Well, it's about time. I was looking for the 2 train at the 14th street station and came across these signs via the L. A copy of D.C.'s wonderful subway system, these signs tell you when the train will arrive and in what direction. This is really useful because when you're standing around waiting for a device, be it an elevator or train, 3 seconds can sometimes feel like 3 minutes. I really hate elevators that don't indicate what floor they're on, which is useful information of whether I should stand and wait or just use the stairs. I remember Tom's first pComp assignment (2005), and our group (Matthew Burton and Cory Forsyth, both very cerebral) proposed to improve the subway system. Ahhh, brings back memories of passing surveys around to subway riders at the Union Square station.

Only saw these on the "L" train.

As part of OneWebDay, Matthew Burton is coordinating a Q&A session with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Dan Phiffer will be presenting ShiftSpace and Fred Benenson will be presenting Free Culture NYU on Creative Commons.

Noon-2:30pm
RSVP
721 Broadway, New York

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On the subject of wikis, under Tom Igoe's recommendation, I tried wikidot, kind of like the wiki version of Blogger. You can customize and make your own wiki without learning how to code.

This was one of my favorite sites in Hawaii. We almost missed it. We only wish we could've stayed to see the stars. It looks a bit futuristic and science fiction-like. If you go up, take a 45 minute break to get acclimated to the climate and pressure. This is suppose to be one of the tallest mountains in the world if you include sea level, 14,000 feet high. This is as close to the clouds as you can get without the window seat in an airplane.

For more photos, click here.

I just went to Digital Life on Saturday. There are some cool new products, and "wait until they come up with the next model" products. Btw, if you are going to buy and M-Audio product, you could receive 20% of all their products if you buy through Amazon.com using this discount code: MAUDIO20 by October 5th.

I really don't understand the appeal to these digital frames, and it just isn't environmentally sensitive to the use of power. I wasn't to impressed with the resolution and color of these photos. I would stick to print photographs.

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I also wasn't impressed with the Nokia knock-off of the iPhone. The N95 is still bulky, but has a 5 megapixel camera and free GPS. But don't most phones have free GPS. I think I'm going to hold on to my Blackberry Pearl for another year. And the o/s interface wasn't impressive either.

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Microsoft has a new mobile phone, which has a touch interface, but it's not as smooth as the iPhone. The os might appease PC users though. One model is quite bulky, but it is still lighter than the Nokia.

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This camera seemed to impress everyone. The size of it is similar to a mobile phone, but it takes digital video, takes 12 megapixel photos, and plays mp3's with a 3 hour battery. If only they could stick mobile capabilities. Manufactured by Panasonic. Uses interchangeable SD cards, and works on both MAC/PC os systems for a reasonable $328.

The new SIMS game looks a bit like Second Life (3D graphics):

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This is called Headplay, and it's basically a visor that you wear that plays movies from a compact flash card. Pretty pricey, $500. It is more immersive than most players, but the quality of the movie looks less stellar than iPod quality. Difficulty with focus features. It's funny when people where this, it looks like they look up. Not sure about audio, if you have to wear that separately.

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I was really excited about playing Ms. Pacman, but became quickly disenchanted playing this game on an iPod. Maybe I'm old school, and used to a joystick controller, but I couldn't get into this game. The circular sensor gives this game an awkward feel. Even up, down, right, left arrows would have given a lot more satisfying experience. Maybe it's better on a mobile phone, like Nokia.

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I was pretty impressed with the hardware design of "Xyber Technologies Fan-less Cooling System." The electrical components are embedded in a gigantic heat sink, and there are metal tubes to carry the heat away from hotter chips. The only thing is, will users get used to leaving their computer or stereo systems on, using more energy? The rep did say they left all four demos on since Thursday to prove their point. I can imagine several ways of carrying heat away from high-powered LED lights.

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Novint Falcon is a 3D console joystick. The x and z-axis movement was pretty impressive. Slightly uncomfortable, but Nick really liked it. Maybe it's a girl/boy difference.

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WowWee robot moves pretty smoothly, and the controls are just as smooth. Was going to take video of it, but I ran out memory. I could see how kids could get engaged with technology playing with this bot.

My friend Andrew Famiano just sent me this link... option for a faster phone (that's what we've been waiting for—speculation that this will have a 600MHz processor, just like one of the second generation of PCs. Hope it comes out before next September when my contract for the Blackberry Pearl ends.

post from BoyGenius blog

Well, reserve online. This system is like the Zip car, but for parking spaces instead of cars. Found the ad for this on the subway. Not sure if it's mobile-compatible. The video demonstration is helpful, and be aware of fee for oversized vehicles, which I don't think in included in the initial search results. The subway ad promotes theater parking, $10 for up to 10 hours, so maybe look for parking in midtown around 42nd street.

Here's the link: http://weparknewyork.com

For more photos, check out my Flickr account.

Touch screens and credit card machines implemented in New York cabs. This system allows you to see your route, watch the news, and pay the fare with your credit card with pre-calculated options for tip (nice option for people who have to write this expense as a tax-deduction instead of collecting receipts).

For more photos, click here.

WOW! $1.5B for 10% ownership of Facebook, which will make Facebook worth $15 billion. Google and Microsoft battling for 10% ownership. Who will win?

Anyway, I just added the Google News app. It's pretty cool. You can either choose from a set of topics or enter your own keywords. We'll see how often it refreshes. I had an issue with the "Yahoo & Google Hot Trends" app. It didn't seem to refresh often enough or those people are still the current trend. I'm going to note that Yahoo posts "National Boss Day" and Google posts "deborah kerr." I'll check tomorrow. Del.icio.us and Flickr apps pose these same issues.

Oops, just checked and the Yahoo & Google Hot Trends app is current. Deborah Kerr died. She was in The King and I, great movie.

:(

I tried this new hand dryer in the women's restroom at the AMC theaters on 42nd street. The sign read that this was economical (didn't use that much heat) and hygienic (and I'm guessing that you don't have to press the button to turn it on, clearly for people with OCD, but then what do they do when they touch the door handle?)

I would wait to buy Leopard. Apparently they released it on Friday, and they didn't have tech support on Saturday.

According to Nick:

Apple:Leopard::Microsoft:Vista

Glad I didn't buy it and install it. Nick has to reinstall all of his programs again, and reconfigure his Ruby on Rails. Almost a 2 day process. I think they need to realize that people's time is worth $$$. Wow, I'm becoming disenchanted in with Apple.

Last December I went to the Apple store because I had Apple Care, and I distinctly remember the woman standing next to me who brought her laptop in to get if fixed. She admitted to the "Apple Geniuses" that she might have spilled some coffee on it, and ten minutes later, the Apple Genius voided her Apple Care. Her computer was less than a year old, and she purchased Apple Care at the time of her purchase (learned from her experience to wait to buy Apple Care after the first year). Then the Apple Genius proceeded to go on with a story about how another guy brought his computer in, and they found a whole Dorito chip in the keypad, which I didn't think was helping his situation with this woman. Then she took out her iPod Shuffle, and asked him to look at it. And he started to ask these questions like "do you use a case when you exercise with this?" because if your sweat affects this Shuffle , he has to void the warranty on that as well. And she said "yes," but he mentioned there were rust marks. I could tell this lady was getting really irate.

I haven't bought any Apple products since DVD Studio Pro 4 came out. I had DVD Studio Pro 2, and there was a file that was consistently working until 4.0 came out, and then all of a sudden when I wanted to burn it, that file had an error. When I tested that file on someone who had DVD Studio Pro 4, it worked. I thought it was a sneaky way to force people to buy the new version. Anyway, I think Apple has grown so big that they're starting to neglect their customers.

Poor Nick, he's starting to bang his computer.

Yay! They finally updated my Scrabulous stats on Facebook.

I've been consistently playing this game online for 2 months, and I haven't gotten tired of it. I have multiple one-on-one games open with many different friends. At first, I lost a lot of games, but now I'm starting to understand some strategies of the game, like certain letters command more points or certain tiles will double your points, etc. At one point, they weren't updating my stats and points because I wanted my wins to reflect, so I wrote to Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, the game designers, and they apologized because it was some kind of server issue. I would like to explore other games on Facebook, such as chess and poker, but this game really sucks you in.

My advice is never play a copy editor or column editor for money.

In this new age, of "stickiness" (read about this term in Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point) is more important than clicks, I celebrate these apps.

Love these new apps. I never got into blog aggregators, but I really like Google Reader. The interface looks similar to the gmail interface so it's really easy to scan through relevant articles. There's an auto-feature that after you click on an entry, the entry drops so you can read more of the summary, then it'll mark it as read. If you want to read the rest of the article, there's a link that will open the article up as a separate tab. The one thing that's fabulous is that you can share feeds. I haven't tried that yet, but I hope it's less cumbersome than opening up my gmail account, searching for an email address, copying and pasting into the form box, and sending the article. Hopefully Google Reader addresses these issues. It's like for:anne tags in Del.icio.us, but this is for rss feeds/subscriptions/articles (?) Oh well, sharing is great, and if there's away not to clog my email, even better.

