Intwo

A long time ago bottom up development was the only type. People who were using the objects were the ones that were making the improvements on them. This type of development not only prevents alterations of an idea for selfish reasons, but also creates a community around the object itself. The Danish windmill is one of the last, large scale examples of this. Somehow, development of ideas, tools, and products were taken from the open hands of the people and forced into an enclosed room, where the ‘experts’ improve them, then throw them over the wall to the people who pay whatever they are told is the proper price.

Today, I read an article about crowdsourcing. Online collaborative efforts have existed for quite some time and the entire web 2.0 concept exists because of user generated content, but the marriage of the two can have some really interesting repercussions. For example, WEbook is a project that invites online collaborators to come post written material on their site with the hopes of getting published. Users of the site can then vote on the writings and the highest ranked writings will be published in a book. Local Motors uses crowdsourcing to develop cars.

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humanity, technology | 6 Comments

Mike McCracken, loneconspirator , has made an Audio ping-pong game (or audio Pong, really) for one person using an Arduino board, headphones, and an accelerometer (a sensor that measures tilt, used in the Nintendo Wii controller). It is still in an early prototype stage, but I have a feeling he will keep refining it.

It is a one-person game. You put on the headphones, and you will hear a sound “approaching”. It will be to your right or left, and you tilt your head to center the sound. If you tilt your head, or the “paddle”, to the right position, you strike the “ball”, and it will come back. Speed increases over time, just like classic arcade games.

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technology | 3 Comments

Nastypixel is a design collective, composed of people associated with Interaction Ivrea in Italy. As a contribution to open-source learning, they have published a a series of excellent step-by-step tutorials, or “recipes”, on how to make various DIY interactive projects. The first project, Soundpad, teaches you how to take apart a computer keyboard and appropriate the internal logic to your own needs. This way you can connect four button pads to your computer, where a Flash software component plays different sounds depending on the pad you press.

As a note on gestural interfaces, previously mentioned on Intwo, SmartRetina is a platform for computer gesture recognition, developed by Yaniv Steiner of Nastypixel. It has a camera component and a software component, forming the base for touchless gestural interfaces.

design, technology | 2 Comments

Feedr is a concept I am working on. The name is a play on “News Reader” – just like a reader makes your favorite blogs and online news available from within one interface, feedr allows you to search newly blogged-about videos. The idea is that you enter a search word/term, and the software searches blog posts tagged with those words that include videos. What you get in the feedr player is a continuous stream of videos. There are controls to pause, skip ahead and back, and there is a link to the original video.

I am posting this to get some feedback on the idea. I want to keep the interface extremely minimal – the inspiration is a TV, but instead of a predetermined set of channels, you ‘zap’ by entering search terms, and the channels are ever changing – reflecting the current online trends and discussions. As soon as I get a working prototype up and running, I will post a link here.

technology | 5 Comments

Just over a year ago i first saw this video of Johnny Lee creating a multi-touch (touchless) interface using a Wii remote. Though I thought that the idea was neat and that Johnny was a genius, I kind of wrote it off as a follower of the muti-touch trend. A few months later I saw this video. This time Johnny is creating a fairly stunning head tracking interface, again using the Wii remote and a few parts. Once more I was thoroughly impressed with Mr. Lee’s innovation, but I still wasn’t really catching the “why” other than making some cool things happen with a Wiimote and a PC…until I saw his TED talk.

Johnny Lee is setting a new standard for hi-tech research, and he is doing so by making it available to everyone. Using a camcorder and YouTube, he is teaching the world how to create devices that are at the frontline of innovation. This can empower users of technology and fosters much stronger development of products. Rather than developing in a box, he is trying to make everyone a part of the process.

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technology | No Comments

As you may notice we shifted things around a bit on you. Now no matter what your browser window size, intwo will still look good. And please re-size your fonts if you find the text too big or small. Enjoy!

design, technology | No Comments

Most of you may be familiar with In Rainbows, Radiohead’s latest album. Less of you might be familiar with how they distributed it. The first three months of the album’s availability was accessible via the internet only. Anyone could come to the albums website and download the album for whatever price they saw fit. The band hasn’t released any financial numbers on their profits from the endeavor, but financial success or not, they introduced a new method for mass distribution of music. Until the end of this month, they are experimenting again.

The have separated the song nude into five separate tracks: vocals, guitars, bass, drums, and string. Anybody has access to download these tracks and import them into whatever audio mixing software they have. People then have the ability to upload their remix to a website that users can vote on.

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design, technology | 1 Comment

Hobnox is yet another social networking site trying to find its niche in the broad range of online social network users. Their platform is is to connect through creatives and give an outlet for them to express their creativity. If you are familiar with sites like this, this, this, or this you know that this idea isn’t new. But there are some interesting things about hobnox. The most prominent being their integrated tools for creating music and video. The tools are pretty impressive flash interfaces that you should check out.

The effect of the rapid growth of social networking sites audience seems to be flooding the market of social networks. Though there seem to be useful tools that have a great potential application, persuading users to join these sites seems to be a daunting task. Ultimately, the tools/sites are only useful if they are used in conjunction with a thriving community. So I guess the question is, what creates community?

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design, technology | 4 Comments

As of April 7th, 2008 Bell Canada will ‘throttle‘ its internet service. This means that they will implement control over what content you will be able to access at full speeds. They already claim to offer a different range of speeds, which as reported by CBC marketplace, is rather suspect. If Bell gets away with doing this, the new control will open the playing field for other ISPs to enforce control over internet content. The implications of this control could severely effect how the internet works. At this stage the internet is largely a free source of knowledge untainted by our corrupt economic system. Allowing the providers to filter and control content for their own economic benefit is adding major influence from the corrupt economic system on this purportedly free knowledge network.

So what can you do? Well here are a few things: Read more…

humanity, technology | 2 Comments

This is a great music sharing site. Create a playlist and you are added to the list.

The idea is good, but I am really impressed with the interaction design. He is limiting the searchability of the site, which some users could find as a deterrent. Putting the users in a cluster, though, increases the exploration of the content, and then, when you view a users playlist he is using semantic urls so that you know where you are and that you can bookmark back to that page. So many sites use proprietary bookmarking systems when all internet browsers already have bookmarking capabilities.

The interface is clean and to the point. Kudos.

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design, technology | 8 Comments