I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....
Posts related to: Representation
Mirror, mirror
Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass? A recent article in the NYTimes (Mirrors...
How does my browser know I am Indian?
Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically - in particular to my Indian origin. For instance this page (a story about ipods being used by the army) contains a set of banner ads that seek...
On finding the right (parking) spot
I had posted earlier about a "virtual speed bump" a visual illusion that make drivers think that they were approaching a speed bump when in actuality it was just a design cleverly painted on the ground. Now here's another one: Directions in a car park... As the...
Browsing for gender
Just found out about this rather nifty tool that looks at your browser history and estimates your gender. My personal results were as follows: Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 24% Likelihood of you being MALE is 76% Try it out for yourself, or read more about how...
Calvin & Jobs!
This is just too good to be true! Also see here and here.
The end of practical obscurity
There is a somewhat troubling story in NYTimes a couple of days ago: (If You Run a Red Light, Will Everyone Know?) about CriminalSearches.com, a free service that lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United...
Ask-ing Cuil questions of Google
How do we evaluate a search engine? Chris Wilson attempts to answer this question (with help from the crowd) in his article on Slate "How To Talk to a Search Engine: Three queries to help decide if Google or Cuil or Ask is right for you?" The three search items he...
By the numbers
Today's NYTimes story about an economist ranking art by the numbers (see A Textbook Example of Ranking Artworks) bothered me a bit. As the article says, David Galenson's method is based not on the aesthetic qualities of the artwork but rather on "how frequently an...
Visual thinking
While researching my previous post about véjà du and Abraham Wald I came across "The Back of the Napkin Blog" (a.k.a. Digital Roam). This blog is devoted to visual thinking and representation. Very cool and very interesting... well worth a visit. Turns out that there...
véjà du for the first time ever!
I learned a new term today, véjà du. As we all know (didn't I write a posting about this earlier?) déjà vu (or paramnesia) from the French meaning “already seen” describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. It...
Pogue on design
David Pogue has couple of great examples in his latest posting about bad design in the world of software. Check out: It’s the Software, Not You. Potentially useful in CEP817/917...
A cuil new search engine
Cuil (pronounced cool!)... check it out. How does it compare to Google? Functionally? Design-wise?
sci-Phone
In a previous posting I raised the question about when does a piece of technology become an educational technology? One of the coolest pieces of technology today is the iPhone. Can it function as an educational technology? I have been considering getting one for a...
Virtual speed bump
Optical illusions are usually seen as being cool visual tricks, an intriguing way of peeking into how our brain works. They have rarely been considered to be functionally useful. Here is an exception: an optical illusion seen as a virtual speed bump! Check it out...
Psychology & torture: A sad mix
Martin Seligman is one of the most eminent psychologists alive today. As his wikipedia page says, "He is well known for his work on the idea of "learned helplessness", and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of Positive Psychology." He has...
PersonalDNA & cool survey tricks
I just created a personalDNA map for myself. Turns out I am a Benevolent Inventor... beats being a benevolent dictator I say! However, this posting is concerned not with what the survey found out about me but rather about what I learned about the survey. Let's get the...
What do they know? Video projects on understanding
In my summer classes I have the participants complete a video assignment on understanding. This year as always my students worked in groups over a week-and-a-half to select their topics, develop interview protocols, video tape people as they answered their questions,...
The political psychology of images
Browsing through Nikita Prokhorov's website (see this posting about Nikita's new blog about the process of creating ambigrams) led me to a fascinating article about how symbols and the historical weight they can carry. I think a similar issue comes up regarding the...
Ambigrams and the creative process
I received an email out of the blue from Nikita Prokhorov, a freelance graphic designer and assistant professor of graphic design from Connecticut. Nikita runs a blog devoted ambigrams, but in a different kind of way. As the email said, the blog is "devoted to the art...
Distributed creativity
Re-Public: re•imagining democracy, an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, has a special issue devoted to Distributed Creativity and Design. This may be a useful resource for my Learning technology by design...
Manoranjan ka baap
The Indian Premier League, Twenty20 cricket championship was a great success. I had a chance to watch a few games (including the finals and semi-finals) when I was in india and it was a blast. This posting however is about an extremely creative commercial for the IPL...
Chinese-English Ambigrams
During my travel through Taiwan and Hong Kong, I usually opened my presentations with some bilingual ambigrams - words that can be read in Chinese AND English. These ambigrams were created by David Moser, someone I got to know, virtually, through Doug Hofstadter's...
YouTube & Research
In a previous post I mentioned a new study on children and the internet recently completed by Warren Buckleitner for Consumer Reports Web Watch. Anyway, towards the end of the post I mentioned how the final report includes links to YouTube videos of the actual data...
Slipping into uncanny valley
MindHacks has a great post related to some of my previous postings about anthropomorphizing interactive artifacts (see here and here) - just that this time these artifacts under discussion are robots. As it turns out, sometime too much similarity between humans and...
Buttoning on to a trend
There is an barely interesting article on today's NYTimes.com site by Steven Heller on campaign souvenirs being sold by the three presidential candidates through their websites (read: From Mousepads to Piggy Banks). I thought his earlier columns on the graphic design...
ZIPskinny
Just found out about this website www.zipskinny.com, a great example of how the web makes information easily available. This website allows you to enter your US zip code, and see US Census data and comparisons with neighboring ZIP codes (or other ZIP codes, upto to 20...
Senseless signage
Great examples of funny, absurd and weird signage from across the world. Archived for use in my 817 or 917 classes. Check out Senseless signage, parts I through 10.
Gender & GPS
During our recent NY / New Jersey visit (during the kids spring break) I had the first opportunity to drive a car equipped with a GPS system. It was a case of love at first sight. I got back home and bought myself a Tom Tom right away. I used this unit extensively...
Introducing India…
I had been invited to the Second Annual Internationalizing Michigan Education Conference: Building Bridges from Michigan to the World to speak about India. The title of my presentation was Learning about India, the world’s largest democracy. I was assisted in this by...