Also a plus, there are NO ADS, YAY!!! We'll see how long that lasts, but I hope it stays this way because ads are extremely distracting when you want to READ, my $0.02.

Love these apps in Facebook, Google Trends and Google News. Google News is fabulous because you can personalize news feeds by keywords.

Like the content of Google Trends, however it doesn't update/refresh automatically when I login to my profile page. I would probably read it more if it did.

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Tinyurl.com is pretty brilliant. It shortens the long url and gives you a short one with their domain name in it. This tool is becoming more and more helpful, as URLs get longer and longer. This is more helpful when sending email to people who are confused when they copy and paste text-wrapped links.

Can Yahoo! compete with Facebook? I'm not sure if their site offers any novel uses for "networking." Here's the article. If you want an invite, go to this link. I'm not networked out, since I just joined Doostang (a combination of FB, LinkedIn, Monster), but I don't want to join if it's going to be an exact replica of Facebook, which seems like what Sean P. Aune is saying. I'll pass for now.

So far, I really like Doostang. I'm reading more of the discussions. So far some interesting topics are "how to obtain a venture capital technology job" and "seeking your opinion for two job offers." The jobs offered on Doostang are targeted for business people, but they're higher-skilled jobs as oppose to Monster, such as "buyer for some major retail store" or senior analyst positions, all requiring MBA's. Some of these jobs require you to be in some kind of group, which requires you to add 20 friends to your network, which seems to be a bit of a paradox (since the community felt the small world network). Anyway, I have yet to explore this site.

A blog aggregator to their tech section on their site. I wonder how many clicks their getting, if any. I'm not sure if I'll use this tool yet, since I'm subscribed to newsletters and using Google Reader, which pretty much does the same thing, except I get all my tech and business, design and art news from the NY Times, Los Angeles Times and other blogs. Second, would I add my subscription to BlogRunner? Probably not, since most of the stories in tech and business from the NY Times overlap. I don't need a third subscription to overlap. LESS IS MORE. There are a lot of blog aggregators out there, but maybe they're trying to tap into the market of business execs that don't know if blog aggregators exist. My take on that, is that you're late, and you should focus your energies on retail on a slower market.

Really enjoyed reading the comments on this story from the ReadWriteWeb site. I agree with the first commenter (point taken), the second one goes on a superfluous rant and at the very end, plugs his blog (blah blah blah).

Aside from Mash, Yahoo created Kickstart, which is kind of a little bit like Facebook and LinkedIn. I filled out my profile, but now what? How do I interact with others?

Aside from the subways, I'm assuming this is probably one of the last pay phones in this city, since almost everyone has a mobile phone. In subways, there is little cellphone reception, so I can see the need for it I guess.

On my way to the 4 train on Lexington and 42nd Street, I walked through Helmsley tunnel, and saw these ads. Interesting how they piece together four parts, and it's run on some pulley system. Didn't see it run though (weekend?) but it may not be animate anyway.

It's THAT difficult to find pillows, believe it or not...

Just recently, I had to shop for pillows, so I bought four from Macy's that were branded Ralph Lauren. I must say these pillows were awful. Every morning I would wake up, and all four were on the floor. I was going to return them, but couldn't find the receipt because I probably threw it away, intending to keep these pillows.

I visited Macy's web site to search for information on their return policy. Low and behold, they have a fabulous one. All you have to do is go to their store, and they scan your credit card and your item to find the transaction. So you, don't need a receipt. The downside of shopping in-store is that they don't have the variety that you see on the web or customer reviews, although when I was reading the reviews, all the products seem to be positive, even for the styrofoam-like pillows from RL, which seem suspect. They were also having a promotion that if you write a review, you win a $1000 gift card:

First there was spin in the news, and now there is spin in reviews
So I decided to login and write a review. First of all, it seems that ANYONE can login or sign up to write a review. The problem is that people who didn't buy a product can review it anyway, which to me seems like, either the brands can hire people to write positive reviews about their own products, or people who want to win that $1000 gift card are trying to increase their chances of winning it. The difference in Amazon reviews is that you can only review a book after you purchase it. Of course there are some authors out there that promote themselves by buying their own book and writing a positive review about themselves under a different screen name. I tried cross-referencing products from Macy's, Overstock.com, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Linens-N-Things, and Costco to Amazon's reviews, but this was extremely difficult because some of the brands sell the same product under different names and change the product just slightly to appease their retailers (e.g. thread count, fill power, "ecodown," feathers, etc.) Some manufacturers trademark their process or design, so you don't even know what they're really selling (e.g. confusing illustrations) or what the product is named at say Macy's versus Linens N Things (e.g. "The Hotel Collection" or "Hotel Down Pillow"), which look similar except for the label on the bottom right corner and the price. Case in point: Kaboodle (a shopping community where people recommend and discover new things), and although I was able to find some pillows, most recommendations seem to be about self-promotion (e.g. Designer recommends their designed pillows) and targeted at the youth market, where sleep is less important.

Early on, I had Googled "nytimes, pillow, review," and wasn't able to find any articles, but when I changed my search from "nytimes, pillow, recommendations," I was lucky enough to find this review by the New York Times (2004). Ms. Joyce Cohen wrote about the same frustrations in shopping for a pillow that I had. I ended up going with DownFactory.com because of the owner's knowledge that was stated in the review and that's what Ms. Cohen ended up going with. I will later post if Ms. Cohen's review is current. I checked every link mentioned in her review, and most are current except for this site, idfb.org (acronym for International Down and Feather Bureau, but is now a parked site).

I was also convinced with DownFactory because their designs were used in a couple of Olympics and because they've been in business since in 1932.

ADDENDUM:
Okay, I just received two pillows, and was kind of worried about them, when I saw it arrive in a small box.

Luckily, they have a warranty that when a pillow is squeezed, it can only be reduced to 20% of their former size.

So far, they are comfy.

I saw a lecture by Ms Sparacino at the Center for Architecture. Her presentation, ‘Interactive Media Environments & Architectural Machines’ uses sensors and camera-tracking to make physical spaces interactive.

She worked with a lot of famous architects, and was responsible for creating the technology infamous in the scene from Minority Report. More about her work on my design conferences wiki/notes and my Flick'r account.

PETA does a spoof on the Olsen twins. On the PETA site, they are the Trollsen twins, Hairy-Kate and Trashley, yikes! You can dress them in fur outfits, persuade someone not to wear fur (by sending them a prewritten email), watch a reappropriated video of Full House on the Tanner Family Crisis, buy t-shirts, and download free banners. Interesting that they are targeting the youth market. I wonder what happens if they do stop wearing fur, who will they go after next? Now all they need is a Facebook app.

I just flew on Virgin America, and was pretty impressed with their cool technology. They have a new media system catered to the youth and the hipsters.

1. There safety video is an amusing animation, which is slightly sarcastic in humor, fun to watch, even twice (JFK<>LAX).

2. While some airlines have customizable screens, what is really refreshing is that you're not limited to the conventional channels like CNN, which is also offered. You can watch some indie shows, like Current TV, clips from Boing Boing or cable shows Dexter and The Tudors.

3. Another option is to buy a movie. You have a choice from the new releases, indie and foreign films. I didn't see a lot of people use this feature because they were either watching a movie on their laptops or iPods. The people sitting next to me brought their own portable DVD player and headphone jack splitter.

4. Not that I'm a parent or anything, but if you are, and you're worried about your kids watching violent or explicitly sexual content (e.g. while watching Top Model, VH1 broadcasted some lengthy ads that may be sexually explicit, Rock of Love), you can control that here.

5. You can order food with your credit card. While some airlines encourage their passengers to bring exact change or have their passengers wait while the flight attendants find change, Virgin America has a system where you can order food and pay with your credit card. This is such a convenience. The other nice thing about this display is that you can watch continue to watch your show, while you select your food. I would say to order early because when I tried to order potato chips during the latter half of the flight, they were all out (dynamic/real-time tracking). I watched a lot of people use this feature.

6. This system records what shows and songs you listen to, so let's say if you dozed, and wanted to continue watching the shows, you can easily find them here.

7. Interesting controller. One side has the controllers, similar to a remote, just in case people are timid with the touch screen interface. The side of the controller has a magnetic scanner for your credit card, and the back is a full key pad to facilitate chatting between seats, and browsing the internet (not yet working). The keypad feels slightly awkward to type on because of it's elongated shape, and you have to hold down the blue button while simultaneously typing the symbol (I wasn't used to this because my BlackBerry shift button stays put).

