Cell-outs and Phonies

Cell-outs and Phonies, to be held at the L.A. Center for Digital Art from August 6-27 wants to demonstrate how camera phones have evolved into expressive art mediums.

Short films will be shown on LCDs and projected while other images are printed, up-linked or never removed from the actual phone.

The opening reception next Friday will feature music composed with ring tones by German experimental group Super Smart --who had launched their last album in ringtone format for mobile phones-- and continuous screenings of cell phone videos.

via wmmna -> via rhizome

I'm going, if anyone wants a ride...I'm looking at you Erin.

Time That Land Forgot

Here's an interesting experiment in switching around the Position-Image-Annotate syntax of your typical geo-referenced photography project. Timo Arnall and Even Westvang have inverted the representation so that time becomes the landscape, and location/GPS coordinates become the things time references. I think..
Parenthetically, Timo's www.elasticspace.com is an awesome resource to other geo-image-mapping-annotation types of projects.

SmartView

I don't know when this happened... but a friend here just showed me this feature of yahoo's mapping service:

Link.

So cool...

I want this on my GPS cameraphone.

new web game

so you missed playing 'the beast' (the ai web game a few years back). well, time to make up for it - it appears that halo2 now has a similar game being launched. looks like it might even be the same design team doing this one.

more info from /.

An Automobile With Feelings

A drawing of a car with facial expressions. Inventors said they wanted drivers to have more than a horn and headlights to signal other drivers.

Read the Article

roam.net

ROAM-NET members will start broadcasting information about themselves, and their surroundings. At a most basic level, all members will be broadcasting video and GPS feeds and anyone connected to the network (including the cars themselves) will be able to view maps of their peers, and see from their perspective. Spectators can also use laptops, pocket PCs, and kiosks to view the vehicles in action, and send messages to the vehicles. For example, one might message "I need a lift, will you barter?" or "Come visit us at camp hello; free greetings and smiles".

ROAM-NET is non-profit, and will no doubt evolve as technology and social networks improve, but is dedicated to the community of technomads (technological nomads), be them cyborgs, or computer equipped transports. We are currently using the open-source blogging/cms tool, thingster as meta and mapping engine.

link

Interactive Tele-Journalism

Interesting reseach project from NYU's ITP program on interactive journalism:

"Interactive Tele-Journalism is a means with which to empower a community with the ability to act in aggregate as the director of a television news program. In a sense it is a merging of concepts relating to online communities, tele-presence, television news and interactive TV. It allows members of community to push discussion and questions in what is otherwise a passive medium (television news) in a direction that interests them. Specifically it allows individuals viewing a television program to engage in discussion with each other as well as individually and in aggregate determine specific elements of the news programming. For example, an individual viewer of a live interview (as an example program) is able to log on to the program website and chat with other viewers as well as send comments and questions to the interviewer (tele-journalist) who may subsequently pose that question the interviewee."

[Via Dan Gillmor's We the Media]

couple of /. links

usc robotics gets shoutout
An Anonymous Reader writes "LivingCreatures.com has released several new photos of the humanoid robot platform that it developed for the USC Interaction Lab. The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child and will serve as a human-robot interaction (HRI) testbed for studies involving imitation, learning, and the effects that interaction with humanoid robots has on children."

mike, will and i were discussing reappropriation of media last night (from mashup tunes to cut n paste video), so this story caught my eye:
slashdotbs writes "The New York Times writes that 'A handful of Web users are programming their own virtual TV newscasts and eclectic collections of video clips using a free media-sharing tool called Webjay. The site makes it easy to build, share and watch playlists of audio and video links culled from around the Internet.' Although the site was originally intended to be used for audio playlist creation, it turns out that it can also be used effectively for video. In addition, you can create "video mashups", where you blend audio and video together to present a new message. By using simple smil commands in a URL, a CBS news report can become a short clip of George Bush saying "I can't do my job" (the third track on this playlist)."

and finally, again for brinker cause we were talking about mods and games and this reminded me of his final last year (or what i knew about it before i got sick):
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the official 'The Ship' website, featuring "a free downloadable [multiplayer] Half Life 1 mod" described by a forum poster as "a twisted version of Agatha Christie meets Clue." The welcome page details: "You've just won a free ticket to a dream cruise onboard a spectacular, replica 1920's cruise ship!", and the official play guide explains some of the intriguing game mechanics, which involves each player needing to "find out the name [of each fellow 'passenger' on the Ship], eliminate unknown passengers, and find out which one is your quarry", then "kill them without being caught by security or too many witnesses." There are also additional wrinkles in the recently released mod, since: "To curb excessive killing, players are traumatised by committing murders", and "Each player has basic needs [including going to the bathroom] which must be taken care of."

