Updates from theinfonaut RSS
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04:50:26 pm on February 16, 2008 |
Imagine little blue hyperlinks on your stuff, your real stuff, not your computer or your cellphone, but you jacket, you box of pancake mix, that lamp in the corner. The idea of creating hardlinks or physical world hyperlinks boggles my mind and gets my imagination running.
Well, it’s possible, and they aren’t little blue links they are QR codes (sometimes called 2d barcodes). Japan was covered in them when I lived there 2 years ago. QR codes were on everything from soda cans to billboards. For QR codes to work you need two things, the code with encoded info and a way to read them, usually a small cellphone application.
These codes are little windows from the physical world into the information of the virtual world. Here’s an idea, I could make some seriously fun alternate reality games around the city. Or what about being able to take a camera phone pic of a business card and instantly be able to call that person and later search for them again in my address book. I want to put aQR code on my website, so you can transfer my contact info from website to you cellphone through the screen. I want to use it for cute applications, like tagging my crafts with the maker name and website (the kind of info that doesn’t normally fit on a little “Made by:” tag).
Speaking of space constraints, my plants don’t have room for an instruction sheet, but the small stake labels or even the pot itself would have room for a QR Code. QR Codes could link my objects to the information that I need to make decision about them. Should I wear a jacket today? My clothes can link to the weather, my car can link to my favorite gas finding site. Friend’s objects can have their phone numbers (Can I keep your book for another week?). Or what about will-call paper tickets at shows? You’re handed the paper only to walk 10 feet and have it taken back or ripped up (a waste of paper), imagine just using your phone to hold a QR code image that you scan screen to screen.
Oh, and how much geekcraft-cred would be earned with a little QR Code cross-stiching? Traditional QR codes have 3 points that define the plane, and the forth point helps correct for skew from angles. There are also other proprietary types of codes, such as the Dune-ish shot code.
You can learn more at Instructables, make your own or get a reader for your cellphone.
A flickr search turns up some really amazing results.
If anyone gets any crazy ideas let me know, I’ll help out and in the least I’d love to see what you make.
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05:45:07 pm on February 10, 2008 |
Last week I had an amazing time in Sebastopol, CA at SGFOO Camp 08. The event was held on O’Reilly Media’s campus over a rainy weekend. Over 100 people got together to talk about the ‘Social Graph’ (that’s you, me, and everyone we know connected on the internet), the technology behind it, its implications, and just to have fun and share ideas. I have to admit I was intimidated going into the event, I feared being the only designer in a programmers’ world. Thankfully I had nothing to fear, the sessions ranged from tech heavy talks about standards, to UI issues and challenges, to my personal favorite subject, game play and system design. We talked about XMPP, OpenID, OAuth, XFN, and those who could, hacked the nights away. If you don’t know what those technologies are don’t worry. The focus of the weekend was thankfully beyond the tools. I was pleased to take part in a lot of discussion about privacy protection, interface design best-practices and game theory. All in the name of making sure that these technologies work their magic in the background while you get the benefits of simplified login across multiple sites, better management of your friend networks, and control over your own online data, all while having fun! What’s more I got to talk with a lot of people about Get Satisfaction. Linked-In, Twitter, Dopplr, SocialThing, and O’Reilly Media all had requests and ideas that will enable Satisfaction to be their favorite tool for connecting with you and providing the best customer service ever. All in all I had a great time, learned a ton, and met a lot of really amazing people.Here are a few other post camp write-ups:Fun @SJO from Renny GleesonNotes from Social Graph Foo from Kellan Elliott-McCreaSG FooCamp ‘08 wrap-up from Scott Kveton
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06:55:49 pm on December 11, 2007 |
The design of web applications has more ramifications then a lot of design entrepreneurs are willing to admit or take responsibility for. Adam Greenfield pulls no punches and is the first to clearly articulate the negative side of social-networking. Here are some particularly pungent quotes from his blog post:
“one of my primary concerns has always been that we not accede to the heedless restructuring of everyday human relations on inappropriate and clumsy models derived from technical systems - and yet, that’s a precise definition of social networking as currently instantiated.”
“All social-networking systems constrain, by design and intention, any expression of the full band of human relationship types to a very few crude options - and those static!”
“Experienced user-experience practitioners will see right away that there’s something of a Catch-22 laying in wait here for the unwary, in that given how dynamic social feeling is seen to be, any system supple enough to model the actual range of affinities and sentiments found in life would be an extraordinary hassle for its users.”
“social comfort and coherence require that by far the majority of actual feelings regarding the people in our lives not be made explicit”
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05:03:38 am on December 10, 2007 |
Next steps: About us, Leslie’s first post, Jeremy’s first post, new (improve) theme.