8. Another cool feature is the chat between seats. At first, I really didn't understand why anyone would use this because one of the journalist on Current TV boast about meeting that cute dude in aisle 8. And actually the journalist tried several times getting people to chat with her. When I tried the chat room, and I was the only one there. On the flight back, I happen to bump into a friend of mine who was sitting in a different row, and we chatted for awhile. I don't think there is a way of chatting while simultaneously watching a show, but anyway it's a novel feature.

9. I'm not sure if this is a feature yet (multi-player), but it would've been cool to be able to play a game with my friend. I tried playing the clown game three times, but then had to reboot it 3x as well (at least they use Linux). The only thing that I thought was awkward about the game controller is the way you have to press the red button to "start" and the green button to "escape." Other than that, it looks pretty slick.

10. Last but not least, Virgin America promoting cool brands like Google, and Method soap (found in the bathroom). Also, their design of icons have that "web 2.0" aesthetic.

For more larger resolution pix, checkout my Flickr site later. Btw, you can only check in one bag, any additional bags cost $10, which is still relatively cheap, even for an oversized weirdly-shape package.

No more tracking scores with paper, this interface keeps track of all the scores of all players and shows a 3-dimensional replay with even a humorous graphic if you knock all the pins down.

I was pretty impressed with how progressive ABC network was with their broadcast of the New Hampshire Debates. In an effort to get the youth involved, they integrated Facebook into their program. At first, I thought it was because Microsoft owned NBC that they were involved with Facebook, but I don't think they own ABC. Nevertheless, I watched both parties address issues. My only criticism was that the moderators should have asked the same questions to all candidates of both parties, even though their intention was to bring up questions that posed weaknesses to each of the parties. Anyway, it was interesting to watch the Facebook polls on television, a convergence with traditional media with the web.

For some reason, I thought Ron Paul presented the strongest arguments, and I thought Mitt Romney appeared superficial. I agreed with Bill Richardson's strong stance on Pakistan, and second Hillary Clinton's views on foreign policy. In any case, my vote will probably go to the candidate who best addresses the national health care issue, and issues that affect aging Baby Boomers. That's because my mom is paying ~$800.00 per month for insurance, which seems pretty excessive.

When I was in San Francisco, I just wanted to do the offbeat and non-conventional tourist activities like visit the fortune cookie factory, the Exploratorium, and Audium (found in Fodor's under off-beat activities).

Audium is a theatre of sound-sculptured space.

I'm going to attempt to describe this experience. You walk into this space and take a seat with 40 other people. And the light dims to complete darkness, and Stan Shaff, who is the composer, plays random sounds of various objects and environment, and electronic sounds that scatter throughout the space through 136 speakers. It reminds me of when you're laying on the beach, and you can hear the sounds of the surroundings around you (i.e. kids playing, conversations, crashing waves, the water guy selling water, etc.)

Anyway, it was a one of a kind experience, and I would recommend it to anyone. Also after, check out the Stan's setup. They look analog with a lot of knobs, which is pretty cool for any electronics guru or techie. Also, after the performance, there's a Q&A session with Stan.

Audium
1616 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
Friday and Saturday, starts at 8:30pm
BUT get there at 8:00pm (there's free coffee in the lounge so you can chat with your friends), they don't take anyone who's late.
Admission: $15

Compositions and Performace by Stan Shaff
Equipment Design by Doug McEachern

I recently went to Kshitij, a 3-day conference that is organized by students. Program is similar to ITP, but heavier on the engineering side. Here are some student projects:

Braille Keyboard

Networked Vending Machine

Agriculture Device

Wireless Military Bot

Robotix is a popular competition among IIT Kharagpur students. There are 390 entries, and over the course of three days, the 390 are eliminated to 32, then 2, and then 1. Most of the competitors stay up overnight tweaking their bots.

This parking structure is converted to an all-night bot lab.

Students tweak their bots on this practice route.

HP sponsors the preliminaries.

The finals...

The terrain (e.g. water, sand) is revealed on the same day of competition. The bots are timed on 2 laps with a 15 second pit stop in between the laps.

Also at Kshitij, Nick Sears exhibited UltraOrb, which was his thesis project:

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Globe4D exhibited was this globe where you can move through a fourth dimension, time. Makes learning about climate change engaging.

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Pyromania is a really amazing Israeli dancing team that uses fire in their acts.

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Jimmy Wales (one of the most influential people) of Wikipedia introduced the Wikia.

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Magician Jason Latimer performed some unique tricks using laser technology.

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Astrophysicist, Professor and Author of The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss. Interesting theories that challenge some of Einstein's theories.

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Dr. Eric Drexler, an expert in the field of nanotechnology, encourage the use of sensors and computing in materials (i.e. roads that are composed of solar panels).

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Robogarage exhibited robots that move almost as smooth as humans.

I attended this conference because of Bill Buxton and Sigi Moeslinger, and was amazed with their presentations. I was also impressed with Malcolm McCullough, who teaches at the University of Michigan, and spoke of his research with culture and ubiquitous computing.

I also enjoyed a presentation on "fieldwork and sketching" from a Ph.D. candidate, who interned at Intel, Matt Jones who founded Dopplr, Regine DeBatty from "We Make Money Not Art," Alan Cooper ("An Insurgency of Quality") as well as another one of his rep who talked about his processes in design, and Dan Brown, who lectured on Concept Models. I hope to put my notes, but it might take a long time to transcribe. In the meantime, please check out my flickr photos.

This was a phenomenal exhibition. I'm going to it a third time, and even bought the catalog, which is beautifully designed by Irma Boom (if you like typography, check out the cover and title page).

Lots of ITP alumni and adjunct faculty, and a lot of current information visualization designers like Brad Paley, Sep Kamvar, Jonathan Harris and Jason Wishnow.

ITPers:
Lisa Strausfeld and James N. Sears, NY Times cover
Dimitri Tyler, Hypothetical Drawings
Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv's pcomp project: Atlas Gloves
Christian Schmidt (ITP adjunct faculty) and Lisa Strausfeld's OLPC's operating system, "Sugar"

Probably more ITPers' works that are not mentioned here.

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Artists/Designers (left to right): Sep Kamvar, Jonathan Harris and James N. Sears

Paul Graham boiled it down to an analogy with food and explanation of the economies of scale:

An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do. So working for yourself makes your brain more powerful in the same way a low-restriction exhaust system makes an engine more powerful.

Mediocre hires hurt you twice: they get less done, but they also make you big, because you need more of them to solve a given problem.

In other words, work at a smaller company or your own start up. To read the whole blog post, click here.

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His post about "How To Do Philosophy" is funny, as it reminds me of some people who fit the stereotype.

Yesterday, a friend of mine invited me to join a pool for March Madness. I've never heard of March Madness, let alone ever watched a basketball game, so I decided to check this event out.

To begin with, CBS's Bracket Manager allows you to feel confident in making your decisions. When you mouse over each school, there is a call-out box that gives you odds and a little blurb-summary about the team (e.g. all team members are freshmen or the team has a new coach). And you just pick for each region, until you get down to 4, then 2, then 1.

So when I logged in to my fb account, CBS already asked if I wanted to add their app. The primary profile page (i.e. first image below) lists the top 5 favorite and despised teams. Fortunately, you can see how many fans, but the flip-side is that 3 out of the 6 schools are on both lists: favorite and despised. They are named by the team and not school, but the brackets are by state, not team, so you do have to click on the link, which takes you to the school/team's page. Each team/school has their own page (i.e. second image below), which lists all team members, stats, scoreboard, schedule, trash talk, etc. Unfortunately I wasn't able to brag about my brackets because of technological difficulties (maybe a broken link between CBS brackets with fb account?)

This page updates dynamically to tell you which schools played, which schools won, and even a photo of some plays.

I found out that Barack Obama picked North Carolina to win the NCAA championship on this page.

If you're involved in a pool, you can see dynamic updates as to who is in the lead, the estimated best score, etc.

How has this changed my behavior? Well, I spent about a half an hour trying to transfer my brackets from my account in CBS to my fb account. Then I was simultaneously watching two or three games at a time, and refreshing my brackets and standings page. I've been looking up how I could HAVE increased my odds (Vegas bets--this is too late, of course because these brackets closed at noon Thursday).

And LAST, more importantly, I am engaged. This photo is just...

I've seen so far is KÀ. One of Nick's clients recommended this show, and it is fantastic. I've seen Mystère, which was impressive, but KÀ is probably the best I've seen so far. The stage rotates, so the dancers look like they are climbing a wall while dancing at the same time. The set design, and tech is amazing (which took approximately 2 years to develop), but what makes KÀ better that some of the other shows is the story. It kind of has a manga look, and it's a story about a brother and sister who are separated. This is the newest of the Cirque Du Soleil shows, and is playing at the MGM Grand. I also recommend getting the documentary, which isn't sol on Amazon. It's about the making and production of this show.

