(And, because I love Chicago and harmonicas, here’s Yuri Lane, too.)

Kevin Olusola, playing “Julie-O”

Greg Pattillo and thePROJECTTrio, playing “Sweet Dreams”

Yuri Lane, playing harmonica on the streets of Chicago

I could listen to this stuff all day. In fact, I think I will.

TED 2012 is crowdsourcing its innovation

Last Friday, TED announced they will accepting audition videos that could lead to a main stage appearance in 2012:

We’re holding this audition to give a chance to the undiscovered talent we know is out there—and especially talent that can help us continue to reinvent the ancient art of the spoken word. At TED2012, our whole theme will be devoted to this. We’re calling it “Full Spectrum”—the rich use of technologies, formats and styles to make an impact on an audience. And that’s what we’ll be looking for in this audition.

The public audition will be held on May 24 in New York. There will be a live audience of TED-sters looking for some crowd-sourced innovation in how to deliver interesting material. The best talks likely will wind up online, and a handful might also get an invitation to California next February.

TED has a few specific requests. They are hoping for some human guinea pigs to test ideas like:

• a talk accompanied by an imaginative soundtrack
• clever ‘choreography’ between a speaker’s words and what we see on-screen
• improv or audience interaction
• intense campfire-style storytelling
• a remarkable new invention

They are also expecting a few new innovations that they can add to the list, which is where the public search for stage talent doubles as a crowdsourcing project.

To be considered for the New York audition, you have to show your worth online first by making a one-minute video by April 25. The short video—which needs to land on YouTube or Vimeo, thus adding “free marketing” to the benefits of the public audition process—should describe both the proposed content and the technique for delivery. Sixty seconds isn’t a long time, so polish is not one of the evaluated criteria; the goal is to communicate your vision. There is also an entry form asking you to justify your choices with the “Full Spectrum” theme for TED 2012.

Winners of the initial online round will be contacted by May 9. If invited to New York, you have to pay your way there for the May 24 presentations, which will be 3-6 minutes each. That may keep the demographics from including economically challenged folks.

On crunce uplonta lime,
The mubs where flowfing so dabime.
The hunklehorns where crunkling,
crute the chithe, the gumps the flyme.

Oh, Flump, oh gzump, the frupulos dariogi,
The knulll carrot garby’s Ghadagee gahzee!
The trapolite crumb, hath gone
and the capapa did dodlada jee!

And he played his trump, he won the jump,
he googled, so filled up with Zee!
He gabbet, he gump, oh he sat ‘pon a stump,
and chabbled away all his dee!

Oh, do keep your eyes open, my lubulous pal,
on came the great pariogi!
Oh, chip chip chap! Chad chacholy chal!
Oh, he killed, he slayed its tee!
Oh, now time no one worries! We frumble in our zee.
We have nothing to fear from the dadasasear
Frupulos pariogi!

The Periodic Table of Little 500

Larry is a senior majoring in journalism and fine art who has a visual column in the IDS. In the past, he has drawn art depicting the changes on campus over four years and the hairstyles of IU presidents. Larry is also a coordinator of the Wisdom of Play’s Human Puzzle project.

Unlike some tables, this one doesn’t try to re-categorize all of the aspects of Little 5. Instead, the actual periodic table is replaced with names more appropriate to the week. There are some who would argue this meme should die: There are so many periodic tables, there is a periodic table of periodic tables. I’m a sucker for collections, however, and it is fun to look at all of the IU and Bloomington culture—past and present—retold in this form.

The musical duo of Kevyn Smith and Jeremy Johnson recently paid tribute to @BronxZooCobra, the joke Twitter account tweeting on behalf of a missing snake in a New York zoo (since found). A tweet from April 5—Enough! Tonight I’m busting out. Just like that new A&E show, call me “Breakout King Cobra.” Nothing can stop me!—turned into a half-minute song. That was the rabbit hole that led to a few hundred other tweeted songs, or “sweets.”

My WeSingYourTweets Playlist

The process is a “social experiment” that is both a creative spark and a way to use their talents to highlight interesting content they find on Twitter. Attention to their work got a boost when they sweeted the Real Housewives of Atlanta last November. The following month, NPR interviewed them about their project and asked them to do a sweetment of the top retweets of 2010. Well into 2011, they are still recording short-form songs.

Earlier this week, there was a great little interview with the musicians in Turnstyle that includes the following tidbits:

• Writing sweets is quicker than writing lyrics, because the narrative is fixed
• The melodic potential of a tweet is a key factor.
• They generate about 60 sweets a week, through a couple night’s work.
• They will keep doing sweets until it isn’t fun anymore. It’s fun now.

The project has already had a few thematic endeavors, including holidays (Halloween and Christmas) and the State of the Union, and plans to visit Twitter archives to tweet first posts from other people. In between sweets, the songwriters play for a band called Dave Hates Chico.

I wonder what it would take to get sweets for my favorite favorite tweets. Maybe they need to make a new sub-genre for overheards.

The Geek Zodiac

The Geek Zodiac was created by James Wright and Josh Eckert, posted to Geek Tyrant last week.

I’m a spy. Amy is an astronaut. Archie is a time traveler (lucky!), and Matilda is a wizard. Carter will be most happy to know that he is officially undead.

The Wisdom of Play is a suite of community engagement activities taking place in May 2011. These projects are designed around the theme being used by our TEDx event and include geocaching, storytelling, art and an alternate reality game. We are trying to raise at least $2000 to cover the material costs using Kickstarter, a grass-roots micro-donation campaign site being used to fund interesting creative projects all over the world.

