tantramar

Connected Cats

This is Gus and Penny. They are nice cats who are loved by their owners and as such they are given very nice food by their owners. Unfortunately for Gus and Penny the other cats in the neighbourhood know that Gus and Penny have much better food than everyone else, so they sneak in and steal it!

You may recall that the owners of Gus and Penny love them very much. Well, are they going to sit around and just take this? Certainly not! They created an RFID cat flap so only Gus and Penny can enter. The RFID chips in their collars alerting the cat flap to their presence.

Pretty good huh?

This is only half the story though. Gus and Penny's doting parents then set up a camera to take a picture whenever either cat when in or out of the cat flap and yes, connected this to a twitter stream. Possibly the best use of technology I've seen all year.

Wanna know how they did all this? Click here.

The Social Media Mainstream Invasion

Things on the social media front seem to be going a lot more mainstream of late. The world has been in love with Facebook for some time but Twitter it seems can do no wrong currently in the press. As a result everyone I've ever met is now trying to be my friend on there which presents numerous problems, such as me not wanting to follow that many more people but sort of being forced to by being polite. I'm feeling slightly invaded, which is of course ridiculous as I'm not exactly entitled to be left alone in a socially interactive, open sharing environment... I'm clearly confused.

Then a few days ago somehow one of the pictures on my Flickr went top ten on Digg (oh joy). Anyway, then 175,000 people came to have a look and lots of them decided they wanted to be my friend, simply because the picture was on Digg! It's like being made captain of the football team when you were happy just carrying the oranges.

I hope this kind of thing can settle down a touch. Clearly people who use digital services all vary according to how social they all want to be. This is only going to get more complicated for everyone as all this stuff becomes used by one and all. I hope the filters get better, they're going to need to.

Nice Package

I love eBay for many reasons. It has everything I've ever wanted (almost). It lets you snoop through people's stuff (sort of). And you can get nice things in the post (if you buy stuff). I got this package the other day from Holland. How lovely is that?

With stupidly amazing stamps to boot. I was flabbergasted. It took me a while to justify opening it. The guy obviously enjoys sending records out and packaging them up. How wonderful.

In this digital age it often worries me that we're loosing the charm out of so many of the analogue processes we took for granted previously. I'm sure I've waffled on about this before.

It's why I took part in Russell's Dawdlr and might do again when I think of another idea. And it's why I think this is so brilliant.

I always look to try and incorporate charm in the digital things I design but it's not always the easiest element to squeeze in when it's often not really essential to the service. But often essential to the experience.

It's made me want to do something crowd sourced with the postal service. Thinking hat on.

Communciate With Charm

It's the simple things that make us smile. Good lateral thinking. This is what we need to think about when designing communication services. Keeping it in the here and now.  Focus on the the stuff people actually see and engage with. After all, charm costs so very little.

As seen on a gallery door in Brighton.

Feeling Swell

Summize labs is the kind of thing that you can play with, not really agree with or understand but still enjoy, so that's pretty good, if entirely useless. It can be amusing too. Basically this particular tool analyses what people are saying (on Twitter) around certain subjects and categorises the 'general feeling'. Finding holes in this concept is like finding holes in the London water system; pretty easy.
Anyway it still provided me with some entertainment.

I'm feeling swell...

The place where I work is great...

But then it seems Twitter folk think genocide is 'swell'

Hmmm. Back to the labs boys. I couldn't find anything really bad and I tried the most heinous things I could think of.

NFC on TFL = too many TLAs

Transport For London have been trialling these NFC (near field communication) boards on the tube.

I don't go on the tube much and I go through Blackfriers (where they are being tested) about once a year so I hadn't seen one until recently.

I was simply curious if anyone has used them? Any good?

They are meant to relay information about your local area (tube stop) onto your phone and give recommendations

As location aware mobile services are falling off the back of lorries right now isn't this all a bit two years ago?

Box Of Tricks

I spend a bit of time musing over technology and its role within communication. We're in an intermediary phase at the moment where signals and embedded tech aren't ubiquitous and we haven't worked out the best way of designing communication technology interactions yet.

We're extremely sociable creatures. Every physical communication we do is littered with subtle nuances and signs as to what we're thinking and saying. Technology really hasn't done much to help this. It has reduced almost every type of communication to tapping out little messages on some kind of keypad. We have a little way to go obviously, as this method really doesn't deliver much satisfaction.

I saw this concept device (above) recently and it really intrigued me. While it's not changing the world it is quite physically playful in relation to how we send messages.

It basically sends an update to all your message platforms - IM, Facebook, mobile phone, email etc. You set (online) whatever messages you choose (for each face) and then turn it over to display one at any given time. So for example you could set; I'm driving, in a meeting, punishing the maid, whatever. Just... for fun and of course, easy communication.

I'd like to see a lot more devices that play with physical gestures to communicate messages. They're coming. Nintendo (if no one else) has seen to that.

Via Greener Grass

Android

A lot of the videos I've seen for Android have been pretty ropey, this one is pretty good...

Marxisms

I just found a Marx Brothers Twitter feed. Honestly, that's going to improve my day if nothing else.

Please Mr Postman

I bumped into Mark Pawson the other day randomly in Soho and he gave this little badge documenting the moment. I thought it was a charming idea and it got me thinking about how we communicate what we're up to, in the real world, you know, offline.

Online, this is very nicely catered for by the likes of Twitter and Facebook updates - 'John Doe is...clipping his toe nails'. In the real world (sans technology) this has all but faded away.

We used to have letters and postcards, for personal correspondence but these two are mere shells of what they once were. Physical correspondences such as these are far more exciting and charming than anything online and I think it's a shame we've lost touch with them.

I see the online / offline communication relationship as a marriage, where a complete experience needs both to function seamlessly together, creating more than the sum of the parts. I think it's something that is only just starting to happen properly. I welcome the change.

I'm actually working on a project with this very subject. I'll be revealing more of it later in the week.