ConnectingTheDots

Fame Game

Ended up at a party last week for Fame Game.  Name aside, there is not much of a game playing component to the Fame Game (perhaps the name moreso comments on the nature of today's society).  The site "maps the networks of capital, influence, and attention that drive New York’s cultural economy."  Aside from social network-like profile pages, an algorithm they call ANDY determines connections and identifies the fastest rising movers and shakers.  Weekly changes in "fame" percentile rank are published and displayed like stock tickers.

The idea of understanding degrees of seperation and power structures through visualizations has been around for awhile.  Older websites (albeit with less dynamic data sets) have been mapping connections of influence.  NNDB Mapper allows exploration of over 33,000 "noteworthy" individuals and the creation of maps like "Silicon Valley Boards".  Early in 2002, They Rule was recognized by Ars Electronica for its visualization of relationships between powerful corporate executives. 

Unlike the more educationally driven objectives of past sites, with Fame Game's focus on the structure of celebrity and its dynamic use of the constant media that builds on celebrity, will public fascination and advertisers interact and follow?

Interactive Life Cycle of a Blog Post

Often have a hard time reading the fine print on information graphics.  Rather than pushing the magnify button, interactive functions that allow viewers to easily zoom into and along their reading path also enable focus.  Nice example: multimedia created for Wired, depicting the life of blog posts after you click Publish.

Paper Prototypes of User Interfaces

Paper still often happens before pixels.  In my notebooks are sketches of some unborn sites.  Some folks have been more eager to digitally document and share their initial inspirations on paper (see description of Twitter on Flickr.  More examples to browse here.

                         

Softkinetic: Body as Joy Stick

Softkinetic 3D gesture recognition software platform, iisu, captures full body movements and is now available as middleware (creating opportunities for developers to create new gameplay applications). A teaser video below and some more videos here show the even stranger body gestures you might be seeing soon through a neighbor's window.

Seriosity and Productivity Games

Seriosity is applying video game and economic concepts to solve the common problem of overflowing email boxes.  According to its site, information overload costs companies $588 billion.  It's product, Attent, creates virtual currency to prioritize emails.  Have not tried the service and am curious how they mitigate gaming of the system (people assigning values to get messages opened that do not necessarily correlate to a recipient's valuation).  Also wonder, if most people value average messages similarly, how significantly it improves upon the current simpler filter of "red flags" marking "very important" messages. Perhaps game influenced design elements create the right social dynamics and incentives? 

Game systems have interesting potential when applied to various sectors of the economy (see previous posts on Fold It! and games on gwap as well as posts on Games for Change.)   A recent Google Testing Blog post further discusses (and seeks comment) on the idea of productivity games.

Social Lending

Would you lend a stranger $10,000?  How about $1,000?  Prosper thinks people will (for a return).  The site combines the concepts of social networking, online auctions, and microcredit.  Borrowers set up personal profiles, that describe not just their financials, but also their interests, social habits, a short pitch on why they are a good bet, and, of course, a photo.  Since its start in 2006, Prosper has gained more than 700K members and $140M in loans (like online campaign fundraising, most are small by many e.g. $5K funded by 50 people lending $100 each).

Unlike Kiva, Prosper is targeted for the developed world (see also UK based Zopa).  How to monetize social capital is a multi-million dollar question in our 3.0 world.  Aside from a hypothesis about efficiency (more of the spread going directly to lenders), I wonder how significantly human and social considerations play a role on Prosper (easing funding between friends/acquaintances or people with similar affinities) -- there is also a Facebook app.  In our increasingly de-humanized financial markets, is there a special appeal for returns that also have an emotional value?  (Note: some bumps in performance data: renegade analysis + some official numbers)

Ads find new fans online

Have to admit, I have browsed some blogs devoted to "the best ads" (and may have even purposefully watched quite a few ads on YouTube - gotta love those Sony bouncing balls).  Found myself enjoying the digital immortalization of a few ads that are ironically probably better experienced in-person. 

Leica ad highlighting its zoom

Papa John making usually neglected door holes interesting

Giving stop signs additional meaning

Providing an imaginery view inside

Tipping Point for Meaningful Games?

Normally don't comment on my other worlds, but must share how happy I was about the turn out for this year's Games for Change Festival.  When even the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor is talking about creating games (Our Courts), something has moved beyond the once small niche of folks reimagining how games can create social impact.  Still many (interesting) challenges in embedding values into design, but lots of emerging projects are happening and intersecting various fields.  Aside from typical do-gooders, increasingly corporations and venture capitalists are also showing interest and investing in platforms and projects (see Microsoft XNA based Imagine Cup, AMD Changing the Game, and Akoha).   More at Games for Change.

