Recently i had a discussion with one student on her project related to maps for travelers. We had thought of an idea of having panoramic view of the street instead of using conventional maps. If we see Indian scenario, then very few people use maps, instead they would prefer asking some one about the place. Perhaps a new way of navigation could encourage them to use that application. As an extension of that discussion, we came across Google Redefines GPS Navigation Landscape: Google Maps Navigation For Android 2.0 which i feel has some interesting features. The most interesting i found is, street navigation through street view only, instead of conventional maps view. I feel, looking at the actual street view will encourage users to use this application, because people can relate it very well. There are other features also, which can be viewed here in the video.

As a part of mediamatic RFID hackers camp, RFID photobooth was created during Picnic conference. The photo booth team consisted of Timo Arnall, Anne Helmond, Jorn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen. The idea was to create something that brought people together both in a physical activity and in an online social network.

“A photo booth that encourages people to take photos of themselves with others. By waving multiple tags over a touchpoint inside the booth, a photo is taken, a connection is made and pictures are added to the Picnic website”

A large white box was constructed, with a picnic-themed grassy interior that allowed up to about 10 people to have their photo taken at once. Inside there was an RFID reader, a camera and a screen that would show what was being recorded, as well as showing a countdown for picture taking. Outside a large LCD screen showed recent and random pictures from the booth, encouraging participation. By touching your tag to a reader outside, you could see pictures of yourself.

Photos from the booth were also uploaded to Flickr and tagged with the people’s first name (see for example all the photos taken of me and the tag cloud of the names and IDs of people who used the booth most). This realtime Flickr stream appeared on the outside of the booth, where people stood around watching their recent creations, as well as seeing random photos where they or their friends appeared.

I guess after a long vacation of almost 15 days, i am publishing a new post. Ah!! going home feels toooo good.

I have always been fan of Adam Fischer/Kitchen Budapest’s work. I was just browsing around their website and i saw a nice exploration which i thought would be nice to share. Though it is not yet a product, but they have some future plans.

“we interact with mobile phones via 15-20 small buttons, which makes it extremely hard to reach certain functions. To write the word “hello” needs 15 button presses on an average mobile. We also need long keystrokes to find someone in the contact list with hundreds of names. Voice dialling has been available for many years, but it isn’t reliable at noisy places”

” we can define gestures by recording it a few times and selecting an action. Gestures are recognized by the computer and the action is sent to the mobile. It recognizes gestures with around 97% accuracy, using 10 different gestures. Future plans include implementing the recignizer application to the mobile phone, and building external hardware that works with older mobiles too.”

Interesting exploration & nice start!!

the alloy looks at different concept of navigating through several application in a single mobile phone. Today we use number of application on our mobile phones, like games, GPS, sms, call etc. The question is how a mobile device can become more intuitive to help users understand to navigate through the application.

” Ultimately the target audience for the user interface is anyone who wants to use their mobile phone to do more in a more intuitive and user friendly way than allowed before. It is a phone that allows for older eyes and clumsier fingers as much as for the younger touch screen savvy generation. In this respect the 01 User Interface has significant cross over value and broad appeal that could be applied within any multi functioned mobile handset or multi media device “

Cheers!!