Mobzombies video on Gametrailers

Just noticed that the Mobzombies video that Aaron and I cut last week at sxsw got posted on gametrailers.com, which is pretty cool, but also pretty weird. It's a little strange seeing it juxtaposed against what I would consider like, normal Game games (right after a new Prince of Persia thing???), but a cool nonetheless. It's been viewed a bunch of times at this point, Here are some of my favorite comments:

"Ooooookaaaaayyy. Looks kind of like a rip off of the original Gauntlet"

"Awesome! This is almost as much a godsend for pedophiles as DS Chat! "Over here, little boy, I'll save you from the zombies!" lol...."

"haha that looks freakin awesome.. gotta watch out for fat kids runnin around though"

"Wow did I just teleport to the 80s terrible"

"Graphics look really bad for a PSP game."

cell death

Nice piece at the always-on-network today by steve baker from tomato design fame (and, full disclosure, the president of the company I'm working for, eduardo sciammarella) about the transition from cell phone to mobile device. Lots of good numbers, use scenarios, etc. Written for business folks, mostly I think, but trying to get these folks to realize that providing cell phone service is a thing of the past.

All it takes to start that revolution is one device—a handheld network device, something very like the Palm TX, Sony PSP, or Nokia 770—with a Bluetooth headset. (After all, what use is a QVGA screen on a handset that's pressed up against your sweaty ear?) With VoIP, a web interface, and a broadband-wired world, the cellphone is a museum piece. Get ready for the ODMs in Asia to churn out hundreds of millions of low-cost devices. Pop in a WiFi CF card, and you're ready to roll. Did someone say dumb pipe?

del.ic.ious vodcasts

so this is cool, subscribing to del.ic.ious video in the new iPOd (which I fucking ordered yesterday, man -- you got a problem?)

apple wins again, proving that having a easy distribution system will trump everything. sony blows it again, even though they are first in the space. poor sony.

kellee posted a good comment on the vblogging seminar about content -- she's right... video on the iPod is not just about watching Lost on the train, or in your car while driving on the freeway or whatever - how we make videos is also due for an upgrade.

link

vg map

nice! eyebeam just released vgmap, a way to lay vector graphics onto google maps! finally, an alternative to the ugliness that is the google maps overlay. although it is yet to be seen what kind of cool stuff can be done, I'd imagine that it extends what you are capable of doing with the gmap overlay classes.

nice mac gps app

huh, this is cool.

GPSy® is a sophisticated Macintosh GPS communications and GIS mapping program. GPSy connects your Macintosh to a broad range of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational units and has advanced mapping, logging, and data transfer features. GPSy has extensive support for USGS DRG topo maps, Internet DGPS-IP servers, GPSyLinks to Internet Map Servers, StreetAtlas 4, and IPC's MapFan II, as well as user-scanned maps, Magellan and Lowrance/Eagle data transfer protocols, Sony IPS protocol, Rockwell Zodiac/Tripmate binary protocol support, Trimble TSIP support and much more.

so what's kinda cool about this is that it's actionscriptable... meaning that it's super easy to control any macintosh app you want based on GPS input...

Exclusive Ringtone deals

In what is just another sign that mobile music is becoming more than just crappy polyphonic ringtones, Groove Armada's Andy Cato has signed an exclusive deal with the british carrier O2 to provide custom ringtones available to O2 subscribers.

I think we'll start seeing more and more of this kind of thing happening: artists brokering deals with phone companies to provide their content exclusively. I think it also marks the transition towards new types of media, or rather, new subsections of media that are created expressly for a mobile platform.

cingular to launch iTunes phone?

link to reuters article suggesting that motorola and cingular are working out final revenue sharing details on the much-talked about iTunes phone.

My personal opinion on this is that there are a lot of crappy mp3 phones starting to inundate the market -- apple and motorola had best be sure that the iTunes phone is that perfect mix of consumer friendliness and and chic design, or else I think it might get forgotten.

Word on the street is that the phone, as it currently stands, is not all that hip / cool / whatever.

mobile gaming innovation

here's an interesting "industry" talk given by Qualcomm's Mike Yuen at this year's MEM conference in London. Starting with a quick history of innovation in the games market, from pac man to super mario to GTA, Yeun moves into talking about mobile games (quoted from article below):

"it's like the beginning of the gaming market, but all over again". Yuen is a firm believer that the growth explosion of increasingly sophisticated handsets, and higher customer expectations will force all developers to find new ways of thinking about mobile game design.

