Joe McCarthy has a writeup of the way screens are used in Disney World to keep the queue amused whilst waiting for Soarin’ ride. What’s interesting to me is that the games flip between interactive and demonstration modes – tangible or physical computing remains hidden; no discovery. I encountered this at the British Music Experience; a display on the history of dance music let you rifle through a record bag to listen to lots of different tracks.

If you left it alone – even to just listen to the music – a virtual hand would appear, move items around the screen, and eventually pick a new record to listen to: a demonstration. Unfortunately it happened so quickly that you couldn’t enjoy a record without tapping the screen constantly to stop the dreaded hand from appearing.

We’re at an odd inflection – old people think screens are TVs, young people think all screens can be touched. Another thought is that all screens are computers, and therefore you could expect interaction and networking. Just throw more technology at it.

Well, no. These bluetooth and SMS calls-to-action feel clumsy (as do 2D barcodes and anything not baked into the standard behind all mobile phones), and certainly harder than any way you’d actually get more information about a film. The best interaction is probably just a simple domain name – or possibly the “Google for…” actions that are now sprouting due to the lack of short domain names. However, I bet most domain names mentioned on posters don’t work very well on mobiles.

Found over at Crafty Crafty.

Modern Pricewars: Sainsburys had a nice tactical advert for MW2 in the gadget show last night, selling it for £26, obviously its sold out! both copy’s ;)  Tesco are doing it for £25 but only when you buy another game at 39.97.  Amazon look best/easiest option at £32. Game/Gameplay have it at £35. So looks like you are saved from its full retail price of £55.

This group is unashamedly pro-video games. We aim to discuss how UK video gamers can find their voice in newspapers and government.

He started it, what, yesterday or the day before, and it's already got over 6,000 members. Join us!

Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up. I don't know how it should work yet but please register your interest if you agree that gamers need their voice hear in the corridors of power. And if you have any ideas, please post them to the wall.

Owie owie. Buy it here.

(Via SuperPunch)

Feb 14, 2008
- After posting my question, I got through to a Wd service manager who checked everything out with me and finally suggested I tap the drive sharply on the back since a power button would sometimes stick. I did that and the button must have released since the drive then became bootable, recognizeable and has been working since. Sorry to have been such a bother for so simple a solution; I had tried to work the button but I quess it needed a slap--maybe I do too!

Martin

“[News Corp] have tons of unsold inventory of ads right now. They dont need new traffic. BAck in the day search engines were a great way to discover new websites as sources of information. Today, that is no longer the case. Fox wants you to come to them as your destination. Just like they do for Fox News on TV. If you cant get to them through Google, you have to make a choice. Go to them directly, which they hope will become a habit, or ignore them. While they know they might lose some people, losing some visitors wont cost them money because they have excess inventory. On the flipside, they know that viewers that go directly to foxnews.com and other newscorp sites will be visitors that are far more engaged and committed to their site. That is more attractive to advertisers.” (My emphasis)

People who haven’t worked in publishing, or who have been the kind of journalists who divorce themselves from the business of publishing, very rarely get this. More traffic does not equal more revenue. A niche where you can demonstrate you are getting a particular target market and engaging them deeply is much, much more valuable.

And he’s right about Twitter, too. The percentage of links that I click on which crop up on Twitter is very, very high. My friends are my filter, which means that when a link crops up I already know it’s likely to be interesting and relevant to me. The human “editors” in my friends list perform far better filtering than any machine algorithm does – which is why Twitter outperforms Google News easily.

(Picture of Rupert Murdoch from World Economic Forum.)

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From the home to the arcade, yes the conversions are now arcade versions of home console titles, adding in things like proper seats/stearing wheels and LOUD lit cabinets.  The Mario Kart arcade game ads in a web cam to put your face in the game as well.  Interestingly Tekken 6 was in the arcades for a period before the home release, but just used a PS3 internally.

I feel sorry for the people who must have worked hard to make this mouse happen. Sure, it’s not the peak of industrial design, but I really don’t think it deserves universal ridicule. Much of the criticism seems to focus on the complexity of the thing, comparing it to Apple’s ultra-simple designs. Given the target market — hard-core gamers and intensive technical applications — this seems like the wrong comparison.

