Anatoly Zenkov created a Java application that monitors your mouse movement. I ran it for a few hours throughout the day while surfing the web, writing emails and working in illustrator. And this is what happened….
The lines are where I moved my mouse and the black circles are pointer stops (not clicks). You can run this little app and see what you can create by downloading it from Zenkov: Mac or PC. How does yours look?
3.6 Zettabytes is a wooden puzzle created by me and Mark Kizelshteyn that visually and haptically illustrates media consumption in the United States. The title refers to the total amount of information data absorbed by the country for the year 2008 as calculated by a recent study (December 2009) published by the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego. A zettabye is equal to one sextillion = 10^21 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or roughly 5.1 trillion average PC hard drives of data!
The puzzle represents information consumption measured in hours [per American, per day] across seven major media categories — television, radio, print, phone, recorded music, computer, and videogames. Average time spent on each activity is mapped to the area of the brain; the total brain represents a 24-hour day while the surface area of each puzzle piece proportionally represents the time spent on that activity. Blank puzzle pieces signify time spent on anything else other than information consumption. Along with hours average data measured in gigabytes is also provided.
A 19th century phrenology diagram is employed as the basis for the puzzle. The juxtaposition between a familiar antique design and the absolutely contemporary, futuristic, almost unbelievable data that it communicates provides extra contrast for users to appreciate just how fully the modern-day media landscape has permeated our lives. When phrenology diagrams were first made this map/brain would have been almost completely blank, with maybe a tiny dot representing the very few citizens who had enough time to read books.
The board is made out of two pieces of 30 X 35 X 0.3 cm three-layer birch plywood and was cut with an Epilog Mini 24 Laser Cutter. Special thanks to the CabFabLab for making the project happen! More pictures after the jump.
Reference: Roger E. Bohn & James E. Short (2009). “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers.” Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego. – [pdf]
We (Paul and Mark) just spent two days @ Le Web in Paris and had a fantastic time. The conference was incredibly well organized and kudos to both Geraldine and Loic Le Meur (founder of Seesmic and one of France’s most influential tech bloggers) for doing such a fantastic job.
We had the opportunity to meet interesting people, network with industry leaders, hear inspirational talks (and not so inspirational ones), and rekindle some of our energy/enthusiasm about the future of the web and 2010 in general. It was surely a nice antidote for entrepreneurial burnout. Off course, some truly great food and wine and simply enjoying the beautiful City of Light doesn’t hurt either.
A lot has been written about Le Web 09 already and we don’t want to simply recycle content, but rather offer a few highlights of our personal experience:
Twitter and Square
First off, we heard the term Twitter a bit too much, but that’s not surprising. Not only was it spoken about constantly (especially rumors about a Google purchase), but it seemed like everyone were on Twitter compulsively every spare second they had. The conference started out with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, presenting his newest venture: Square. Square is a small hardware attachment for the iPhone that allows users to accept credit card payments directly in person. It looks very promising and using the headphone jack plug is a creative solution. The application’s interface seems incredibly intuitive and quite beautiful, and will likely be a hit. We also had an opportunity to watch Jack demo Square close up at a reception thrown by the Mayor at the Paris City Hall:
Russia roundtable
With:
Sasha Galitsky (Almaz Capital Partners)
Bernard Lukey (CEO, OXON.ru)
Edward Shendorovich (Managing Director, Kite Ventures)
Arkady Volozh (CEO, Yandex)
The Russia roundtable was of course especially interesting for us. The discussion was both broad and in-depth, covering topics such as Russian innovation, startup culture, search (specifically Yandex), venture investment, ecommerce (why it is failing), and what is in store for the future. The single most salient question that permeated all discussion was the paradox of a high-tech, relatively wealthy country not really developing Internet technologies on par with the rest of Western Europe and Asia. Again, Russia falls into its strange neither-here-nor-there conundrum, an existential dilemma that has defined the country since the Slavophiles and Westernizers went at it in the beginning of beginning of the 19th century. Clearly, the largest problem is not talent, but a complete lack of a startup culture or any institutional support. Taking risks, experimentation, “doing your own thing” – these are not very highly regarded in Russia and especially not in the Russian business world. So even though so much raw talent is there, and even some true innovation (for example, Yandex was in search before Google), it will require a significant cultural shift for Russia to develop the sort of atmosphere that makes Western startup hubs so successful.
