brightly colored food

Bluejacking could be a meme in the making, though the website the article links to appears nonexistent. It’s the “sport” of finding nearby mobile devices with an open, unsecured Bluetooth connection and sending the unsuspecting owner messages (”what’s that you’re drinking?”). Something about having control of your device wrested from you seems like such a significant moment; imagine if your cursor moved right now across the screen like it was an ouja board.

I’ve been thinking about other significant moments recently. I think another one is the first time a person does a Google search of their own name. Seeing the search results and realizing the persistent and uncontrollable data traces that show like smudges across the internet must provoke some interesting impressions from a person at that moment. I don’t remember what I felt when I realized I could search the internet about myself.

Billed as “a database of sources for physical computing parts, methods, software, and other resources”, the site is a weblog run out of the Interactive Telecommunications program at NYU. Bless ‘em for sharing the wealth.

It’s looking like my thesis paper and project are going to be more socially focused (CSCW: computer-supported cooperative work, social software, whatever you want to call it), but dorking out on the physical computing stuff is number two on my list of things to do after graduating next spring (number one is taking a long trip somewhere).

Also on the more arty side of design, my friend Carl mentioned that Golan Levin is going to be teaching here in the spring. Should be a nice break from the HCI classes I’m taking this fall: CSCW, taught by Bob Kraut and Paul Resnick (Neema’s taking it too), and Applied Reseach Methods, taught by Sarah Kiesler. My other two classes are my thesis paper and thesis project, advised by Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman, respectively.

This could potentially be quite a useful tool. The Mac version comes out in a few weeks, but now that I’m on a ThinkPad at work, I guess I can test it out on Monday. One of the guys I work with is Martin Wattenberg, who among other things is an information visualization rockstar (he designed the SmartMoney Map of the Market). I imagine he’ll have an insightful critique of the product.

From Gil Friend

Because videos often get the point across much faster.

CHI Video Retrospective
U of Maryland HCIL Open House Videos

From HCI Index

If you happen to be in Pittsburgh over the next couple of days, you should definitely check out the Robocup American Open. I’m not nearly as excited about robots as some of the people I work with here, but that’s still pretty damn excited.

On Tuesday I went to a lecture by the Masahiro Fujita, the Principal Scientist and System Architect at Digital Creatures Laboratory, Sony Corporation. They’re the group that made the AIBO. He was talking about what looks to be the successor to the AIBO, the SDR-4. The motion, particularly the balance and types of navigation it could handle, was impressive. Check out some videos here, here (watch the volume levels on this one - it’s loud, but several SD4s are singing and dancing), and a few good ones here. Here’s an article from PCWorld about the SD4, and a feature list from Sony. Fujita was also encouraging students to download the SDK for controlling their robots - I guess this has been quite a source of innovation for them.

I also got to see some footage of last year’s robotic soccer championships, called RoboCup, where teams of autonomous robots, including AIBOs, play soccer on a very small field. It was surprisingly thrilling to watch. The American Open 2003 is going to be at Carnegie Mellon in early May. Didn’t think I’d be saying this, but I’ll be going…