- ARCHIVE / May, 2007
- Are you a Reader, not a Writer
At Kosmix, we are trying to build a widget for blogs to help authors add meaningful content for readers. This will ideally be done in a very contextual and relevant manner. Shveta, an HCI graduate from the IU School of Informatics last year, is looking for blog readers to informally interview, present a few initial design ideas, and gather opinions. If you read blogs and are interested in participating in a short feedback session (about 30-45 minutes), please contact her at shveta -at- kosmix.com. We are interested in blog authors (almost all of whom are also readers) and blog readers (especially those who do not contribute to the content of a blog). Thanks.
- Sim Terrorism
An island was nuked in Second Life. Or the SL equivalent of a nuke. Devastation of the 3D island landscaping for the popular Australian company ABC came sometime overnight and took several hours to correct. ABC Island is reportedly the third most-visited place in world. The act of cyber-terrorism was possibly caught in the digital archives, so it will be interesting to see what transpires. There were hints of business rivals being involved, but those might be red herrings.
- Amaznode
There is a well-designed search tool called Amaznode that leverages the Amazon.com recommendations to visualize how search results relate. The tool is a personal project by that started in 2004, was thwarted by existing Flash technology, and last year was renewed by creator Takayuki Fukatsu when that tech caught up. Try searching for HCI Design, informatics, parenting, fantasy sports, relational-cultural+theory, complex systems, online community, politics and Bloomington, Indiana. These are areas of interest to our blog.
- Why, indeed
I can only take credit for the picture of picture. Here is the real champ.
- Meebo Rooms
In examining possibilities for building ad-hoc communities around specific web pages, I was excited to read that Meebo created a widget to release their meebo rooms into the wild. Meebo.com is an Internet application that allows you to manage a variety of existing IM accounts through a single web site. Their chat rooms can be customized, and the interface incorporates multimedia, such as YouTube and other web content. What I was looking to find was a notification feature: the ability to link chats situated in web sites with an administrator not looking at that page at the time. It doesn’t seem to be there at the moment, but Meebo is just a Twitter away from being a killer app.
- Living with(out) garbage
The rules include the removal of all garbage cans from personal spaces at work and home and a ban on use of all public trash bins. It is OK to recycle and compost. Unless the business composts, you must eat all the food on your plate in a restaurant or arrange to compost it yourself. Toilet flushing, incineration and donation are fine. You can’t give your trash to others, though, as we’re already very good at doing that. The real kicker—the part that will make you and others aware of your footprint—is the rule that you must carry around any generated garbage, and it must be within five feet of you at all times. The author of the Frog Design Blog has devised a plan to try to go a couple weeks hyper-aware of her ecological footprint, measured in the form of accumulated trash.
- The Map Metaphor
Maps are obviously very important to content involving locations. No site purporting to be about a town or city would be as useful without a map. But the map metaphor can be used for other information, too. Even straightforward road maps may be more informative by changing perspective or rearranging convention. As part of my early design research for Kosmix, I poured through a couple resources to compile a list of inspiring examples of how maps and the map metaphor can be used to heighten knowledge transfer.
TWITTERSCHMITTER
/ WHAT WE ARE DOING
Amy:
watching kmakice's video of the fireworks last night
Kevin:
Heaven is waking up with a happy family, clean house, working computer, and Edwardo's pizza.
Heard the Word of Blog?
VISUALS / IMAGES