Our campaign will only last through the end of April, so we need to reach our goal by then or—under Kickstarter rules—cancel the project. More likely, it will mean scaling back many of the planned aspects of most of these activities, but some may be in jeopardy without some financial support.

There are some interesting rewards we have come up with to thank our backers for their financial contributions. These include:

• At least $29—A DVD documenting all of the projects and their outcomes.
• At least $59—A shirt from one of the Human Puzzles
• At least $99—A framed section of the story from Our Infinite Canvas
• At least $129—Personal branding for you or your organization in six projects
• At least $199—One of the toy boxes used in our geocaching game

There is also a single super-backer opportunity for $500 that will get all of those rewards plus the ability to influence where three of our projects will be located.

Ideally, this fundraising would have taken place in February, but circumstances didn’t work out to allow that to happen. We have a campaign now, through the end of this month. Less than $100 a day from the community will get us to our goal. More than that, and maybe we can get a blimp.

Check out the new video on our Kickstarter page and consider giving something to the cause.

Famous Objects from Classic Movies shows you an object that appeared in a movie and asks you to play hangman to guess what it is. So, if you see a bowling ball and _ _ _   _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, you might think of The Dude’s favorite sport and the movie that made him famous.

Famous Objects from Classic Movies

The icons are gorgeous (reminding me of another cool website) and the simple game is fun to play. As you type, it will fill in the blanks, giving you three misses before you lose. Most of my failures were with foreign films or ones made in the past decade—since we’ve had kids, our ability to get to the movie theatre is sporadic. The site is also integrated with IMDB and points to trailers for the movies. It’s great fun for a movie buff, and sooooo easy to keep clicking …

VSL was founded in 2006 by Kurt Andersen, Michael Jackson, Tim Nolan, Emily Oberman, and Bonnie Siegler. The idea was born from people being deluged with emails suggesting something to watch or read or do. With the advent of Twitter, information flows much more freely than when they started this project, but it is still amazing to me how many times VSL will point to something new. I followed their Twitter account for a while, but there is something special about getting that info in the email.

There’s a new iPhone application that may finally bring me on board with listmaking. Yesterday, DropList was released to the App Store with the promise of “fast and easy” task list creation. The selling point for me, though, was the integration with Dropbox.

Droplist magically creates to-do lists from copied text

With Droplist, you can type, or copy-and-paste text from anywhere on the iPhone and magically get a checkable list. Once the list exists, the interaction is well done, too. Swiping your finger and tapping gets rid of a task, and it is easy to toggle to a title or task if the app makes a mistake interpreting your pasted text. Everything is stored as plaintext files, keeping the app lightweight.

The killer feature for Droplist is that it leverages Dropbox, the file sharing platform that has proven to be a godsend for collaboration. It has replaced email attachments and Google docs for most of my group projects, including the things my wife occasionally wants me to print out on campus. I have moved many of my desktop files there so they are available on all of my machines. Adding to-do lists—particularly ones I can share with my family—could be a practical benefit.

That scenario was the motivation for the app. Developer Drew McKinney, a recent alum of the HCI/d program at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing, got an email from his girlfriend containing a grocery list. “I couldn’t find a single to-do list app that would simply let me paste in the content from
email as a list and go from there,” McKinney recalls. “I kept thinking, ‘Why isn’t this as easy as scratch paper?’”

McKinney says the integration with Dropbox was a breeze because they tailored their API for mobile use. They provide a simple SDK and sample code. Other apps, like Frenzy, are leveraging the private and localized file sharing capabilities of Dropbox, too. “I have two other projects in the mix that allow the user to grab files from Dropbox to enrich an experience,” hints McKinney.

The app currently costs a buck, but there will be a free version in a few weeks with iAds and a task limit (15 max per list). Other changes are already in the works, based on early feedback. “I’d like to make checking off list items more fulfilling,” says McKinney, citing EpicWin as a good albeit grandiose example of rewards.

Drew is currently the Mobile Lead at Cook Medical, helping sales reps improve their work experience in the field. His startup company, Bloomingsoft, creates user-focused software for mobile devices. Droplist is the company’s third iPhone application in the last several months, the others being Driving Buddy and Corporate Slang.

My Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX in 1986

Twenty-five years ago, I was graduating from high school, seeing my valedictorian speech blow away in the wind, and surviving a lonely first semester at DePauw, away from family and friends. It is a year that stands out in my life due to all of this personal change, but it was also quite a year for events around the globe, too.

What is amazing to me are the similarities with the big events of today. In 1986 …

… the Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch, killing seven crew. 2011 will mark the end of the Shuttle program.

… an earthquake in El Salvador hits 7.5 on the Richter Scale and kills 1,500 people. On March 11, 2011, the Sendai earthquake and subsequent tsunami claimed almost 10,000 lives with 17,000 more missing. Less than a year earlier, China was devastated by a 6.9 quake that killed 2,600.

… a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, leading to the worst nuclear disaster in history. Thanks to the Japan tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear power plant is becoming the second worst in history.

… Libya killed 3 and injured 230 in a bombing of a discotheque in Berlin. They are still the bad guys today, fighting a revolt and a U.N. coalition that just bombed the country to enforce a ceasefire (I’ll let that last bit of irony sink in).

… Jean-Claude Duvalier flees Haiti. After the devastating earthquake last year, “Baby Doc” returned to Haiti in January.