Urging developers to consider mobile from the outset, Yuen continued to identify six design considerations that would lead to the mass adoption that so many publishers covet. Leveraging mobile DNA and utilising the uniqueness of the platform, incentivised play, pre-launch teaser content, loyalty programmes, viral marketing and, most importantly, integration with other traditional gaming platforms.

read the rest here

so much going on

so much happening in mobile sphere these days...

2 recent interesting articles:

this one is about how mobile carriers may start integrating wifi into phones to counter "dead spots" by using voip -- seems interesting but a slippery slope for them to start offering these cheaper services.

this one is another look at how now that mobile content is getting to a certain breaking point, the carriers are having to rethink their business models, specifically the slow decline of their portals vs. MVNO stuff. Basically, this article is saying that big music labels no longer want to let verizon, et al take a huge cut of their downloads for stuff like ringtones, etc., and feel that their brands are strong enough to drive consumer demand -- they don't think they need the carriers anymore to generate revenue.

This is just another trend that is going to eventually break the "walled garden" and make the mobile content space much more open and participatory.

mobisodes in duke city shootout

article from the hollywood reporter about the upcoming christopher coppola film fest duke city shootout and the emergence of mobisodes as a viable new filmic medium.

mobile album

huh. this chinese songstress just released an entire album exclusively to mobile phones...

maybe the new coldplay single should have been released to mobiles -- then perhaps it would have beaten out that horrible frog thing.

link

and on the eve...

...of our thesis presentations, another project called well 'Ere Be Dragons.

Todd's T-Projekt (I know, I know...) is in my mind far cooler, and really does better service to the name.

However, since this is on a PDA, and uses your heartbeat as a controller, I thought I might / should post it / the thing (on this web page).

In this game (which I'm sure Tracy F. would put sarcastic quotes around the word game) the game world changes depending on your heart rate. So you set your max and min HR at the beginning of the game, and if you go outside of that range, the world will disappear. On the other hand, if you keep inside that range, the world will persist, and you will move through it.

mobile music recognition

shazam has developed a new mobile app that allows you to point your mobile phone at any loud audio source for 30 seconds, and then have the song sent back to your phone via sms.

not entirely useful, maybe -- but better than using the crappy phone interface to google lyrics or something when you just can't for the life of you remember the name of that song and it's going to be stuck in your head all night and stuff.

link

non-mobile

Walking around Culver City Downtown is a pain in the ass. I must've seen this dude 80 times today, his stupid little smile (or lack their of...) completely mocking me while I stand there waiting for another infinite light.

mobile game roundup

josh rubin has a good roundup of a mobile games panel from the g to the d to the c.

link

all I'm thinking about right now is the bassmasters game, but instead of the relatively crappy way they ported it, have some type of kick ass motion sensing so you you could actually use the phone to make the casting motion.

unfortunately, this would work better with fly fishing, as that is more of a true cast... the bass fishing cast more closely resembles the motion of reaching over for another cookie.

reblog: citysnapper

this looks promising:

urban photographer game

link via wmmna

MSN Viral Story

Hrm.

MSN has an interesting idea for a viral story thing to push their new search engine, which really sucks.

here is part of an article, read the entire article here

So far, "MSN Found" has generated mostly negative buzz in the blogosphere. While that's not necessarily an indicator of its potential with its target market of mainstream Web users, most viral campaigns rely on blogs -- typically run by more techie early adopters -- to raise awareness.

The effort centers on a site at msnfound.com, which introduces a cast of six fictional characters in their mid-20s. These made-up MSN users maintain blog-like online journals, providing links to searches on their interests and to videos. There's Reggie, a London DJ; Tad, the Venice, Calif. Surfer dude; Karen, the Bichon dog breeder; Swing, the Tokyo hotel concierge; Cy, the Chicago-based conspiracy theorist; and Denise, the Brooklyn matchmaker.

It seems a bit forced, to me...

