February 2009 Archives

"Bringing sustainability to life: The animated polar bear on this page reacts to real time power usage data from several dorms at Dartmouth College – low use and the bear is happy and healthy, high use and the bear is threatened by climate change."

White people. Hurling.

"At first glance, Chicago’s latest crime-fighting strategy seems to be plucked from a Hollywood screenplay. Someone sees a thief dipping into a Salvation Army kettle in a crowd of shoppers on State Street and dials 911 from a cellphone. Within seconds, a video image of the caller’s location is beamed onto a dispatcher’s computer screen. An officer arrives and by police radio is directed to the suspect, whose description and precise location are conveyed by the dispatcher watching the video, leading to a quick arrest."

"It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map."

"Argues design practice has moved from hand-craft to service-craft and that service-craft exemplifies a growing focus on systems within design practice. Proposes cybernetics as a source for practical frameworks that enable understanding of dynamic systems, including specific interactions, larger systems of service, and the activity of design itself. Shows development of first- and second-generation design methods parallels development of first- and second-generation cybernetics, particularly in placing design within the political realm and viewing definition of systems as constructed. Proposes cybernetics as a component of a broad design education."

"Today, after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete."

Enhancing Scanned Texts with Context

A demonstration of how scanned texts can be enhanced with links to contextually relevant resources. Using the output of an optical character recognition (OCR) process, line and word locations can be determined, allowing interactive selection and highlighting of references to people and places. These references can be detected automatically or manually added as annotations. Part of the Contexts and Relationships: Ireland and Irish Studies project.

Timo Arnall's very nice and clear presentation on pervasive computing, or "the web in the world"

Wish I'd gone to this:

14-17 May 2008
Ghent University, International Conference ANALOGOUS SPACES

"The International Conference on Analogous Spaces interrogates the analogy between spaces in which knowledge is preserved, organized, transferred or activated. Although these spaces may differ in material, virtual, or operational ways, there are resemblances if one examines their 'structure,' 'form' and 'architecture'. How do these spaces co-exist and interrelate?"

"With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way."

"I'm very proud to announce that Library Services at the University of Huddersfield has just done something that would have perhaps been unthinkable a few years ago: we've just released a major portion of our book circulation and recommendation data under an Open Data Commons/CC0 licence. In total, there's data for over 80,000 titles derived from a pool of just under 3 million circulation transactions spanning a 13 year period."

"There’s some interesting data hiding inside of our Integrated Library Systems! Here are four days worth of search terms, about 17,000, that were entered into DCPL’s OPAC earlier in the month. "

"We protest against the use of surveillance cameras in public places because the cameras violate our constitutionally protected right to privacy. We manifest our opposition by performing specially adapted plays directly in front of these cameras. We use our visibility - our public appearances, our interviews with the media, and our website - to explode the cynical myth that only those who are 'guilty of something' are opposed to being surveilled by unknown eyes."

"Street With A View introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View."

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more...

"Can Civic pride be created through information access?
Can a library can maintain the sustainability of a local economy, a culture and populace? Perhaps becoming part of the reason for continuation of the society itself?"