… the Khian Sea cargo barge began a 16-month journey to dump its toxic cargo. Some of it landed in Haiti. The rest of it was finally dumped in the Indian Ocean. The Gulf of Mexico was trashed this past year by BP’s huge oil slick.

… a Lebanese magazine reports that the U.S. has been trading arms with Iran for hostages, the Iran-Contra affair. Wikileaks recently released over 250,000 diplomatic cables, forcing a lot of unplanned transparency in international politics and leading to legal actions.

Here are some other things that happened 25 years ago:

• Polaroid wins the instant camera business, knocking Kodak out of the picture.
• My Bears win Super Bowl XX
• Pixar is launched
• Halley’s Comet returns
• U.S. Senate televises its debates on a trial basis
• Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on live television, discovering only a bottle of moonshine
• Over 5 million people participated in Hands Across America, forming a human chain from New York to California to raise money to fight homelessness and hunger
• Len Bias dies from a cocaine overdose 48 hours after being selected 2nd in the NBA Draft
• Eric Thomas develops LISTSERV, the first email list management software
• Greg LeMond wins the Tour de France, becoming the first American to do so. He would win twice more and Lance Armstrong would claim seven straight titles.
• Patrick Sherrill kills 14 employees at a U.S. Post Office, leading to the phrase “going postal”
• Fox Broadcasting Company launches
• Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meet for unproductive talks about arms reduction between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
• The centennial of the Statue of Liberty’s dedication is celebrated, just three months after it reopened to the public after an extensive refurbishment
• Mike Tyson wins his first world boxing title, defeating Trevor Berbick
• Lady GaGa was born. So were Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox. The deaths were more significant.

I wonder what will happen 25 years from now.

Well, modern gamer fans can play that game, too. Here’s an interpretation of a traditional Mario Bros. adventure from a first-person perspective:

It took over 60 hours to render this into a 88-second video. 3dsMax, FumeFX, and After Effects were used to make this interpretation of a familiar game. Well done!

Thanks to Thalith Nasir for the twip (tweet tip).

Kevin Spacey is slated to star in a political thriller, “House of Cards,” based on a novel about the dark side of British politics. According to Ted Sarandos at Netflix:

We’ve committed to at least 26 episodes of the serialized drama, which is based on a BBC mini-series from the 1990s that’s been a favorite of Netflix members. Originally written as a novel by former UK Conservative Party Chief of Staff Michael Dobbs, “House of Cards,” explores the ruthless underside of British politics at the end of the Thatcher era. Reset against the backdrop of modern-day U.S. electoral politics, this new one-hour drama follows Spacey as an ambitious politician with his eye on the top job.

The executive producer of the series will be David Fincher, fresh off his Oscar nomination for The Social Network. The episodes are slated to “air” in 2012 for customers in U.S. and Canada.

This is a big move for the disruptive media company. Having already successfully migrated from physical DVD rentals to online streaming of movies, the acquisition of an original TV series—technically, Netflix is only agreeing to license the show before it is successfully produced—shifts the perception of the company from a conduit to a source of entertainment. “House of Cards” presumably won’t be available in a movie theatre or via DVR (unless your device is integrated with a working Netflix account). To watch this content, you have to join their club.

Netflix beat out HBO and AMC for the rights to the show. Television industry executives are raising eyebrows, as it is unusual to order an entire season of a show without a pilot episode in the can. Company executives are soft-pedaling the risks. Even with great people involved, though, there is no guarantee of success.

As Fast Company‘s Austin Carr writes:

Remember Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? The much-hyped NBC series in many ways boasted the same “perfect storm” of talent as House of Cards. The show starred Friends’ Matthew Perry, The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, and was helmed by mythical wordsmith Aaron Sorkin. NBC, so confident in the series’ potential, ordered up (only) 22 episodes before a pilot was even shot. Sound familiar?

After a strong start, however, Studio 60′s ratings dropped off a cliff, and the network cancelled the show after only one season. Netflix is on the hook for two (short) seasons of the show, minimum, whether or not it tanks.

VP Steve Swasey said evidence for the decision to bid came from their existing data. “A lot of this comes from our algorithmically driven software recommendations,” Swasey told Fast Company. “We know what our members like and watch.” Citing other serialized one-hour drama like Heroes, Lost, and Dexter, Sarandos said that this project “represents a manageable risk” and could lead to additional original programming in the future.

Netflix enjoys a 61% share of the U.S. market for digital movies streamed into the home or downloaded over the Internet. A wide margin separates them from #2 Comcast (8% of the market). There are currently 20 million subscribers to the service.

Ever since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released, “Abe Froman” has been the most commonly used alias for when men want to anonymously check into motels.

It’s not true, but it feels true. That plausibility is what makes Daily Urban Legend a fun blog to inject into my regular Snackr news feeds. It tests my information fluency with regularity.

DUL is the work of Maggie Serota, who tries to make up a new fake fact each day to share with friends. Serota—a Brooklyn writer who has contributed to publications like The Onion A.V. Club, Radar, and NY Press—started this project as a Twitter hashtag (#UrbanLegendIJustMadeUp) but turned it into a Tumbler blog so she can include pictures.