This will probably be the next one I see. I hear it's in water. Btw, we saw poker pros Daniel Negreanu (@ Bellagio) and Phil Ivy (@ The Mirage).

I would skip the Mirage (since they're renovating), and stay at the Flamingo. If you get a gold card, you can bypass the long registration line (probably about a 20-minute wait) and get a free upgrade to their spacious suite on the highest floor, which had a view (approximately ~600 square feet).

We paid $150 for this room, and it came with a king-size bed, and a queen-sized sofa bed. The redesign reminds me of the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, where you would have a unique experience. For instance, the neon pink lighting in the bathroom. There's even a television embedded in the bathroom mirror, so if you want to take a bath while watching your favorite movie, you can do so here.

There were two flat screen televisions (rarely used) and an empty refrigerator for cake or BYOB (for college students on spring break). Prior to staying here, we stayed at the Mirage, and incurred a $40 charge just for opening and closing the fridge 5 times, and we didn't drink anything. We just used it to store our cake. Anyway, I really like how their rooms are catered for the youth, and how they thought very hard about who would stay there. I can visualize a bachelor party or spring break, f-u-n!

For $3.00, you can charge your phone for 30 minutes. Found this kiosk/vending machine at the airport in Vegas. I've seen free chargers at LAX advertised by Samsung or Sony. Owned by the company renting out luggage carts.

So eager to not wait in line, we were escorted to the non-traditional security line. The way this machine works is that it blows air at you, and explosive debris/residue is also blown off. Never seen this before, but it's at the Las Vegas airport.

At 34th Street where the N train runs, there is an interactive musical installation (green). If you wave your hands over certain parts, it plays music.

I originally bought the student versions of Creative Suite 1, Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX in 2004, and haven't upgraded since because of it's hefty cost of $1799.00. But recently a friend told me about an upgrade that is affordable ~$500.00. I was a bit skeptical because since 2004, Adobe merged with Macromedia, and back in 2004, there was a caveat: you can NOT upgrade student versions. When I called Adobe, there was absolutely no hassle, and they didn't care if I had Macromedia software, they were able to upgrade my student version of Creative Suite 1 (skipped version 2) to a professional 3 (non-student version) for only $599.00. With tax and shipping, the total cost is $655.62. If you want to only upgrade to Web Premium, you can, and I think it's a bit cheaper.

This promotion is to deter people from downloading software from net. Anyway you can do it online or you can call.

Unlimited World Plan, which is only $9.95 a month. If you sign up before June 1, they knock off 20 or 30 percent, so it's really like $5 or $6 a month. You get a Skype Out number, which is local, and you can call it from your cell or land line. You can also save 6 numbers in speed dial mode or press 2 for the other option to call even long distance in the US. I just set one up for my mom, who frequently calls Korea and Canada, and she was pretty surprised at how good the reception was, which is another plus when you call from your land line versus the mobile phone.

Need I say more?

Does it have to be on every excerpt? Actually, you can avoid this if you subscribe to feeds not related to technology.

I've always been a big fan of starting with paper.

Although it's hard to tell what the content is, it gives you a good sense of timing of a user interacting with a site. Amit Pitaru demonstrated and assigned paper prototyping when we had to design clocks for people with low-vision or blindness. This was mine my design.

This site shows sketches of very popular sites like Twitter.

On an earlier post, I made accolades about Skype's World subscription. I retract them, and have recently unsubscribed to Skype because they weren't salient about these restrictions, and the slow response email communication is a turn-off. I was locked out of my World subscription, and there were restrictions on "purchases and redeeming vouchers." Even trying to email them was so confusing. You have to choose specific links in order for them to route your emails to the correct department. This is the canned email I received.

a) The country you have dialed is not included in your subscription.

Please sign in to the “My Account” section of our website and select Manage underneath the box showing your subscription name at the top centre of the page: http://www.skype.com/go/myaccount/ , you can find the list of destination (s) included in your subscription.

b) The number you have dialed is not covered by your subscription, such as a mobile phone number or a non-geographic number.

The subscription covers calls to landlines in selected destinations. However, mobile phone numbers are only included in certain countries. For more details, please go to:
http://www.skype.com/go/subscriptions/

c) You have exceeded the Fair Usage limit of xxxxx minutes included in your subscription.

Please be aware that your calls apply to our fair usage policy. For more information about this policy, please view the following page: http://www.skype.com/go/terms.fairusage

In addition, please note that you have the possibility to see a detailed list of the calls you have made and their exact costs: https://secure.skype.com/store/myaccount/history.html

If you have any questions or concerns on the calls listed on your call history, please provide us with the exact date, time and destination of the call(s), and we will assist you further.

I checked my account, and certainly did not exceed 10,000 minutes, but I think why should Skype advertise "unlimited" when they should say 10,000 minutes? Is that why they restricted my account? So I respond to Marilyn's email, but received a response from Alec. I had one more question, but since then Alec hasn't responded. Maybe he's on vacation. This is where I start to relive my frustrating eBay/PayPal experiences. Even Amazon (online), calls you back.

Needless to say, the lag in communication is a bit of a turn off. I just don't have the time or energy to sort this all out, so I ended up canceling my subscription. Besides a few of my foreign friends said it is cheaper to buy a calling card in Chinatown, which is probably what I'm going to do.

On another note, I sold my Skype phone, but for a separate reason. Skype works on wireless networks, but everyone in New York locks down they're wireless. Skype suggests using Boingo, which I tried for one month, but it only refers to places that I know have free wireless. And most of those places are loud (like Think cafe in Greenwich Village), so it's very difficult to hear your party on the other line. I tried using this Skype phone and Boingo in India, and it didn't work. It was better to just pay the additional $60 to your cell carrier. I'm sure Android phone or v4 of the iPhone will probably make the Skype phone obsolete.

So last year, I added Scrabulous, and have been playing this game with all my friends. I've been following the stories about Hasbro. Awhile back, they were in negotiations to settle. The makers of Scrabulous are brothers from Kolkata, India, and they net $300,000 a year, and could be worth between $3-10 million (NY Times). I read in another article that the two brothers from Kolkata wanted to sell Scrabulous to Hasbro for $10 million, which Hasbro refused.

Personally, I've never played Scrabble before the Scrabulous app. I think the reason why Scrabulous is so popular is because it's the perfect social game, and it solves the issue of timing. After one or two months after adding this popular app, I noticed people playing the board game at cafes and hotel lobbies. Scrabulous revived Scrabble.

Anyway Hasbro hired EA to launch a Scrabble Facebook app, which only had fewer than 10,000 players whereas Scrabulous has 2.3 million players (Slashdot). So since they failed at their Facebook app, they are now going to sue the makers of Scrabulous.

It's going to be interesting to see who wins this trademark case, since Scrabble has been for 70 years (Wikipedia). I remembered awhile back reading about trademark, and you know when studios "digitally master" a movie every 25 years, like Excorcist , Bladerunner, and many Disney movies? They do that to renew their rights on intellectual property. But when they digitally remaster those movies, they new copy is an exact copy.

I think that Hasbro would be smart to hire the Kolkata brothers to translate all their board games to digital media (like Google buying YouTube, or Yahoo buying Flickr or del.icio.us). This suit will probably piss a lot of Scrabulous players off, and I'm not sure that will be good press for Hasbro.

So after a 2 years of perusing, I've finally become a Yelper. I used to use Citysearch frequently before, but one time I reviewed a restaurant, and it was rejected (and it was a good review too). I think I was trying to upload photo several times, then finally I just gave up.

In a recent trip to Miami, I was looking for a restaurant that served good ceviche, so I checked on Yelp, and found The River Oyster Bar, which met and exceeded my expectations. Instead of blogging about food, I just review them on Yelp. Also, I've been looking for recommendations on hair stylists and acupuncture, and found some very helpful tips (e.g. they don't charge tax if you pay cash, and so forth).

Just recently, a fellow Yelper invited me to an event to meet other New York Yelpers in Red Hook.

Just use the Safari browser when you scan through Google Reader. These examples come from screenshots of the same article in Google Reader. The Firefox version has an Adobe ad.

Firefox displays ads...

Safari doesn't...

Need I say more?

There is an actual Firefox Add-On called Adblocker Plus, but I was able to correctly set my office computer (because my co-worker Angelos helped me), yet I was not able to properly set this app on my laptop. It's great because it rids all ad banners, and I don't have to worry about losing auto-fill. There's also an app that blocks Flash Ad/animations, but I haven't tried it yet. There were a lot of positive reviews for it.

So after the Scrabulous app was taken down. I tried the Scrabble app from EA on Facebook, and found that it crashed within the first page. I waited 5 minutes, then refreshed, and still nothing, which is shocking, since it was designed by EA (the makers of Playstation games. Their graphics are amazing, yet they weren't able to successfully create a working game on Facebook.