Virtual Walk of Fame

so there is a petition going on one the line lobbying for video game characters to be placed on the walk of fame.

this idea sucks. I agree with the perspective of laist.

maybe we should make a virtual walk of fame... ooo (locative??).

the location clapper?

this is neat. James Scott of Intel Research Labs in Cambridge developed a cheap location tracking system using off the shelf microphones that are attached to a PC PCI slot. I guess the system basically searches for human noises such as clapping or finger-snapping in a 3D space, then does it's calculation thing and returns a value. Haven't read the paper on this yet, but I'd be interested to see how accurate it can be.

sony walkman phone

new song walkman phone... coming soon, the iPhone.

link

Remember Get Smart?

So apparently Shaq has put a cell phone in his size 8000 shoes to "field encouraging calls" from his wife during a game.

Is this necessary? I think at least certain spies would feel that it was. Hello, chief?

link via slashphone

friends don't let friends lose their mobile phone

interesting story on bbc today saying that 1/3 of people in the UK feel that if they lose their mobile phone, they will lose their friends.

I wonder if Paris Hilton feels this way.

feedbeep

RSS --> SMS Feed

http://feedbeep.com/

Seamful - GPS Wifi Game

Seamful game, dev'd in scotland, looks super cool. This is a reblog post cause I'm in class...

Players travel around a designated area collecting digital "coins" (which appear all over the map, including in places not covered by the 802.11b wireless network) and uploading them to get points. To gain these points, players must upload the coin to the server, by pressing the "upload" button on their PDA in an area where there is 802.11b coverage. If players attempt to upload coins in an area not covered by WiFi, the upload fails and they loose all the coins they are carrying.

Only by understanding the boundaries of the network, and the effect of signal strength on their ability to upload coins, and thus score points, will players be successful in winning the game.

The "Pick Pocket" feature of the game allows a player to steal coins from other players nearby. The player has to be inside network coverage, and use the GPS to get within 10 meters of another player (also within network coverage). By pressing the "Pick Pocket" button, they can grab any coins the victim is carrying but has not uploaded yet.

Plus, scattered around the map are "Mines". If a player moves to within 10 meters of a mine, it will detonate and the player’s PDA will be temporarily disabled.

via near near future

Blinkenlights

control classic arcade games on buildings using your mobile phone as a controller. They did this at brown when I was there with an n64 controller, but the mobile interface is totally cool. Lights/Games/Architecture convergence.

link via near-near-future

panoramas with new A9 yellow book service

man, the new amazon a9 service is sweet.

I made a super quick and dirty panorama using php and css of Hillhurst Ave near where I live. the stitching is nill -- I just set a close margin-left tag when writing the page out to get close. Plus, I think I screwed up obtaining a couple of the images from A9...the point is the macro level though -- this service is pretty damn amazing. I want the API.

Los Angeles movie Map?

I mean, there are so many cool things that can be done with this. I keep going back to the patholog project we are/were working on... would have been amazing to tap into this database and let you search a panorama of your path with embedded content on the images...

sigh, I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to expand the 24 hour clock so I can do that project...

the quick + dirty panorama is here

link to the A9 service from waxy.

happy slapping

from a boingboing post, a link to a scotsman.com article on the 'happy slapping' phenomenon. , yet another compelling case for camera phones:

Head teachers have banned children from using video phones to stop them slapping other pupils in the face and recording the attacks on their mobiles.

Man, when I was in school, we just slapped kids for the hell of it -- but now that you can take a picture of the slapping -- well, that's more the reason to keep with the slapping. The happy slapping.

another choice quote:

Superintendent Mark Newton, of British Transport Police, said: “It is a cowardly form of attack – childish but also criminal.

approximeeting

nice article at the Guardian about the subtle cultural shifts being generated by cell-phone use.

textually has a good synopsis of the article, so I won't go into it here, but I will say that I'm certainly guilty of approximeeting. I don't make concrete plans anymore, hardly ever. It's typically assumed that there will be an event, or a meeting, or something, but no one feels the need to come out and explicity state time, place, etc. I wonder how business culture is reacting to what I assume is still a more or less social cultural shift at the moment. Most of my experiences with work related things still demand a certainly amount of, well... certainty. I wonder if this will change.

Although I guess in the tech world, shipping dates are always sort of approximate.

This Mobile Will Change Your Life

Ok, sorry for the reblog, but this seems like a really cool, simple sms based service.

Subscribers to “This Mobile Will Change Your Life” receive SMS text message orders which they must carry out immediately, in Mission Impossible-style.