It was also agreed that there is LOTS of opportunity remaining in Russia and a lot of room for growth. Take one significant example: online shopping. Currently this is suffering because of a) the terrible, unreliable postal system b) the commonplace cash-on-delivery payment method and c) peoples’ general distrust of digital commerce. All three are inevitably going to evolve – probably quite soon – leaving a ton of possibilities for developing online retail solutions. We are excited and will be keeping our eyes on future developments in the Motherland!
Startup competition
The startup competition was one of our favorites aspects of the whole conference. In our limited experience these are often really hit-or-miss though this year it appeared that all 16 companies had something real to offer. When the dust settled, Paris-based company Stribe took home the Gold. Stribe aims to provide an instantaneous social network on any site, helping companies foster conversations around their product/brand/etc. directly on their site. What’s interesting is that just before the ceremony, at the Brand Roundtable moderated by Chris Brogan, one of the key conclusions that arose from the discussion was that brands must mediate conversations directly where customers are visiting them – aka, their websites. Providing an accessible channel for customers to converse will become a priority that will separate companies open to the future, who will thrive in the new economy, versus closed off companies that will become less relevant. Stribe solves this problem with seeming aplomb.
The Silver prize went to TigerLily, another local (French) startup also operating in a similar domain. TigerLily basically pimps Facebook fan pages. Controlling and modifying the page seams extremely simple and they really did a polished job with the entire interface. The value is obvious and the improvements upon Facebook’s own capabilities are inevitable, though it is a bit sad to see the site veer away from the clean, minimalist, egalitarian aesthetic towards the realm of MySpace cacophony.
The Bronze prize went to CloudSplit, a Dublin-based startup that provides analytics to cloud computing customers. They’ve already received €100,000 of seed funding and are looking for $2M more. We don’t really know much about this industry, so all we can say is that CEO(?) Joe Drumgoole probably had the most confident, well-rehearsed, down-to-business pitch.
“At one time a computer was a job description rather than a machine. Before electronic computing machines, computer referred to the teams of people who operated simple mechanical calculating machines to solve complex problems. These human computers were programmed by their written instructions. Likewise, typesetting was once a career for a trained typesetter, laying up lead type, rather than an expected menu choice in any word-processing program. It may well be that in the world of personal fabrication it is the fate of engineering to similarly become a shared skill rather than a specialized career,” writes MIT professor, Neil Gershenfeld.
A bold statement of this sort is easy to dismiss – technological fads are thrown at us regularly, where the-next-big-thing announcements are just as frequent as their dismissals. Nonetheless, Gershenfeld identifies several compelling parallels. As the story of personal fabrication unfolds, its resemblance to the personal computing revolution is remarkable. Computers were bulky, big and expensive – not to be seen in the home, but they found their way in and became the center of our lives. Many, along with Gershenfeld, are arguing this will happen with bulky, big and expensive manufacturing equipment. Yes, we are talking about a Star Trek Replicator thingy on our desks.
Let’s zoom out and position ourselves in the (re)new(ed) cultural trend of DIY (do-it-yourself). Justin Lahart in “Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis” gives an interesting overview of the reemerging DIY culture that has been the cornerstone of innovation. From the shift of garage tinkerers to successful entrepreneurs, there is something big happening — people are reclaiming their physical world and shaping it to fit their lives. Realizing that creativity is essential in ones success, many are finding this through the personalization of their world.
While Hackerspaces have recently been covered in the media, I want to focus on FabLabs which have been exponentially growing since 2005. I am discovering the incredible potential for FabLabs as I am starting to get my feet wet in a local lab. I have been blow away by the personal creative empowerment, the larger social meaning of such a movement and the contagious momentum it has.
[RepRap Workshop at FabLab. Image from XNDR, CabFabLab]
A few weeks ago, I finished Neil Gershenfeld’s book, Fab, which tells the detailed story of all fab-related things. Although it is from 2005 and much has changed, it is still an informative and worthwhile read. Gershenfeld argues how FabLabs and ultimately DIY culture are the future.
So, what is a FabLab?
A FabLab is an open workshop that contains a variety of modern prototyping machinery that can be used to create essentially anything. The FabLab program was devised by MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld. His course “How to create (almost) anything” was the impetus for FabLabs, which have now developed into a global network of (somewhat) standardized and largely open-source setups. From the South Bronx to Afghanistan to the Netherlands, Norway and India — Fablabs around the world are serving the needs and demands of local economies. While some lab users are dreaming up jewelry and art installations, others are creating food safety monitoring systems, wireless networks and RFID animal tags.
