-
“igg’s entry into the field of recommendations is interesting because news has a very different character from e-commerce. While shopping sites are dealing with fads that play out over the course of weeks and months, news sites are dealing with fads that
links for 2008-07-11
-
Nova on representations of imagined online places/spaces: “Working on both fields of video games and urban computing, I find interesting to observe the relationship between the image of the city and its physical counterpart. For that matter, it seems that
-
Nova on the changing face of the differentiation between user and bystander in ubicomp games: “The presence of bystanders in some pervasive games or ARG is interesting as it shows how the notion of “user” in ubiquitous computing is flawed. Unlike face
-
Fabien Girardin on ‘sentient cities’ research: “In this presentation I discussed the deployment of new urban actors as instigators of new types of data at the source of a sentient city. These new technologies should not be perceived as drivers of urban ch
links for 2008-07-07
-
My new, temporary, purveyor of coffee. A good choice of varieties and they don’t seem over-roasted!
-
“The future of mobile phones is perhaps”¦ not a mobile phone at all, but rather a contextually aware and active mobile magic wand. It’s not about skins anymore. Not even about features, open source, multi-touch or iPhoney. It’s about who is going to
links for 2008-06-21
-
“This list of unthinkable futures — probabilities we tend to dismiss without thinking — was published 15 years ago in the Summer, 1993 issue of Whole Earth Review. Our intent was less to correctly predict the future (thus the silliness) and more to pr
-
“More than 20 years ago a generation of schoolchildren sat down to complete a questionnaire they were told would predict their future… Their answers were fed into the Jiig-Cal computer, which filled an entire building at Edinburgh University and promise
-
“We would be better off having fewer academics and using the savings to fund more grants, because then more research could be done for the same national expenditure. Such action has to be taken by governments, as universities currently have the freedom to
-
“The goal of scientific excellence should trump nationalistic considerations.”
The Nature editorial of June 2008 praises the launch of the European Research Council (ERC) as an independent research council with a Europe-wide reach to distribute conside
links for 2008-06-20
-
“What kind of society are we likely to get if it turns out that yes, we’re hitting peak oil round about now, but that it’s possible to process random junk biomass into crude oil for $100 a barrel, and $1000 will buy you a machine that you plug into your l
-
Stross interviewed by the Guardian: “I think that if there’s one key insight science can bring to fiction,” he says, “it’s that fiction – the study of the human condition – needs to broaden its definition of the human condition. Because the human conditio
-
“For as long as I’ve known the term, ubiquitous computing has been largely ignored, written off as a scifi pipedream from the people who promised you AI and cars that would run on water. That’s beginning to change, as hardware such as the Arduino and prog
-
Coverage of Prof. Jonathan Zitrain’s (MIT) anxiety over the future of the internet, on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (17/06/08).
links for 2008-06-19
-
“the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.”
links for 2008-06-18
-
“Would you trade Alzheimer’s for breast augmentation or a luxury cruise? With an ageing population and an overextended NHS, you may find yourself alone, geriatric and diseased in your home, discovering new forms of “Care in the Community”, ordering your
-
“there is a hierarchy in architectures of participation, with the most powerful literally building a system in which participation is automatic, and driven by the design of the system itself rather than any explicit request for user contribution”¦ ubiqui
-
“The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland, and you can be part of it.”
links for 2008-05-17
-
“BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The ability of Google Inc’s map service to put detailed street-level images on the Internet could raise concerns in Europe if it was introduced there, the EU’s data protection agency said on Thursday.”
-
“The double-edged sword that comes with keeping abreast of all the latest developments in technology means that we’re always aware of the latest and greatest applications and services to try…but it also means that we’ve tried all of them. Unlike the ave
-
“Last week, the fight to manage your social data kicked off in earnest as three major players in the social networking space each announced independent competing approaches to making profile and friend information data portable. MySpace Data Availability
-
“Web 2.0 has brought many wonderful innovations and ideas to the Internet. We can no longer imagine the web without a social dimension, and we can no longer imagine an online world that is read-only – it is now a read/write web full of user-generated cont
-
“One of the dangers of doing history of science or science studies (both of which I studied when I was in grad school, and taught before becoming a futurist) is that you end up spending time talking to your subjects. Generally, when you’re an anthropologi
links for 2008-05-16
-
“muscle memory – a far more important element of software than many designers realise. If you don’t use keyboard shortcuts, then you’re wasting precious hours every week (if not day) fiddling with the mouse, moving around the screen when you could just pr
-
Sony’s model for NFC.
-
“QR Code is capable of handling all types of data, such as numeric and alphabetic characters, Kanji, Kana, Hiragana, symbols, binary, and control codes. Up to 7,089 characters can be encoded in one symbol.”
-
“HP Labs researchers have developed a wireless data chip that could revolutionize the way you think about information stored on paper and other physical objects… The tiny Memory Spot chip – less than half the size of a grain of rice — makes it possi
-
Press release: “HP today announced that its researchers have developed a miniature wireless data chip that could provide broad access to digital content in the physical world… With no equal in terms of its combination of size, memory capacity and data
-
“Technology can be sublime, but machines aren’t something that happens to us; they’re something we make. That is, they’re less like meteors that come crashing into our planet (actually, “billiard balls” appears to be the preferred metaphor) than
links for 2008-05-15
-
“The supermarket chain Budgens has installed face recognition cameras in one of its stores to stop children buying alcohol and cigarettes.”
“Charlie Willetts, managing director of Charton Ltd, which is supplying the software, said about 1,500 images were