Smashing Magazine have put together a splendid and pretty much definitive guide to how Google’s Page Rank works. It is full of links to more information. Essential reading.
Category: Interactive Media
The IIT Institute of Design is undertaking some very interesting work with American libraries prototyping what they call ‘Thinkering spaces’ for children.
I’m particularly struck by how appropriate this research is for museums, and how many museums have already made large steps in this direction.
Tinkering for the sake of one’s own discovery promotes more than just learning about the topic of inquiry. Tinkering further promotes the development of critical thinking skills that will prepare kids as they encounter future, more-complex scenarios. The trends resulting from the digital revolution indicate a demand for all kids to develop more progressive skills for future success. In particular, the following list of competencies, formerly seen as niche skills sets, is forecast to be of major importance for today’s kids in their adult futures:
– Creative Thinking (developing intellectual independence and multiple perspectives)
– Systems Understanding (seeing meaningful relationships in complexity)
– Innovative Problem Solving (framing problems in unconventional ways and connecting ideas through lateral thinking)
– Information Management (knowing how to find, organize and use resources)
– Interdisciplinary Teamwork (collaborating effectively across disciplines)By providing kids with opportunities to develop these competencies they will be better equipped to face future issues. The experience of tinkering, self-directed discovery, and peer engagement within both physical and digital environments can help kids to develop these competencies. The ThinkeringSpace initiative aims to support and nurture children in their exploratory activities to help them develop these important skills.
The big news around the internet at the present, apart from Microsoft’s Surface, is that Last.Fm has been bought out by CBS. Hopefully that isn’t going to mean the closing down of their current open policy towards data sharing and use.
One of the coolest data visualisation applications for Last.fm is one that creates a rather stunning layered histogram of your tracked listening habits. Originally this popped up as an art project by Lee Byron at Carnegie Mellon, but now you can create your own visualisations via this nifty little program written by a 23 year old, albeit a little rougher.
Here’s my listening habits based on my Top 50 most listened to artists, averaged monthly,for the last 12 months.
(click for larger)
I’m very excited about generating one of these layered histograms based on object usage in our collection database . . . . stay tuned.
Using social media is exciting but what about learning how to program your very own web applications?
How about those 10 year olds who read about using IM (instant messaging) and rejecting email as bring for ‘oldies’? Could it be possible for those same 10 year olds to be writing their very own instant messaging application?
A while ago I sent around the Try Ruby! interactive tutorial to my team to introduce them to the basics of Ruby. Most of us had grown up around Commodore 64s and had learnt the very basics (using BASIC and perhaps machine code a little later) when we were youngsters and the Ruby tutorial had a lot of that kind of playful unbreakable (but hackable) vibe to it.
Now there is a lovely little downloadable package called Hackety Hack put together by a sensible person with a little time on their hands, which takes this idea further and is a combined programming environment and web browser.
The seven part introductory tutorial nails the very things that youngsters want to learn to do, and do quickly – automating the downloading of MP3s and YouTube videos, building a blog, even your own instant messaging/chat tool – all quickly and logically.
The lovely thing about this is that whilst building these applications – which actually do work out in the ‘real’ world – you are also learning the basics of Ruby.
Simple.
Now to start using this in classes in one of our media labs . . .
Yesterday Demos UK released their report Logging On: Culture, participation and the web. It is available as a free download or can be purchased in a printed form.
In the brief history of the internet, the cultural sector has followed two related paths: on the one hand, the digitisation of content and provision of information and, on the other, interactivity and opportunities for expression. Some have seen these as in binary opposition. The truth is that they are inexorably merging. But the big question is where do we go next? How can policy intervention best meet with technology to achieve the aim of bringing about a more democratic culture? What will be the role, opportunities and limitations of online culture in a rapidly changing world?
A moment of reflection is provided by the coming to an end, in March 2007, of the Culture Online initiative funded by the Department for Culture,Media and Sport. Culture Online provides both an interesting case study, bringing together lessons learnt about how to organise online engagement, and a point of departure for asking questions about future directions.