The movement is a disruptive technology that reclaims customization and pushes bulk production out the door. In Gershenfelds book, he brings up the concept of globalization being replaced by localization, whereby mass customization losses the “mass” piece. He argues that technology will start better reflecting our needs because it is going to be developed by and for us. We are heading toward a highly malleable physical world.
It is pretty incredible, but what does this all mean?
Gershenfeld states, “If you give people access to means to solve their own problems, it touches something very, very deep…somehow it goes back to nest-building, or mastering your own environment. There’s sort of this deep thing inside that most people don’t express that comes tumbling out when they get access to these tools.” The access to FabLabs is drawing attention from artists, entrepreneurs and engineers alike, and is at the root of this rapidly growing revolution — one where manufacturing and DIY are empowering communities. I have seen this first hand. Similar to a child getting her hands on a Lego kit and exploring what she can build, people are being given a chance to expand their creative potential.
The funny thing is that this future trend is moving towards the way things used to be. People were inventing, building and tinkering since the dawn of man. If you needed a tool or something for your house, you built it. Or went to your friend and got advice on how to build or acquire such a thing. But industrialization hit society and mass production took over. We became consumers rather than producers. But, we have reached the other side of that hump. Production is coming back to the garage. Well not only the garage, but also peoples desks, offices and schools. Society is being re-equipped with the tools and communities are leveraging the potential of these powerful technologies.
But, what is going to happen in just a few more years when the market continues to drive down the price and the ability of these machines continues to rapidly increase. (And off course what good is a technology blog with out mentioning Moore’s Law).
What do you think?
If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend watching Neil Gershenfeld’s Ted Talk. This is a great little video showing the diverse and global FabLab community. Check it out. Lastly, The CabFabLab has an excellent photo stream of all FabLab related projects. These images offer a really good insight at what is possible. Check it out here.
STAGE 3: “THE FINAL FIVE”
Best of BIW: Year 1 Festival!
August 7, 2009- August 23, 2009
Its hard to believe that Brooklyn is Watching, a mixed-reality art project co-developed by Jay Van Buren and Popcha!, has surpassed the ripe old age of one – how exciting! What’s even better is the five finalists from the Best of Year 1 Festival (selected by a panel of five guest judges), have taken over the main room at Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, NY, as well as also being displayed at Odyssey in Second Life.
I had the chance of attending the kick-off party last week, and let me tell you, the space looks spectacular! The five finalists are each presented on a small LCD; the attached headphones stream BIW podcasters’ commentary and ambient music, really allowing a sense of immersion with the artwork. Guests are strongly encouraged to vote for their favorite piece, as the winner of this tally will win the coveted Golden Eyeball Award!
Another fun part of the evening was taking a group photo of some of the Brooklyn is Watching artists in Second Life; check out the photostream here. It was great to see such an enthusiastic turnout, and I’m glad this emerging, experimental art form is getting the attention it deserves. As a side note, the gallery’s artist-in-residence, Gregory de la Haba, has a spectacular display in the back room.
Don’t fear that you missed the opener, there are some great events coming up:
SATURDAY, 8/15/09, 6:00 — Virtual Artists in Panel Discussion
A group of academics and artists will engage in a panel discussion regarding themes such as design strategies for large virtual spaces in Second Life. Pavig Lok who was responsible in part for the design of Greenies will present his ideas and first hand experiences. Lori Landay from Berklee College of Music will discuss what she considers to be the difference between virtual art and art that is shown in the virtual world. Stacey Fox will talk about her experiences with promoting virtual art in the Department of Visual Art at Kansas University.
SUNDAY, 8/16/09, 7:00 — Lecture with One of the Pioneers of the Metaverse World
Jerry Paffendorf, an artist and entrepreneur who lovingly refers to Brooklyn as Silicon Ghetto, will share personal adventures and new ideas combining virtual worlds, art, business, the web and what’s happening with Crazy Company and the LOVELAND project to collaboratively own land and create a new city on a grid of a million inches in Detroit.
About Brooklyn is Watching:
Brooklyn is Watching, conceived of by Jay Van Buren, executed as a collaboration with Boris Kizelshteyn and the Popcha! development team in February 2008, is a breakthrough relational art project that invites interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. It consists of a series of inter-related spaces for artists, audiences, and participants. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned), and an alcove in the Williamsburg art gallery–Jack the Pelican Presents where the sim can be viewed on a large monitor and entered via an avatar.
