Link Love: Mobile Culture

tokyo cafe snack
Photo by twinleaves

Posting will be regular but light as I travel with my kids over the next five weeks.

From the archives.

Digits Calculator for iPad

Digits Calculator for iPad

Digits Calculator for iPad was designed and programmed by Joshua Distler. I love this app. simply for the fact that it has a great UI without succumbing to the use 'skeuomorphic' design cues like many of Apples own software. I find the trend visually tiring and at times distasteful. Digits Calculator is set in Helvetica, features changeable background colors, a scrolling history tape, undo/scrollback, autosave and aspect ratios from landscape to portrait.

Digits Calculator for iPad. Via app.itize.us.

The Necessity of a Smartphone

The Necessity of a Smartphone
Photo by by iulian nistea

A New York Times article from last year looks at how the adoption of new technology, in particular smartphones, is as much about consumer sociology and psychology as it is about chips, bytes and bandwidth. Android commentators being the exception.

For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness -- and thus worth the cost, both as a communications tool and as a status symbol.

The downside to this need for constant connection.

Such a digital connection can have its downside. The perils of obsessive smartphone use have been well documented, including distracted driving and the stress of multitasking. CrackBerry, a term coined years ago, is telling.

The smartphone, said Mr. Meyer, a cognitive psychologist, can be seen as a digital "Skinner box," a reference to the experiments of the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner in which rats were conditioned to press a lever repeatedly to get food pellets.

With the smartphone, he said, the stimuli are information feeds. "It can be powerfully reinforcing behavior," he said. "But the key is to make sure this technology helps you carry out the tasks of daily life instead of interfering with them. It's about balance and managing things."

Smartphone Rises Fast From Gadget to Necessity

QR Code Cow

QR Code Cow

Brazilian artists Daniel Siarkovski and Rafael Grostein QR coded cow which appeared in the São Paulo annual Cow Parade. The Cow Parade is one of the largest and well succeeded contemporary street art events in the world. I read successfully some of the codes but the web address wouldn't load. Fun.

QR-Cowde-Vaca-Interativa

Caroline Chiu - Dreaming: A Chinese Wunderkammer

Caroline Chiu
Subtitled: Caroline Chiu: Polaroids as Chinese Ink Painting

These photographs are taken from Hong Kong artist Caroline Chiu's larger series entitled Dreaming: A Chinese Wunderkammer. Wunderkammer were 17th- and 18th-century European "wonder rooms" or "cabinets of curiosity"--some of the earliest known "museums"--which contained specimens reflecting the natural world, anthropology, archaeology, relics, and art. The late Qing emperor Qianlong, known for his passion for the arts, also pursued this type of collecting.

In Chiu's case, she collects, by photography, objects representing the material culture of traditional China: bonsai, scholar's rocks, flowers, artworks depicting the animal zodiac, and, here, goldfish. Her choice of subjects makes reference to historical Chinese culture; her graphic photographic images of goldfish suggest the brushstrokes of traditional Chinese ink painting and the sweeping abstract shapes of Chinese writing.
Because the images were taken with a rare 20 x 24 inch Polaroid camera--for which film is no longer manufactured--the exhibition is also an elegy to the era of Polaroid cameras and film.

Continue reading >>

Wood Wood 'Hoste' Bag

Wood Wood 'Hoste' Bag

Wood Wood 'Hoste' Bag

I love when designers incorporate some recognizable emotion into their bags. This large tote bag is made with 100% Polyester with one external pocket, three internal pockets and nice button detail. The padding is reminiscent of some of Porters Tanker Original tote bags. Cute.

Wood Wood 'Hoste' Bag in Curry.

Jansport Ski and Hike Bag

Jansport Ski and Hike Bag

I'm a big fan of these classic styles from Jansport. The colors, shape, straps and zippers look great. This daypack features a large main compartment, zippered front pouch pocket, seatbelt-style shoulder straps and far more attractive branding. The bag is made with lightweight durable nylon with a leather bottom. I've seen this series locally and I would swear they must be made in a different factory as the build quality looks much better.

Jansport Ski and Hike Bag

Transitloungers: Just Landed - 61 Hours

Jer Thorp is interested in visualizing 'information that isn't implicitly shared - but instead is inferred or suggested'. In this piece he visualizes international flight movements of those on twitter who tweet 'just landed in...' or 'just arrived in...'.

This piece looks for tweets containing the phrases 'just landed in...' or 'just arrived in...'. Locations from these tweets are located using MetaCarta's Location Finder API. The home location for the traveling users are scraped from their Twitter pages. The system then plots these voyages over time."

Via The Pop-up City.

Link Love: Cultures

tokyo taxi
Photo by detestrian

Small pieces loosely joined.

From the archives.

Bringing the News to India's Poor

Bringing The News to India's Poor
Photo by rajkumar1220

A project called CGNet Swara is a fascinating glimpse of how mobile technology can provide news and information to people unlike anything they have ever had before.

The essence of his project is this: The Internet, cable television and newspapers reach only a fraction of the 80 million people in the rural tribal region of central India, but about half the population now has access to mobile phones, which cost the equivalent of only $15 or $20. These people, citizen journalists, supported by a small group of professional editors, can collect and deliver news through what amounts to a portal reachable by a phone number. It is, in effect, a voice version of news websites with a menu of stories available for listening.
It has now been about fifty years since the advent of transistor and battery-powered radios made an enormous impact on these rural areas. But the news on the radio stations is still very tightly managed by the state (there are no independent or private news stations). And, of course, the information only goes one way. That is what makes the mobile project so promising. For the first time, news can be made available from across the region in several languages, provided by reporters in towns and villages in a way that substantial parts of the community can engage.
"The real power of the mobile phone," wrote Sam duPont in a comment for NDN, a Washington think tank, "is in the fact that people around the world are adopting them of their own accord. . . . Mobile phones have leapfrogged not just land-line phones, but television, radio and nearly every other information and communications service and brings information into citizens' hands directly."

I've been fascinated lately by the possibilities of the iPhone as a media production tool but the change this brings pales in comparison to what last years mobile tech can bring to these people's future.

The Atlantic: Bringing News to India's Poorest People

Flakjakt "Cascades"

Like we knew there would be there has been a flurry of footage released emphasizing the new media production capabilities of the iPhone 4. I think we are going to see all kinds of new art produced over extremely short time periods, shot and edited, on this tiny device. It's amazing.

Flakjakt "Cascades" claims to be the first music video shot with the iPhone 4. The device that captured it is what got my attention but the music and production are great in their own right.

Song was written in 2 days, video shot in 1.3 days and edited in 2 days.

In a fun weeklong experiment, my friend Marty and I collaborated on this video for an original song I wrote specifically for the iPhone 4 shoot. The overall goal was to produce a music video you can get down with - first and foremost - regardless of what camera we were shooting with. I think the end result turned out fantasmic! I hope you do to.

QR code money

QR code money

An interesting idea and question from QR Arts.

One day, pounds and euros will be printed with QR codes to allow for people to see current fluctuations in bank note values with respect to the international market, printing plant of orgin, and other information about the country of which it was issued. Although money will become more electronic, why not have a link between our currency and the electronic medium that determines its value. This could be particularly useful for empowering tourists for exchange rates, and helping them determine the value of a good in their native currency. There are many opportunities for this idea.

The immersive nature of current mobile phones and the fact that people handling currency transactions in a foreign country tend to want both hands free (and all their attention on their money) would make its usage unlikely. There are other possibilities beyond a realtime link to currency data - background information on the bill itself or currency exchange locations come to mind.

QR Arts: QR code money

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