Russell Davies

joggled

The normal problem with problem/solution advertising is that the problem is way more interesting and dramatic than the solution. This ad struggles even harder because (to my mind at least) it actually illustrates how the situation in the 'problem' half of the equation is much better than the 'solved' half. (Though I guess that's mostly a problem with the product rather than the ad.)

All the richness, texture, flexibilty and embedded information of the notes on the fridge door is flattened and denuded behind the screen of the joggler.

I'm not saying something like the joggler isn't useful - I can see the value in a family alert system - but you lose a huge amount when you move from paper notes and hand-written information to flat text in a database.

I suspect this'll be a continuing problem for the phone companies as they try and find new pointfullness for their products; they've conquered and incorporated cameras and music players, but that was relatively easy, they're recent technologies. Unseating and improving the centuries-old practise of scribbling a note is going to be a lot harder.

Anyway.

measuring pebbles

I've been playing with the Nintendo DS Walk With Me pedometer thing recently. Well, walking with, not really playing with. And it feels quite future-y. I was trying to think of something profound to say about it, but couldn't. But then realised I didn't have to, I could just report it and you lot could come up with your own profundities.

It's a standard DS game cart with two little lozenge devices, a white one and a black one (above, on the left, is the black one, with my regular pedometer). The lozenge thing has no external features or functions except a tiny LED that flashes when it moves; red before you hit your daily steps target, green after.

Syncing is easy and reliable - as simple as you'd expect from a games company rather than as rubbish as you get from a GPS company. And step counting seems pretty good too, within about 10% of my fancier pedometer.

 

It does what you imagine, counts your steps, remembers when you took them, counts periods of active walking. It's slightly obsessed with 'regularity of daily activity' in that way fitness games always seem to get taken with something they can measure, even if it doesn't particularly relate to health.

And there are the usual mini-challenges which you invariably can't do or forget about.

And then there's the madness. It looks at the amount of walking you do during the day and assigns you a style. Because I walk quite a lot and start early it normally decides I'm a Morning Lion. Though I wasn't aware that Lions were known for their regular hiking.

You can decide whether you had a moderate day, a good day or a very good day. I always have a good day. And there are various games you can play with your steps data.

You can consult historical records in a way you can't quite understand.

 

And you can go online and play various global games with your data. It seems I was 21st in the world with 104,385 steps, over some period I also didn't quite understand.

I really like Walk With Me. You carry a small, simple thing around with you which reliably collects interesting, useful data. The DS grabs that data really well and easily. Personally I don't like the lunatic ludic stuff they layer on top, but equally I'm not just looking for a digital pedometer that'll sync with my computer. The playfulness and the connectivity is important, they'll add dimensions to your data, it's just not quite right with this yet. The hardware is lovely, the games aren't quite there. I wonder how hackable it is.

To me, this illustrates the huge potential for partnering little devices to iPhones and Androids and the like. (Perhaps those little devices will be along the lines that Julian's been thinking of with the Flavonoid.)

You don't need your phone running a pedometer all day, not when you can have a tiny thing like this with you. If the phone can be the screen for little measuring pebbles like this then all sorts of fun and utility can follow.

last lot

The Final 50 Interesting tickets will be on sale at 11am on Friday the 17th of July.

ffffodder

really enjoyed it

We went to see Buzz Aldrin at the South Bank on Saturday. Science heroes are to be cherished. It was good, not because he was heroic but because he was flawed and enthusiastic.

He talked eloquently and honestly about how hard it is to answer the question every one wants to ask moon walkers. It was along the lines of this answer he gave to The Guardian a few days earlier.

"He has always had problems putting into words the grandeur of that moment 40 years ago. "People want to know what it felt like," he says. "They want us in a few words to generate the enthusiasm that the world had as they contemplated what we were about to do. Well, what it felt like is something that we trained for. We were trying to treat it as calmly as we could and perform to the best of our ability. We tried to repress feelings of exuberance, of disappointment, and be proud and responsible people accomplishing the task that was given to us. That sounds kind of boring. Except that what we did was kind of earth-shaking."

His interviewer, Andrew Smith, mentioned another strategy. Apparently Pete Conrad always tried to get away from that question as quickly as possible:

(From A Man On The Moon)

Massive understatement always wins.

office art

Microsoft Excel v. Mario Paint Composer from patricksyms on Vimeo.

Patrick's made an animation out of 707 Excel spreadsheets. Perverse genius.

jon cherry

Blue Watch Flick Through from Jonathan Cherry on Vimeo.

Some people are bound to succeed. Certainly they're talented, but they're also energetic. They do good things, but then they also tell people about them, and get others involved. Such a person is Jon Cherry, who's done some splendid photography of fire fighters, but didn't stop there, and persuaded a bunch of people (including me) to contribute some text. Full marks to him, it's a marvellous thing.

just fyi

Am also enbloggening a bit over here.

intern/placement at mother?

I don't really do this any more, but Sarah's a good egg, Mother are a good thing and they owe me money. So this might be extra incentive for them to pay me.

So they asked me to stick this up.

Strategic + cultural insight internship at mother. 2-month placement to begin asap.

Digital and research skills required.

Please send a CV + short cover letter to:

[email protected]

Don't contact me. Contact them.

prepared screens

Lift with Fing 09: Timo Arnall: "Making Things Visible" from Lift Conference on Vimeo.

Timo ends this splendid talk from Lift by talking about trying to get to a future less full of 'glowing rectangles'. Which made me think of a couple of things.

I went to see Hauschka a few weeks back who did all sorts of wonderful things with a prepared piano. I'd always thought of prepared piano as a Cage-y thing, more intellectual than listenable, but Herr Bertelmann made it playful and pleasant. Adding simple, everyday things to the piano gave it loads of new textures and tones, and gave it a sort of  clustered variety, so adjacent strings/keys produced quite different results. The musical 'code' (as expressed through his fingers) was filtered through a lumpy unpredictable physicality.

And for some reason it made me wonder if anyone had ever done interesting things with Prepared Screens. Whether taking the standard rectangular monitor and adding lenses, mirrors, filters, glasses, cellophane, magnifiers etc and then designing something for that prepared screen (or, even, not) might help overcome the 'bored with screens' problem. Not necessarily for steampunk affect, but to do the same thing to a screen as Hauschka does to a piano - reveal new, unexpected, unpredictable possibilities. Imagine designing something for a screen knowing that there's a big magnifying bit in the upper left hand corner. Something that alters pixels like a prepared piano alters the strings. Not through altering the code, through altering the screen.

So I started looking for prepared screens online, thinking they had to be a discarded cliche of Interaction Design shows by now, but I haven't found many examples. I'm probably looking for the wrong thing, in the wrong places.

I also imagined I'd seen them in lots of films but could only really remember the screens from Brazil. Which, while wonderful, aren't quite what I was imagining. In my head I'm thinking of something prettier and more distorting. I'll keep looking.

Anyway.