Volume 2, Number 2 of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research came online today. It’s an entire issue dedicated to healthcare innovation within the virtual domain and includes a lot of great resources for healthcare professionals looking to utilize emerging technology to help solve unique health-related problems. Best of all, all the articles are available for free!
Dr. Maged Kamel Boulos, the journal’s Associate Editor and professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, summarizes the issue:
Though Second Life has existed since 2002 and there are even other virtual worlds that predate it, most in the health sector are only recently starting to migrate to such platforms, as the technology is gradually maturating and rapidly becoming more affordable and popular. This special issue of JVWR on the theme of ‘3D Virtual Worlds for Health and Healthcare’ provides a good sampler of how healthcare organizations, groups and individuals are currently using virtual worlds…for a range of clinical and health-related purposes. Topics covered in this issue include: the use of virtual worlds in healthcare higher education, including in ‘virtual patients’ game-based learning simulations, with examples from both the UK and the US; the growth and direction of healthcare support groups in virtual worlds; the development of a virtual worlds’ coping skills game to prevent post-hospitalization smoking relapse in tobacco dependent cancer patients; and an examination of how the attitude and appearance of an individual’s avatar might result in positive changes in her/his real life in relation to obesity, which is one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century.
Though I’m delighted to see so much work being done within academia, I am most excited to see the transition from research to real life application in a field that will surely witness exponential growth in the next several years. It cannot be long until we hear an announcement of a well-funded professional venture that tackles one or more specific healthcare issues using virtual world and other emerging technologies. At a time when our nation is facing a healthcare problem of gargantuan proportions, we need to turn to innovative technologies that can streamline medical care and shed billions of dollars in costs. However, beyond electronic medical records, there hasn’t been much discussion in the mainstream media about emerging healthcare technologies nor any serious and dedicated provisions in Obama’s proposal. The challenge of bridging the gap between cutting-edge academic findings and real-life social policies is one that spans every field, yet if we don’t figure out innovative and cost-effective solutions soon, healthcare costs will become the straw that finally breaks America’s back.
Readers interested in this topic who might have missed it previously, check out Popcha! principal and TurtleThink founder Mark Kizelshteyn’s award-winning research regarding therapeutic uses of virtual worlds for elderly, disabled, and convalescent people [link]. Needless to say we are all very excited for advancements in this field!
Business cards are perfectly suited for the application of augmented reality technology; the results are practical as they are fun. Last week, the net went abuzz with the following video by James Alliban from London. His card features basic relevant professional info spoken by an abstracted, pixelated version of his head. Very well done!
Today a new AR business card demo came online, this one from Jonas Jäger, a Communication Design student in Germany. Jonas’s version features a lot more interactivity; you can see his latest tweets, flip through some photos from his portfolio, and even call him directly via Ribbit. Check out more details on how its all done at his blog.
I think we are very close to a company attempting to create a standard around this, as well as an application that will allow the average businessperson to create and display a cool augmentation for their own cards. I know I would want one!
TechCrunch points us to SPRXmobile, the startup behind Layar, the mobile augmented reality browser for Android. The company is opening up its API by handing out keys to a number of developers. Developers can fill out a request here to gain access to the API.
As Tech Crunch notes ” Without a decent amount of usable layers, none of these AR browsers are going to see mainstream adoption any time soon, and Layar is the first to attempt luring third-party developers into creating layers on top of their system by means of an extensive API.”
This is a great step for AR — as the race to develop the best platform with maximum content while also supporting an array of devices. We are going to see some create stuff come out of this API opening.
It’s finally here. Google announced the long awaited operating system – we all knew this was coming in the same way we knew that Apple was going to come-up with a revolutionary phone and ipod.
“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010….
…Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”
The OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips, and Google is working with a number of OEMs to introduce netbooks to the market next year! The architecture is going to be based on a Linux kernel.
TurtleThink attended this evenings New York Tech Meet Up, where a few startups presented some interesting products and services. None of the applications were particularly ground breaking, but a few are worth noting.
The first interesting one was a collaborative polling company called urtak, which offers different categories of user generated polling topics. From their website: “The goal of the Urtak project is to find an answer to the question “What do men and women live by?” Since no single person has the knowledge to answer this question, we propose that we must work together, pooling our knowledge and insight to learn what we all care about, what unites us, and what makes us different from each other.” It seems like an interesting company, however, what compels those people to answer the polls. This is a good idea that is lacking a sticky component.