I couldn't get past this page:

So then I tried downloading the app again. This time, I paid attention to the 1.2 star rating out of 5. Still nothing. I am skeptical of the ~88,000 active users.

So then I received an invitation to play Word Scraper, which appears to have the same interactions/experience as Scrabble, but the players can customize their boards, so it doesn't look like a Scrabble board. However, it takes some time to getting used to playing with circular tiles, and now the double and triple-point tiles have to be learned again. Perhaps the two brothers from India can beat Hasbro. ;D

A couple of ITPers showed me this new tagging feature on Amazon (I'm not sure if it's new or if I'm just late), but I will probably investigate a little further for Hypershelf and Smart Shelf (thesis and collaborative projects), which use tagging. I just bought this book about Processing (Casey Reas and Ben Fry) authored by Dan Shiffman, a professor at ITP.

This book is suppose to be for beginners. Link to Amazon.

I just read about a game designer, Richard Garriott who will fly to the space station in October as a private tourist via NASA. While there, he will be conducting protein-crystallization experiments for some pharmaceutical companies. It will cost $350,000 to send emails from space to Earth.

Recently, my sister just got me a subscription to The Economist. I've grown to really like their Science section, which is almost like science journals except, not as technical. Some of the more interesting articles that I've read about and bookmarked in Delicious are about science research and citations, salmon farms, neuroeconomics, etc. There are broad subjects ranging from nutrition to different alternatives to designing photovoltaic cells.

After stumbling through the new design interface for two weeks, I finally lost patience, and switched back to the old design (maybe it was too much for me to adopt new designs of both Facebook and Delicious at the same time). Over the two-and-a-half-weeks, I noticed that my visits to Facebook were diminishing, but maybe that's a good thing. Actually, if it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't have planned to meet my friend for a reunion. The last time we saw each other was May 2007, so Facebook does have some utility in my life.

It is different because the new design has a wider palette, however I couldn't find my favorite new apps, or figure out how to post on someone's wall. When you change your template, it automatically changes the template for all your friends' pages that you visit. But recently, I was trying to figure out how to write on someone's wall, and wasn't even sure if the message was posted. And they've managed to stick one more ad on the right side (2 ads total).

When I reverted back to the old design, there was a warning that I would probably loose all my new friends that were added to my network while using the new design, but I don't think I lost them because their messages on my wall were still posted.

It may look better, but I liked the old interface better because I could navigate through my ritual of checking messages, keeping up with games, poking and posting messages. Maybe this new design is suited to new users. The new one sort of reminds me of FriendFeed and a little bit of Twitter sans the neat boxes.

I'm loving these new Google themes for personalizing your email interface. You can choose from a variety, kind of like what you can do with Twitter and MySpace pages without having to code. I chose the artsy-sketch theme. The art switches randomly from a giraffe to a tall ice-cream cone... Very cute. It's also useful if you have multiple Gmail addresses to distinguish from opened on several browsers.

Speaking of personalization, I thought this was neat: Personalize the Flip Cam. The Flip Cam is a compact video camcorder that can take HD as well. It's compact, and around $220, and easy to upload. They give you the specs, and you can upload your design, which will be printed on your camcorder. Once you design the template, you can upload it onto Cafepress site, and if your design sells, you earn $10 per camcorder. They have a whole section of bestsellers and top designers, which are other options than using they're Pattern Generator.

I forgot to mention that a couple of the themes change according to weather information.

My friend Tim McNerney is working on a cool Bike-Sharing Program and NYU that he had proposed. So far, we've gotten three pcomp things (1. magnetic card stripe reader; 2. solenoid-electric lock, and 3. Xport, which is an ethernet connection) to work separately with the Arduino, but now we are trying to merge everything together. The pcomp experience is slowly coming back to me, which is much like being an auto mechanic when troubleshooting.

Now we have to hack the Arduino code to get the solenoid to release when it reads the N number of an NYU ID card. Fun stuff. Figured out on Tom's site that you can use this breakout board (RJ-45) for the Xport instead of this sold out breakout board, which is $2.00 more expensive. Or, you can get this shield for $15.00.

Located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.

I saw this on my way home. Wired Magazine, and displays and demos tech and sustainable gadgets, and is open temporarily until the end of this year. If you wanted to see Pleo (responsive toy/robotic/dinosaur), you can demo it there. I saw this portable printer by Polaroid, the size of a compact camera, that prints business card-sized photos taken with a cellphone.

TED.com just released Nick Sear's 2007 presentation on the Orb. Since it's premiere, he has been working on version 2, which is probably 200% more complex than the first one. There are more LED lights, 80-pin chips, and SD cards. Every component is surface-mounted, and takes place on both sides of the circuit board.

This is the Eagle/CAD drawing of the circuit board:

This is the printed circuit board with the electronics soldered on:

This is when it's illuminated:

It is heading to Singapore for Siggraph 2008. For more information on Nick Sears, visit Art Magnitude site.

Saw these callouts in a BusinessWeek article. Thought they were cool in providing a second layer of information. I thought it was counterintuitive that you had to click on the i-icon to close the box. It took me about a couple of minutes to figure it out. Also, there should be a way to turn of the highlighted information for people who like to read clean copy (i.e. Yellow is such a striking color). I can see this used in Wikipedia.

Here is another image of the Orb projecting Jonathan Cousins' thesis project, data visualization. Orb v2.2 has more resolution. Jonathan Cousin is an alumni of ITP, and has great info visualization projects. I especially loved his CIA World Factbook visualization of the Middle East that he did for Lisa Strausfeld's course, who is partner at Pentagram, and designed the OS system for Sugar for Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC program (One Laptop Per Child).

So I was contemplating on designing a print version of my portfolio, and just happened to check-out my friend, Pete's new book. He designed it through Blurb, which is affiliated to Flickr. You download Blurb's BookSmart software, and there are a dozen of templates of styles and sizes to choose from. This is great if you don't want to shop for the holidays. I spent Saturday evening creating 3x50 page photo books, and ordered them online.

It is slightly slower than InDesign, however there are many advantages like the templates, and when an image's resolution is questionable, a warning icon appears. I'm not sure if the software automatically converts RGB to CMYK, but who cares? The prints are reasonably priced. You can choose a softcover or a couple of options for hardcovers. For another $3.00, you can print on Premium Paper, which I would recommend (of course, I only saw this option after ordering the first two).

Afterwards, if you do plan on selling your book, you can set the cost of your book, whether you want to sell the printed version on Premium Paper, and to opt for an online-preview for your readers. Within a couple of hours, your book will appear within the first 5 results of a Google Search. Btw, the preview is limited to the first 15 pages, so don't think that your other 35 pages are missing.

Estimate $10-20 for shipping depending on if it's a rush. And as always, check your work (copy and photos) twice.

Among the numerous DIY sites popping on the World Wide Web, I tried Custom Ink (www.customink.com). For promotional purposes, I tried uploading a graphic of a circuit board for a t-shirt design, but because it was really detailed, it was over 10mb. No worries, they sent me to another page, and I was able to get the file to them. Online or on the phone, the customer service was excellent. I was helped by Sarah Blair, who called me when there were some issues with the process. She explained the output of digital print versus screen-print, and assured me that if I didn't like the quality, I would be able to obtain a refund. You lose a lot of detail with the traditional screen-print, and a graphic designer would have to retrace some of the lines. She was good about calling me with print issues (e.g. ink colors and colored t-shirts). Specifically, on digital-preview, the graphic looked like it could be printed on a navy t-shirt, but she called to tell me it wasn't recommended.

To make a long story sort, details do show up. The photo was taken with my iPhone, sorry. You can choose from a variety of t-shirt brands (i.e. Hanes or American Apparel for that hipster). I'm really happy with the results.

Jonathan Cousins' cute little nerd is modeling and Orb shirt.

I really like this forum. People are knowledgeable and friendly...
http://flickr.com/groups/nikkor/

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As a big fan of Annie Leibovitz work, I really like these covers:

This is the photo of a cover that Annie Liebowitz shot for Vanity Fair (talk about lighting forced to look painterly):
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2006/12/yearinphotos_portfolio200612?slide=8

This is the video of the making of the shot above (I can watch this a million times). Takes awhile to load the video:
http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/video/2006/03/clooney_video200603

What is remarkable about this is lighting different skin colors so they look true, and also she puts another spin to it, look how the red background is consistently red in every photo of the series:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/onthecover_slideshow200707 (actually click on the next link):

(slide show-- this link automatically refreshed is for you):
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/onthecover_slideshow200707?slide=1&run=true&start=1#globalNav

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Saw these link bounce around ITP mailing list (was it Matthew Burton who sent it out?)

