Google warts and all.

Google glasses - 

Here is me trying on google glasses.  Was I impressed? well its not a walk up and use interface. Its voice and picture you have to learn it. Overall I wasn't impressed, but you don't buy a computer for it's hardware you buy it for the unique apps that can run on it. Unfortunarlty the only app which I would have found useful would have been the face recognition apps ( app which reminds you of the name of the person you talking too- I'm so rubbish at it) has just been banned as an invasion of privicy.

I wasn't impressed by the screen - its a tiny command line. Generally my opinion is that people use their face as a communications medium and expect a huge pay back for anything which inteupts this bandwidth. So I won't be buying and Google shares soon but I might short them. 

Still I like big bold interface advances and I'm willing to sit on my hands thinking, until people have had time to develop some good apps.

Architecture 

More importantly was the architecture of Google HQ. The bright primary corporate colours were resued through out the building,
(bikes, chairs, plates). Unfortunately this had the effect of making the place look like a huge children's playground. 
I quite like the 'playful' nature but I was told I wasn't insured to use the bike or the unused slide behind. The provision of 
services and the general paternal nannying made me feel like they were infantilizing the work force.  

Google and neruodiversity 

Every evening I saw huge numbers of kids (I'm doing it now, young college graduates)  get on a bus to down town 
San Fransico where they live. I liked the fact they got a bus rather than adding to the huge pollution and congestion of silicon valled. 
I watched the ultra smart, ultra numerate, ultra ordered, ultra meticulus,   ultra perfectionist,  boys and girls many of whom got their clothes washed by the company, 
getting on the coaches together and thought  'there is another autism cluster in the making'. 

The Pervasive display conference 2013 

It's been a hard tip and I have a lot of budget travelling to go,  but its been worth it. I managed to make a link up with the people at Lancaster and I can finish the work on recasting space syntax for pervasive displays. 
It's also at a polar point to CHI - small, with enough overlap in language and thinking that people can really talk about stuff.  If the research works out I would like to atend next year.