Vocab Sushi was another interesting concept. The free service offers “bite size” vocabulary words and sources them from thousands of news and media outlets daily. The vocab words are offered in contextual examples and one can play “never ending” games with those words. The company was founded by Jeff Novich and the website notes: “VocabSushi provides thousands of sentences that demonstrate any vocab word’s contemporary usage in news articles. Compared to the brute force method of flashcard definitions, a deeper understanding of the word can be attained simply by reading several interesting sentences that contain that word.” It is an interesting replacement for flashcards, and I believe this will catch on. I would have loved to use this years ago when I was studying for the SATs. Although I subscribe to Anu Garg’s Word.A.Day, I can nonetheless see myself using this service once in a while.
Sponge Cell presented a new form of flash based interactive banner advertising. The company is using social networking tools built into ad banners to help push content directly from banners as opposed to relying on clicking through the banner and arriving at a new website. The company writes: “The best advertising gives its audience information that they want to hold onto and share. Sponge Cell lets people do just that, by pushing advertising onto calendars, social profiles, mobile devices, home pages and other permanent places, without disrupting their browsing experience.” The company is attempting to mitigate a persons aversion to clicking a banner and being steered away from their chosen website. Sponge Cell’s banner’s allow for brand interaction directly on the banner. Another interesting idea, but once again, what compels me to interact with a banner which has an added social media component? Sponge Cell did discuss their advertising algorithm (patent pending) which bases the ad not on the search key word but on the aggregated data that the search terms yields. I thought this was already built into Google’s algorithm, but go figure.
The most interesting application was Zagat’s Augmented Reality Application called NRU.
The application allows you to find restaurants, nightspots, and shops “near you.” As you rotate your mobile device (360 degrees), the location of the restaurants appear relative to you. It also syncs with Zagat’s detailed reports on the restaurants. Although Zagat reviews are not user generated and have a top-down approach, the service is still fairly compelling as a closed source offering of reviews opposed to Urban Spoon. Check out a video demo of the product here:
The product is only offered on the Android as of now, but with the release of the magnetometer on the iPhone — we should see this application at the app store shortly (as long as Apple opens up the channels for AR production on the iPhone). This is a cool app and just the beginning of compelling AR apps to reach the market.
NYTM also invited two guest speakers: Iranian technologist, Ali Amami, who discussed the recent Iranian election, consequential revolt and the role of social media. This was the 10th election in Iran after the Islamic revolution and is the first election since then to see the levels of protest. Ali Amami stated that this was a new school revolution as a result of social media. He said that cell phones were used as capturing devices, where citizens became independent news outlets. Facebook was used as a community organization tool and YouTube was a video distribution channel that major media outlets, like CNN, turned towards. The question, however, was what went wrong? Well, first off, Nokia sold wiretapping equipment to Iran’s Telecom giant (source: Wall Street Journal). Also, Iran’s internet is state owned and they intercepted and filtered content with the ultimate suspension of internet service across the country.
Amami’s message to NYTM was that as technologists, we need to think about ways to work towards solving the issues of wiretapping/filtration, interception and suspension of the world wide web. He urged companies like Google and Yahoo to not bow to fascist government requests.
And the evening ended with Douglas Rushkoff discussing his new book, Life inc., about an open source economy.
It is always a pleasure to hear Rushkoff speak — he is intelligent, charismatic and extremely articulate. Speaking to the NYTM crowd, Rushkoff offered the analogy that our economic system is like a closed source operating system, though we behave as if our role in the economy was somehow organic. He argues that although there are natural elements and emergent properties of our system, our currency and economic affairs hold a bias to corporations (which are anti-competitive) and a centralized currency (which seeks to create value from top down) — the opposite of an open source economy, which was most closely realized in the late Middle Ages. During the late Middle Ages, there was tremendous spending and abundance, where with local currency people invested and reinvested from the bottom-up — wealth was distributed to people who created value. Those who did not create value, did not make money. The aristocracy, seeing the uprising of the middle class and that wealth was no longer controlled by the centralized authority — made local currency illegal. This type of approach extends to today’s times. Rushkoff offers the solution (to the NYTM crowd) of an open source economy which is being facilitated by the internet and low start-up capital. As our economy is at a downfall, he is urging us to take advantage of the situation and create value through the net.
It was an interesting evening at NYTM, and I look forward to the next meet up! NYTM also showcased the 3 finalists of their t-shirts competition (you can vote here.)
Spent too much time online today (catching up). Now going to Den Haag for the student exhibition at the KABK.
11:26:31 AM February 05, 2010
from Twidget
Art, New Media 
Mark Kizelshteyn 
4 comments