Daily Urban Legend makes up new "facts" to share with friends

In addition to the Froman fiction, here are a few of my other favorites:

• Walt Disney was not cryogenically frozen after his death, but his cremated ashes are used nightly in the fireworks displays at Disneyland.
• The U.S. birthrate jumped about 16 percent in 1995 to reach a decade long high, just 9 months after Boyz II Men released their hit single “On Bended Knee.”
• Back in the 80’s, some cocaine shipments were smuggled into the country inside the sneaker phones given away with Sports Illustrated subscriptions.
• The only way Prince will communicate with others when it is not in person is via fax machine.
• 86% of all emergency room trips for children under the age of 10 are the result of swallowed board game pieces.
• By the year 2026, there will be more fictional lawyers practicing law on television than lawyers practicing law in real life. In related news: 43% of the defendants who choose to represent themselves in a court of law feel qualified to do so after watching the DVD set of the entire L.A. Law series.
• 2 pledges at a University of Florida frat party died after smoking soiled cat litter out of a bong during a hazing ritual.

Look it up.

A Map of the History of Science Fiction

According to the artist, “History of Science Fiction” is a graphic chronology mapping the genre from its roots in mythology and fantasy to the space operas of today:

The movement of years is from left to right, tracing the figure of a tentacled beast, derived from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds Martians. Science Fiction is seen as the offspring of the collision of the Enlightenment (providing science) and Romanticism, which birthed gothic fiction, source of not only SciFi, but crime novels, horror, westerns, and fantasy (all of which can be seen exiting through wormholes to their own diagrams, elsewhere). Science fiction progressed through a number of distinct periods, which are charted, citing hundreds of the most important works and authors. Film and television are covered as well.

The image was inadvertently leaked onto the Internet a couple weeks ago, going viral enough to prompt Shelley to start collecting emails from fans interested in a possible poster version of the map. In addition to being a visual delight to explore, it is also a great reading-viewing to-do list for a complete science fiction education.

Shelley—a Brooklyn artist specializing in large paintings and sculpture installations—has also done paintings depicting the evolution of Avant Garde, the New York downtown scene, media role models, and Fluxus.

A few of these Steotch meme samplers are NSFW

The subject matter of the samplers have already covered a lot of ground in Internet memedom. You can find pieces about:

• dancing bananas
• a double rainbow
• All Your Base Are Belong To Us
• Star Wars
• I Can Haz Cheeseburger
• MST3K
• Pedobear
• the Fail Whale
• even goatse (although you’ll need to know what you’re looking for to see it)

And, of course, no meme tribute would be complete without a Rick Roll.

Steotch is the brainchild of Emily and Matt Fitzpatrick. According to the website, Emily is battling cancer, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to pay a visit to their Etsy store and pick up a gift for the Internet junkie in your life. Or perhaps get one for your grandma, and see if she notices the Rick Astley lyrics.

"Girl Walks Into A Bar" is the first Hollywood Internet movie

The description of the 79-minute comedy is:

GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR connects a group of apparent strangers over one night across ten bars throughout Los Angeles. Zachary Quinto stars as a dentist who teams up with a feisty would-be assassin (Carla Gugino) to put the final touches on the plan to kill his wife. Once he makes a play for the assassin’s payment, he unknowingly sets off a chain of events that fuels a crosstown journey through the many lounges, bars, strip clubs and the occasional nudist ping pong clubs scattered across Los Angeles. By turns funny and heartbreaking, this sharp-witted comedy features ten interconnected vignettes that build to a revealing finish.

The project is supported by four ad breaks shown during the full-length playing of the film.

The movie stars a few familiar faces: Carla Gugino (Watchmen, Night At The Museum, Spy Kids), Zachary Quinto (Heroes, Star Trek), Rosario Dawson (Buffy, Sin City, Josie and the Pussycats), and Danny DeVito (too many to name). My personal connection to the movie is that John Colella—someone who was at DePaul when I was acting there—is in GWIAB. The movie was directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, writer of the cult movie Snakes on a Plane, itself a product of the Internet, albeit in a different way.

The first 23 votes on IMDB had it at 9.8 out of 10 stars. I presume that is the GWIAB marketing team at work, but it will be interesting to see how this method of delivery affects perception of quality.

Building a visual language through free symbols

The site is intended to be simple to use and include images that are easily understood across cultures. These icons are highly designed, quality visual artifacts accessible from a few major categories:

• animals
• food & beverage
• healthcare & wellness
• people
• safety & warnings
• science & math
• sports & recreation
• tech & communication
• transportation
• travel & wayfinding
• weather & nature

The symbols are free. In fact, free distribution is a core part of the effective strategy to improve visual communication. The images are in Public Domain or available under Creative Commons license.

The Noun Project is looking for volunteers to translate their website into languages other than English, and eventually will implement a system where community members can contribute to the project as well. Think Urban Dictionary for icons.

Sustainability and Futuring: Collaboration over distance

Carbon dioxide is not a bad thing. To the plants using it for photosynthesis, it’s a great thing. Too much of anything can be toxic, however. The earth had to work a long time before the planet achieved a balance necessary to sustain life:

[T]he present amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere every year by plants is almost perfectly balanced by amount of carbon dioxide put back into the atmosphere by respiration and decay. The carbon dioxide produced in this manner is part of a cycle in which new carbon does not enter the system, but rather it keeps changing in form.

source: “CO2 Pollution and Global Warming” by Barbalace, R.C. (2006)

In addition to decay, deforestation not only releases some carbon dioxide but it takes away some of the planet’s ability to remove it from the atmosphere. Warming oceans also contribute, releasing trapped carbon as their temperatures rise. The biggest hit, though, is the burning of fossil fuels, releasing all at once what would have taken millions of years to add to the ecosystem. This is largely what has accounted for the dramatic increase from 280 to 380 parts per million by volume between 1800 and 2005.