OX-2 w/ Dual Touchscreen Seeking Copy Cats

OLPC's second generation OX laptop evoked a wow from first world citizens (a repeat of their Give 1, Get 1 campaign would probably do well).  Positioned horizontally, the design acts like an iTouch laptop.  Flipped vertically, the interface becomes right and left page (like a book).  Hinged flat, the continuous surface can be used in tablet mode (to play games like pong).  Half the size of the original, it aims to use only 1 watt of energy and cost $75 (OX-1remained $88 above its goal). As noted by gizmodo, this time the prototype was displayed early and copy cats were encouraged...a better strategy to hit its release targets?

Bigger Screens for Digital Shows

Something about scale and unexpected surfaces as canvases grabs me every time.

Stumbled upon some images of installations from the Today's Art Festival. In the latest event, custom made artworks were precision-beamed onto the City Hall building (The Hague).

Design Probes

Wireless stick-on sensors as body adornment, dresses that allow physiology and environments to interact usings patterns and colors, electronic tatoos that visualize emotional shifts -- perhaps coming soon to a store near you?  Philips' design probes are meant to shake up their innovation process and generate insights into whether some  "far future" trends might become mainstream.   

Recently, quite a few major companies have opened their nacent R&D ideas up to the public for feedback. Starbucks, ever so good at getting press (even for barista trainings), launched My Starbucks Idea.  Philips' feedback mechanism is less buzz provoking (not a digg-like social network) but its survey does ask the public to rate the appeal and relevance of its design research.

Fold It! Competing to Design Cures

Can a competitive game played by thousands of people help discover novel proteins beyond what is currently possible with computation-only approaches?  An interesting project out of The University of Washington, Fold It!, is experimenting with that premise.  The game casts molecular folding problems as a massively distributed 3D puzzle game that enables players to discover the solutions to current open scientific problems -- such as cures for cancer or AIDS.  The idea that well-designed games are fun/addicting/competitive/collaborative and thus potentially powerful tools to create impact is gaining traction.  Like Free Rice, it borrows techniques from casual games (Fold It's  game design has an even tighter connection between content and outcome).    

Orphaned Cameras

Given my proclivity to lose electronics, appreciate this blog seeking to reunite orphaned cameras and photos with their owners.   

First Impressions

Love this simple short film from artists Lenka Clayton and James Price capturing people's first impressions and biases.  The split screen shows strangers' gut reactions to each others images.

Kluster: Crowdsourcing for Innovation

Kluster, already receiving much buzz, is one of the latest websites harnessing the wisdom of the masses.  Unlike digg, wikipedia, or youtube, aside from allowing participants to post and vote, from the get go this social network is translating collaborative user-generated sparks into real dollars and products.  Anyone can post ideas or invest watts in (hopefully) winning ideas that are financially rewarded by businesses seeking crowd sourced solutions. 

There are various recent examples of sites forging a more direct connection between longtail producers and funders (Kiva), customers (Etsy), or collaborators (Netsquared mashup challenge).  Kluster's "advanced algorithm" for decision making, hipster language, and clean interface may differentiate it from other sites similarly seeking to facilitate community generated solutions for big industry (see also InnoCentive and Cambrian House).  Will be curious to see whether it produces new taste tests vs. breakthrough drugs.  Let 1000 flowers bloom.

Photoshop Process

Christophe Huet's site let's people browse through his creative process - clicking the "making of" button on the side navigation bar summarizes step by step how his images for Motorola, Playstation, and other ads transform from banal to sellable visual concepts. 

A simpler site allows a similar window into a photographer's process.  Mousing over the images reveals the unretouched original (including one for Project Runway fans).

Design and the Elastic Mind

Enjoyed helping friends out as a filmed silhouette for a piece harvesting the Internet for human feelings and behaviors that recently opened at MOMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. The 300 plus projects showcased are also viewable online and worth exploring.

Perhaps exemplifing the rapid adoption of once esoteric projects and terms mostly confined to ITP shows, MIT's Medialab, and other research communities, the MOMA exhibit was packed with tourists absorbing the numerous innovations in visualization, sensory design, biologically derived systems, algorithmic processing and mapping connecting technology, science, and design to human experience and society.   

Sharing Life Filtered Through Design

Daily self-portraits aren't the only patterns being shared (see prior post), other personal observations are being visually chronicaled as well.  Enjoyed this Flickr set a Manhattanite posted, his appreciation of 36 days of color changes in new york city's sky.