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/07/24/chindroppingPhoto.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/2699829038/sizes/l/

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Photo DIY tricks (I subscribe to the newsletters):
http://photojojo.com/

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Just found this...
http://gizmodo.com/5116662/how-to-use-your-new-digital-camera

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My ex-co-worker, Andrew Famiano found this site for me. Beautiful site and beautiful photography:

http://www.jansochor.com/

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i love this...

http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/pd--14010420/sp--A/Director_Woody_Allen_Posing_with_Statue.htm

This site is probably the worst web experience I've ever had. I typically don't criticize, but I love Vanity Fair Magazine, so I'm hoping that this blog post encourages their user experience designer/web team to get a move on. I spent an hour just flipping through a slide show that at most other sites, I would've spent 10 minutes on, but because I love the photographs, so I was persistent. The page refreshes S-L-O-W, and I'm not sure if it's because it's pinging information to a free account at Google Analytics (it says so on the bottom left corner of my Firefox Browser, and I'm assuming it's a free account because the page takes 20-30seconds to refresh). I'm waiting an eon to just read the captions of the photographs and upon scrolling, I'm waiting 2 eons to get to their video gallery. And just looking at the layout tells you they need some help with information architecture. I'm not sure if this experience is suppose to frustrate the reader to the point where they just close shut down their browser, and go pick up a magazine from Borders, but if that's the case, they need a new business manager. Look at all that wasted space.

I remember as a teenager that Vanity Fair and New York Magazine were on the same plane, but on the web, NYMag surpasses Vanity Fair. They could probably use some CSS help from my friend Andrew Famiano or Flash help from my friend Austin Corneilo.

When I was visiting Wikipedia, I came across this page, Jimmy Wales' letter requesting donations. I felt compelled at 3:30am to give.

Anyway, what's even cooler is the "Contribution history" page, which you can see a list in real-time. Most people are anonymous, but I like reading the comments from different languages and see different currencies, which show how Wikipedia has an impact globally.

Contribution History Page

I found this story about Microsoft's Surface already having an error on Gizmodo [As Seen at CES: Microsoft Surface Fail]. Check out the comments on that article, they're pretty amusing. Aside from the "error," what I really don't understand is why they don't keep their design simple? It's tiresome to see excess visual stimuli whether its using Surface, or opening Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows PC platform to see a lot of popups (e.g. I spent 2 hours trying to simplify my mom's web browser until finally I was fed up, and downloaded Firefox, and told her to only double-click that icon). In this case, the "Fallout 3" DVD screenshot coupled with "Games for Windows" ad and discretionary warning for inappropriate content in the background (of the photo above). Or maybe their designer was targeting gamers?

And lately in the NY Subway system, Microsoft has posted these "I'm a PC" ads/ad campaign (On the 6 line), which all the models look like artists that use Apple products (except for the pre-adolescent gamer), but it was fun reading them anyway.

p.s. I didn't tag this blog post "design."

So that's two articles that I've read where Disney is venturing into gaming. The first was an article from the Wall Street Journal [Disney Could Raise Its Game With EA] about Disney and EA. Second, at CES, Disney launched "Disney Star Guitarist" that competes with Sony's Guitar Hero published by Gizmodo [Disney Star Guitarist: Guitar Hero, But With Real Guitars]. Often I wondered, why I would play Guitar Hero because I wouldn't gain musical skills if I spent all those hours, but with Disney Star Guitarist, gamers can learn how to play real music.

This idea reminds me of a prototype that Cory Forsyth worked on 2 years ago. He designed a tangible guitar interface using infrared in our Introduction to Physical Computing at ITP taught by Tom Igoe. It was pretty cool, and even cooler that it worked.

Last, I recently saw a job post for a major company hiring 60 UX/UI designers in Los Angeles. I'm wondering if that's Disney.

Thought these were interesting about the Palm Pre in an article that sums it up again iPhone and G1 on [a href="http://i.gizmodo.com/5126870/in-a-nutshell-palm-pre-vs-iphone-vs-g1?skyline=true&s=x" target="_blank">Gizmodo [Read full article here].

These will be interesting to follow...

Development platform: The Pre's "Web OS" sure sounds nice—all developers need to know is JavaScript, HTML and CSS? Sounds good in theory, but building a mobile app will never be as easy as cranking out a new theme for your Tumblr. Palm's stressing ease of development, though, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Apple's solid, familiar-to-devs OS X-based SDK and Android's fully open source approach. Advantage: Pre? If it's straight-up JavaScript, that's a lot of programmers ready to go. Note: we had iPhone here before, but we've switched with a qualification. Developer community still goes to iPhone for volume.

and

Multitasking: One of the beefiest of our beefs with the iPhone SDK is its insistence on Apps running one at a time. The G1's notifications drawer was definitely a step in the right direction, but the Pre's interface is the first smartphone OS that was built with multitasking as a core design element. Resembling the Xbox's old Blades, or a less-jarring OS X Expose even, the Pre's "Cards" interface always places you in the context of every app running for fast switching, and notifications from other apps don't pull you away completely from the task at hand. Multitasking is hugely important on a phone, and it's a good sign that Palm recognizes. Advantage: Pre

Wondering if Palm Pre will make a comeback. Overall, Gizmodo really liked the interface and gave it an honest review. But how does Palm's relationship with Sprint work out? I know a lot of people who are on the Sprint network, who are moving to AT&T because they needed a smart phone ages ago. Most of these people are moving because one of their immediate family members transferred to AT&T awhile back, and now their move to AT&T will save them money (because mobile-to-mobile is included on AT&T). This will be an interesting battle for Palm.

Just got the SlingBox for Christmas, and we're pretty excited about it since we researched a whole year between Apple TV, SlingBox, and one that the NY Times wrote about, but I can't find that article now. They're all about $250-$350, but the biggest factor for us was the HD aspect. Streaming has been pretty good on Slingbox (we tested when Nick visited Jerseyville and Singapore). Also access to our recorded shows on TiVo is pretty sweet. They even have a Dashboard widget (the screenshot above). We heard that they were going to come out with an iPhone app before we bought it, so now we know for sure because they just announced it at MacWorld Expo 2009 on TÚAW.

Just in time because lately, since the national analog to digital conversion for TV, my stairmaster no longer plays TV. This poses a timing problem and a programming problem. I'm not sure if it's because our super is lazy (which I highly doubt), but I think some of the treadmills are obsolete. I've been listening to Stitcher on my iPhone, an app mimicking radio news, but it's not enough. Especially because my Sunday routines is to do 45 minutes while watching Frontline and Meet The Press. My friends suggest This American Life and various podcasts and RSS, but I need something more visual when I work out. And I would be able to watch any show anytime, uninterrupted (fast forward through ads). The Slingbox App is very much anticipated.

I found out so many and learned how to do so many things on Flickr. It is truly one of the most successful social software. So far, one of my photos have been published in foreign newsletters, domestic music videos, Art Forum magazine (Print edition) and BBC (digital edition). I learned how to take a screenshot of my iPhone app, and meet great photographers and artists, who tell me about new interesting exhibitions or advise me on camera purchases.

Please credit Lia Bulaong.

Just recently, on Lia Bulaong's page, I found the above photo with a lot of people commenting about this newspaper/newsletter on select internet writings from techno-artists-designers, such as "Michael Beirut, Matt Jones, Michal Migurski and the Mars Phoenix probe" (Lia Bulaong). Lia also included a link where you can order this paper, which is pretty cool. It's published by Ben Terrett and Russell Davies of Really Interesting Group. I just ordered one. You can read more about their project here.

Lia is definitely a cool hunter.

I went in with the mind set of not taking notes for all four speakers, which is why I just brought my iPhone and no tablet.

But at the end of Rachel Abram's talk, and in the middle of Soo-in Yang's talk, I decided to not be lazy, and start taking notes. I've seen Rachel speak at an IDEA event in 2007 and an AIGA/Apple event last year [a link to my notes last year]. She spoke about how her many diciplines have added to her interaction design, and showed some of her research of the taxi system. Soo-in Yang is an architect who created this physical interactive sculpture that reacts to information about air quality via mobile phones. It was a public art piece in South Korea (look at photos below). He also collaborated with Rob Faludi and Terence Arjo on another project.

Last, was this music composer, Phil Kline, who started Unsilent Night, an event that happens on Christmas Eve, and started with a couple of people in NYC, but has grown to thousands in many other cities. You can see his video on YouTube.

A slide from Adam Greenfield's Presentation

Adam Greenfield, who taught at ITP, and wrote the book titled Everyware also spoke at Dot Dot Dot, and now head of design direction at Nokia. He researches many ubiquitous computing systems. I can't cover everything he spoke about, but if you want to see some of his presentation slides, visit my Flickr set. Here are some of the highlights that you can look up or read about in his new book The City Is Here For You To Use:

UNStudio with Arup Engineering: Galleria West, Apgujeongdong in S. Korea

u-Cheonggyecheong: Instead of cleaning the stream, they wrapped it in media.

