me wantee Yamaha Tenori-on.

Posted by aynne at 05:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Our beloved is not lost. Our beloved is manifesting in a different form."

this is actually a Buddhist mediation on death
but I think things like IM on idle and light touch passive systems such as Twitter and even to a certain extent the status on Facebook is like this

you don't have to actually talk to the person to know they exist
they are still there ... I would love it these systems were more emotive...
like a very light pulsing heartbeat
like they ...breathe

I have people on my IM list I don't talk to anymore... but when I see them.. I know they exist and they are out there.. somewhere
and it pleases me

Posted by aynne at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

from a company called Senseg.

Posted by aynne at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A side project I have been working on is now live!

Congreateis a Flash enabled Mash-up created for the iasummit2008 conference.

It works by searching for stuff tagged iasummit2008
from Flickr, Twitter and Crowdvine

Posted by aynne at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not sure if these are supposed to be a joke or not but they are certainly unpleasant.

Posted by aynne at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday on Facebook Twitter said F You to me.. and it hurt my feelings :-(

A long time ago Yahoo! Messenger gave me pause when it shared this philosophical thought:

Posted by aynne at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently T-Mobile has mandated they own the color Magenta in their brand usage therefore other companies cannot use magenta for their logos or branding pieces...

Here is a response to this from the Netherlands

Posted by aynne at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Extending our senses

Urban Atmospheres
Elizabeth Goodman (UC Berkeley)
Designing Alternate Location Systems
Alternate ways of making tracking systems visible.

Example:
RFID, FastTrak, LoJack, Runners, Disney Phone

Wireless beacons

Precision and reliability in data gathering.
Privacy

Alternate constraints can create exciting new design territory.
Compact representation of complex data.

Mobile User Experience team
Paul Adams, Google –
Social Map –

SMS used to avoid awkward conversations

Need to think about broad conversation

How, when and where people choose different communications tools.
Context? Or the people communicating with.
How big are people’s social networks and how did they evolve?

Stop Self- referential design

Most of the time –
You are not designing for you, your friends or people like you

Making Social Maps:
Layer One - People and Groups
People tell you all the people in their social life and let the user group them together on a large piece of paper.

Layer Two - Them across (in a different color post-it) show how they communicate with that person or group of people.

Layer 4 Sharing -

Layer 5 - Mapping actual behavior
have them bring the phone and find out who last 5 SMS and 5 Voicemails were from

Layer 6 Sticky dots - (blue dot who is on Facebook, MySpace, etc...) very rare for any one group to have all the same networks.

Close contacts
Loose contacts
Ambient contacts
Indirect contacts

Posted by aynne at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple will be offering $100.00 store credit to those who purchased the iPhone prior to the price drop.
Brilliant move--- builds loyalty, lets users know they are listening and in a way forces users to purchase more product...

Posted by aynne at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New scooter zips along nicely for pennies per mile This headline caught my eye because I am always interested in design that solves problems of the greater good.

This scooter is a zero emmissions vehicle, it is soundless and low cost to power.
The 11K price tag unfortunately makes it prohibitively expensive right now but as we all know technology gets cheaper and cheaper as adoption and demand widens.

I am not entirely convinced electrical power is a sustainable solution. Electric power has it's own implications on the environment but, we have to start somewhere.

This made me think of one my favorite songwriters..
the highly underrated Duncan Sheik who wrote the following in his song White Limousine:

"America, America, this is our reward
Everything is boring, everyone is bored

Maybe a white
Maybe a white limousine
Maybe a white, white, white, white limousine

Who's the smart guy at the wheel
Running out of gas
Likes to wear a flight suit
and fly around for laughs

Maybe a white
Maybe a white limousine
Maybe a white, white, white, white limousine

I feel incentives for the pharmacy
Hey I'm feeling better already
I don't want to be clear
It's too much for me
I'm making up
Oh, I'm making up
For lost time
For all the lost time

We have won the war
We have won the war"

I personally want to proud to be American.
Not ashamed to be part of a consumer-oriented, imperialist, decadent, slovenly, wasteful society who votes in madmen to run the largest economy in the world.

I want to see out future as the innovative, ecologically-minded, progressive, diverse and solution-oriented place we could be.

Posted by aynne at 06:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The project I worked on at Microsoft is now Public!

I am elated! I saw the demo that had the designs for the jukebox player I did over three years ago.

This is so satisfying...

I can't believe it.

Posted by aynne at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw this at Giants Stadium in San Francisco and I had soooo many ideas...

Posted by aynne at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am very excited about the course I will be taking this summer at Domus Academy (Formerly, Ivrea). I wonder why we don't have more courses such as this in the US.

Workshop and intensive course on design of innovative consumer electronic tools in the context of mobility (ubiquitous computing, mobile phone, locative media etc.), considering both tangible qualities (physical manipulation, gestures, etc) and immaterial interactions with social networking functions and services.

Posted by aynne at 05:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)