2007-05-30

Minority Report style computing, one step closer :




MS released Surface (presented above as on what looks like 80s table-top-style video game). Apple has already previewed the iPhone with similar touch surface interaction. I recently presented a concept brief for an museum exhibition that made use of dialogue tables. (That I proposed would interact with RFID tags.)

People seemed to doubt this would work. But here it is all grown up with Surface.

I think we’ll see this a lot more in museum and exhibition presentation settings. More so than even hotels and restaurants as Core77 suggests.

irrelevancy watch :

As I continue to miss on the ever evolving new media world, I’ve only just found out about lolcats and all the variations. As an amateur anthropologist (hey, I did major in it!), I found Anil Dash’s round up the best (in part because it gets into the structure of the lolcat pidgin). A new form of internet grammar? You decide.

2007-05-29

experience design program, cancelled :

Putting People First reports that a undergraduate program in experience design that was to start in the Netherlands has been cancelled. Apparently there was a lack of interest.

To which I would say, of course there is, no undergraduate has any idea what that major would even be. It’s such a new field (pulling together many existing fields) that it seems silly to start this as bachelors program. Build up a strong masters program and let that be the magnet that seeds the interest for an undergraduate program.

Let’s hope someone else sees this and creates the same program elsewhere or retools and relaunches at Utretcht.

2007-05-25

a tale of two (East Tennessee) cities :

What Chattanooga got right 23 years ago, Knoxville has only just figured out: Redevelopment happens when there is community buy-in from the start. Every get rich quick, redevelopment scheme (A World’s Fair!? A domed downtown!?) failed in Knoxville because of top down decision making.

Knoxville has less far to pull itself up (it was not a dirty, dyeing steel town like Chattanooga), but they are still behind and have made some irreparable planning decisions in the meantime. MetroPulse does the round up.

(Also, Chattanooga’s success pre-dates Web 2.0 by two decades. For you kids that think collaboration and distributed decision-making is some new idea.)

visualization :

Kottke writes today about what he cynically (or snarkily?) calls “self-deception.” I think it’s more accurately called visualization. And how that leads to better living. I think there’s some rule self-help book out right now about something similar. I could Google it, but so could you. The science seems to support the theory though, according to Kottke.

2007-05-22

Crime Fueled by, um, Ecstacy? :

A crime wave has hit the once bucolic Lakeshore Avenue District fueled by the (formerly) peace-love-unity-respect, rave drug Ecstacy? Apparently so.

Police have also identified a troubling new trend: Some of the young suspects are users of the drug ecstasy.


Perhaps it’s the thirty dollar a tab designer price.

2007-05-21

SF’s daytime ‘idle’ :

I was always amazed by this to. I used to see all the fabulous people walking around in the middle of the day. When I first moved there and couldn't find work. I wanted to go up to them and ask “what do you do?”

Someone just did.

Best answer:

“If you ask 100 girls for $10, that&rduo;s $1,000, that's rent,” he explained logically.


Ahh, the California lifestyle.

2007-05-16

canada’s missing gravity found! :

Which has led (as science discovery often does) to other kinds of new data.

From HowStuffWorks:

While the mystery surrounding Canada's gravitational anomalies has been put to rest, the study has wider implications. Scientists involved in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center study were amazed that they were able to see how the Earth looked 20,000 years ago. And by isolating the influence of the ice sheet's rebound effect, researchers better understand how convection affects gravity and how continents change over time. Finally, the GRACE satellites have provided scientists with data on many ice sheets and glaciers. By examining climate change that took place thousands of years ago, scientists may gain a better understanding of how global warming and rising sea levels are affecting our planet today and what impact they will have on our future.


Read the whole thing for additional fun-facts to know and tell.

future cool :

There is a simple, retro-future sensibility to Studio Kanna’s work. It mixes-up modernism with ornament and a and personalization. Cool. [Featured at PingMag]

2007-05-12

Why I miss San Francisco :

No other city would consider a transgender woman as president of the police commission. Oh and she‘s the CEO of a $12M women-centric sex toy company. Sigh.

Not Dead Yet :

When I started this second blog I had visions of long-form essays, infused with humor and humility. Or something.

It’s clear that that is not working as I just avoid posting altogether if I can’t come up with at leas 150 words.

Beginning now, DC1974 is moving to a Kottke-style blog of links and short thoughts.

Please thank you for your patience during this adjustment.