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Bill Buxton corrects and adds to the history of touch screens as presented in Dan Saffer’s book. Some interesting bits on the iPhone’s precursor Simon here. We need more interaction design historians.
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“…an obsession with the new and original, without a deep literacy and appreciation for the past, leads to a path of missed opportunities.” Buxton comparing the Vanity Kodak with the iPod Mini.
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“Barcode Beats is a system that converts barcodes into music through an interpretation of the numbers on the barcodes.” Jonas Löwgren, — professor at K3 in Malmö — told me about this project. It was done as part of the master of interaction design. I really like the fact that this is a tool, it leaves meaning-making to the users. It is playful and encourages creative action.
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Interesting post by Dan on foundational concepts for a multi-touch OS. I’m surprised there’s nothing related to collaborative work on one screen, which I would say is a prime opportunity for this type of system.
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“RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right — a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €500).” Saw this at the fablab in Utrecht today. What a crazy idea, imagine how disruptive this will be once it hits the main stream?