We Have No ‘Fete’ But What We Make… Judgement Day: 5th June 2008

The next project has started and it looks to be a very interesting one, with the emphasis on a village fete style environment with many ‘booths’ (or interactive experiences in this case) that will bring the community together to raise money for the proverbial church roof.

Currently the mindmapping (formerly brainstorming) is in progress and ideas are flowing freely. These have been documented on the back of the brief but will be filled out further as the week goes on. Initially ideas were conforming to the norm of the village fete as the brief did not express the areas into which we could explore.

Here is a list of ideas that have been initially individually thought up with that in mind:

Wii Splat The Rat
Gesturing a bat swipe at a projection of the game

Wii Coconut Shy
Gesturing a ball throw at a projection of a coconut shy. As participants can’t take a virtual coconut home if they knowck one down… one will be emailed to them.

Guess the Pixels
People are given the option to guess the number of pixels in a shape on a projection (instead of jelly-beans in a jar).

Wii Tug of War
Participants use a projection mimicking their movements to move a rope

Wii Gladiators
Participants use a projection mimicking their movements to battle each other.

However after an insightful discussion, the type of ‘booth’ veered away from the traditional village fete and more towards lots of interactive experiences that would bring people together in a fete-like environment. Giving the same sense of community and also providing the same ‘pay-per-go’ attributes that would enable the restoration of the proverbial church roof.

Here is a list of ideas that stem from that discussion:

A Visual Shout Box
People make a noise that is then depicted on a projection / wall. The louder the noise the more ‘angry’ the image / animation or the more it does something. There is the possibility for many more shapes to be added by using (for example) the tone of the voice. These can then be printed or emailed to participants as a souvenir of their experience.

A Disobedient Shadow
A camera tracks the movement of a person against a wall (back projected screen) and creates a shadow them. The shadow then appears to disregard it’s own nature and take on personality indipintant from that of it’s host. The shadow could simply stop, or turn around or get angry at the fact it is always copying someone. At this point it is unclear how realistic the shadow would be or how the participant’s existing shadow would be neutralised. This is interesting because if the shadow suddenly started doing it’s own thing, would the host find themselves following their shadow?

Other more general ideas include participants being unaware of what is going on but other people can see the result of their interaction with the ‘booth’ or participants thinking they are involved in a predefined experience but in fact they are reacting to each other and THAT is the experience.

This project has a lot of potential with thing like movement tracking, gestures, unusual input, unusual responses and even expected results but an unexpected way of receiving them.

Based on feedback from Flo on previous projects this post is an attempt to write project related articles in more of a formal, third person style.

Is It A Bird, Is It A Plane… Yes It’s A Hydrogen Powered Plane

The BBC reported the successful flight of a manned hydrogen fuelled plane developed by those boffins over at Boeing. They say it is paving the way for a new generation of ‘greener’ planes as the only by-product is heat and water vapour. I am sceptical of such lofty claims by developers of such technologies however it is great to see that large companies who can actually have an impact on the global climate are trying to do something about it.

I guess I find it difficult to take heed of government campaigns on this small island about switching our TVs to standby, using a 30 degree wash and walking instead of driving. We are a major western power yes, and we contribute greenhouse gasses yes, but we are one of the smallest.

The government puts restrictions on emissions that factories have to comply with, so what do those companies do? They outsource to countries where the restrictions are more relaxed or don’t exist at all.

The fact is that in order to save the planet, the WHOLE planet needs to address the problem. Something I can’t see happening until its too late. Leading by example is just giving us the right to say “We told you so”.

New Rave On Air

Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn’t but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new ‘branded’ site is online but I’m not convinced by it. There were a few ‘must-have’ things they said needed to be put on the website… which made it harder to cut up their template. The theme had to rotate every time someone went to the site, so there was a different colour each time, easy to do - bit of javascript and several css files.

The problem was the headings HAD to be in Century Gothic font, meaning they had to be images, meaning I had to cut each heading out and create a div just for it so I could have it as the background of the div and rotate it with the stylesheet. This was made infinitely more complex as the templates I had been sent were all different sizes and alignments but obviously meant to be the same thing.

Anyway… after many hours of slaving away over Illustrator and photoshop the site is now re-branded. It does rotate the themes randomly when you hit refresh but doesn’t always work if you try to do it too often. I just grabbed the first javascript file I found.

Have a look here

Have a look at the current site www.raveonair.com

Xbox 360, Blu-Ray 180?

Microsoft are denying rumours they have done a 180 and are discussing the possibility of Taiwanese manufacturer Lite-On, makers of optical drives, possibly making a Blu-Ray player for the Xbox 360. The rumours suggested initially an external add-on for the console (like that of the now defunct HD-DVD drive) but it now appears to be an INTERNAL drive for use in the next generation of the Xbox 360 as an external drive was seen to pose problems of full HD through USB and with the HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection) which might result in movies requiring this being unable to play.

An industry ‘watcher’ has stated that if this is indeed the case, Microsoft would have to sell the upgraded Xbox 360 at a loss. The reason being the current DVD drive costing $20 per unit to Microsoft and the new Blu-Ray drive would cost $100. People would be unwilling to pay more just for the ability to play HD films and may instead turn to their competitors, the PS3, for a better deal.

I hope there is some truth to these rumours. There were also rumours about Microsoft talking to Sony about licensing their Blu-Ray technology for use in their console but they deny this as well.

With the current state of broadband connections it is naive of Microsoft to believe that consumers will be happy with a download only service for HD content. I would turn to the PS3 and play all my existing Blu-Ray movies and have another HD games console.

Fingers No Longer Your Own?

According to an article on The Register, someone has developed a proof-of-concept for a ‘bio-logger’.

You’ve heard of key-loggers for keyboards right? That log keystrokes made on a target keyboard and send the retrieved data to a USB key or via the internet to anyone. Well this new ‘gadget’ does the same thing but captures images of fingerprints from keyboard users which could then be used to create a replica fingerprint and used to access biometric-protected areas.

This just goes to show that not even your fingerprints are safe. Imagine if you will, that the government gets it’s way and introduces its identity card scheme, you use a computer that has a ‘bio-logger’ attached… hackers’, thieves and general undesirables then have your fingerprints. Which they can then use to potentially steal all of your data from anywhere that (in the future) uses biometrics as a security system. Off the top of my head I would imagine using it instead of chip-n-pin, passports, starting your car and even general identification if stopped by the police.

This reminds me of a 5 part drama that was on recently called ‘The Last Enemy’ set in the not to distant future and featuring things. But that’s another post entirely.

Just another reason why the government’s identity card system would fail miserably.