CFP - transmediale.05

I can think of several IMD projects that would make worthy entries!

:: transmediale.05 Award
:: Call for Entries
:: Deadline: 15. September 2004

You will find the complete call for download at: http://www.transmediale.de/05/pdf/tm05_call.pdf

transmediale, international media art festival berlin, invites submissions for its Award Competition. The competition highlights outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art. The international jury will award one main prize of EUR 4.000, and two second prizes of EUR 2.000 each.

It seems impossible to define either the 'core' or the 'borders' of what constitutes electronic or digital media art. However, the main concern of transmediale is the vector field in which artistic practices and new technologies intersect, and where they articulate their social and cultural meanings. As a festival for media art and digital culture, transmediale presents advanced positions in the artistic reflection about the socio-cultural impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience these technologies. transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques which need to be embraced in order to be able to understand, critique, and shape our contemporary society.

There are many ways for artists to explore the relation between art and technology. What is important for transmediale, though, is that the artistic practices do not only make use of technologies, but that they also imply a reflection about the aesthetic, cultural and social dimensions of such technological developments. What the festival and its competition try to convey is an understanding of media art as a sounding board and catalyst for a critical and creative expansion of the potential of human agency through new technologies.

While during the last years, the transmediale competition had three separate categories (Image, Interaction, Software), we are this year responding to various discussions by abolishing the separation into these categories. This move forms part of a general debate about the definitions and limits of 'electronic', 'digital', or 'media' art, and we hope that opening up the terrain of the competition will help to re-evaluate the connection between art and media technologies.

We invite the submission of works and projects that respond to this challenge. We remain interested in works that expand our understanding of interactivity, of digital image aesthetics, of narrative and, in particular, the cultural significance of software and computer programming as cultural techniques. However, we are also curious to see the submission of works outside of these areas, works that encourage us to reconsider the traditional boundaries defining artistic practice, and works which can make a strong argument for the crucial role that new technologies should play in our perception and projection of a contemporary global culture.

:: Jury of the transmediale.05 award:
Valie Export (Cologne/Germany)
Masaki Fujihata (Tokyo/Japan)
Amanda McDonald-Crowley (Australia/currently Finland)
Gunalan Nadarajan (Singapore)
Christiane Paul (...

Broccoli browsing

asahi.com : English

Produce grower and exporter Dole has introduced a new technology service that allows a cellphone user to check vegetable information while at the store. Consumers can learn where the produce came from and how it arrived on the shelf, along with cooking tips. The service only works on produce packaged with a ``QR'' barcode, a matrix-type super-code capable of storing lots of information. The shopper needs a cellphone equipped with a camera and scanner equipment that can read the codes. For now, only Dole's broccoli has the QR code, but the company plans to expand the service to other vegetables.

IMD fall exhibition proposal

It's been proposed before, and I'm throwing it out for discussion again. Not sure how formal we'd make it. While formal spring thesis exhibits I'm sure will be the norm from this year on, a fall exhibit I think would be valuable to showcase current work. My feeling is that this would be more of an informal affair showcasing finished work as well as research. One concern is booking space, or finding alternative space.

OS Master Map

via wmmna

Ordnance Survey, Britain's national mapping agency, started 30 years ago to build a database of Britain's landscape and society. MasterMap contains 450m topographical features, each positioned to an accuracy of centimetres.

From the Master Map website:

The OS MasterMap Topography Layer is a large-scale digital database of the detailed surface features on the landscape, with relative positions and elevations of every town, manor, parish, or tract of land mapped to minute detail. This highly accurate, flexible resource covers some 400 million man-made and natural features, from fields to pillar boxes, each with its own unique identifier or TOID® for easy reference. It is broken down into nine themes to make it easier to access the data:

roads, tracks and paths;
land;
buildings;
water;
rail;
height;
heritage;
structures; and
administrative boundaries.

