.: Kobot :.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

OPEN SOURCE METHODS AND THEIR FUTURE POTENTIAL| The principles of 'open source' - collaborative forms of creating knowledge pioneered in software development - look set to have a transforming impact on many areas of business, government and daily life, according to a new Demos report written by Geoff Mulgan, Director of the Young Foundation, and Tom Steinberg, Director of mySociety.org. |SmartMobs|

Posted by KO : 10:50:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

BARCODING THE PLANET| Until now, hypertexting has remained in the online, virtual world. But Lavasphere's invention has the potential to turn bar codes into the real world equivalent of a hyperlink. Click on a bar code and you'll be rewarded with the online information relating to it, delivered virtually, on your phone. |SmartMobs|

Posted by KO : 9:48:00 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

OFFSHORE CODING PROJECT| Three San Diego entrepreneurs plan to start a cut-rate outsourcing plant for software development three miles off the coast of Los Angeles aboard a used cruise ship moored in international waters.

Wired with a fat T3 pipe fed by microwave, SeaCode would employ 600 developers - the bulk of them non-U.S. citizens - who could crank out code around the clock at a lower cost and higher rate of efficiency than their American counterparts. The beauty part (at least according to the proponents) is that business would be booming, the headquarters could change sail wherever business took it, and RnR would be just a half-hour water-taxi ride away. In your neighborhood. |BoingBoing|

Posted by KO : 7:12:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

ANNOYANCE, IRRITATION, FRUSTRATION OF THE MOBILE PHONE: A DESIGN CHALLENGE| Donald A. Norman: "We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distraction to the driver of an automobile, whether hands-free or not. If we do nothing to overcome these problems, then the benefits these technologies bring may very well be denied us because the social costs are simply too great. There are many sources of frustration or potential liability."

Related: Howard Rheingold's Mobile and Open: a Manifesto |InfoDesign|

Posted by KO : 3:29:00 PM 0 comments

BBC UNVEILS 5-YEAR MOBILE STRATEGY| The BBC has finalized its five-year strategy for mobile...it is centered around mobile browsing, establishing the mobile version of bbc.co.uk as important as the main website..

"Today you press the red button to access extra information on a TV programme," said Angel Gambino, BBC controller of business development and emerging platforms. "We want to offer that experience when you're not tied to your home, so you can leave home and still interact and access that content. We see mobile as the key way to giving additional access to that content." |MocoNews|

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RANDOMLY GENERATED COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH PAPERS| SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. It uses a hand-written context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers. The aim here is to maximize amusement, rather than coherence.

Related: The Postmodernism Generator was written by Andrew C. Bulhak, using the Dada Engine, a system for generating random text from recursive grammars.|Slashdot|

Posted by KO : 2:50:00 PM 0 comments

Saturday, April 02, 2005

BLACK BOX UBIQUITY| For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate.

- Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC, 1994

In contemporary computer culture black boxing is deeply encoded throughout many layers. Think of a corporate office. Physically servers are locked inside rooms, while the technicians in charge of them run small fiefdoms that tend to be unwelcome to outsiders. The computers are a territory open only to those that understand. The technicians will venture out, installing and fixing computers, but few ever are invited in to their all too frequently windowless offices. What good would it do, they wouldn't know what to do with the technology anyway. The same process repeats inside the tech itself, a systems administrator often has full access, if they can't see everyone's files at least they can delete them. They control what sort of data passes into and out of the network and where. Sites can be blocked, ports turned off, words sensored, emails amended. The computer systems are their locus of control and they keep it that way. Their power might be modulated by the accountants, influenced by marketing and sales and manipulated by anyone with enough social skills, but ultimately they run the computers and thus stay empowered... |Ubik TV|

Posted by KO : 10:32:00 AM 0 comments

Friday, April 01, 2005

ADVANCED HANDSETS NEED ADVANCED UIS| As mobile phones become more capable, people are using them to store an increasingly wider variety and greater quantity of data. This raises a new problem for designers of handset user interfaces: how do you let owners find what they're looking for in a coherent and friendly manner? |The Feature|

Posted by KO : 9:20:00 PM 0 comments

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