Of all the ways we burn fossil fuels, air travel is the worst. Internationally, it accounts for up to 5 percent of carbon dioxide emissions that are released. To help our planet remain or regain its life-supporting balance, addressing the problems of flying modern aircraft is the first, best target.

Telecommuting

George Monbiot’s book, Heat, claims that to meet (British) environmental targets for 2050, almost all flying will have to stop. That’s how bad air travel is for the environment. Climate groups have calculated that, in a sustainable world, each person can contribute no more than four tons of carbon emissions each year. One long flight uses almost all of that allowance.

The quickest way to slow down carbon imbalance is to stop flying. For many businesses, it isn’t practical, but it is possible to look for more ways to leverage computer-mediated communication to collaborate. Skype is just one of the tools that would allow for face time (through video chat) and file sharing between two people at remote locations. Finding more and better ways to work together over great distances is a big area of interest for HCI designers.

Solar Planes

The inevitability of air travel is underscored by the fact that passenger demand has continued to increase dramatically, despite the threat of terrorism and economic downturns. There are many changes airlines can make to improve fuel efficiency—including wing design, supplemental jet fuel, in-flight refueling, formation flights to reduce drag, and artificial intelligence to optimize flight performance.

In 2010, André Borschberg piloted a solar plane—Solar Impulse—for more than 26 hours, throughout the entire night. Solar power, harnessed through large paneled wings on light aircraft, is a young but promising path of innovation toward reduction of reliance on fossil fuels. Imagine commercial planes powered by the sun, providing all of the advantages of long-distance travel with none of the costly carbon emissions.

Carbon Offsetting

Until a variety of technologies exist to allow one to comparison shop based on carbon footprint, travelers don’t have many options for avoiding fossil fuels at the airport. Acknowledging the fact that our tech cannot yet support the increasing need for air travel, several organizations now offer registries to allow people to pay in advance for the carbon they will add to the environment by flying.

With carbon offsets, organizations can offer ways to financially support projects that reduce as much greenhouse gas emission as an air traveler would add to the atmosphere. These credit bundles allow the traveler to alleviate the guilt of flying by simultaneously supporting something that directly contributes to restoring some balance in the ecosystem. Recognized carbon offset companies that can be trusted include: The Gold Standard, The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS), Green-e, and the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance.

There are questions about how effective such programs are. Some believe the guilt relief leads to more flying, compounded by offsets that do not reduce carbon emissions enough.

Students in my HCI Design class this semester at the School of Informatics & Computing HCI program are being asked to work up weekly components (research or a grounded concept) to gain experience in making and communicating good design choices. I’m going through the process with them, devoting the minimal amount of time (2-3 hours) that I expect of them each week.

Although I’m excited to read their book, I have to wait a while. The book is due out in 2012. However, it was introduced at MacWorld last month:

“Make It So” was introduced at MacWorld 2011

In their planned book Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons From Science Fiction, Shedroff and Noessel intend to glean practical lessons from the many interfaces depicted in science fiction television shows and movies. They take a perspective that the production designers of these entertainment projects are empowered to develop “blue-sky” systems that require some consideration of how humans (or aliens) interact with these fictional devices. This can translate to real work insights about the design of mobile, online or other pervasive interfaces. “SciFi is a design tool like any other,” they argue. “All design is already fiction, until it gets built.”

The MacWorld talk covers the introductory content they plan for the first chapter, including defining their area of concern, how the real world and science fiction inspire each other, and comparing timelines of technology advancement in both worlds. They narrow the focus down to interaction design culled from 3D and live-action, screen-based science fiction. To begin, they catalogued and tagged 10,000 images from science fiction shows fitting this definition to generate a tag cloud that described the entire corpus of interactive artifacts. The biggest term was “glow.” The best insights, though, came from the interweaving timeline showing how these two worlds—real and fictional—work together to advance design. “The real world establishes the paradigm that science fiction then extends,” explains Shedroff. (The video is well worth an hour of your time, btw.)

Noessel is a Director at Cooper, designing for a variety of domains that include museums, health, and counter-terrorism. A pioneer in experience design, Sherdroff is chairing the Design Strategy MBA program at CCA, aimed at applying design to business practices. Through their publisher (Rosenfeld Media), the authors will be blogging their progress as they write their new book.

On Tuesday, the local internet spontaneously combusted with a promising new use for Twitter: Cheerleader.

Using Twitter and Facebook to brainstorm gameday chants

From a new blog for Hysterical Hoosiers, the organizers explain the project:

Those of you students who have been to games this year, our atmosphere has been awesome. However, we can create an even more hostile environment. Each game, we will look players up on facebook, twitter, etc, and try and get some more personal info and dirt on a lot of thems. A couple days before each game, I will post chants we need to start up when certain players touch the ball, are shooting free throws, during time-outs, etc. Spread the word so we can make Assembly Hall the most hostile place to play in the country!

In a sign of the evolving value of media channels, the blog showed up after the Facebook and Twitter pages. By the end of the day, the Facebook page already had over 100 “likes” and the Twitter account had almost 400 followers.

The Hysterical Hoosiers Twitter account has caught the attention of the IDS, an IU newsman, a local sports bar, sports podcasts, the Crimson Guard, and the Big Ten Network. They are all dwarfed by Tom Crean, who is an active Twitter user himself (although he tends to tweet in bursts). This project would get a shot in the arm if he passed a link along to his 25,000 followers.

