks destroyed, etc. I'd often track my own accuracy stats in Quake 3 deathmatches, and even though the correlation between stats and 'winning' is only so deep (debatable to say the least), it is rewarding to see yourself improving over time.
Stats are also good for server admins, who can use them to track average player patterns. Times when player numbers are at their peak and most popular maps come to mind as useful stats to know, for managing server load, default map rotations and the like.(...) Successful marine teams will typically will play in very tight cooridination, and individual contribution to kills is not important to the bigger picture. Not having stats there removes a big part of the temptation to go totally rambo which is going to usually be bad for your team. Who cares if you are killing a bunch of aliens if you are doing it in the wrong place and your team is losing all it's equipment?
The alien style of play on the other hand is much more swarm everywhere. The aliens basically want to inflict as many kills and cost on the marines as much as possible. Raw kills is a valid way to win the match. Having the killboard then makes sense, as it drives competition between the aliens to accomplish this. There is a support alien type that suffers from this scorewise, but you usually only want a level headed person playing that role anyways, so they are probably not affected by pride games.
Basically, I'd say that individual stats are going to often be bad in games that are trying to emphasize on teamwork, and are totally sensical the more individual deathmatch oriented a game is.
TICK TOCK TOYS is a wonderful archive of vintage stuff (food, supermarket, toys) compiled by Dan Goodsell. My favorite is definitely this one. It's taken from a book about kids' parks that presents different "creative unit" devoted for children amusement.
On this picture, one can see my colleague Mr C. working in what some people can expect to be the office of the past (computerless). Others could expect it to be the office of the future (computer is so well integrated that you cannot see it). Well, the answer is simple: Mr. C. who is a real geek had to move away from his computer so that he could read paper to avoid disruptions or any possible computer-related distraction (IM, e-mail, newsfeed reading, web-browsing).
A paper about how the new technologies failed in Iraq (sensors and communications networks as on heavy armor and huge numbers.) in MIT Technology Review. I am definitely not a military freak but some insights good be drawn from it.
Yet connectivity in Qatar was matched by a data dearth in the Iraqi desert. It was a problem all the ground forces suffered. Some units outran the range of high-bandwidth communications relays. Downloads took hours. Software locked up. And the enemy was sometimes difficult to see in the first place.
Today, next to my building:
Via Popgadget: personal tech for women
Wherewear underwear, a concept designed by Theo Humphries, sends a text message to the mate of the wearer if they are removed in a location that hasn't been pre-approved. There's also Timewear, underwear that keeps track of how long they've been off, and sends a warning if they've been off for longer than a bathroom trip necessitates. Snapwear takes a photo right before they're removed by sensing the light conditions.
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Spark! Design and Locality by Jan Verwijnen, Hanna Karkku offers insights into the new roles of design in planning the future of communities. It presents the Spark! project which creates and tests ideas for a new kind of community design education. It also introduces a number of projects from all over the world aiming at bringing designers and artists together with citizens, politicians and administrators to develop culturally, socially and economically sustainable solutions for the problems of a given community. The Spark! project was supported by the Culture 2000 programme and in co-operation with Doors of Perception, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. |
All watched over by machines of loving grace: Some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings by Adam Greenfield is a column in Boxes and Arrows. The author provides guidelines to deal with the issues raised by ubicomp.
My sense is that the challenge of ubiquitous computing for user-experience professionals resides fundamentally in two places: in the regrettable quality of interaction typically manifested by complex digital products and services designed without some degree of qualified UX intervention, and in the ease with which ubiquitous systems can overwhelm or render meaningless the prerogatives of privacy, self-determination and choice that have traditionally informed our understanding of civil liberty.
Found at the railway station in Lyon, France; an old remnant from the first french cell phone network called 'bibop'.
Richard Bartle's take on Gamasutra is of interest for every person who works on virtual space. It is entitled Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really!.
Virtual worlds are being designed by know-nothing newbies, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. I don't mean newbie designers, I mean newbie players - first timers. They're dictating design through a twisted "survival of the not-quite-fittest" form of natural selection that will lead to a long-term decay in quality, guaranteed. If you think some of today's offerings are garbage, just you wait…Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like.
Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
I like his conclusion: "purist there will always be text MUDs."
Seen in Roanne, France:
Savannah is " is a strategy-based adventure game where a virtual space is mapped directly onto a real space".
The Savannah project is an ambitious combination of games technology, mobile computing and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. It aims to support Year 7 children to become collaborative, reflective and imaginative learners in the fields of ecology and ethology. The project brings together the motivation of games play, with the near magical quality of wireless computing to create an engaging world where children learn through a cycle of experience and reflection, of ‘being’ animals and reflecting on animals’ behaviour in their environment. (...) Children ‘play’ at being lions in a savannah, navigating the augmented environments with a mobile handheld device. By using aspects of game play, Savannah challenges children to explore and survive in the augmented space. To do this they must successfully adopt strategies used by lions. (...) The project has demonstrated that mobile technology games can generate high degrees of engagement and enthusiasm in children. (...) In respect of the role of games in education, Savannah has identified that the main motivating feature of games is likely not to be complex graphics, but the establishment of appropriate and authentic challenges.
I decided to start a new collection of pictures: every monday, close to where I live, there are always a bunch of crappy stuff down the streets. I am now going to take picture of those every monday.