Orders vary from the straightforward (“kiss the nearest tall stranger”) to the hazardous (“Walk into a police station, tell them you’re finally giving yourself up, then remain totally silent.”) to the deranged (“It’s 2am: everybody meet in your nearest cemetery dressed as zombies, then march on the town centre”).

Subscribers must commit to obeying the 10 instructions a month without fail, in return for which their life is guaranteed to change.

Link via textually

rheingold's mobile manifesto

Lots of compelling stuff in this recent thefeature.com article by Howard R.

Link

val kilmer

val kilmer is apparently the subject of a tagging/street meme in toronto. or, as it turns out, viral marketing scheme by a band called "val kilmer tagging caper." I'm guessing that the name for the band came directly from the idea of littering toronto with val kilmer (which, taken literally, is a terrible idea).

This is exactly the type of thing that more mobile-platform projects need to do, and that more companies should be doing with mobile stuff. not specifically the street meme thing of plastering an area with a singular, unified image (in this case: val kilmer), but something that people can interact with. something mysterious and viral. In a few years, the virtual layer will begin to manifest itself in the physical layer in just such a fashion. So while we have this idea that virtual spaces are somehow innately fake, or non-physical, they have very real manifestations of themselves in the environment.

hopefully they'll look a little different than val kilmer.

Check the links:

pictures

"solution"

WUG

Julian pointed me in the direction of the SoCal Wireless User Group yesterday.

The SOCALWUG is here to be a local resource for those interested in wireless computer technology, wireless professionals, businesses and individuals looking for information on wireless.

I especially like the project by Mike Outmesguine that is creating a 1 mile bluetooth link. (why? because he can. or: why not?)

Going to try and get in with these guys and figure out who is responsible for green-lighting (been in hollywood too long...) the culver-city wifi thing, then try and pitch my project to whoever that is in order to maybe mobilize some support behind a possible event in the spring.

MEETINGS HELD AT AN IHOP MEETING ROOM!

google SMS

huh, this looks cool. I'd imagine that it's only useful for very specific searches like addresses, phone numbers, etc. But a cool idea none the less.

Link via Cool Hunting

placelab

Intel Research in seattle is developing a project called Placelab, which is a wifi-based positioning system that, like GPS, tracks the location of the device, but unlike GPS, works indoors and out. There is no information on the site about what the accuracy of the position data is, but I'd imagine that it's better outdoors than in, since word-of-mouth has it that there are more walls and stuff indoors. Walls truly are a pain in the ass. If only we could get rid of them...

This isn't necessarily the first such service to explore triangulation w/ wifi band frequencies, but it's an interesting development to watch nevertheless.

soundabout redux

so, short post, but looks like the new virgin electronics 5 GB mp3 player, aside from sucking in most of it's other capacities, has brought back the 2 headphone jack capacity made ever so famous by sony's first go-round on the walkman (the soundabout). Sony dropped the dual (dueling?) headphone jacks after about 6 months of manufacturing I think, but it's interesting that Virgin has brought it back. Maybe there is some tenuous tie-in with the new "reckless billionaire" show?

probably not, I guess.

Link via the recently back online gizmodo

are these shoes cool?

textually.org has a nice write-up about a new york times article that focuses on how mobile phones have crushed our sense of self-reliance.

Here's a quote from the nyt article:

"According to Christine Rosen, a senior editor at the journal New Atlantis and the author of "Our Cell Phones, Ourselves," a recent article exploring the social effects of the mobile phone, the ease of obtaining instant advice encourages cellphone users to respond to any uncertainty, crucial or trivial, by dialing instead of deciding. The green sweater or the blue, pizza or Chinese, the bridge or the tunnel - why take responsibility for making up your own mind when you can convene a meeting in a minute?

I think Rosen's work articulates a potentially larger social problem that, unfortunately, resembles a sci-fi writer's dystopia. This goes for more than just phones - although our dependence on these devices is probably the most significant cultural/social change in the last 5 years. Name another example.

link to the write-up.

link to the full article

halloween costume

I'd like this as my halloween costume this year, for sure.

SMS novel

"Weighing in at a mere 4,200 words, "Out of the Fortress," is like a marriage between haiku and Hemingway, and will be published for its audience of cell phone readers at a bite-sized 70 characters at a time, including spaces and punctuation marks, in two daily installments."

