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September 7, 2006

IM in Young Innovator Awards

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"Since 1999, the editors of Technology Review have honored the young innovators whose inventions and research we find most exciting; today that collection is the TR35, a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35. Their work--spanning medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, and more--is changing our world."
At least three of TR's young innovators are working in the area of Interactive Media: Jane McGonigal for her work on ARGs. Paul Rademacher for his google map mashups, and Joshua Schacter was awarded "Innovator of the Year" for del.icio.us.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:21 PM | | Comments (0)

September 2, 2006

Ta-Da Series

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This won an honorable mention in I.D. Magazine's recent Student Design Review. Designed by Silvia Grimaldi, Central St. Martins College, London. Pretty funny.

"A furniture collection that plays off our attitudes toward possessions, Ta-Da alters the typically passive relationship between objects and users by introducing household items that work best in tension-provoking circumstances: A lamp turns on only when it's dangerously close to tipping over, or a table reveals its pattern only when coffee is accidentally spilled on it."

Best of Category was another cool project called " Trans-sensing—Seeing Music".

Posted by Scott Fisher at 7:56 PM | | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

Emotion Interface for Music Collections

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...software developed by the Munich group, AudioRadar, provides a map of songs by their sound and similarities. Using algorithms developed by other acoustical researchers over the years, it scans a music collection, measuring song qualities: tempo, chordal shifts, volume, harmony, and so on. Then it weights the songs by four key criteria: fast or slow, melodic or rhythmic, turbulent or calm, and rough or clean. (Turbulence measures the abruptness of shifts; "rough" indicates the number of shifts.) Based on these metrics, the application creates a map in which a chosen song appears at the center of the screen, with similar songs clustered in a circle around it -- sort of like points of light on a radar screen. Then users can gauge, for instance, the "calmness" or "cleanness" of another music choice by its relative position on the map. Distances are scaled; for instance, a song at the circle's outer edge would be twice as calm as one in the center. And the cluster rearranges itself after each new song. Thus, users can surf their collections without needing to remember every song they own. They can build mood-based playlists or let the program select the next most similar song.
 This and similar services in development described in Technology Review

Posted by Scott Fisher at 1:23 AM | | Comments (0)

June 22, 2006

BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype

I need this:

[Thanks Boris...]

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:58 AM | | Comments (0)