Tom Armitage, Making Bridges Talk: What if the London Bridge could Twitter?

u-City New Songdo: totally networked, and can track everything down to tagging soda bottles with RFID tags that can automatically credit your account even if you throw it in trash. Every action is recorded and mediated. This project is still a work-in-progress.

Massive simultaneity: The 1K Project

MITsenseable city lab/New York Talk Exchange (NYTE)

Mosaic of Singapore mall: A photo that shows a lady moving through a mall physically, but this mosaic also shows a layer of secondary information--who is on the other end of her mobile phone. We should think about cyberspace (Being on phone is like being in cyberspace) when we think about designing the physical space.

Stamen Design: Oakland Crimespotting
Think about constraints in analysis (e.g. Taxonomy of police department is already a constraint (e.g. categorizing rape).

iPhone/Flickr: Geotagging/Search urbanism, browse urbanism, make urban API. If we check the weather before we go out, we are conditioned to that networked information, hence Adam calls this a "network overlay." Contemplate how this "overlay" reflects every decision we make (i.e. real-time info).

I've also added Adam Greenfield's blog to my RSS Feeds and Google Reader.

I'm in Dublin, Ireland to document some work at the Lightwave Exhibition in the Science Gallery at Trinity College. This exhibition is trying to bridge science and art. Already, there a couple of ITPers showing their works: James N. Sears, Nurit Bar-Shai, and Lori Napolean.

Nick is showing his second design of The Orb, which now plays videos and Processing apps, and still images. Right now, Jonathan Cousin's data visualization is currently on The Orb.

Nurit Bar-Shai collaborated with other artists and MIT to show live video feeds of cellular interactions and the Northern Lights, of course separately.

Lori Napoleon created an interactive sculpture called "Scintillator." The sculpture is composed of tetrahedral shapes, and changes color when you touch it.

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Later, I will try to post photos on Flickr. Feel free to ping me if I forget.

Lêbonê Project: Lighting Africa with Off-Grid Energy
In partnership with Harvard University/Lêbonê Solutions, Professor David Edwards, Huga Van Vuuren, Ralph Borland & Richard Kirk

They can produce electricity from soil, using microbial fuel cell technology. Overnight, they were able to produce at least 5V.

This project would complement the Kennedy Violich Portable Light Project (more info here).

I am so lucky that I got tickets for this event. I have probably seen Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons) talk twice before. Steven Johnson spoke in Red Burn's class at ITP in 2005, and co-founded the community site [www.outside.in]. Also, he is coming out with a new book titled The Invention of Air. Just from the title, I can see how it's relevant to Lessig and Fairey. Here is the video of him talking about his new book. I've also been a big fan of Shepard Fairey's works since Obey. All three will be at this event, hosted by NYPL, and co-sponsored by Wired magazine.

There's been a lot of controversy surrounding Shepard Fairey (known for the popular Hope posters depicting Barack Obama and Obey). Apparently Fairey is being sued by AP Reuters for referencing a photo he used for the Hope poster. Read the article from Wired magazine.

Photo Credit: Boing Boing

Milton Glaser writes his point of view on this matter in Boing Boing. Milton Glaser designed the Bob Dylan album cover, and was popular for his "I ♥ NY" identity.

What I think is interesting is all these remixes of Fairey's works. You can see people using Fairey's style and aesthetic for the Hope poster on their Facebook profile, but instead of Obama, it's them. Here is an article from Wired magazine of fans of the movie Dark Knight using Fairey's style on a photo Heath Ledger's Joker.

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If you like Shepard Fairey's works from Obey. You may like Robbie Canal as well. He did a lot of posters of political figures.

Having worked in the publishing industry for a couple of years, I can't say enough how "On Point" Clay is about businesses having to think through new business models to survive. He mentions useful suggestions/examples and provides solutions to problems that I saw first-hand in these environments (e.g. The Guardian does it right, Fail-Forward-Fast model). Adaptation/Iteration/Group Action seem to be some relevant points. It's great that they covered filtering as well because I'm starting to get more of my news and more relevant links through Twitter.

The original link here [http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/group-action-interview-clay-shirky.html]

Another good article on Micropayments/Journalism/Freakonomics here [http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/blnk/]

Found this on Twitter from @matthewburton. Permalink is http://blog.anaara.com/archives/125. It makes me reconsider Flash applications. Lot of potential for games.

Photo Credit: Extreme Ice Survey

I just watched this documentary on NOVA that was pretty effective in convincing me that our source of water is endanger. This group EIS, Extreme Ice Survey is surveying and documenting how fast ice is melting in Greenland, Alaska, the Alps, etc. which is our source of drinkable water. EIS plants cameras to document the ice and glacial activites. They build these shells for cameras that I think operate using power generated from solar panels to power these cameras for one year. The photography is amazing and beautiful, but the video is scary.

Visit this link, and click on "Videos" to see time-lapsed documentation.

My friend and colleague Tim McNerney pointed this out to me the other day. I just bought the Arduino Duemilanove, and now you don't have to worry about toggling the jumper, and it has 3.3 and 5 Volts. With the other Arduino, I always had to scour around for a 3.3 voltage regulator, but now I won't have to with Arduino Duemilanove.

There's also a cool print of Italy on the back of it. I think it is approximately $30-$35 still.

The image cuts off, so click here to see it on my Flickr. Or feel free to drag this image to your desktop:

So I've been on Twitter a lot lately. Early morning, there was an unfortunate accident with our plant, "Lucky Paws" (Real name of plant is "Panda plant," more info about species, click here). We tried to salvage all the leaves to clone them. I took a pic with my iPhone and uploaded it to Twitpic, and one of my Twitter friends (@hungry_traveler) wanted links to documentation of our process. I was inspired by @hungry_traveler to start documentation on Flickr, here.

I plan on documenting, and re-potting the leaves as soon as they grow roots. Then we will probably give them away via Twitter or Flickr, and hopefully they document their process and send us links because we certainly won't be able to keep all 23 Panda plants in our tiny New York apartment. I hope this works. I'm crossing my fingers.

Story of Lucky Paws on Flickr is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkinggirl/sets/72157617381192609/, the same link above.

Clay teaches at ITP and talks about social media, specifically about Twitter:

till parsing through all these videos, but if you want to watch more videos, visit IgniteNYC on YouTube, click here:

Matthew Burton's Presentation "Hacking with Spooks: How to Code For the CIA From Your Basement"

Perry Chen's site Kickstarter (pretty awesome site)

Luke Dubois' "A More Perfect Union"

Baratunde Thurston's "...I Learned From Being @the_swine_flu"

Andy Maskin's "Bring On The Dancing Horses"

Rachel Sklar's "How I Learned to Love Giving Away My Money Online"

Kevin Slavin's "Dollhouse Earth"

Upon recommendation from a friend, I'm using "Delicious Search" over "Google Search" more and more because the results have been filtered. So far, I've been able to find more relevant search results when searching for scripts, software or creative procedure) (tech and creative fields). I still use Google Search for more general searches.

Even though I use CS4 with my clients, I still have CS3 on my own laptop because Adobe took away my favorite feature from Photoshop, and put it in Bridge, which makes my computer run very, very slow.

Yesterday, I had the most frustrating experience with Flash, and then I found this link:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

In a nutshell, Eric Socolofsky summarizes what is supported and not supported (found on ITP list)

Supported:

MultiTouch
Screen Orientation
Saving images to Photo Library
Accelerometer
Geo-location
Cut / Copy / Paste

Not Supported:
Embedded HTML content (via webkit in Adobe AIR).
RTMPE
Dynamically loading SWFs that contain ActionScript
PixelBender Filters
Microphone Access
Video Camera Access

Found this app via the Daily Intel's blogpost about Gossip Girl last week. In a nutshell, this app is like a karaoke machine and recording studio. Inspired after seeing a tiny, blond girl perform a Snoop Dog track at a karaoke bar, I decided to buy/try this app.

Also, the buying and downloading experience is cohesive (meaning, I'm not ported to another site to buy a track, and it's downloaded into my iTunes account). This app is self-contained, which allows a more engaging experience. Love that you have options for real time auto-tune, and it truly works better with the mic. After trying this app, I could really see its viral potential.

Last, bought the "I'm on a Boat Track" and it seems like the instrumental is louder where the profanities are. If you are a fan of SNL, Smule is hosting a contest:
http://iamtpain.smule.com/contest

Google Home Job is hiring. If you want to make more money in less hours, this maybe the perfect job for you. I think it's legit, but maybe it's not? If it's not, I hope Google sues them. If it is, here is the link:

http://www.news3insider.com/jobs/googlehomejob.html

It's called Monocle. It's a work-in-progress, but pretty cool.

Can't wait to see what "big" games people create with this feature.