The suggested crowd actions will be curated and displayed on the new blog. The few visible in the timeline only reference Tijan Jobe and referee Jim Burr, but there is time to get the crowdsourcing in line before Saturday’s game against Northwestern. My big concern is a lack of good taste.

I’ve lamented this before: fans have great potential to be boors. Having more people swearing at referees or being classless in targeted taunts would not be a good outcome for Hysterical Hoosiers. More intimidating than being clever with words (mean or otherwise) is having a large crowd do complex things. I’d love to see this evolve into using the crowd to play Tetris in the stands, passing large blocks down the rows instead of waving Big Heads during free throws.

I think this is a creative way to elevate participation in and enjoyment of the games in Assembly Hall, as long as this is about crowdsourcing and not mobsourcing.

UPDATE 2/16: Founders Zach Litzelswope and Tony Adragna added a podcast explaining the project. They credit Bill Simmons with the idea, set their sights on being better than the Cameron Crazies, and talk about how some of these ideas might debut on Saturday. On a more ominous note, there may major fuzziness area about what is inappropriate (e.g., statutory rape) as a chant topic.

What is your favorite word?

Gazebo.

What is your least favorite word?

Dissertation.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Good movies. There was a time when I’d watch at least one a day. I enjoy watching the little moments in a movie, like Jerry Maguire hesitating getting off of the elevator, or George Bailey realizing his plans to explore the world just got derailed again. I love movie soundtracks, like Elmer Bernstein’s signature theme. I love well-told visual stories I can watch again and again.

What turns you off?

Social myopia. I want my leaders to be philosophers, and their philosophy to involve systems and design thinking.

What is your favorite curse word?

Imperio.

What sound or noise do you love?

Any Stevie Ray Vaughan riff, especially from this and this and this.

What sound or noise do you hate?

Silence after a joke.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

History Detective.

What profession would you not like to do?

TSA inspector.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Wazzup

Songwriting uses technology to help the creative process

These assignments are intended to be ambiguous, to encourage some ownership of its interpretation. My initial inquiry focused on how music connects people as a social object. I identified three possible tensions to explore: Mobile vs. Fixed; Creating vs. Consuming; and, Public vs. Private. As I thought about how songs moved through the music ecosystem, I began to evolve this into a study of those who create the songs.

On Sunday night, I was able to interview Five Year Mission, an Indianapolis band with the goal of writing a new song for each of the 80 episodes (including pilots) of the original Star Trek television series. While the impetus for the interview was to support a forthcoming article in Wired‘s GeekDad blog, I devoted a little time asking them about their creative process as it relates to these three tensions.

The group divides up the season among 4 songwriters. The details of how they each approach the assignment vary, but in general they go through a process of watching the episode, re-watching it for notes, composing musical themes, and then writing lyrics. At some point, the result is a demo tape shared with others, for later collaboration.

Personal—Private composition is a product of available time. The band members talked about times when they write music just for their own pleasure, but that time to do so is limited by the number of other things they are doing. Between other jobs, families, and playing in multiple bands, time is scarce for personal projects. When such music is created, it eventually will find its way into a social sphere, such as transitioning from private to public music by uploading to Last.FM.

Creative—Listening is as vital to the creative process as performing. Every songwriter has a unique creative process, but more than one touted the value of iPhones. With voice recording applications, the iPhone allows for quick capture of music and lyrics for later playback and remixing. This is valuable both as a means of sharing (the recordings are used to create demo tapes or send as a raw example of work-in-progress) and for cognitive offloading to help remember ideas. Not everyone has an iPhone; some work with paper, which is as portable but less expensive. Though they work individually at first, the band continues to work through ideas by iterating on the initial demos, sometimes dramatically changing the song. New insights about the songs are learned through live performances and recording sessions as a group.

Mobile—Music making gravitates to familiar spaces. Retreats for working on new songs are constructed by convenience—this is where the equipment is housed—not necessarily for reasons of comfort or solitude. In some cases, due to a combination of time scarcity and pervasive thoughts about music, the songwriting takes place throughout the day in a variety of places. The instrumental work, however, is dependent on having the equipment at hand to perform. Keyboards, drum sets, and even guitars are not easily transferred from place to place. Even to transition from an interview to a practice session in the next room, the setup (equipment and soundproofing) took about 30-40 minutes. Controlled and predictable spaces also accommodate those not in the band, whether it is neighbors or family members, to allow them to anticipate noise levels and change behavior (e.g., leaving the vicinity).

Resources:

1. Original photos by Kevin Makice, taken at a rehearsal (2-13-2011)
2. Interview with Five Year Mission band members (Noah Butler, Andy Fark, Patrick O’Connor, Mike Rittenhouse, and Chris Spurgin), conducted during a rehearsal on February 13, 2011.
3. Five Year Mission website banner (downloaded with permission at http://fiveyearmission.net/ on 2-13-2011)
4. “002/365 Time,” photo by Venn Diagram (downloaded at http://www.flickr.com/photos/venndiagram/4238905532/ on 2-13-2011)

Students in my HCI Design class this semester at the School of Informatics & Computing HCI program are being asked to work up weekly components (research or a grounded concept) to gain experience in making and communicating good design choices. I’m going through the process with them, devoting the minimal amount of time (2-3 hours) that I expect of them each week.

