Archive for April, 2007


PLAY MEGAPHONE 3001

\”MEGAPHONE3001\” is a multiplayer real-time collaborative telephony platform for use on large screens in public space such as sports arenas and concert venues, and movie theaters. It isn\’t a mobile application, but a phone system that users can call in to. The phone system reacts to buttons and voice to control a screen near the user. It can be used for information, advertising, and is currently setup as a series of games.

TeleQuarium

An installation & interface that connects people and underwater acoustics

Park It Forward

Park it forward is a design brief for a mobile tool to allow the sharing of curbside parking between drivers leaving and arriving at spaces. Free parking in New York and other cities has an impact on everyone as cars arrive to do business in our neighborhoods or return home at the end of the day. Free parking creates bad models of hoarding and stagnation.

The approach in this thesis is not to solve the parking problem, not even in the narrow range of this subset but to take a look at how the parking problem could be addressed by using principles of social capital and cooperative strategies to motivate people to consider becoming part of a group collective to manage the use of and sharing of this popular resource.

The work will be a finished design brief detailing the strategies and recommendations to develop a collaborative environment. Possible commercial sponsorship and city involvement could finance this initiative and start the real work of building this tool. Design challenges such as transfer of spots from one driver to another, communication and verification all will addressed to provide a template for moving forward.

The effects and impact that such an approach might take are far ranging and could be applied to problems to mediate any resource that is scarce, such as bike sharing to reduce congestion. Technology can’t solve problems until we consider the human factors that motivate us to connect as social groups and work together without limitations imposed by current broken models.

MoCaGoGo

MoCaGoGo is a Java cellphone application for the mobile community. It enables the community members to easily connect to each other right on their cellphones. Users can browse, search and subscribe to different channels, which are basically RSS feeds. After subscription, episodes in the channels, be it picture, video or MP3, can be automatically downloaded and consumed locally on the phones. Users can also rate, comment on episodes, or recommend them to their friends. In the meanwhile, MoCaGoGo allows users to use cellphones to create their own channels on the go. They can take pictures and videos, update and manage episodes, and publish to community.

MutherBoard

This project will examines how embedded computation can record information created by physical interaction with the intent of producing a tangible information object. The practical application of this concept will show how snowboard rider data can be used to enhance and enrich the snowboarding experience. The resulting system will be designed for the consumer and will collect and display information generated by this physical intersection with embedded computation.

REWAKE

REWAKE is a design exercise that exists at the nexus of mobile technologies, networked objects and board sports. The goal of the process is to determine whether I can design a system capable of re-interpreting the experience of skiing/boarding into a meaningful visual and sonic re-recreation.

REWAKE is a framework consisting of a modular, self-contained networked device equipped with a accelerometer and bluetooth transmitter, a Nokia 80 Smartphone and a custom visual software suite. It is rigorously designed to be used in conjunction with board-sports, surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and skiing.

This framework allows for the greatest mobility with the smallest physical infrastructure. The combination of the highly mobile sensor device and Smartphone provide unrestricted use within a variety of environments.

This goal is in celebrating the convergence of mobile technologies and networked objects to both encourage and enhance our experiences within the real world. It seeks to capture artifacts of our experiences, enabling them to re-examined, re-interpreted, re-created and re-distributed.

my30seconds

Mobile phones have now permeated the market such that virtually everyone has one and they are no longer simply phones, but advanced electronic devices that people use everyday as MP3 players, schedule planners, email inboxes, instant messengers, and digital camera/camcorders. In addition to these powerfully versatile functionalities, a particularly exploitable fact is that people carry their phones around wherever they go. My30seconds is a project that takes advantage of this: using mobile phones to take and immediately share videos whenever and wherever you are. That\’s the tagline: \”Your Motion Memories Captured, Shared anywhere, anytime\”.

My30seconds would consist of three main components: the website (my30seconds.net) the SMS and the MMS function on mobile phones. The website serves as a portal where users can store, manage, and share the videos that were taken and sent from their mobile phones using the MMS functionalities. MMS also allows a real-time sharing experience by sending videos to other mobile phones seconds after their capture.

Although this use of existing technology is not new, my30seconds attempts to distinguish itself by presenting several designed functions. First is that all videos are limited to 30 seconds in length. This is intended to force users to submit original and creative content that only captures salient highlights of their day. These videos would then be automatically mapped onto a \”personal calendar\”, forming a kind of video-based profile/diary of the users. These videos can further be socially linked. A user can initiate a SMS message to his friends and call for a particular kind of video to be recorded, for example, to send a birthday message. This collection of videos centered on a particular theme can then be viewed by the recipient successively or even concurrently on mini-streams on his screen.

Another method of organizing and sharing the user videos would be to divide them into geographical locations where they were taken. Videos organized this way would add an extra dimension above that of the individual user by presenting a video profile of the community/locality/city/country. Users can both present and learn about their own and others\’ communities by sharing these video clips of themselves and events in and around their communities. This snapshot in videos of the particular community would be of interest to both locals and tourists. Finally, local small business owners can also use my30seconds to post self-made advertisement videos for their businesses, adding a commercial and convenient facet to my30seconds.

Experimental Devices for Performance

Experimental Devices for Performance are wearable and handheld devices used for media interaction in experimental performance. Being performer oriented, the devices make the connection between media and performer inseparable. The performer affects the media through the devices and the devices affect the performer. Together, they become the performance.