There is the choice of a single theme, a combination of themes or all of the above. When overlaid with other OS MasterMap layers or the customer's own data, it will provide a clear picture of what's on the ground.

Britain has gotta be a pretty fun place for AR now.

Game Mod Contest

From the Los Angeles Independent Game Developers' Association:

At the chapter meeting on July 29th, we are holding a Game Mod design
contest. Now is your chance to be the game designer. Make the
pitch. Everyone is eligible to submit an idea for their dream mod.
No artistic or programming talent needed. Take your favorite modable
game and then improve or reinvent it. Your entry should at the bare
minimum contain:

From the Los Angeles Independent Game Developers' Association:

At the chapter meeting on July 29th, we are holding a Game Mod design
contest. Now is your chance to be the game designer. Make the
pitch. Everyone is eligible to submit an idea for their dream mod.
No artistic or programming talent needed. Take your favorite modable
game and then improve or reinvent it. Your entry should at the bare
minimum contain:

• Description of mod (style, presentations, gameplay, etc.)


• The Engine/game/tech it would be modded from.


• List of required mod assets (3D/2D art, sound, etc).


• List of required technology/script/code.


• Milestone schedule and required team member breakdown.

ZML Down

I'm only posting this here because this is important and I want people to see the message. Essentially - important news.

The Zemeckis Immersive lab is currently without electricity for a while. This means that none of the computers, projectors, or rack mounted equipment will function. The only thing that can be turned on are the lights. I received the following email from Alan Starbuck, the manager of the Zemeckis center. Here is his message. I am sorry if this is a hinderance to any of you. Please read below for more information. I will send out an email the minute things are fixed.

From Alan Starbuck --

Hello--

--Alan

Social Lives of a Cell Phone

Good overview of a couple of the more interesting social apps for mobile phones.
New wireless services will maximize your connections to others and minimize your need to plan ahead

MIT Technology Review

Err..MoPhoBlogging?

Courtesy of we-make-money-not-art

Audioblog from your phone

If you blog on Blogger, you can send free unlimited audio posts from any phone to your blog. You call their number, record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your audio...

Quarantined iPods

Music fans, beware: Britain's Ministry of Defence has become the latest organization to add the iPod to its list of high-tech security risks. The pocket-sized digital music player, which can store thousands of songs, is one of a series of banned gadgets that the military will no longer allow into most sections of its headquarters in the UK and abroad.

From CNN

Camera Phone Scavenger Hunts

Simple and fun, from Picturephoning:

I picked this up from an article published in the Miami Herald on various mobile campaigns (mostly text message) launched by wireless companies. But this one involves camera phones:

"In April at six colleges, Verizon sponsored the Urban Challenge on Campus -- scavenger hunts with camera phones. College students had to decipher clues at 12 campus locations and photograph them in 90 minutes."

Mobile Immersive Audio

The IM division definitely needs one of these.

Japan: Schoolkids to be tagged with RFID chips

The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.

read the brief article

Intern position at Intel Berkeley

URBAN PROBES
We are expanding the urban research focus at the Intel Research lab in Berkeley. As a result we will continue performing more Urban Probes and have an additional open Intern position here at the Berkeley Lab for Fall 2004. The work will focus more on building and programming actual probes that we will deploy in urban spaces. Please see details on the position and how to apply.

Also please visit the Urban Atmospheres pages for a complete overview of the research.

GPS Digital Camera

It's way too expensive - the software alone is $250, bringing the entire package to over $1100, but I've been waiting for something like this: digital photography integrated with a GPS. Actually, now that I think about it, when I cobble the same technology together for a current project that includes a PocketPC PDA, Bluetooth GPS unit, and a decent Compact Flash digital camera, I'm up to about $800! But, I guess the DIY satisfaction is invaluable..oh, and Microsoft donated the PDA and a huge box of development tools..

Geospatial Experts

Gattaioh: Moving Transformers with Anime instructions

Saw this amazing transformer made by Takara Toys at Kiddyland on Omotesando last January and couldn't resist getting it for my son's birthday this week (4 years!). Collectively called Gattaioh, the characters start as vehicles moving along separate tracks, transform into robots, and then converge to make one huge robot. Videos here (6.2M) and here (10M). Was very impressed by the incredible engineering but then also discovered that they included a 30 min. Anime on VHS tape that effectively combines the instruction manual and also the backstory for the toy - pretty great concept.