Many of these status updates had to do with interesting moments in Twitter, related to research in the service, but I also find my personal Twitter museum has collected a number of profound, hilarious, and striking status updates from others around the world. Here are fifty of my favorite Favorites …

this superbowl needs more vuvuzelas.—@djbender

Apparently there’s a sequel to Super Bowl 44 today – do I have to know anything about the other Super Bowls to prepare for today?—@trobinson79

After a brief flirtation, I’ve turned away from Quora. It’s too structured to be social and too closed for open talk. Also, it’s boring.—@shelisrael

I mean really, Mubarak should have done that speech while sitting in a swiveling chair and caressing a white cat. #Jan25 #Egypt—@KarlreMarks

The Spider-Man musical doesn’t need to close – it needs to be the next season of Survivor.—@moonandserpent

Assembly Hall just went from being the loudest place in America (after Hulls 3) to one of the most quiet (as Watford shoots free throws)—@IUSportcom

Now that the astrological birth signs have been recalculated, thousands of awful lower-back tattoos just become even more regrettable.—@justinkeller

My 5th grader has a paper due. It needs to be double spaced. She very carefully typed 2 spaces between each word.—@MacksMind

Glad they’re making Great Gatsby in 3-D. My favorite part of the book was when Gatsby threw knives at the reader’s face.—@BorowitzReport

I guess “A Christmas Carol” will forever be known as the episode where the shark jumped Doctor Who.—@lmcalpin

Google Wave Lesson: If a product is named as a Firefly reference, expect it to go the way of any Joss Whedon show.—@jeffcatania

If my quick glance at my twitter stream is correct, Brett Favre & Wikileaks are building a mosque in NYC.—@bmk

someone should submit The Economy to kickstarter.com—@jingman

Do all these muscles make me look fat?—@OldSpice

I’m glad I never have worry about forgetting whether or not Jesus saves. Thanks, bumper stickers and billboards.—@cmbeck_

The Emergency Alert System on the cable is preventing me from watching the local stations which will show me where the storm actually is.—@bubbas_brain

Discussing with my lawyer a new idea: adding “Agree to Disagree” option to my EULA dialog box, and let the user use the soft anyways.—@migueldeicaza

The cure for boredom is curiosity. The cure for curiosity is worksheets.—@alfiekohn

DON’T MAKE ME CRITIQUE YOUR COMPLICITY IN MALE PRIVILEGE. YOU WOULDN’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M CRITIQUING YOUR COMPLICITY IN MALE PRIVILEGE.—@feministhulk

If plastic bags live for thousands of years in a landfill, they’re like little time capsules. Why don’t we encode cool info on them?—@jingman

I saw a guy playing Solitaire on the iPhone. That is wrong in so many ways.—@SoundSystemSDC

Hotel internet is to internet as rice cakes are to oreos.—@clifflampe

Calling Butler “America’s Team” at this point is like commenting on a blog post with “First?!!!”—@tacojohn

My biggest fear of traveling back in time is that I’ll waste it explaining what it is that I do for a living.—@cmbeck_

incessant drumming. Me: Stop or I’ll have you committed. @cmakice: what’s that mean? Me: locked up in a room. @cmakice: Oh. With drums?—@amakice

One of the most painful things about being an academic is that no mater what you research, there’s always someone telling you how dumb it is—@whazlewo

wouldn’t it be great if we all pitched in to help people even when there wasn’t a disaster?—@aschweig

#Twible Ex 20: G’s Top 10. No gods, idols, blasphemy. Keep Sabbath holy & love Mom. Don’t kill, cheat, steal, lie, or look @ Xmas catalogs.—@janariess

Jim Zorn suspended practice, called investigators. Forensic experts determined white substance unknown to players was goal line.—@chucktodd

the Nobel Prize for Obama is really a Most Improved Player award for the USA.—@muchosalsa

Johnathan Frakes is directing. Yesterday, he called me Number One. My heart made a noise that sounded like awesome.—@NathanFillion

Why is the “default” image on most sites a male silhouette? I find it offensive when women are represented as a shadow of a man.—@zephoria

how many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? eh, it’s this really obscure number. you’ve probably never heard of it.—@treyp

When I take my pants off in public I’m being lewd. When I willingly do it in airport security i’m a patriot.—@cmbeck_

I always wondered how I could make “obituary” rhyme with “millionaire” and now I know. Thanks country radio!—@ryanvarick

My 6 year old son got a new watch. It’s 3:10 everybody.—@theaudioprof

@trotzke and I are now Bonsai buddies. Something he doesn’t know: I’m going to grow the hugest bonsai ever!!!—@BigDaveSmith

if nice guys finish last, then who would win a nice guy contest?—@StephenAtHome

wisdom of a 4 yr old: “the most important thing when deciding where to eat is if it has a gumball machine”—@mtwolf

Looking up the synonyms for unique.—@trotzke

@oprah ur caps r on, btw—@THE_REAL_SHAQ

Hey Twitter, you’ve been Punk’d. @aplusk is really a 14 year old kid who lives in Encino.—@SoundSystemSDC

@amakice I suggest the online moniker of Ma~—@benfulton

Hoosier Music Mt. Rushmore: Axl, Michael Jackson, Mellencamp, Wes Montgomery. Suck it, Hoagie Carmichael.—@SnailTrax

OH: Me: what are you doing? Archie: taking the onions out so I dont taste them. Me: they’re onion rings.—@amakice

OH: Nanna: “Is that his name? French Fry?” Archie: “Yes.” Nanna: “For Certain?” Archie: “No. French Fry.”—@amakice

Time to reset the Illinois governor sign once again to “This office has been criminal-free for 0 days”.—@dickc

I’m standing in the foot prints of giants.—@whazlewo

Charlton Heston is dead? Who is goign to take the gun out of his cold dead hands?—@zebtron

If you’re reading this now, I can only assume it’s because your family is boring the crap out of you.—@StephenAtHome

Since I’m also trying to re-establish a long-term pattern of public writing, it seems appropriate to post my weekly work here. Although the School of Informatics & Computing HCI program has freed me from the need to perfect my work before sharing, I still am apprehensive about doing so when work is in a rough state. My caveat, therefore, is that the self-imposed time limit does constrain me from the kind of depth I hope some of my students attempt.

