SketchSynth
SketchSynth by Billy Keyes lets you sketch out interactive user interfaces using pen and paper:
SketchSynth lets anyone create their own control panels with just a marker and a piece of paper. Once drawn, the controller sends Open Sound Control (OSC) messages to anything that can receive them; in this case, a simple synthesizer running in Pure Data. It’s a fun toy that also demonstrates the possibilities of adding digital interaction to sketched or otherwise non-digital interfaces.
Brilliant. (via)
Kinect Sandboxes
There’s now a veritable number of Kinect-powered sandboxes, the newest one coming from Oliver Kreylos at UC Davis:
Before that, Petr Altman and @Rob_cz presented something similar at Microsoft Fest in Prague:
But the first Kinect Sandbox i know of is Project Mimicry, a multiplayer sandbox game developed by Monobanda:
I love that progression – from media installation to hack to research project. Normally you’d kinda expect these things to move in the opposite direction.
Paul Ford for New York Magazine makes this astute observation about the Instagram acquisition:
If you had a huge pile of data about websites and services that might pose a competitive threat and billions of dollars in cash at hand, what would you do? Right: You’d buy Instagram. And you’d be able to make a very informed decision without consulting anyone, because, well, math.
No, Facebook Has Not Already Peaked
The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg
Henry Blodget for New York Magazine:
When talking about Zuckerberg’s most valuable personality trait, a colleague jokingly invokes the famous Stanford marshmallow tests, in which researchers found a correlation between a young child’s ability to delay gratification—devour one treat right away, or wait and be rewarded with two—with high achievement later in life. If Zuckerberg had been one of the Stanford scientists’ subjects, the colleague jokes, Facebook would never have been created: He’d still be sitting in a room somewhere, not eating marshmallows.
The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man
ZeroN – Levitated Interaction Element
Recursive Drawing
Recursive Drawing by Toby Schachman. Source available on GitHub.
Richard Feynman Explains Science in 63 Seconds
(via)
Database as a Symbolic Form
An algorithm is the key to the game experience in a different sense as well. As the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the rules which operate in the universe constructed by this game. She learns its hidden logic, in short its algorithm. Therefore, in games where the game play departs from following an algorithm, the player is still engaged with an algorithm, albeit in another way: she is discovering the algorithm of the game itself. I mean this both metaphorically and literally: for instance, in a first person shooter, such as “Quake,” the player may eventually notice that under such and such condition the enemies will appear from the left, i.e. she will literally reconstruct a part of the algorithm responsible for the game play. Or, in a diffirent formulation of the legendary author of Sim games Will Wright, “Playing the game is a continuos loop between the user (viewing the outcomes and inputting decisions) and the computer (calculating outcomes and displaying them back to the user). The user is trying to build a mental model of the computer model.”
What we encountered here is an example of the general principle of new media: the projection of the ontology of a computer onto culture itself.
Lev Manovich: Database as a Symbolic Form. (via)
Weavrs: the autonomous, tweeting blog-bots that feed on social content:
As far as we can work out, a Weavr’s most obvious use is as a sort of discoverability tool that you can fine-tune to your own preferences — think of it as similar to an automatically-generating Tumblr or Pinterest. If you’re planning a move to another city, you could create a Weavr with your preferences but geolocate it in the city you are moving to. That way, the Weavr will trawl around finding places, experiences and content that might interest you in your new home. “Think of it as advanced reconnaissance on the ground using live data. The Rough Guides can’t keep up.” O’Hara explains.
I seriously doubt this works well (yet?), but i absolutely have to try this.
Twitter Digest for Week Ending 2012-05-13
- RT @jakemarsh: This is a genius tactic to encourage users to buy your app: http://t.co/lTXJixd9 #
- RT @bdwassom: "Diminished reality can reconnect us to nature by deleting phone lines and billboards." @fianxu from @daqri #are2012 #
- RT @designtaxi: Vienna gets its first cat café http://t.co/QANbgoz4 #