Link via Smartmobs

personal life recorder

Don Norman speculated about a "Personal Life Recorder" (PLR) type of device back in his 1992 book "Turn Signals Are The Facial Expression of Automobiles". He theorized that these PLR's would start out as a device given to young children, called the "Teddy". The "Teddy" would be given to us as children and record all of our personal life moments, and as we mature, the data could be transferred to new devices that matched out maturity level.

USA Today reported that a newly developed type of computer memory, called MRAM could make the vision of a PLR-type device possible, as well as "instant-on computers" and "longer battery life for pervasive devices".

link from smartmobs

Citi-Tag

Cool GPS tag game.

Link via Coin Operated

vanity, thy name is camera phone

Lots to post today... in a posting mood, baby!

from an article on PICTURE PHONING, the top uses of camera phones by UK girls, according to a study done by Vodaphone.

-- 20 percent of mobile users send snaps of themselves in new outfits to friends to see if they like them.

-- 18 per cent take pictures of shoes or clothes on display for the same reason.

-- 5 per cent take pictures of snappy dressers that they see on the high street to copy their style.

-- 15 per cent frequently pull out their camera-phones to photograph the sides and backs of their hair,

-- 10 per cent use their camera-phones as a mirror to check their make-up.

-- 4 per cent even resort to getting the phone out in the middle of a restaurant after dinner - to check their teeth.

-- More than 20 per cent use their phone to capture details of a new property, and 15 per cent send pictures of new furnishings to partners to get their opinions.

Yellow Arrow

The way it works is “participants place arrows pointing at the locations and things that count most to them, their most cherished views of the city, the subway stations they frequent daily, their favorite bodegas and neighborhood parks. When placing an arrow, a participant sends a text message to YellowArrow.org with the sticker?s ID number and a brief story about why this location is important. When another person encounters an arrow in the city, he or she sends a message with the arrow’s ID number to YellowArrow.org and immediately receives the short message associated with it on their phone.”

Link via Coin-Operated

Tokyo Picturesque

Tokyo Picturesque (alpha version) is a site where people in Tokyo can attach pics taken with their GPS enabled mobile phone. The system then associates that image with the location on the map where it was taken.

link via we-make-money-not-art

mobile dj

SSEYO, the company that brought us Vector Audio w/ KOAN, has now developed a system for mobile DJ-ing. Sounds pretty interesting, potentially -- similar to what I'd like to do w/ location aware music players. Fundamentally cool idea: collaborative / spontaneous music making w/ mobiles... a general goal.

Available for both Pocket PC & SmartPhone Microsoft Windows Mobile-based platforms, SSEYO miniMIXA is a revolutionary integrated multi-channel mobile audio mixer and recording studio. It allows the easy mixing together of content in many audio and MIDI formats, including microphone recordings, plus application of wide-ranging sound effects for the on-device creation and recording of stunning grooves.

This feature-packed application also lets you incorporate in your mix sounds generated live from music engines and modular synths (see “Innovations” below), for an unparalleled mobile mixing experience.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this device is being used to DJ at ISEA 2004 by a group from FUTURESONIC on a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea. Perry's mobile audio project would have fit in nicely...

Via

iTunes for the cellular

apple is putting iTunes on some motorola phones... pretty cool, wish I had a nice motorola phone now.

elephant paths

Elephant Paths is a project that explores a geographical and social space by mapping paths. It reveals a point of view connected to a space, telling a short story of a moment via video triptychs and texts. It links these places together with mapping traces and social relations. Altogether it creates a spatial map that can be experienced via GPS –devices (Global Positioning System) and the Internet. Mapped paths are marked also with a note.

link

GPS for Mars

Future explorers of Mars will always need a way to know where they are, regardless of whether they're rover automatons or flesh and blood humans.

To do that, NASA researchers and scientists alike have been studying the requirements for a potential global positioning satellite (GPS) system around Mars that could also function as a communications network. Their vision is a small flotilla of Mars spacecraft conducting their own science while watching over future robotic or human expeditions, then relaying data back to Earth.

