Over a Month Ago
Every day, the millions of people that are connected to the internet confess their feelings and emotions to an unknown audience. It provides a forum where you can feel as though you are talking to no one yet speak your emotions like you could be heard by everyone. In 2006, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar created We Feel Fine, an interactive exploration of peoples feelings through blog posts. The application filters the plethora of information that is posted on blogs and shows you real time posts that relate to a specified emotion. It then gives different methods to visually search and sort through that information.
Yesterday I came across twistori(by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs). Drawing on the same idea as We Feel Fine, twistori searches twitter posts and filters them by the emotion written in the post. The interface is pretty, and it is interesting to watch what people are saying for a while, but I find that the project lacks meaning. I maybe shouldn’t say that, I guess what I mean, is that I would like more meaning out of it.
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design, humanity | 1 Comment
Over a Month Ago
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
Over a Month Ago
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
Over a Month Ago
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