Wave is a concept for comfort control system

The design challenge for this week was to use prior design research—the class of 120 just submitted research on the topic of comfortable spaces last week—to motivate and inspire a new concept for an interactive digital system. This system should address a human need for controlling personal or collective comfort.

Wave is my concept for controlling physical and social comfort through swimming. Small pools are rigged with sensors that interpret water-based interaction to control local and remote environmental systems. Patterns of activity then connect you to those with similar patterns for follow-up socialization.

Background

One working definition of comfort is relief from pain or trauma. My initial research focused on spaces that provided such relief:

• Panic rooms claim to provide safety from an immediate threat at home by essentially entombing the residents in a protective cave stockpiled with necessities and armed with digital surveillance and communication technology.
• An endless pool is a small-footprint pool for water exercise, aquatic therapy, and relaxation. Unlike larger recreational pools, this space is meant to be intimate, usually meant for a single person to use at one time.
• A meditation chamber is a room dedicated to the practice of gaining awareness. It is furnished with pillows and special chairs, with soothing music, art, and incense to help distance one’s self from the noise and pressure of the outside world.

I also conducted a quick online survey that asked about how and where people find relief. Although the number of responses I could get in a short window were small (N=5), a theme that seemed to emerge is that comfort is an escape from reality. The respondents did this with food, sounds, and natural spaces and by doing activities like watching a movie, listening to music, or literally running away.

“I seek comfort in cool places under blankets, with some sort of media to help me turn my brain off.”

Further research expanding this notion of comfort as relief from pain to include social disconnection. Humans are hardwired to connect. It is a biological imperative for us to form ans sustain enduring relationships. When we are rejected or suffer from prolonged detachment from others, our brain endures what is the chemical equivalent of physical pain.

When the focus of the assignments shifted from comfortable spaces to comfort controls, I opted for a combination of the endless pool and meditation chamber, but also wanting something that facilitated social connection.

Explanation

In this case, Wave is not a failed collaborative tool by Google but a social pool connecting you to others through your motion in the water. Interaction with water can be detected through light, flow, texture, temperature, and sound to trigger digital controls of pool environments.

The pool room has is tricked out with ambient cues that someone else is using their own pool. Lights change colors, the temperature of the room becomes more inviting for swimming, and gentle sounds of music or nature play to entice you to get in the water, too. Prolonged absence from the pool when others are swimming elsewhere in the world can spark uncomfortable conditions (dissonant noise, temperatures that are too warm or cold, and all-but-seizure-inducing flashing lights).

Once in the pool, you are encouraged through similar environmental cues to find your own pace for exercise, relaxation, or even physical therapy. From the community of other people using the pool system, similar patterns of movement and pace are detected and used to form an ad-hoc, anonymous social network. In the future, when these people use the pool, the ambient cues are more inviting to encourage stronger connections and mutually supportive sessions in the Wave pool. These social networks can be further nurtured online by accessing your Wave system’s personal contact list.

Resources:

1. Endless Pool (downloaded at http://www.endlesspools.com/gallery/detail.php?id=399 on 1-25-2011)
2. How a Panic Room Works (downloaded at http://home.howstuffworks.com on 1-25-2011)
3. YMCA of USA (2010) Hardwired to connect: The new scientific case for authoritative community. Ed. Stephen J. Bavolek
4. Zhang, Z., Bao, X., Rennie, C.D., Nistor, I., and Cornett, A. (2008). Water wave frequency detection by optical fiber sensor. Optics Communications, 281(24), pp. 6011-6015.
5. Rudomin, I., Diaz, M., Hernandez, B., and Rivera, D. (2005). Water, temperature and proximity sensing for a mixed reality art installation. Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3814, pp. 155-163.
6. Toon, J. (2007). New sensor detects direction of sound under water. Optics+Photonics@Georgia Tech (downloaded at http://www.op.gatech.edu/ on 2-6-2011).

Zombie Tabernacle Choir is a scream

Yesterday, amidst all of the ice storm anticipation, Ze tweeted a link to a Zombie Tabernacle Choir, a grand piece of web flotsam similar to his own roots as a content creator. It is what you might expect from that title—a choir of zombies singing—but it is strangely compelling in the same way many of the interactive iPhone apps are. To make the zombies sing, you have to click on their heads. That can last a while, if you find it as engrossing as I did.

The ZTC is the work of Quality-Schnallity (I name I can admire). John Schnall has a demo reel and YouTube channel that feature a wide range of applications for his animation talents, including commercials, music videos and web company promotions. He spent about a decade producing a radio show (“Midnight Madness“), mixed live, based on clips from television and movies There are also some old interviews with him that may be enlightening.