Location-based Photo Albums

From we-make-money-not-art
Trevor F. Smith has released the first public beta of a new photo map editor, 93 Photo Street. The application downloads and renders free maps for any region in the US and makes it easy to geolocate your photos and generate web photo maps.
This is something I and probably other people have thought would be fun and interesting to work with. The idea of cohering physical space somehow to your photos to help ground them and locate them. I wonder what you do next? I'd want to be able to make my maps to look like those goofy placemats you get at small town diners where a map of town shows all the featured tourist traps more than anything else.
Maybe i'll have to get out my Denis Woods to help me think through this one..

Flexible Color LED Screen

check out the
video

The screen is connected to a mobile phone via a Bluetooth link, so drawings and animations can be sent by MMS to another user with the same equipment. Thanks to a dedicated embedded software application, the mobile can be used as a remote control to activate the screen's functionalities: adjust the brightness, select the image or text to be displayed, enter text, draw simple animated visuals, download animations from the Internet, etc. A more sophisticated animation editor has been produced to allow professionals to market their own animations, which will be online and downloadable via the Internet from a mobile phone.

Sensors integrated into the screen mean it can also be used as a "standalone" device (to display visual sequences stored in the screen's memory or specific animations triggered by certain gestures or sounds, etc.).

The electronic components (including LEDs) have been soldered on a flexible circuit board and then packaged in a fabric layered sandwich. This offers an optimised display rendering while maintaining a very good flexibility and a comfortable yet resistant textile feeling.

Compared with the optical fibre screens developed by the same team of researchers (and awarded the prize for innovation at the 2002 Avantex textile trade show), the display screen is lighter, has a colour display and is easier to integrate into clothing because it is small (10cm by 7cm) and light (approximately 50 grams, in addition to a battery weighing approximately 100 grams). The removable screen is inserted in a special pocket in the garment. It is easy to use and connected to a rechargeable battery with a 4-hour charge life.

though I think OLED will make this tech moot, and the "flexibility" looks pretty minimal, it's got some definitely interesting immediate potentials.

compiled from France Telecom press release

R&D blurb

via ./

Apart from the fun, trendy aspect that appeals to consumers, possible applications exist in the professional event marketing and communications sectors (the staff coordinating events could display real-time information for the visitors) or in advertising, public safety, etc.

In July, trials under real conditions will allow the developers to confirm the advantages of the functionalities offered, discover new specific applications and check that the communicating clothes are comfortable to use. In the mean time, France Telecom's R&D teams are continuing to explore the nascent communicating clothes market, concluding market research studies and finalising an appropriate economic model with a view to launching commercial production of the existing prototypes in the near future. Even today, they are working towards future generations of the new screen, and in particular its compatibility with a large number of mobile phones.

CFP: Mobility, New Social Intensities and the Coordinates of Digital Networks

From stirrups to satellites, the invention of new forms of
technically-assisted mobility has always created new intensities within
the social. Each invention has also required a new idea of what it
might be to be human, along with new tensions as older cultural
practices and social forms are challenged.

Papers are invited for the 'Mobility, New Social Intensities and the
Coordinates of Digital Networks' Issue of the Fibreculture Journal, to
be published late in 2004/early in 2005. The issue will be co-edited by
Larissa Hjorth and Andrew Murphie.

http://journal.fibreculture.org

The deadline for submissions is September 22, 2004.

indie game dev SIG

new independent game dev SIG here

Welcome to the Indie Special Interest Group of the IGDA, a group of game developers interested in pursuing game development and distribution outside the standard channels as presented by the mainstream industry today. For purposes of this SIG, the definition of 'indie' is:

'Not having any formal relationship with a publisher.'

The purpose of this SIG is to provide information and resources to help build the community of indie developers and support their efforts.

