While the Dutch language uses bikes to show understanding:
“Oh, on that bike!” => “oh, in that way!”
Swedish thinks you are crazy:
“He is outside, biking.” => “He doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
Today’s “What did I just watch?”
Illumiroom – great concept
Illumiroom enhances gameplay by projecting in your living room around the tv while playing games. Too bad Microsoft announced they are not bringing it into production yet because it would be too expensive..
Find old maps
I just came across The David Rumsey Map Collection which is a collection of maps from the 18th and 19th century. Here you can search for maps by selecting a part of the world using google maps.
Graphed history of the world
This one graph summarizes the history of the world in one long graph, covering 4000 years. What surprised me the most was that the Mongolians were quite strong twice, and I hardly know anything about them.
[Source]
Career advise
Airdrummer
Description
This project aimed to create a virtual drum-set that you can play with a pair of custom made drumsticks. The application shows a drumset. You can play them by flicking custom-made drumsticks while simply pointing at one of the drums. Next to this two foot pedals control the high-hat and bass drum.
The system works via IR-LEDs in the drumsticks that flash when the drumstickis flicked, which is seen by a Wii remote. This is then translated in a mouse movement on the screen, that causes drum sounds to be played when the mouse moves over a drum image in the web-based application. The floor pedals are connected via an arduino that sends a signal to the computer when they are pressed. The sticks are activated by a weight that moves up when the stick is flicked, which presses a button. To add a haptic feedback a vibration motor is built in the handle.
This project was created together with David Andersson and Emilio Gimenez Bahl for the course Tangible Interaction Design.
Custom touch controls
Today the old ‘racing’ game Carmegeddon was released as a port to Android. When it first came out in 1997 it caused worldwide controversy due to that the player is encouraged to drive over pedestrians.
Today’s free tryout of the app allowed for some nostalgic pixelated blood spatting. But it was what I found in the settings which caused me to write this post. The car is driven via five onscreen buttons (left, right, gas, brake, handbrake). Via the menu this interface can be customized by dragging around the buttons to any place that suits your needs. The nice thing is that with this it can be made to fit different sizes of hands and screens. I guess this is the touch screen equivalent of changing which keyboard keys you want to use to play the game.
Buddy Cup
Budweiser has introduced a new concept that they will use during events: the Buddy Cup. It is a beer cup that you link to your Facebook account via the QR-code on the bottom when you enter the bar and receive the cup. Then during the event, when you toast with somebody (and your cups touch), you automatically become friends on Facebook.
The initial idea sounds fun. It is an existing meaningful gesture which now has an additional digital meaning. But have they really thought this through? What if you bump into someone by accident? Or what if a random person walks by and bumps your cup without your approval, that person can then instantly see all private information you have shared with your friends. And this means you need to keep your cup with you all evening long, instead of getting a new one with each drink as is normally the case (or is this different in America?).
To me this idea sounds like nothing more than initial idea that needs a lot more thought before it can become a real product.
Funny detail: In the movie they use the form of the Facebook time line to show the ‘history of toasting’. But their time line goes in the opposite direction as the one from Facebook (scroll down = back in time).