Category: Links

A plant that Twitters when it needs water? Oh yes. The onslaught of blogjects continues.

“The bluff is the quintessential force of mobility.” Molly writes about German propaganda in WWII. More good stuff on her Ph.D. project site.

“In order to promote The Netherlands in Japan, The Dutch Embassy in Tokyo, The Dutch Game Garden and the NLGD Foundation are looking for Dutch game developers to create a mobile game for the Japanese market.” Might join in on this one…

Sponsored game that is actually fun to play for a change. Build a robot and fight with others in an arena. Some imaginative weapons such as a granny bag are included. Held my interest for a bit. Via Jacco.

An influential presentation by Richard Garfield (designer of Magic: The Gathering) for GDC 2000. “…metagame…is how a game interfaces with life.”

Alper posts on generative techniques in interaction design and I reply.

Merholz has been hearing the term transformative a lot lately. I chip in with “transformative play” as another use, besides “transformative experiences” and “transformative practice”.

“Many of the fascinating social and cultural changes transforming the media right now…are little more than reversions back to the ways things used to be before the 20th century.” Fahey on the anomaly that was the 20th century.

Visualization of bluetooth presence coupled to music tracks built on top of the RoomWare server.

“It’s the game of life. And death.” My friend Hessel’s submission for the Gamma 256 games competition now has a proper home on the web.

Interesting initiative headed by Aral Balkan: “Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world.”

The Playyoo launch contest is over. Match the Blocks came in at 1st place and won the creator Samir $10,000. Nicely done. There are plenty of other nice games in the system though. I’m a fan of UFO Catcher at the moment.

My friend Alex’s wonderful dinnerware is now on sale at Etsy. Topoware “outlines” the dining experience similar to topographic maps.

Dan Saffer has posted a draft of the 1st chapter of his upcoming book on interactive gestures.

“The Mobile City is a conference on locative and mobile media and the city. The conference brings together academics, urban professionals and media designers to answer the question: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge?”

Mr. Armitage creates an “idea-space representation” of the London Tower Bridge using some screen scraping and Twitter… A sign of things to come? When will I be following my house on Twitter?

Don’t know why I did not post this before. Mr. Greenfield (of Everyware) will be publishing his next book himself. In short, it’ll discuss how ubicomp influences the metropolitan form and experience. Needless to say, I’ll buy this the minute it comes out.

Apparently the iPhone stands up to a proper usability test comparing it to other devices (such as the N95). Read all about it in this report from my friends at InUse.

Danah Boyd on the need for user centred social design: “Would it be possible for a culture of profitable startups to emerge that focus on niche audiences by going after the practices and needs that they experience?”

Spotted this at GDC, dangerously close to being convincingly real.

Vlad Micu writes about GDC. Here’s a short report of my lecture (in Dutch). Vlad Micu schrijft over GDC. Hier een kort verslag van mijn presentatie.

My friend Mark is moving to Copenhagen and looking for a job at “a company changing the world”. Check him out.