Streetmemes

Streetmemes are those idiomatic tags that appear in nooks, crannies and crags and pretty much anywhere someone can quickly paint or sticker. And somehow they silently spread around the world. When I was last in LA my driving route from Los Feliz to USC was lousy with Andre the Giant. A curious distinction between LA and NYC, I noticed, was that car culture forces the memes in LA to be ginormous, while in NYC one finds more tiny ones tucked into odd corner and door ways.
I helped prototype this application last year. It's essentially a growing catalog of memes, with an almost genetic-like schema to help categorize variants, originals and so forth. Geographic tagging would make a nice addition as it'd be interesting to visualize where what particular memes appear.
Check 'em out and submit yours: Streetmemes

Janet Cardiff's Mixed Reality Works

A new work by Janet Cardiff is up in NYC until Sept. - review in Metropolis Magazine here:

A Sound-Art Project that Reconfigures Central Park | Urban Journal | Metropolis Magazine

When the 48-minute walk ends, you feel as though you have been on a long and somehow transformative journey through a landscape that is at once familiar and wholly new. The challenge Cardiff sets you is to continue bringing such attention to bear even after you've returned the headset, to extend your walk into a summer-long excursion of close discernments and unexpected discoveries.

Crawford on Immersion

"I am surprised at the two comments dismissing menu-driven interfaces as destructive to immersion. While I agree that menu-driven interfaces do interrupt the real-time experience, I question whether real-time experience is a significant consideration. I suspect that some people are expecting interactive storytelling to mimic cinema, which is real-time in nature. But cinema is the only storytelling medium that maintains real-time behavior. Theater has lengthy intermissions, and audiences don't lose the thread of the story. Television has commercials every ten minutes, and while people complain, the success of the medium clearly demonstrates the insignificance of real-time continuity to the success of storytelling. And of course literature is the most discontinuous medium of all - people can interrupt the reading of a book at any time, pop in a bookmark, and come back to the story hours, days, or weeks later.
Cinema was crippled in its early years by expectations that it mimic theater. It took revolutionaries such as D.W.Griffith to break loose from those silly expectations and establish the unique character of that medium. The same will happen with interactive storytelling".

Grand Text Auto » TIDSE 2004 (Part 1)

GPS enabled Gameboy

A GPS affixed to your Gameboy!? Pretty cool. Now all we need is an open API for creating games on there.

From We-Make-Money-Not-Art.

RedSky Mobile

CFP - Ubiquitous Systems for Supporting Social Interaction

This workshop is the second workshop on the subject of ubicomp technologies for supporting social interaction in public spaces. It will be held in conjunction with the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2004) in Nottingham, England.

Public spaces, such as conferences, museums, cafes, and workplaces present new opportunities for ubiquitous computing technologies. Such spaces represent important venues for social interaction and the informal exchange of knowledge, providing a place to find others who share common or complementary interests. As discovered in last year’s workshop, we have only begun to understand the challenges and questions associated with situating ubicomp technologies within such spaces.

Seems to me that there are a few IMD projects that would fit well within this workshop.

Call for Papers

For example, how do people find others who share their interests and develop their social networks? How can technologies provide richer ways for people to communicate and engage with others? How can the serendipitous exchanges and interactions that often occur within public spaces be supported? How and where does the interaction between people happen? In view of these questions, the proposed workshop seeks to bring together like-minded researchers and practitioners to better understand the design, development and evaluation of ubiquitous systems for supporting social activities and social interaction in public spaces.

FUSEDSPACE

Entry #146

FUSEDSPACE, an international competition for innovative applications for new technology in the public domain.
Do you have an idea or proposal through which technology will make possible other interactions with the public domain, will shed new light on it or in any other way will bring about innovation? Then do enter the Fusedspace competition. Fusedspace is an international competition for ideas on inspiring applications for new technology in the public domain.

The total prize money amounts to
€ 17,500. The competition is open to artists, architects, designers and anyone who is interested in the subject. Fusedspace is an initiative of Stroom, the hague¹s center for contemporary art, InformatieWerkPlaats, SKOR Foundation for Art and Public Space and Premsela foundation for Dutch design.

[IMD should enter SPECK, Chojo, or Patholog...]

comment tracking

for some reason, I felt inspired (ok, maybe compelled is a better word) to write a simple graphical comment tracker for our blog. I was perhaps noting that maybe something like this could be turned into some sort of competition w/ prizes (self-congratulation would be a good prize), or use the data to do a simple game. Ok, maybe I'm pushing the *fun* merits of all this, but maybe it would inspire more people to read and comment on our page. For example, Erin is a comment machine lately, but it would be nice to have his recent level of commenting matched by others. I suppose the next step would be to composite comments + posts into a OBA level (overall blog activity). I admit, between baseball and the tour de france, I've become a little over obsessed with statistics, but take this how you will.