Link to Space.com Article

porting, interface-ing

porting patholog over to flash...quicker loading, more reliable than the applet it was running in. also trying out a number of different interfaces to see how best to do things. right now am currently busy parsing a lot of the content data from the db into a more flash friendly format, which has been really the only pain in the transfer from java to actionscript. but once that's done, it won't be a huge step to pipe all the annotation stuff over to flash also. it adds some more headaches, but it will be probably good to start thinking about this interface.

current link

good rundown

of the futuresonic '04 mobile presentations

here

placestorming

got some mobile media action this morning w/ a project called placestorming, by someone up at berkeley. synopsis: use gps to navigate to a dossier, which describes your 'mission.' Using gps, then find the other 5 locations and 'intervene' at those locations with whatever your mission was. my mission was 'new music forms' so we went around and made music from whatever we could find at the 4 waypoints. There was much banging involved. and some yelling (and even some broken glass). We were supposed to then document each of these activities. It was an early stage of this project, and it was pretty fun for a bit I guess. For me, the navigation was the best part, but since there was really no location-specific nature of these points (rather arbitrary), I was always a little disappointed when I found the spot, because it didn't really feel like I was finding anything. alas.

image map

walked around today, took some pictures, and mapped them to a stitched terraserver image of the los feliz area.

(btw. the yellow line is a connect-the-dots of some waypoints - not a highly sampled path... which would explain the appearance of me walking through buildings, etc. fyi: I stored a highly sampled path too, but didn't feel like swiping it from the tablet...)

Bike Against Bush / Magicbike

Bikes Against Bush is a dynamic performance/protest that occurs simultaneously on the streets of NYC during the Convention and on the Web. Bikes Against Bush uses wireless bicycles that incorporate a mechanical printing device consisting of a series of spray-chalk aerosol cans. This mechanical ChalkWriter can print text messages from web users to the street surfaces on which the bike cruises. Online users can send messages to the bicycle in real-time through the project website and the cyclist can decide when and where to print them. When the cyclist prints a message, bikesagainstbush.com automatically updates a live map marking the location of the message. A webcam on the bike also documents this with a snapshot at the moment of printing. The spray-chalk text message remains on the street for 4 to 5 days till the chalk biodegrades, or can be washed off easily with water. Thus, the goal of “Bikes Against Bush” is to serve as an inspirational and working model for alternative, creative political resistance.

link via Gizmodo

net attack

a cool, pervasive mobile game

geodesic pencils

cool gallery of GPS pencil-art.

But why limit yourself to simple line drawings.

link via Smart Mobs

from there to here

This was recorded on campus today using GPS and my laptop -- although soon the tablet will help throw some legitimacy upon my claims that this is a mobile platform. Basically, you are always in the center of the screen and the world moves around you as you walk. You aim for the nodes scattered throughout campus, and when you come within a certain radius of a node, it will start playing a sound linked to that location. The sound will begin with no volume when you first enter the radius, and will gradually fade up relative to your proximity to the center. This allows a nice cross fade to occur when you are within the radius of more than one node.

Eventually I'll implement some code I wrote that uses the compass on the GPS to rotate the map and the nodes based on what direction you are looking.

Click on the image above, or here to see how the display looks when a user (me, in this class) is walking about campus a bit, and then strolls off to Zemekis.

u-beat, other wearable speakers

from most to least relevant / interesting.

u-beat is a set of speakers that you wear around your neck. designed for gamers to 'feel' the vibration whilst playing.

more clothing integrated stuff here

the NeckPhone (integrated mp3/headphones)

mobile "L" check'a

I woke up, messed around on the computer for a bit, read some Far Side. Then, suddenly inspired, had to walk all the way downstairs with my overflowing laundry basket, only to find all the "L" machines in use. So I walk all the way back upstairs, dropping more laundry on the way back upstairs. The next trip, I had to check if the machines were open, then rush back upstairs, then back down with my L. I got the machines, luckily, but there have been plenty of times that I have been foiled on even these subsequent trips downstairs.

So I hate this. It was an especially large problem in college, or in previous apartments, where there was no elevator, and more bloodthirsty L-doers to be trifled with. Therefore, reading this article has been disarmingly relevant to my day so far. Check the status of the "L" situation from my phone. The perfect solution to these annoyances. More info is here.

Reminds me of this MIT Bathroom server, which is perhaps the best, most ingenious project ever.

<--patholog...-->>under continuuuued construction

Here's what we've got now.

Embedded content in space. Sound / Video / Image / Text. Anyone can author these places. As these enviornments become authored, and only if they indeed do, does patholog become relevant. With this project, we are making the assumption that it will.

another photoblog

this time for the Democratic South Carolina Primary

Link via Smart Mobs

step one - mobile performance

here's an mp3 of a improvisatory ambient piece I made using a more flushed-out version of the piece of software I detailed here, and described the further possible outcomes of here.