So quite awhile back when I went to Wired Nextfest, I saw a robotic arm with 33 pneumatic pumps. I thought it was amazing because it could pick an object as fragile as an egg, but I couldn't visualize how this could be translated to helping amputees.

But recently on a 60 Minutes program, DARPA is funding this amazing project. You can control the arm connected to sensors with your foot. In this clip, you can see a user pick up a bottle of soda, open it, and drink from it. Also in the last portion of the clip, this company experiments with brain waves by connecting sensors to the limb (not sure, but could be related to phantom limbs). Anyway, I was blown away by this technology. If you have any insight, and ping me links to other scientific research (address is posted in the footer--Thx).

Watch CBS News Videos Online

You can read more about this story, here.

In an effort to push publishing forward, Esquire magazine experiments with augmented reality. Last year, it was eInk, this year, AR. Now, I'm just going to guess that the creators used Adobe Air and/or Flash for this? Or do they use Open GL. In any case, the quest to push the digital realm of 3D to our physical spaces is hot right now. Other uses of AR is Yelp's "Monocle" feature of the iPhone app. Esquire's and Yelp's foray into AR is still premature, but nevertheless, it's definitely worth the experience (Esquire: $3.95/Yelp: free). I can really see AR in gaming or educational applications, but as Esquire demonstrates, AR can be used for advertisements as well (see Lexus AR - reappropriating infrared tech). There were some fullscreen issues with this ad (see photo below-looks like non-HD footage on HD screen). Any HD consumer of media would think this was a mistake rather than intentional.

If you are strapped for cash, just check out my screenshots, but the relevant ones are embedded in this blog post.

To begin with, Barbarian and Psyop worked on the tech and design of the AR for Esquire. You download the software onto your computer, and hold up the magazine's semicode to a web cam. I really enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s monologue and the fashion bit. I phased out on Jillian (maybe because of her story didn't interest me), except for the last part, which she says, visit her past midnight, and she'll tell you another joke. I am definitely going to try it after midnight to see if her content varies. You can change the direction of semicode to activate different 3D video clips.

The scattered letters for Robert Downey Jr.'s would appeal to any student of typography. The illustrations for the fashion exhibition (not really a slide show, more animation) were definitely really cool. All in all, the AR experience was beautiful and hip.

The slide show exhibiting "jr's" work was probably the most frustrating experience. Partially because jr's photographs are so compelling, but navigating through the media was très difficile. I spent a good 20 minutes flipping directions of semi-code, since the slide show player was too speedy. The photography looked better on my screen than the magazine, but navigating through print pages was definitely more convenient.

Last, was a jazz sample from an artist. An experience you can't get from print. But aside from the great music, it was a pretty flat experience. Maybe AR will help save the cost of print for publishers, but readers will pay with their time. Consider this: Would you want to download a piece of software to access to experience another dimension of your magazine? Would you do this for every magazine you have? Is this AR experience immersive enough to repeat weekly or monthly?

In any case, I was narcissistic enough to get a cool profile photo out of this experience ;)

Full-screen warning by Esquire and app confirmation.

Lexus Ad

Fashion Animation/Exhibition

Slide show of jr's compelling photography.

Music AR experience.

Here are some good ones:

Anonymous

Feds monetary policies create financial disasters; Great example of a pyromaniac working for the fire department.

Charles Hampton

Thank you for being a light to the world. I have every confidence that Wikipedia will help lead us out of the dark ages.

Albert Morton [this guy donated $100]

I never thought about Wikipedia needing money. OK! I'm on board now.

Karl Jay Garcia

If I could only have ONE website, it would be wikipedia

Adam Burton [he donated 2 Canadian dollars]

I dont have much this year....but thank you for letting me use this wonderful source of knowledge,

Michael Ang referred this screen to me. It's pretty amazing. It is low-power, has without-backlit option (reading screen in sunlight is easy), and color option. Pretty amazing technology. If you do a search on the Engadget site, you will see some posts about a demo in Google Android tablets at CES. A netbook using this screen is going to cost ~$100, amazing!

This is a seed to an interesting project.

http://www.internetarchaeology.org

I remembered growing up through junior high and high school, history was so mundane. I felt like I was reading irrelevant content, which sounds so sacrilegious. I do remember some blitzes here and there, and I was interested in McCarthyism, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown vs. Board of Education, but everything else is a bit of a blur (and I took AP History, lol).

Anyway, later on through travel and practicing design, I grew to love history. Last year, when I visited Ireland, I borrowed a couple of travel books that explained the whole history of Ireland within a chapter or two. And about 10 years ago, I took a class on the history of graphic design (taught by Carl Heinz), and we had to read The History of Graphic Design. I didn't buy the book because it costed $80 at the time. Instead, I borrowed it from a friend. I believe with the exception of a couple of chapters, I read that whole textbook, and was fascinated how history was perceived by creatives. Anyway, I recently checked the price online, and I snatched one for around $3.00. I really can't believe my luck. In retrospect, I think history should have been taught with this book first, or any history relating to the arts. Cultural and art events that relate to the era (e.g. Bauhaus movement in relation to the war), or Paul Rand's controversy (with this magazine cover for Direction) can be of interest because of the artifacts produced in that era.

Anyway, Amazon is offering a Kindle version (sigh), which I highly don't recommend because there are lush visuals to accompany the text. It almost costs the same amount for the hardback version.

For more about Paul Rand, this article was recommended by Nick Sears and Jonathan Cousins (who have stronger "developer" skills) -- a good read for the geeks out there.
http://www.paul-rand.com/thoughts_politics.shtml

Just saw two projects that I thought were really interesting with Hallmark. The first is a printed book with a recorder (google: Hallmark recordable book), so the small device captures you reading a story to your kids. Below, if you click on the link, you can watch a video of how this works. I find this a very engaging experience.

http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/article%7C10001%7C10051%7C/HallmarkSite/GoldCrownStores/GCS_HOLIDAY_GIFTS_STORYBOOKS

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The second is a voice-recognition stuffed animal. I remembered while I was attending ITP, several students experimented with this type of interaction. There are several types of interactions that are described here:

http://corporate.hallmark.com/Product/Valentines-Day-Gifts

Click here to read about them.

Here is the condensed list:
50 Best Websites (Time Magazine, 2010):

MUSIC & VIDEO
1. Vimeo
2. Movieclips
3. Grooveshark
4. MOG
5. Labuat [http://soytuaire.labuat.com/]

SPORTS
1. Sports-Reference [http://www.sports-reference.com/]
2. Rotoworld
3. Yardbarker
4. Total Pro Sports [http://www.totalprosports.com/]
5. Citizen Sports [http://citizensports.com/]

FAMILY & KIDS
1. Design Mom [http://www.designmom.com/]
2. Serious Eats [http://www.seriouseats.com/]
3. Babble [http://www.babble.com/]
4. Etsy
5. Sesame Street

NEWS & INFO
1. Guardian
2. The Onion
3. The Daily Beast [http://www.thedailybeast.com/]
4. National Geographic
5. WikiLeaks [http://wikileaks.org/]

FINANCIAL & PRODUCTIVITY
1. Mint
2. Wikiinvest [https://www.wikinvest.com/]
3. StockMapper
[http://www.stockmapper.com/NYXtrac.html]
[http://www.stockmapper.com/NDXtrac.html]
[http://www.stockmapper.com/STXtrac.html]
4. Springpad [http://springpadit.com/] -- to do list
5. Wakerupper [http://wakerupper.com/] -- schedule telephone reminders

SHOPPING & TRAVEL
1. Groupon
2. Gilt Groupe
3. Rent the Runway [http://www.renttherunway.com/]
4. Stay [http://www.stay.com/]
5. SeatGuru [http://www.seatguru.com/]

HEALTH & FITNESS
1. Keas
2. Mayo Clinic
3. Walk Jog Run [http://www.walkjogrun.net/]
4. Exercise TV [http://www.exercisetv.tv/]
5. Fit by Fun [http://fitbyfun.com/index]

SOCIAL MEDIA
1. Gowalla
2. Foodspotting [http://www.foodspotting.com/]
3. Linkedin
4. StockTwits [http://stocktwits.com/]
5. Tumblr

GAMES
1. Kongregate
2. Cactus Squid [http://cactusquid.blogspot.com/]
3. Pogo [http://www.pogo.com/]
4. Newgrounds [http://www.newgrounds.com/]
5. Games.com

EDUCATION
1. Livemocha (languages online)
2. Chegg [http://www.chegg.com/]
3. MIT OpenCourseWare [http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm]
4. Read Print [http://www.readprint.com/]
5. TED

These sites peaked my interest:
MIT OpenCourseWare [http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm]
Read Print [http://www.readprint.com/]
StockMapper [http://www.stockmapper.com/NYXtrac.html]
WikiLeaks [http://wikileaks.org/]
Wikiinvest [https://www.wikinvest.com/]