Oh, the other thing: comments are tracked by author name -- in an open system like this it's really the only way (or, the best way I could think of in 1 second). So in order to track everyone's comments fairly, I need to make sure I have the name that everyone here is posting under. the current list of these commenting names is reflected in the current tracker, linked to below. But clearly, there is inconsistency with these names, although I think what I've got is relatively decent. Basically, if everyone could pls. comment on this post with the name they have been consistently using for making comments, or a name they wish to use consistently in the future, that would be excellent.

link [flash]

disclaimer: this is in no way meant to point out who comment stragglers are, nor is it meant to reveal my personal commenting prolificness (although high comment counts, yeah, huge ego boost...)

mozilla rich-text buttons

just added some additional blog functionality for us non-IE users (should be more of us after the homeland security folks publicity brought the hammer down on microsoft). Those using mozilla can now markup your entries via the MT web interface. This works under safari as well, except a little differently (ok, a little worse). just added some additional blog functionality for us non-IE users (should be more of us after the homeland security folks publicity brought the hammer down on microsoft). Those using mozilla can now markup your entries via the MT web interface. This sort of works under safari as well, except a little differently (ok, a little worse). Anyway, this should be working on IE since it uses browser detection, but pls. ie folks email me with problems if you have them. code for this was
here via Scott Fisher

Play with Purpose: Cultural Critique + Gaming

Seems to me that the computer gaming interface may represent the next portal through which cultural critique is articulated, which is promising so long as the coupling of narrative, critique and action doesn't dry out the game play to point that you can't tell its a video game anymore. Parenthetically, I love the way Rafael Fajardo has packaged his border-politics games with a well-written essay. It lends scholarly heft to his serious yet tongue-in-cheek re-working of Frogger!

The violence of the computer game world is thrown sharply into relief when
characters do not represent the cultural hegemony typically seen in a
First-Person Shooter. "Play" does not necessarily equal "amusement" or
"humour" in these games; the opportunity to put on an identity that sees a
formerly friendly (?) world as oppositional can be shocking. Developers
from four recent games discuss their works on -empyre-..

Collaborative group C-level has produced Waco Resurrection. Several of the artist/developers, including
Brody Condon, Eddo Stern, and Peter Brinson will join us, examining issues
of colonialism, violence, and documentary versus fictive presentation.

Gravity and Resistance

we make money not art

Japanese artists Seiko Mikami and Sota Ichikawa's new work, Gravity and Resistance, combines a real-time, pressure sensor equipped floor and topographic map projection with a GPS tracking device above the gallery space.

http://www.idd.tamabi.ac.jp/Gravity&Resistance/

AmbieSense

AmbieSense

With the AmbieSense system we have started a completely new interaction paradigm for mobile persons! The intelligent and wireless context tags lets everybody tag their surroundings and situations. The result is ambient, personalised and context-sensitive access to info systems of the future.

Desitny?

I was riding my bike around campus and I ran into this fellow carrying a sign. Thanks to my Nokia 3650 I was able to snap his picture. Anthony Adornetto is a 2002 Production Grad from New Jersey that can't find work. He was sober (I think), we spoke for a moment and he gave me a message "I came to USC to be a film maker but I came out a begger."

I'm glad to say I think the stars have a little more in store for us and Anthony then it seems! Good luck all!

Microsoft Patents Human Body

It sounds like an April Fool's Day joke, but it isn't. Microsoft, that imperialist of the information-technology world, has actually succeeded in patenting the human body as a computer network. US Patent 6,754,472, issued to the company on June 22nd, is for a “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body”.

The Economist story

Pocket Projector

blog post via /.

Video projectors able to project high-quality images will be embedded in your cellphones and laptops within two years. This is the promise of a new technology developed at Cambridge University. These pocket projectors will have no lenses and no light bulbs. Instead, these future battery-powered tiny projectors will rely on holographic technology and special algorithms. In "Holograms enable pocket projectors," Technology Research News explains that a 2D hologram will be created on a microdisplay and projected by using a laser beam. This has been possible because the researchers have written special algorithms which generates the holograms a million times faster than standard ones.

this differs from the matchbox projector earlier in the year.
Hopefully this technology will develop into something high quality, and eliminate the need to continually buy expensive bulbs.