It’s not the first mouse with more than a handful of buttons:

• Logitech make (or made, I’m not sure) a 12 button mouse.
• There’s a 17 button mouse also designed for playing MMOs.
• Then there’s the monster of the Belkin N52TE.
• Or the 3DConnexion SpacePilot Pro takes us into another league altogether.
• And it’s hard to forget the Steel Battalion dedicated controller.

I bet there are equally complicated control systems available for niche, technical, professional applications that I don’t know the Google keywords for.

The announcements of most of the above generated much excitement and exclamations of lust, rather than the derision the OpenOfficeMouse has received. The difference is the mis-match of the design with what we expect for the field.

The OOM site describes how the mouse was originally conceived to play games (like most of the above) but the team then decided it would be useful for non-gaming applications too. So we have a mouse with a design which is — in the world of technical, dedicated controllers — probably unremarkable rather than terrible, getting the kind of attention usually devoted to a fetishistic gaming accessory.

If this mouse had exactly the same feature-set, but was finished in black plastic, with plenty of curves and a blue neon glow, everyone who’s asked “Is this a joke?!” would be saying “OMG! WANT!!”

The problem isn’t that the mouse has too many buttons and features — there are other mice with more.

The problem isn’t that it has appalling design — it’s poor and uninspired, but it’s not the worst thing ever.

The fundamental problem is that the product is aiming for two very specific, probably unreconcilable, niche audiences (hard-core gamers and hard-core office workers) while associating itself with a brand (OpenOffice) that wants to be completely mainstream.

While everyone’s knee-jerk response is to laugh at the number of buttons and the uninspired design, the basic source of the humour stems from the mis-match between requirements, expectations, design and marketing. They are all at odds here, and all working against each other.

Nerd is $25. There's also Geek...

... and some "wearable neuroscience" in the form of double helices and the like. Very nice indeed.

It’s fair to say this post is a little behind-the-times, but I finally want to get round to recording the story behind my “Get Excited & Make Things” image – and also releasing the files, which was always my intention…

I was a little frustrated with myself and the world one day, and went to sit in Hoxton Square to do the Guardian crossword as a remedy.

Flicking through the G2 section I came across a short article about the “Keep Calm & Carry On” WW2 poster phenomenon.

It occurred to me that this was exactly the wrong sentiment for this age – and in fact the stoicism it recommends was been viewed ironically in the main by those who purchased it.

I started sketching on the paper a contrary statement, where stiff upper lip was replaced by a stiff upper arm from soldering…

The royal crown was replaced by one made of spanners (or wrenches, for our yanqui friends) – and Get Excited & Make Things was born.

I posted it to flickr, where to date it has had over 90k views. It got turned into t-shirt of the week by my friends at Howies (and became their fastest selling shirt ever, apparently!) with the proceeds going towards their Do Lectures.

Then, an art print by Jen and friends at 20×200 – with proceeds going to Creative Commons.

Along with that, It got featured in various press articles, and there’s a flickr pool for spottings in the wild.

It’s still available via my mates at Mule Design – with the proceeds going to Smallcanbebig.org.

I only mention it’s success (though gratifying personally, obviously – and I’m very happy that it’s provided some small contributions to good causes) – because it seems that it has resonated with so many people.

And that’s the really amazing thing – that there might be a determination, en-masse – to really get the blood pumping and make our way out of the messes we’ve created.

With that in mind, I’m offering the original files under a CC-non-commercial, attribution, share-alike licence.

If you want to use the images for commercial means, we can talk of course – about you giving some donation to a good cause in exchange. I say that, as it’s cropped up in a few places being used without prior permission for commercial ends…

So here they are.

• PDF file
• EPS file
• Adobe CS3 Illustrator

Thank you to everyone so far who has bought a shirt, a print – or just printed it out and stuck in up in their work place or college.

Please stay excited, please stay making.

“The Droid has multi-touch support in the OS, but doesn’t use it in the UI. “

Why is it that in every post about Android, John Gruber mentions its lack of proper multi-touch, yet he doesn’t mention the complete lack of multi-tasking in every post about the iPhone?

Just asking, you know.

Technorati Tags:
John Gruber, iPhone, Android

Very rough notes (it’s not a topic I’m familiar with):

Looking at the history of ruination.
(Acoustics are unexplored in ruination).

The Renaissance: ruin appears not as object, but a theatrical scenography.
Theatre runs through the history of ruination and fake ruins.

18th Century: “ruin lust” / picturesque.
More poetic fakery of ruination – in English literature.
Ruins give atmosphere and historical background.

