September 24, 2005
More and more great ambient devices
So over the past few weeks, I've been thinking more and more about "Ambient Intelligence." Specifically Ambient Display Devices. I had thought that the domain had already been viewed and discarded by the side of the road, however since I've started looking for examples, I'm finding them all over. I found "Ambient Devices" a spinoff company from the MIT media lab. They had some fairly interesting devices like the Stock Orb, the Weather Forecast Beacon, and the Executive Dashboard. I think all of these are excellent examples of glanceable interfaces. Another company I recently discovered is called Violet. It's a French company, and you can see how the difference in culture from MIT really affects the design of their products. My favorite is probably the Nabaztag, a weird little rabbit looking device that can be set up to react in different ways depending on the information it receives.
So, what I'm learning is that there are a few different categories to consider when thinking about Ambient Intelligence. The products at AmbientDevices are pure ambient display devices. That means they are meant to blend into the environment they are placed in, and are not really designed to grab your attention. I think this is the essence of a glanceable interface.
The other category is "Smart Objects," like what we see from the products at Violet. These devices are meant to be able to grab a user's attention on various events, and to be interacted with directly if the occasion calls for it.
I would be very interested to see any comments from you guys on interesting ideas you may have for uses of the products at these two sites. Or any ideas on Ambient Intelligence in general. This is an official call for comments :-)
P.s. I think we should talk Tim Tucker into starting a blog, that guy is nuts.
Posted by whazlewo at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2005
Still Fighting for Anarchy at Informatics
I've been told that I am "blackballed" for my insidious acts in the PhD office over here at Eigenmann. Apparently, the file cabinets in the vacant offices were providing some sort of function, and my involvement in moving them so they could actually be used, has somehow altered the stable universe. Informatics can be such a weird place politically. I've been told that it is the same way in most other departments but I can hardly believe that anything ever gets done if everyone has to subscribe to this level of bureaucracy. At times things seem to get better, but I still find myself astounded with the extreme lack of efficiency in acquiring resources here. I have been around this campus for several years now, and I have worked for many departments, and I have to say that it seems to me that more was accomplished with less in all of those cases. One of the departments I worked for had 300+ users in offices all over the campus, all of which were supported effectively by me and one other person above me. Another place I worked had no more than 50 users in 3 separate buildings, but we had no budget, and somehow we made that work. Where am I going with this? Informatics is somewhere in the middle, probably < 300 users, and what seems like a never ending budget. So why then, do I have to get in trouble just because I started using an unused filing cabinet? Also, why do people have to dread asking for help or recourses from Informatics? My hope is that it is not sheer incompetence that causes these problems, but rather that there are issues that are unclear to me. I am not trying to stir the pot, I just wish I knew what was going on some of the time.
Posted by whazlewo at 10:07 AM | Comments (4)
September 17, 2005
My Ambient Orb has arrived.
I purchased an Ambient Orb online from Ebay for only $40. They said that it did not work, but I plugged it in and everything seems to work correctly. It is pretty neat looking. Since someone owned it before me I have to wait and get the password chagned from their site inorder to configure it myself. They have several free datasets that it will sync with, but if I pay a monthly subscription, I can send it my own data with a php script. Hopefully I can talk them into giving me the 3months free that comes with a new purchase.
Posted by whazlewo at 1:37 PM | Comments (2)
September 16, 2005
Thinking of an Internship
I've started to think seriously about applying for an internship this summer. Yvonne has suggested looking into intel's research labs. After poking around a bit on their website I discovered the Intel Ubiquitous Computing research lab. Several of the projects in the Cambridge lab look very interesting. However, as I look at the skill sets they look for in their interns, I wonder if they would be able to use me or not. They are very fond of people who are working on PhDs in Computer Science. It is still very early to start thinking about this summer, I have to continue to work on collecting options.
Posted by whazlewo at 2:31 PM | Comments (1)
September 13, 2005
TableTop2006: Adelaide, South Australia
Our paper entitled, "Extending Tabletops to Support Flexible Collaborative Interactions" was accepted to the first IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems" (TableTop2006). We've put over a year of work into this paper and its quite a relief that it is going to be published. The sad part is that Australia is extremely popular in January, and on top of a national gas crises, I have not found a plane ticket for under $2,500. So I am a little sad that I'll probably not get to go to Australia, but I am still glad that our paper will be published. Yvonne should probably be the one to go since Interactive Tabletops is one of her areas of expertise. I'm sure I'll have another chance to go there someday.
Posted by whazlewo at 10:46 PM | Comments (2)