dessalles

More conference note-iness…

The first panel I attended at this year’s SXSW was Kill Your Mouse: Kinetic Computing Arrives Main Stage, which was of the persuasion that the keyboard and mouse, perennial all-rounders, will be out performed by a growing number of specialized, role-playing “natural user interfaces” – optimally tailored for specific applications and generally more pleasurable to use. No clear definition was offered as to what makes an interface “natural”, but the panelists threw out some interesting ideas. Kai Huang, co-founder of Red Octane (publisher of Guitar Hero), talked about pulling game elements out of the screen and placing them into the hands of users. These physical interfaces then become social objects around which social experiences organize. Following the same line of thought, Kristin Alexander from the Microsoft Surface Computing group discussed how the human scale of some physical interfaces enable richer multi-user experiences (à la Microsoft’s Surface). And Brewster Kahle seemed on the verge of declaring the death of general computing in favor for “appliance computing”. The common thread of the panelists seemed to be that these specialized, contextual, human scale, physical interfaces have the potential to flatten all but the steepest learning curves with their “natural” intuitiveness. continue reading »

Sifting through SXSW panel notes…

The Supercollider: A Hero of the Social Network set out to understand what influence the well-connected have on the formation and usage of social web services. The intended conversation about “Supercolliders” wasn’t particularly interesting, but panelists Ben Cerveny and Matt Jones did drive a more compelling sub-plot about flow-based social networking. While neither attempted an explicit classification, both seemed to paint an impression of two types of social apps: The first class being services where the distribution of information is informed by pre-defined relationships – you receive photos I uploaded because we had previously declared each other as friends. And the second class of services are ones where the flow of information is what defines relationships – we are friends because we regularly send each other photos we’ve uploaded. The general consensus of the panelists was that the first, more “traditional”, model is proving increasingly ill-suited to support the activities of these extra-social, collision-prone users. Jen Bekman, qualifying herself as a Supercollider, described her network fatigue as a consequence of the inadequacies of this first class of services. She described the frequent problem she faces of forgetting what personal informational and media is being sent to whom as a result of having to define relationships long-before the need to share information arises. And she described the handicapping of services she uses as a result of tailoring her use to suit the least-common denominator relationships in her diluted, hyperextended social networks. continue reading »

[Ghettoblaster for the Commodore 64]

Attended the SXSW session Mobile Phones: International Devices of Mystery today, where Matt Jones (filling in for some absent panelists) discussed his idea of “jealous” devices and expressed frustration with how these jealous, attention-craving mobile phones insist on pulling their owners into the screens – instead of pushing information out for shared, heads-up, social consumption. He also talked briefly about the “annoying” phenomenon of London, bus-riding teens playing hip-hop through the totally unsuitable speakers of their phones. This practice, not unknown to NYC subways, recalls the fabled, 80s past-time of walking down streets with a shoulder mounted boombox. And when I think about it, the boombox may be the only personal, portable device specifically designed for shared, public consumption – and specifically for sharing with strangers. So I imagine Matt’s onto something. Today, there does seem to be an unfulfilled need to more easily pull media out of personal devices for real-time sharing. continue reading »