Change to ruin study in and of itself.
End of the 18thC: fantastical projection of the ruin into the future.

Sir John Soane – projection of ruination of the Bank of England.

Hubert Robert’s Louvre in Ruins.

Fuseli’s The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins.

Literary: Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.

Imagining the past and projecting it into the future.

Kubla Khan – itself a fragment, a ruin.

Link between ruination and melancholy – Chateaubriand.

Ruination in contemporary art –

Robert Smithson, an ironic, absurdist take: A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic (pdf)

“the ruin in reverse”, 20thC monuments that dot Passaic, especially along the river, excavated for road building, read as a classical ruin / eternal city.

A dialectical landscape: Central Park.

19thC decayed into the 20thC.

Shuttles between past, present and unknowable future. Projects ruination into the future – the coming catastrophe.

Paul Virilio – Bunker Archeology. Photos taken in the 50s, Nazi Atlantic Wall.

Anthropomorphic structures, modernist. Link between 50s/60s architecture and defensive architecture.

Relics of the very recent that has accelerated ruination, and it talks about a future that hasn’t happened.

90s art – 99 – Tacita Dean – Sound Mirrors. (Disinformation’s prior art)
Future anterior, a relic from the future (now a cliche in culture).
An unlived and impossible future.

Dean’s Palast, 2004 (film of the Palast der Republik)

A highly charged ruin. Now erased from the immediately recent history – to be replaced with a fake Schloss.

Jane & Louise Wilson (e. g.)

A moment in art of thinking about the relics of British modernism.

Peterlee (NTSH, BD)

Now – Hiorns,… Seemingly romantic view of ruins.

St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross near Glasgow, (1, 2, 3 ), under the influence of Le Corbusier.

Murray Grigor’s film Space And Light (apparently also recently reshot, shot-for-shot in the ruins):

(more videos, Urban Splash rear their heads)

Jeremy Millar: Ajapeegel, filmed in 2 Estonian power stations, recreating Tarkovsky’s film ‘Stalker’.

Bunker: foregrounding of theatricality. People want to treat it as immersive, there’s an invitation of textures. Picks up a strand of frank fakery, the spectator is aware. What is the pull/attraction when we know it’s entirely fake? (similarly with fake gothic).

Questions –

Bunkers of France? Art Deco style? – to be covered in the talk on the 18th.

Acoustics of ruin?
Millar’s Time-Mirror, recreating the sounds of Stalker using the power station on the Isle of Grain. Layers of fiction and distance.
There was a project proposal for the sound mirrors, to recreate exact replicas on the French Coast so that they could correspond – too literal. Invention & storytelling needed, a refusal of the literalism, literal resonance.

Nostalgia?
That’s the big inescapable question. At the heart of most recent art. Psychological links between ruin lust and nostalgia, both 18thC afflictions. Aesthetic archeology to be done. So much work about – when you claim to have escaped it, you’ve normally fallen right into it.

This mini-site/game was developed with Six To Start and they’ve written more about the rest of the Experience’s social media escapades. The game creates a way to explore the world of the show, get to know the characters and the locations, and reveal video, audio, and ways into the characters’ Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc.

There’s a zoomy, scrolly, explore-y scene and, if you find everything hidden within it, a more lively clicky, shooty, score-y pointy game with a bonus video if you do well enough. Every week a new scene and game will appear.

It’s been a challenging project but, eventually, very satisfying technically. I’ve been responsible for all of the coding, with a PHP back-end (that doesn’t need to do a great deal) and an enormous amount of JavaScript at the front. I’ve learned a lot.

The zoomy, scrolly scenes are created using OpenLayers, the open source mapping engine. It’s extremely flexible and powerful, although that means it can be a struggle to work out how to achieve the thing you want to achieve that no one else has achieved before. Time allowing, I’ll write up some of the things that took me a while to piece together.

We’ve also added the ability to log in through Facebook Connect, which not only lets you tell everyone you know what you scored, but also allows you to save your progress and retrieve it next time you visit. Which is very nice. Although making sense of the unorganised morass that is Facebook’s developer documentation, and keeping up with the shifting sands of their platform, is not the most pleasant of web development experiences.

Anyway, we’ve launched, hurrah! Go, look! Congratulations to the lovely designer, Dean Vipond, everyone at Six To Start (including Dan Hon, Kim Plowright and Robin Ray), and everyone else involved.