The report is notable for its recommendations for future directions (smaller, agency-led entrepreneurial initiatives that interact/inter-operate with each other) and lessons about how to successfully implement online projects that effectively engage communities. As the report explains, the shift to networked initiatives and new styles of working will not be without difficulties – new organisational models within the public sector will need to be found to accommodate and nurture entrepreneurial talents.
The cultural sector is, almost by definition, at the forefront of innovation. Experimentation in models of organisation are as necessary as new expressions of cultural content. The cultural sector and the organisations that mediate and enable the sector could and should have a role to play in trying out new forms of technology, especially in highlighting non-market or emerging market fields.
Thank you to Daniel Pett at the British Museum for alerting me to this report.
Coming hot on the heels of all this talk of tracking user behaviour, Adam Greenfield proposes five ethical guidelines for ubiqitous systems in a recent keynote:
(1) all ubiquitous systems should default to harmlessness.
(2) ubiquitous systems should be self-disclosing (e.g. be clearly perceptible, “seamlesness” must be an optional mode of operation). proposal of 5 different graphical icons to disclose capabilities of an object (see first image above the post).
(3) be conservative of face, so that ubiquitous systems do not unnecessarily embarrass, humiliate or shame their users.
(4) ubiquitous systems should be conservative of time, not introduce undue complications into ordinary operations.
(5) ubiquitous systems should be deniable, offer users the ability to opt out, always & at any point
(via the rather excellent Information Aesthetics)
Simon Canning in the Australian writes Uluru row rocks Telstra in which the issues of real world rights and their interaction with representations of landmarks in Second Life is discussed.
Legislation has been in place to limit photography, filming and commercial painting at Uluru for 20 years, with tight restrictions on what is and is not allowed.
Capturing images of parts of the northeast face of Uluru is banned and all pictures taken of that part of Uluru must be submitted to the landowners for approval.
While visitors in the game cannot touch Uluru or fly over it, they can virtually fly in the no-fly zone to the northeast and take snapshots.
However, while the rules governing photography, filming and paintings have been in place since 1987, a spokesperson from National Parks said the issue of digital images online had never been raised before.
National Parks, which administers the area on behalf of the traditional landowners, now has lawyers looking at Uluru in Second Life and is considering sending a delegation to meet landowners to discuss the situation.
There is an emerging world of browser-based technologies that are extending functionality in hitherto unforeseen and exciting ways. A good example of this is Real Costs for Firefox. Like most of these sorts of plugins on Firefox it uses Greasemonkey.
Real Costs adds a lovely visual display of carbon emissions data to your view when you visit popular travel websites and airlines (mainly American at this stage – see their development wiki) allowing you to compare emissions across other modes of transport and assess your carbon credit liability.
The objective of the Real Costs is to increase awareness of the environmental impact of certain day to day choices in the life of the Internet user. By presenting this environmental impact information in the place where decisions are being made, it will hopefully create an impact on the viewer, encourages a sense of individual agency, and provides a set of alternatives and immediate actions. In the process the user/viewer might even be transformed from passive consumer to engaged citizen.
The project is supported by Eyebeam and Rhizome amongst others.
(via Snarkmarket)
Categories
Video games turn 40
Over at 1up there is a good article on the very first video games. A lovely addition are the hand concept sketches for Pong which are at the end of the article.
In 1967, a bold engineer with a vision led a small team to create the world’s first electronic games to use an ordinary television set as a medium. Wary of naysayers from within, the video mavericks sequestered themselves behind closed doors, and for good reason: They worked under the payroll of Sanders Associates, a giant Cold War defense contractor. As hippies on the streets of San Francisco stuck flowers in the barrels of guns, three men in snowy New Hampshire crafted the future of electronic entertainment deep in the heart of a commercial war machine. In May of 1967, the world’s first videogames — as we know them today — made their quiet, humble entrance into the world.
Fidg’t’s Visualiser built using Processing is so cool even in its current early form. What it does is show the relationship of your ‘friends’ to particular tags and maps their ‘proximity’. From there you can browse content which is all pulled in via feeds.
What is even cooler is that you don’t even need to set up a Fidg’t account to use it and you just enter your Flickr and Last.fm profiles names.