Basically, you load up a series of sound files (which would eventually be stored on a database, accessed via JDBC), and attach them to location-specific entities (which in this case, are virtual objects, but would / could be in the future physical locations). You (in this case your avatar) move around the space, and when you come into contact with an object, it spits out it's specific sound. It's actually quite fun improvising in this setting, as you begin mapping the (virtual) environment both spatially and sonically simultaneously.

improvisation #1 - Download [.MP3]

cleaned zombie source

cleaned of version of what we've got as of 11/23/03
includes better comments, and is workable to either test at the mobile lab, or go all out on campus.

view source (.pde)

patholog bug fix

corrects an incorrect variable assignment. both x and y coordinates saved as php were assigned to the current x value. now they are assigned to the x value and y value, respectively.

view source

patholog source

alpha pathalog code reads gps coordinates with glen murphy's tracking code, at a specified sampling rate (in seconds) then dumps the coordinates into php variables (download vars.php) which can then be viewed or otherwise manipulated in php.

view source

note: this is an alternative to downloading the coordinates from the garmin using hyperterminal. There are weaknesses to both -- with this version, you have to be tracked live -- and with the hyperterminal setup, you have to go through the process of downloading all the garmin data into a textfile. Either way, the gps data in either case is the same, and is stored in the same format in php.

more source

converts gps coords to a pixel value between 640X480

+ other stuff.

Download File (.pde)

UPDATE:

The class P5gps has an issue running with quicktime for java on mac...Not sure exactly why, but using the built in processing method splitStrings fixes the problem.

Download File (.pde)

source code (gps)

view source

sound constructor

prototype/proof of concept for 1/2 of my 590 proposal:

The Sound Constructor allows users to create complex and diverse sounds by forming rectangles. The width of the rectangle determines duration of the sound, the x position determines frequency, the height determines the harmonisity of the sound and the area is directly related to the sound's amplitude envelope. view qt movie

The user will create sounds on a desktop (and eventually a mobile device), store them on a mobile phone, and upload them into sonic ecosystems, where they then interact with other sound elements. At this point, I am working on a basic prototype of this ecosystem. As it stands, users can upload their sounds into an ecosystem, but there is not yet any interaction between the sound elements. view qt movie

buzznet TOS

from buzznet TOS:

"I" agree not to...

c. impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Buzznet official, forum leader, guide or host, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity.

f. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights ("Rights") of any party;

hmm...that sucks.

gps code for p5

Glen Murphy recently posted a piece of code he wrote that connects to a gps device over a serial connection and then parses that raw data into GPGGA or GPRMC sentences. Included also are methods to translate this parsed data into more useful formats (minutes to degrees, latitude, longitude, etc).

very cool. We (the mobile group) should use this instead of director, methinks, unless todd has already gotten the whole thing working on the tablet with director. Reason being is I've already written the piece of 'starter' code in p5, and it would be a shame to redo the entire thing if we don't have to.

test 2

use WSAD to move around (make sure applet is active)

press space to stop

hint: this is pretty hard

play

Patholog

Project Description:

The Patholog is a shard of the mobile project developed this summer at the mobile research lab by Scott Fisher, Mark Bolas, Will Carter, Todd Furmanski, Kurt MacDonald and Tripp Millican. The summer project resulted in the construction of some basic authoring tools for the creation of location-based mobile media. In addition to the proposed run-and-chase model of the zombie university game, the patholog is a project designed to put those tools to use and develop engaging mobile media systems.

As a proof of concept, the Patalog will allow users to walk though the USC campus, and, armed solely with a GPS device, dynamically generate weblogs based on the path taken. Before they leave from their home, users throw a gps unit into their bag or purse. The GPS logs tracking points from the user at a certain sampling rate as they move through the physical space. As these tracking points are logged in a file, they are also cross-referenced with the content database to determine if the user has passed through a given point. Once the user is finished walking around campus, they return home and view a dynamically generated weblog based on where they travelled. This page created by storing points in the content database that the user has walked though, and then displaying content such as sound or images that are embedded into that location. This data waits to be published in a weblog format, displaying the place visited, content associated with the spot, and links that point the user or other web viewers toward more information about the location. The user then is able to annotate their experience at each place, and publish the path as a blog.

