TED | Talks | Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did (video)

TED | Talks | Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did (video)

Asks intreasting question - what does technology want? I like the idea of thinking of technology as a thing...

Odd thought

I like having the mail program beep when new mail arrives ( I have enough will to not always go over and have a look). But I have a problem with knowing what beeped.

I think programs that make noises in the background (which is good) should have a 'why the beep' button/menu ( like Mathematica did but in a diffrent context).

dana centre - about us

dana centre
- about us

I do complain about the science Museam. It is neither a Museam nor about Science. One of the things I find urksome is that there is no place for technologists to see both technology and other technologists. This was one of the plans for the original Science Muesem as a meeting ground for the people makeing new technology.

I the Dana center I noticed this.

The dana centre is a stylish, purpose-built venue in London (UK). It is a place for adults to take part in exciting, informative and innovative debates about contemporary science, technology and culture.

how cool.

Netbeans plugins

If I was a plugin writing kind of person I would write two plugins ( or doclet).

1. A documentation plug in that would have a stronger narrative element ( that is a starting point). this would complement the kind of documentation you get a moment but add to it.

1. Starting point
@purpose ?
2. tutorial ( hyperlinked code examples)
3. examples ( more code + hyper links )

At the moment I love java doc but the resultant documentation is usless for getting started.

The second plug in would be part of the bug tracking system.
@bug ID [ message ]
would attached a bug from the bug tracking system via document hyperlink. when a bug is fixed then it can
be part of documentation/code base

@TODO anyone ?

Experiment

Paul had an intreasting idear. Take the matrix of distances we have of people against each other.

We have 50 odd people so we get 50 * 50 matrix then * 12 for 12 experiments.

This would give a set of distances most likely normally distrbuted.

So IF we take he distances of one person ( 1 * 50 * 12 ) then perhaps we can do a Z test or something like it and then get a measure of how random that person is. So if everyone puts A and B together then we should find A,B or all of A's distances are not a random sample of the distances between people.

Ted speeks

Intreasting observation about Google being a new command line ( type data and it does not not finds it) but google is command lines done right.

Nice bit on the new physicality in interfaces too.

Ipod lecture

I'm currently in a nice presentation about podcasting from Apple. Has link to new tool from apple called podcast prodcuer.

sounds like it is all happening. I suspect Apple is talking to the Open University to put a lot of current content on line. There are 16 universities on iTunesU.

Everything is currently moving very quickly. I have even found a fun new list of things to download.

Table top interfaces

Another week of experiments.

I've been wondering what kinds of things we can do with tabletops (sharable/multi-interaction devices in general). That would be better then a laptop and a projector. Things were everyone doing someting could help.

I was thinking that we need to think about cases were all participants try their own thing out be we get to see them simultaniously. Like giving everyone the same pictures on the same table BUT everyone has their own layer. This way we can experiment with diffrent designs and try a multitude of things out coming to some common understanding.

I'm try to talk to Bashar about tabletop interface related to software project planning.

University of Sheffield - Steve Whittaker

University of Sheffield - Steve Whittaker

Intreasting lectore by Steve Whittaker on memory. He says that most of the work done shows that while people might spend a lot of time saving memories they don't use them that oftern. For exampe me metioned research the 43% of book marks are not revisited. or that most corporatations show little document reuse and that having recordings of lectures don't help students scores.

Intreasting. Did show off cool device that records sound and lets you take notes. The idea was that the notes index the sounds and so clicking on an old note jumps the audio stream to that point ( when you made the note). I always wanted to do something similar with a button on a recording ipod. That is it always records but marking makes the last 5 mins stored.

Also showed cool zooming text tech. Basically the way to get significant words is to look for words occuring more oftern than it does in general lanuage. Does produce some quite cool results.

Mentioned website where people have labled significant locations ( something to do with BBC and first memories... I can't remember).

Fourth experiment just completed makes us 30% of the way to statisitcal salvation.

Still the memory stuff makes you wonder why you bother to blog at all ?

|The Future of Digital Interaction

|
The Future of Digital Interaction A nice blog website also blogging the rise of new types of interaction mechanisums. Quite cool.

Experiments three or four.

Today we had another experiment this morning. Just Eva and my self running it and I think it went well. They got through the basic layout which is a good stage.

Some complaints about the mouse being jerky, possibly an effect of zooming in on the large table.
Worth thinking about.

I need to look at the videos to check on how people got on with both interfaces.

We need about 12 experiments and getting people involved is getting hard as summer comes.