GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

We usually freak out at the idea that computer algorithms might tell us what to do. Yet we’re constantly asking them for instructions: how to contact person X, find document Y, or move from point A to point B. We just pretend that we’re in control. What if, instead, we made that submissive experience explicit, producing something unexpected — and fun?

You see, e-books may not yet have their avant-garde, but mapping apps just might. Self-described artist/architect/post-disciplinary researcher Mark Shepard built his alternative navigation iPhone app Serendipitor (currently in private beta) to inject Google Maps with the ethos of postmodern participatory art movements like Fluxus or Situationism. But when you mash-up movement with art, you get something very much like an alternate reality game.

Here’s Shepard’s description of how Serendipitor works:

Enter an origin and a destination, and the app maps a route between the two. You can increase or decrease the complexity of this route, depending how much time you have to play with. As you navigate your route, suggestions for possible actions to take at a given location appear within step-by-step directions designed to introduce small slippages and minor displacements within an otherwise optimized and efficient route. You can take photos along the way and, upon reaching your destination, send an email sharing with friends your route and the steps you took

As it happens, this dovetails with “Reality Has A Gaming Layer,” a terrific article published yesterday by game designer Kevin Slavin for O’Reilly Radar. Essentially, Slavin argues that mobile applications like Foursquare, virtual games like Second Life, simulated-reality objects like the Tamagotchi, and casual games like Farmville or Parking Wars are converging with the “big games” — essentially, games that require extensive play in the real world — that he and other designers have been working on for years.

What we’ve been creating, as we’ve taken these gadgets out of our office and living rooms and brought them with us into the world, are experiences that blend information, entertainment, and interaction. When you’re taking a photograph or looking up a map on your smartphone, you’re really waving around a video game controller. Serendipitor might be the perfect example of that.

(out of the) wayfinding with serendipitor [Serial Consign] via Nav Alang/@scrawledinwax

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Next time you splash around at the Six Flags water park you may be doing some significant–like contributing to some research on computing.

A fish-shaped musical instrument that spouts water jets into which users dip their fingers is being hailed as an example of a new user interface. The instrument called hydraulophone involves putting your fingers on tiny water jets and producing a soothing, organ-like music.

It’s an example of what’s being called a “Flexible Limitless User Interface” that doesn’t demand any level of skill from its users, yet can offer an experience that’s deeply satisfying.

“What we really do with these kind of interfaces is make them as addictive as possible and to do that we have to find a way you can exert your own influence on a system,” Steve Mann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, told attendees at the Singularity Conference in San Francisco held over the weekend. “It can be a very absorbing experience.”

Mann and his colleague Ryan Janzen gave attendees a performance of the hydraulophone.

The instrument resembles a large flute, except with water flowing through it instead of air. It has 12 holes, each of which spews out a water jet. The chords are played by blocking one or more of the water jet holes with the fingers.

Mann has been billed as the world’s first cyborg. For about 30 years now, he has been wearing some sort of wearable computing device including an Eyetap, a pair of glasses that allows the eye to function as a camera, as well as digital systems monitoring his heart and brain. These devices are part of a world he calls computer-mediated reality.

The hyradulophone is an idea that Mann started working on in the 1990s. The device blends art and technology, he says. Early versions of the device were hard to play because the water jets had to be pressed down very hard to create the musical notes. But now the instrument has been refined to respond to the slightest of touches.

“It let you express yourself in a very rich way, which is why flexible user interfaces will be important,” says Mann. “We need to get tactile information into a machine and back to the human.”

Having people in the feedback loop such that the human and computer are linked closely could lead to a new form of intelligence called ‘Humanistic Intelligence,’ says Mann. Ultimately this could lead to a reciprocal relationship, where a computer uses a person’s mind and body as as one of its peripherals, even as the human user thinks of the computer as a peripheral, he says.

The hydraulophone has been installed as a large scale public installation at the Ontario Science Center. There’s also a concert version with precise scale and range.

Mann and Janzen also recently built a hyadraulophone in a hot tub and showed it to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

“He loved it!” says Mann.

Take a closer look at the hydraulophone shown at the Singularity conference and listen to what the instrument sounds like:

The hydraulophone has 12 water jets, one for each of the 12 notes.

Photos: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Someday humans and computers will meld together to create cyborgs. But instead of waiting for it, Martin Magnusson, a Swedish researcher and entrepreneur, has taken the first step and created a wearable computer that can be slung across the body.

Magnusson has hacked a pair of head-mounted display glasses and combined it with a homebrewed machine based on a open source Beagleboard single computer. Packed into a CD case and slung across the shoulder messenger-bag style, he is ready to roll.

A computer is a window to the virtual world, says Magnusson.

“But as soon as I get up and about, that window closes and I’m stuck within the limits of physical reality,” he says. “Wearable computers make it possible to keep the window open. All the time.”

Magnusson’s idea is interesting though one step short of integrating a machine inside the body. In 2008, a Canadian film maker Rob Spence decided to embed a tiny video camera into his prosthetic left eye. Spence who is still working on the project hopes to someday record everything around him as he sees it and lifecast it.

For his wearable computer, Magnusson is using a pair of Myvu glasses that slide on like a pair of sunglasses but have a tiny video screen built into the lens. A Beagleboard running Angstrom Linux and a Plexgear mini USB hub that drives the Bluetooth adapter and display forms the rest of this rather simple machine. Four 2700 mAh AA batteries are used to power the USB hub. Magnusson has used a foldable Nokia keyboard for input and is piping internet connectivity through Bluetooth tethering to an iPhone in his pocket.

Magnusson says he wants to use the wearable computer to “augment” his memory.

“By having my to-do list in the corner of my eye, I always remember the details of my schedule,” he says.

Check out photos of his gear:

The innards of the homebrewed machine are glued to a CD case. The CD case is slung across the shoulder by attaching it to a strap using velcro.

What the homebrewed computer looks like:

Photos: Susanna Nilsson

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews