New York, New York

After a short weekend away in the Big Apple I found something that may be of some interest to me in my final year. I was walking past The New York Times building on Broadway, if I'm correct, and noticed two walls filled these strange black boxes. I thought nothing of it as I knew I wouldn't be able to get in because of the security at the entrance. I turned a corner to find an entrance open to the public, perfect opportunity.


Two walls filled with about 400 6" screens. All connected to a computer. This was very weird at first sight. Each individual screen seemed to be displaying a different piece of information. Then at certain intervals, some would start and then stop making different patterns, but exactly the same on both walls. I read that the piece was called 'Moveable Type' by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin [2007] and said the following on the project




"Moveable Type is an active portrait of the New York Times that is fueled by the contents of the daily paper and to the visitors to NYTimes.com who are browsing, searching, reading and commenting. The artists have programmed the work to extract fragments - words, phrases, quotes, numbers and places - from The Times' growing, living, real-time news database, and to recombine these fragments into a series of ever changing kinetic compositions."

Interesting. Just a little bit.

Web Pathway: Interaction Design: Phidgets

After this lecture on Phidgets, the flash based user interface, it got me thinking more and more about my final year. After been told the set shown was near enough £400 I decided purchasing the set wasn't a good idea, so I set about looking at working examples of the Phidgets. I found this, and it looks like a great idea, and I bet very easy to create. Enjoy!

Research

Lately I've been thinking [but moreso worrying] about what I should research for my final year project, and I've made an inital idea to research into the affects of Web 2.0 on the world wide web and what it has done to the internet community. This will incorporate the likes of social networking and the internet been accessible almost anywhere on almost any electrical device, and how it may change in the future, to 3d internet? and actually been able to do anything without leaving your chair [which, I wouldnt recommend!]

Not a lot of research yet, but over the coming months I will hopefully be more aware of the task in hand.