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Archive for 26 February 2010

It's Interesting Up North

Screen shot 2010-02-26 at 22.52.39Russell Davies’ Interesting conference are something of an institution.  350 people cram into Conway Hall in London to hear interesting people talk about interesting things, ranging from Prozac-flavoured yoghurt, to a history of well-beloved ponies, to a live demonstration of the colour of Radio 4.  And that was just last year.

I’ve been to all three, taken photos of two and spoken at one.   And while they were all tremendous fun, all the Interesting conferences in the UK have taken place in London. With Russell’s blessing, it’s time to change that.

Interesting North will take place at some point this year somewhere that’s north of London and south of Edinburgh.  I’m not sure exactly where it will be, or when, or who will speak, or how much it will cost.   Those are all details that will get worked out between now and then, hopefully with the help of the kind of genial lunatics that make Interesting what it is.

So, this is a plea for help.  I’m going to need help to organise this, and I’m going to need interesting people to talk about interesting things to make it an Interesting day.  Give me a shout if you can help, and watch this space – and interestingnorth.com or interestingnrth – for further details.

26 February 2010

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links for 2010-02-25

  • The Animation object extends the Processing development environment. It's a new object which removes much of the tedious bookkeeping involved in creating graphical motion effects.
  • I am immersing myself into the world of dials and meters for FRED project and I wanted to share with you some of the lovely things we’ve unearthed in our research.
  • Augmented reality pundits, myself included, purport that the nascent technology will change our lives.  But really, that’s what technology is all about.  Even the lowly vacuum cleaner was sold as a way to free the housewife from her oppressive chores.
    A better question might be to ask how augmented reality will change our lives, and more importantly, how will it change our brains.  The brief snapshot of its effect in the story above was to illustrate the result of a ubiquitous computing environment.   But to truly understand, we have to go deeper into the actual brain matter and watch how AR might change it.
  • I've been reading and learning about non-speech audio feedback and how it might be used in NUI. A particularly good resource on the subject is a book that was being written by Bill Buxton and others in the early 90's, but was never finished called Auditory Interfaces: The Use of Non-speech Audio at the Interface – the unfinished book is on-line and free to read.

    There is a lot of ways to slice and dice the topic non-speech audio feedback, but one way of looking at it is in terms of signals and data representation.

26 February 2010

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