To Do:
- Author specific points along the USC Path using mobile authoring tools.
- Create a script that dynamically serves up the weblog and allows users to annotate text and images.

Timeline:
Next 2-3 weeks
- have backend polished and generating blogs based with fake GPS data and mocked up content
- get a handle on the best GPS sampling rate for the project (how often do we track the user's location)
Last 2 or so weeks
- Author and test system
- document a live experience using "video technology"

Participants: Tripp Millican, Kurt MacDonald, Todd Furmanski, and Will Carter

links

Xingtone is an LA based company that allows your mobile phone to convert audio files into ringtone formats - this is an interesting idea, and one that is predictable running to a bit of a DRM problem here in hollywood. Here is an article about the service.

The Sony Ericsson Clicker is a piece of software that takes advantage of some simple applescripts and apple's fondness for bluetooth to allow you to use your phone as a remote control for your computer. I'm just envisioning people using this at parties - controling itunes - but there are some other interesting examples listed, such as having your computer wake up from sleep when you walk into the room, etc. The nice thing is that you can pretty much control anything, as long as you have the right applescript. Another writeup is Here.

Supafly is a mobile based game created by Its Alive, the same swedish company that did botfighters. According to the website, "Supafly is a virtual soap opera, and the goal is to become a virtual celebrity. To do that, you have to create as much gossip around you as possible, while maintaining your relations and status in your group. Using positioning technology, the game takes place in the real world, and you play on your mobile and on the web."

I'm trying to figure out a way to make an intriguing mobile service / experience that highlights Los Angeles as a unique cultural and historical space. Or something. I'm trying to get my hands on every kind of mobile experience I can find. try to see what works. what doesn't. any links would be appreciated.

thanks.

Los Angeles

A new mobile interest.

A few choice LA quotes:

Whatever glass and steel monuments may be built downtown, the essence of Los Angeles, its true identifying characteristic, it mobility. Freedom of movement has long given life a special flavour there, liberated the individual to enjoy the sun and space that his environment so abundantly offered, put the manifold advantages of a great metropolitan area within his grasp.
- Richard Austin Smith: Fortune, March 1965

In Los Angeles people think of space in terms of time, time in terms of routes...and of automobiles as natural and essential extensions of themselves.
- Miles: International Times, 14 March 1969

On my first visit to Los Angeles I was conventionally prepared for almost anything except what it really looked like - a quite beautiful place.
- Nathan Silver: New Statesman, 28 March 1969

LA is a place built on mobile culture. Or rather, the kind of place that has built mobile culture. I'm beginning to think about how to use mobile networks in this city, how to best incorporate them into the existing landscape in a way that social space would be positively reinforced. I need to think more about this. I want to know what the Labyrinth Project is conceiving for their upcoming mobile los angeles project. Are they aware of space? Social Geography? In the meantime, I would recommend checking out the book I'm about to post.

collaborative_networks_1

I've been getting really excited about the mobile web as a collaborative space.

The entire concept of social interaction is based on the idea of cooperation, and how individuals learn- or gravitate towards- publically beneficial cooperative actions in spite of their own private interests. In other words, in order to for cooperation to occur, there must be some resolution between the public good and the private good. The prisioner's dilemma is a good example of such a concept.

In Smart Mobs Howard Rheingold makes the argument that the internet created an even higher cooperative potential because it allowed for what Dan Bricklin calls the "cornucopia of the commons," the ability for a network to allow people to contribute to the public good (the commons) without sacrificing their own private interests. Many p2p systems operate in such a manner - think of napster, for example - as someone uses a system for their own benefit, they are also contributing to the commons. So Rheingold has written about all this stuff, so for more info read the book.

What really is cool to me, is the collaborative potential that is built into (eventually all) mobile devices - gps, infrared, high-speed, text, multimedia potential. But most of all, these devices are all connected to a profoundly large network, which can be leveraged to develop engaging collaborative applications. How can we use WiFi to create situations where people need to collaborate in order to accompish tasks? One interesting idea would be to have specialized services that would send out messages to subscribers based on their locations, having them perform simple individual functions, that on a larger scale, creates something bigger - i.e. the sum is bigger than the whole of it's parts. This concept can be applied to global art projects, television, gaming in both virtual and physical space, etc. The possibilties are really limitless, and I'm itching to see how these ideas grow- and even more so - be a contributor to this development.