***UPDATE: There’s been a change of address. Look below for new location****

It’s that time again. That time to get your geek on and come mess around with technology and human behavior. Got any ideas for new room-based installations, new service ideas that have a multi-touch component? RFID will be a great addition to the table for new interactions like adding contacts.

Where: CanTouch.
When: Saturday, 2nd August, 2008 from 10am – 6pm

Bring your: RFID tags/readerz, Wii-mote, multi-touch “Minority Report” interfaces, empty skullz, and join your fellow reactable heads, hardware hackers, software developers, nerds, video researchers, interaction designers.

Sign up here
or send us an email to let us know y’r coming [info-at-roomwareproject.org].

This workshop is an initiative of Peter Kaptein.

Where:
Creative Crowds
Mauritskade 17
1091GC Amsterdam

Some links to inspire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU&feature=user
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AMv5mz6STo

The interesting new feature is that the networks parameter is simply a set of key-value pairs, and you can use anything as the key. So instead ofmac_address, for example, you could pass a GSM Cell ID, or a Bluetooth Device Address.….  

Once I’ve done that — gluing the Bluetooth Device Address, using the key bd_addr to the Plaze — I can now build a mobile application that scans for Bluetooth addresses and queries Plazes 

 

This is where it gets more interesting as far as Roomware is concerned, their method of using these keys as identifiers for presence could serve as an interesting use case for our own implementation of this sort of location ‘mapping’. One simple Roomware example we often talk about is using a batch of Roomware servers to act as Zones for a location for instance. Whenever someone is near one of the Roomware servers they are detected and can be placed on a map which can then be used by other applications to make a friend locater at large events or a historical timeline of visitor activity.  It’s nice to see some more working implementations in this field and maybe even the start of some standards for working with presence and network identifiers. 

New work by Chris O’Shea created with a new ‘creative C++ framework’ called OpenFrameworks.

(via Bright)

March 6, ‘07: Version 0.2 has been released! The changes for this version are:

• L2CAP client sockets for Mac OS X and Linux
• finddevicename() now takes usecache argument to specify whether to do a remote name request if name is in local cache
• stopadvertising() is now automatically called for a socket when close() is called on the socket
• Added SIS build for Series 60 3rd Edition
• If some of the SIS files for PyS60 didn’t work before, they should now
• Improved buffering of received data for sockets on Mac OS X
• Fixed recv() for mac sockets if other side has closed connection
• Fixed mac sockets to receive binary data

Great stuff! Download the latest version from the LightBlue sourceforge site.

The current version supports these types of information to be added to your photo’s:

• Locational information
  • GPS (with additional Bluetooth GPS device)
  • GSM Cell info
  • Country
  • City
• The bluetooth environment
• Calendar events
• User defined tags
• User defined description

At some point in our work we realised that the way creative people get to know about technology and how to use it was very “casual”, there was no company (that we knew of) that was completely dedicated to this.

We have been doing this for years but in a very “casual” way ourselves. Now, please welcome Tinker.it!

Tinker.it! makes products and platforms to help designers and artists make the best use of digital technologies. We cover the whole design and artistic process by providing early consultancy during the concept phase down to the implementation stage. Being part of the Arduino project means we are on the forefront of this business.

We work on three main areas of expertise:

Disseminating knowledge by teaching workshops and classes in various institutions and companies around the world.
“Experiences” are the new materials for designers and artists. We transform raw technologies into materials for creative people throught our interactive prototyping toolkit. We provide a catalogue of “experiences” that a designer or and artist can use in their projects.
Consulting designers, artists and architect on how to use digital technologies in their projects. We start at the beginning of the creative process by helping you brainstorm and continue down to the production of small series, all with Italian quality.
One area I’m particuarly fond of is this concept that for the modern designer using technology , especially sensor technology, is becoming part their everyday life. This technologies are always presented in a very “nerdy” way that has nothing to do with the “experience” they provide to whoever uses them.

Starting from this point we have been building a toolkit and a “library” that allows creative people to experience these technologies and make the “experience” the material not the chip or the piece of technology.

At the moment there is very little out there about it.. we are testing it with our “beta” users and will start revealing more and more in the next few weeks…

Next stop the tinker.it! party in milan in march… See you there.

Massimo

http://www.tinker.it/