Students and Scholars Take To The Streets - Mixed Reality Gaming

Recently, some NYU ITP students put together PacManhattan - a PacMan game played in the streets surrounding Washington Square Park. It was a fun stunt that got lots of media attention and for good reason: there's something compelling about re-imagining physical, lived space in such a way, especially if it's playful and pulls elements from resonant pop-cultural idioms like video gaming.

Curious for more substantive insights into why this sort of re-imagining has appeal?

The Human Pacman project, originally developed at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University in Singapore, share their insights in a very cogent way. Their publications page indicates that there are (at least) 7 different audiences to which their Human Pacman project has something to say about mobility, ubiquity, entertainment, social computing and more. (By comparison, Pacmanhattan's Press page has links to 19 press clips, and no reference to the MRL's Human Pacman seems to exist anywhere on the site.)

The game is fun by itself, to be sure. Drawing out how the essence of this sort of activity lives beyond a press blip is the hard work of solid, collegial reseach+development.

Mobile Gaming - Who Says Women Don't Play?

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. mobile gamers are women, compared to 42 percent who are men, according to the recent Yankee Group U.S. Mobile Entertainment Survey. In addition, 29 percent of male mobile gamers purchased games compared to 17 percent of women. The Yankee Group is one of those market research operations, and their Media & Entertainment Strategies senior analyst gives some top line insights in the release.

"Our survey clearly disagrees with the common stereotype that men, especially young men, are the most ardent mobile gamers. The largest market may be getting the least attention in a space that's increasingly competitive. This could be important news for games manufacturers and other content providers making large investments in game design and marketing programs that target men and adolescent boys."

A dream of a 1,000-year camera

Sam Raimi wants to document a millennium

Tuesday, June 29, 2004
CULVER CITY, California (AP) -- Sam Raimi hopes to remain in film a long time after he's through making "Spider-Man" movies. For about 1,000 years.

Raimi wants to build the "Century Cam," a network of cameras that would document the United States' urban landscape for a millennium.

The proposal: Position cameras above all major American cities and shoot one frame -- a 24th of a second of film -- each day at noon. The frames would be strung together gradually to create a continuous chronicle of each city's development.

more

Pitfalls of Virtual Property

"The debate over who owns what in persistent-world games got a bit more knotty recently when online gaming consultancy The Themis Group released a white paper written by one of its advisory board members, Richard Bartle. Bartle is an Essex University principal fellow and author of the 1993 book, Designing Virtual Worlds. He has become one of the most visible commentators on the subject of "ownership" of virtual-world property. For anyone who has kept abreast of the conversation, the complications come as no surprise. As Dibbell wrote recently in his blog, "The games we choose for our amusement are becoming so complex, so involving, that the line between gameplay and career, between gameworld and society, begins to blur." According to Bartle, the blurring will get worse before it gets better."

Gamespot news article

Richard Bartle's white paper (pdf)

USC Mobile Media Institute

this was news to me. anyone know more information?

The new Mobile Media Institute, comprised of Cinema-Television, the Annenberg School, the Marshall School of Business, Viterbi School of Engineering, the law school and the Thornton School of Music will produce new knowledge, art, business models and technology to shape the world of mobile media.

The Institute will also involve various research centers including the Institute for Creative Technologies, Entertainment Technology Center, the Annenberg Center for Communication, the Integrated Media Systems Center and the Center for Telecom Management.

The institute’s main goal will be to develop solutions to real-world problems in the digital economy of the future.

Specifically, the USC Mobile Media Institute will provide solutions to the challenges created by the intersection of three new phenomena:

• the increased digital creation and distribution of content, ranging from movies to news bulletins;

• the increased availability and accessibility of wireless Internet communication; and

• “interactive engagement” - the evolving ways in which people interact with each other and with media in an increasingly wireless world.

Each month, the participating schools will take turns playing host to discussion groups on topics relevant to the institute’s mission. Briefs written from what happens in the focus groups will provide the basis for roundtable discussions that will involve a roster of industry and academic experts.

press release (short)
press release (long)