January 2005 Archives

'Technology has consequences'

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Terrifying in its total predictability and complete unexpectedness: mobile virus infects Lexus cars.

"I've even seen screenshots of major commercial aeroplanes with Windows 2000-based operating systems," said Mikko Hypponen, director of anti-virus research at Finnish firm F-Secure. "Cars are an obvious target for viruses. It's okay if you don't use the operating system for the engine and the brakes, but when you do..."

...Just another unintended consequence of ubiquitous computing that I often forget to take into account.

via telecom-cities

a mini for the mini

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For car enthusiasts, the Mac Mini conjures the potential of having a car like KITT from “Knight Rider,” the popular t.v. program featuring a talking and thinking sleek black TransAm. The Mac Mini supports voice recognition and voice response, allowing for handsfree operation while driving. It also supports Bluetooth, allowing for the use of a wide array of wireless peripherals such as keyboards and cell phones.
Drivers can use the customized Mac Mini Auto to log into home networks to transfer flies, such as your favorite music, video and photos, wirelessly from computers and home media devices directly to the car. The Mac Mini platform supports virtually all home media formats (MP3, DVD, CD, WMA, etc.) and the 40 GB storage allows for onboard selection of thousands of songs. Of course, Mac games can be played on the Mac Mini to provide hours of entertainment for passengers.
Road trips will never be the same for Mac Mini-equipped cars. Users can drive up and log into to any hotspot, as offered at many Starbucks, McDonald’s, hotels and other public locations to surf the Web, view e-mail, view webcams, and other useful options.
Mr. Benzaquen explains, “For around the price of mounting an iPod in your car, you get a whole Macintosh computer.”

via

Wow. It's not quite true car hackability, but it feels like one small step into Jetson-land.

What's in your bag?

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Latest flickr obsession: the what's in your bag? pool, filled with amazing pictures from around the world of, well, the contents of bags.

What's in your bag? is a gateway drug - it led me to the equally fascinating flickr subculture of teenagers from the Middle East, especially the UAE and Dubai. Note the characteristic mix of Arabic, Xanga-style English spelling, and total teenage slang.


Subway colors

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stations-grid.jpg

I just discovered that parts of New York's subway system (the old IND lines, for all you public transportation buffs) have an obscure color-coding navigation system, which the highly otaku nycsubway.org describes thusly:

As you go away from downtown Manhattan, whether uptown or towards Brooklyn, the colors change each time an express station is reached. Thereafter, all the local stations have the same color (or color group) tiles as the preceding express station. This presumably was intended to serve as a means for helping passengers to remember where to change for the local on the way home from work.

The colored tiles don't work as planned, because I never noticed any logic to the station colors throughout my five years in New York. And I'm a designer by trade. Nevertheless, nycsubway.org's Prismacolor-based descriptions of the tile color combinations (Scarlet Lake + Dark Brown, Bottle Green + Ice Green) inspired me to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon making a little simulation of the color transitions from deep Brooklyn to upper Manhattan.

Pretty, in its way. Enjoy.

Disturbdelightdesign

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release1-laundry.jpg release1-mode.jpg

Release1 is a Boston-based design collective that has sponsored some great exhibits on critical design and marketing. They don't seem to have done anything recently, but I especially liked the 2003 Disturbdelightdesign exhibit, which introduced me to some older work (from 2001) I hadn't noticed at the time, such as:

Carla Ross-Allen's Fatwear and Skinthetics series

and Kirsten White and Ken Nicol's Laundry Carpet (see above left) and

Jonathan Fairman's mode-shift (see above right).

Sadly, the Release1 website is a Flash-based atrocity: hideous to navigate, unsearchable, with lots of hidden sections and untraceable steps. Still, the projects are worth the frustration - for many of them the website provided the only online documentation I could find. It's a pity that the site prioritizes showy navigation over supporting their exhibitions, though. It's been a while since I've seen Flash used so unhelpfully in an interaction design portfolio site.

The Power of It Now

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Then, probably in about February, Steve called and said, “Am I in a band with you?” And I said, “Um, I guess you are.” And he said, “What's the name?” And by the tone of his voice, you could tell he knew what the name was. And we said, “Well, it's Loincloth.” And he was like, “Really?” and we said, “Yeah, you're in a band called Loincloth, dude.” At the time Steve hated the name, but I think he really understands the power of it now.

...read it all

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