Category: Web/Tech
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Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces
danah boyd and I are organizing a panel on "Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces" at CSCW 2004. If anyone wants to "join" us on the IRC chat channel, we’ll be at #cscwC (on irc.freenode.net) from 11:00am-12:30pm Central Time today (Wednesday, November 10). More info on how to use IRC can be found on the…
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TV-B-Gone: Life-B-Here
Mitch Altman, founder of 3ware, has invented a universal remote control, TV-B-Gone, with a single function: it can toggle the power (on or off) of nearby televisions. Altman‘s goals are to help people extract themselves from the television world and attend to the physical world and the people around them, “improving conversation” and “freeing people…
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Location-aware Computing: Walking the Talk, Mapping the Walk
Chris Heathcote has shared many interesting observations and insights regarding location-aware computing; he is now experiencing — and allowing us to experience — location-aware computing first-hand by posting his location on his web site (and linking to a map of that location). Chris is using a Pretec BluetoothGPS Wireless GPS and Mobile Data-logger, an Aspicore…
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WiFi and Community
A recent Boston Globe article quoted Boston City Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. as saying “[WiFi] promotes community … It gets people out of their dorm rooms, out of hotel rooms, and out in the parks and out in restaurants.” While WiFi may encourage people to bring their laptops out of their homes, dorm rooms…
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Social Networking via Mobile Phone: Update on BEDD & Other Services
A query from someone who had read my earlier post on BEDD — “a Bluetooth mobile phone application launched recently in Singapore that allows users to discover things about and interact with the other BEDD-enabled phone users in their immediate vicinity” — motivated me to do a quick search to see if I could find…
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Technology-enhanced Vinification
Wine Spectator recently published an article about how my former colleagues at Accenture Technology Labs have deployed wireless sensors to measure “microclimate data such as soil and air temperature and moisture content, rainfall and leaf wetness” over a 30-acre area in Sonoma’s Pickberry Vineyard, which supplies grapes to Ravenswood. I’m reminded of another wireless vineyard…
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Unemployed Programmers Going Phishing
Chris Arnold reported on “Tips to Avoid Internet Identity Theft, E-Mail Scams” during today’s Morning Edition on NPR. One recent development is organized crime’s growing involvement in such scams, for which unemployed computer programmers are being hired to write code for phishing attacks, “‘spoofed’ e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal…
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We, Robots
Mike mentions a New York Times article on “Seeing Double to the Perfect You” that talks about the decreasing differentiation between human and non-human beings. As part of “the relentless, and uniquely American, drive to self-improvement” people are augmenting their bodies, for enhancing either form (e.g., plastic surgery) or function (e.g., pacemakers); a reference to…
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Clonepointer: Finding (or Avoiding) Proximal Kindred Spirits
Catching up on Anne Galloway’s wonderful blog, I discovered Fusedspace, an international open competition that invites participants who are exploring the nature of the relationship between new technologies and public space, particularly “groundbreaking interventions in the public domain.” A quick perusal reveals many interesting entries in this contest; for now, I’ll focus on one: Clonepointer:…
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Bill Gates: New Kid on the Blog?
The Seattle Times reports that Bill Gates may soon start walking his talk and start blogging, following his promotion of the use of blogging and RSS for business during his keynote at the annual Microsoft CEO Summit last month. If he starts his own blog, he would be joining the ranks of [at least] hundreds…