On February 1st, a workshop organised by Nicolas Nova and Julian Bleecker about Blogjects and the new ecology of things was held in Geneva. The purpose was to discuss usage scenarii of Blogjects, the design issues they raises as well as their significance in various contexts. The description of the scenarios helped us refining what would be the Blogjects features and capabilities.

Nicolas has just posted the report (.pdf, 18.6Mb). It summarizes the topic discussed, presents the main characteristics of Blogjects and four potential scenarios elaborated by the groups formed during the workshop.

Unfortunately i couldn't make it to the workshop. I would have talked about stuff that would have bored everyone anyway. My idea at some point was to make the blog of my AIBO public. I wouldn't have been the first to do so of course. But what if i added ads to that blog? What if i had several aibo blogs or object blogs that generate loads of money? At some point it would bring about interest from, say, Sony or the manufacturer of the blogging object. Can we imagine that in the future there will be some disputes about who owns the the blog content? Would i be allowed to keep all the money generated by my blogging slaves? What about the copy rights?

Check also: Manifesto for Networked Objects; Bruce Sterling's talk at eTech + at Siggraph in 2004 and Anne Galloway's Internet of things: working bibliography.

Image from flickr tag blogjects.

InstantSOUP is a cookbook to make electronic prototypes, an introductory path into Physical Computing through a series of examples. Each example is a step-by-step recipe to follow leading to a working prototype ready to be consumed. Each recipe introduces a new physical computing element and builds on the previous ones learned.

After completing the basic set of InstantSOUP examples you will be able to create your own yummy prototypes.

InstantSOUP has been developed for students of interaction design, product design, architecture to explain them how to prototype concepts that involve digital behaviours, to produce interactive artifacts that give a direct experience of your concept.

InstanSOUP is a way to connect Flash programs with the physical world. You can make physical input devices for games, connect hacked electronic gadgets to Flash, or do anything else that connects the virtual and physical
worlds.

Existing recipes include a NetBell that informs you whenever a visitor enters your site, a physical version of the 'Color Picker' on the computer, a digital Etch A Sketch tablet, a sound toy with four pads, etc.

Developed by Yaniv Steiner, with Massimo Banzi, Giorgio Olivero, Hernando Barragan and Paolo Sancia.
Seen at the Greenhouse effect show, during the Salone del Mobile.

German firms Vorwerk Teppichwerke and Infineon Technologies have created a "Thinking Carpet", equipped with sensors that can control a whole range of functions.

A self-organising network of microchips integrated into the flooring can register several sensory signals and analyse them correspondingly.

For instance, pressure sensors can send an alarm as soon as people enter a security zone. The software can analyse the signals individually. Thus an alarm is triggered, say, only when traces of movement commence on a window, but not at free-access entrances. Pressure sensors in the carpet can also be utilised as door-openers and light switches, or as electronic counters for people.

Besides, temperature sensors are able to sport a fire alarm, control the climate, making it possible, say, to regulate humidity.

In combination with LED modules, the carpet can turn into a controllable guidance system: light-emitting diodes in the carpet could mark the way to an emergency exit. The combination of different sensory functions (pressure, temperature and motion) can enable the detection of people lying motionless on the floor, triggering a call for emergency help.

Via PhysComp Notes < Inteletex.

Thanks bev.

Related: interactive walkaways, the healing floors, flying carpet, and the sausage carpets.

Jeremiah is a virtual face that you can install for free in your computer. It watches what's going on and make decisions based on that.

"When he sees children running and laughing and waving at him, he smiles at them. If you ignore him, he gets angry. If you leave, he gets sad. And you can also even surprise him," says his creator, Richard Bowden, lecturer at the University of Surrey.

Jeremiah works on vision, reacting in a preset way to the data sent by a surveillance system. It is not yet able to talk or to hear you.

Bowden believes virtual humans could be a natural way to interact with all the new hi-tech gadgets.

"If you get up at three o'clock in the morning, and you go downstairs, there are probably two things you are going to do: either going to the bathroom, or maybe you are going to make a cup of tea," said Dr Bowden. "Now if the system can watch your behaviour over time, it can learn this, so it would predict what you are going to do, turn on the lights for you, or, before you even get to the kettle, it could have switched it on."

You could even tell your home surveillance system that you will be going away on holiday, and ask if it could make sure that the house is secure.

"When we put the surveillance cameras in our centre, a lot of people were very unhappy about the fact that there was a system watching them," said Dr Bowden.

"But when Jeremiah's camera went in, nobody minded, because although it's still watching them, they could see what it was watching."

Via BBC News.

Gaetano Borriello, a University of Washington computer scientist has developed a working prototype of a smart swatch system.

Like pretty anything called "smart" these days, it works with RFID tags.

The wristwatch acts as an interface, driven by a personal server the wearer can carry in a pocket, but which will eventually be a part of the wristwatch itself. Important items are labeled with RFID tags and RFID readers are installed at various locations to read the tags.

The UW smart watch system works as follows: an RFID reader senses the tags on, say, your books, relays the data to the personal server in your pocket. The server checks if anything has been forgotten, and if so, it sends a prompt to the wristwatch to alert you.

The server also takes into account the last known location of items, your calendar and where you may be going.

�This is really part of a larger effort to create an RFID-enabled building, a sort of microcosm of what society would be like if these things take off,� said Borriello who hopes to have a building-wide system up and running within a year.

Via Washington Engineer.

Matsushita Electric Works has developed the human skin data transmission technology and started selling it to manufacturers of mesuring apparatuses including Teraoka Seikou.

Teraoka Seikou will be able to build a system for sales agents who sell, for example, meat by weight. They will wear a wrist-band that accumulates information. When a customer orders, say, ground beef, a sales agent touches a corresponding digitally-enhanced product information card. This data is transmitted through the sales agent's skin and stored in his wristband. When he puts some ground beef on an electronic scale and touches it the data in thewrist band are transmited to the scale.

The technology can be used both for "human-human communication " and "human-machine" communication.

From Trends < RFID in Japan < ITMedia News, September 13, 2004 (in Japanese; some photos)