Monday, April 30, 2007

Feedback please

Here are some of the shortened diary entrees I might use for the shirts...what do you think?

4/30/07
I never broke a bone in my body. My body is a miracle.
4/18/07
Today someone stole my empty, old fanny pack that was attached to my bicycle.
3/14/07
I finally found my collection of my baby teeth.
3/9/07
Rainbows and unicorns are beautiful.
3/2/07
I am having a hip pack and sweats party today because it is my birthday.
2/24/07
Karaoke is the only material possession I could never live without.
2/8/07
I will spend the rest of my life missing you.
1/30/07
I convince myself that the things I wish would happen will happen.
1/16/07
I have an inflatable castle, costumes and a karaoke machine in my basement.
1/8/07
I stepped on my fish by accident, but he survived it.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Progress of NYCAbandonedLover


The designed tag with “lover number” is to put on the top of the discarded item for promoting NYCAbandonedLover and encouraging following stories from the person who took it. Link to NYCAbandonedLover

Project Update: QR code

I decided to make a series of shirts with QR code of my personal diary entries. Because there is a limit to the amount of text capacity in each QR code I had to make several parts for each diary entry. Each part will be on a different T-shirt, worn by a different person in a different location. There is no way of knowing what the next part of the entry is without finding the follow up t-shirt. I am thinking of having the diary entries on the website as well or incorporating the site in another way, but I have not decided yet. The website is a work in progress right now but can be viewed here.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Work In Progress..

Here are some of the wallpapers that I will have available on the website.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Final Project


GRAPHICAL REDESIGN
-
For my final project I will be creating a set of wallpapers for cellphone users (mainly users of my particular phone, the Helio Drift). People will be able to go to a website and download wallpapers for their phones. In addition to this I will attempt to redesign certain graphical portions of my phone, these include: animated outgoing/incoming call screens, animated wallpapers, animated number screen (shows the numbers on screen as they are pressed), animated power on/off screen, and I would also like to redesign the main menu.
-TECHNICAL HURDLES
- I still have to figure out the best file types needed for various animated screens. I have already determined the format for wallpapers, and have already gotten some custom walls on my phone.
- Need to determine if I can even alter the main menu.
- Not sure if website should be cellphone accessible? Should the wallpapers and other screens be able to be downloaded directly to the phone? I don't know much about created websites accessible from cellphones.
(above: example of one of the wallpapers 240 x 320)

Revised Project Idea

- project name: NYC Abandoned Lover

- project descirption: We are developing a blog which collects all the stories of the abandoned lovers we found on the NYC streets. These abandoned lovers which refers to those discarded items used to have important roles in their lovers' home but were deserted after they were not needed. This blog is a moblog which contains entries posted from our cellphone. We want to use this moblog to raise public awareness of recycling.


- precedents:

1) http://www.freecycle.org/

2) http://garbagescout.com/

- prototype: http://nycabandonedlover.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Update for SMS Outdoor Game Idea


So after a massive redesign of the massive outdoor game, it is now a combination of Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost's game Cruel 2 B Kind and Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught.

It is a territorial assassin game that will cause random acts of kindness. All player feedback will occur through an SMS Gateway.

Here's the first draft of the game's design doc.

Jane McGonigal posted new footage from the GDC version of Cruel 2 B Kind here.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Project Proposal

Barcode shirts: I want to create a series of shirts that have mobility 2D barcodes on them. They will be readable by mobile phones. Someone can use their phone to scan the barcode on the shirt. The scan will translate the barcode to reveal the profile of the person wearing the shirt. You can see the persons age, name, interests, or whatever they chose as their profile. I plan to silkscreen this code on the shirts. I can use either of the following websites to create my own barcodes: Quickmark or Kaywa. For now I will make simple barcodes that reveal one word or a URL when you scan them. Full profiles are more complicated to create and I think it could be more interesting to have one word or statement. U.S phone companies do not program thier phones with the technology needed to scan these barcodes, so testing this project will be difficult. I hope to expand on this idea and put barcodes on ties, backpacks and jewelry. A similar project already exists and is described here: Shyno. Instead of using barcodes, these shirts have sms code. If you are interested in the person wearing the shirt you can go to the website and send a message to the person. I don't plan on this being a "matchmaking" project. I am more interested in using the barcodes to represent random words and ideas that might trigger conversations between people.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Cell Phone Sonar Proposal

The concept behind Cell Phone Sonar was to create a big-scale outdoors game that exists in both in a virtual space and real space. In the game, players would navigate the gaming space by getting feedback from their cellphones. So if a player needed to work through a maze or find a node location, the cell phone would be able to give them some direction.

This project would focus entirely on getting the cell phone to work as a feedback device for navigating a game space. This could work off of GPS location, tower location, or both. How the player interacts with the phone to find a location would be limited to the best possible technological solution, but it should be clear enough for the player to find their way.

Known Issues: There is several major problems that have emerged in the research to make this project. First, not every cell phone has GPS available. Tower location is dependent on the cell phone's service. The biggest problem is getting a universal application made for multiple cell phone types that will check location. Though it would be possible to map a pre-selected area using Mike Edward's Sydewynder, there would need to be an application installed to every player's phone that would check for location. This could be player-initiated or check on an interval, but since there is no universal coding language for cell phones, and each model needs a re-coded application, this project seems dead in the water.

It may be possible to build a Sydewynder version of Cell Phone Sonar through one of the school's Nokia phones, but this would be limited to one phone and wouldn't be applicable to a big-scale game.

Project Idea

- project member: Chia-Ying Lin and Hsiao-Ying Huang

- project descirption: We are interested in making use of cellphone as a useful tool for spreading and receiving information quickly and easily. We would like to set up an interface for people to share information of recycled items in New York City
1) Users need to register to become a member of the webiste.
2) Share info: If a person finds a recycled item on New York street or wants to give out a recycled item, he/she can send a text message with specified format to the website. Rule for Text Message: item: red leather sofa and a bunch of wooden chairs, very good condition; location: 13th st. & 6th ave.
3) Receive info: The website will then send out this information to the registered members with the specified requirements. For example, if a person specifies the need of a sofa in east village, he/she will be informed if this kind of information becomes available. Rule for Requirement: item: sofa; location: brooklyn.
4) Question: Do we need to send out the message to users when the item is taken?

- precedents:
1) http://www.freecycle.org/
2) http://www.equipfinder.com/

bujemu


Yudi and I are going to make a project that brings different religions together in the form of advice. The advisors are Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad (this is what bujemu stands for). The interaction will be that the user sends a text message with the word "love" and then gets a reply that states what each religious figure says about love. Hopefully this project can also promote discussion about the significant similarities between religions and their views.

Project Idea

Kate and I came up w/this idea: We are going to explore the notion that we do not control our phones, our phones control us. Take the Forbes editor Dennis Kneale who lasted 40 hours in what was supposed to be a week without his cell phone (amongst other things such as e-mail). Clearly the technology has a hold over us as we’ve grown to become reliant on it. We are setting out to show this in a more literal sense where our actions are controlled by voters via text messages.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Project Ideas

My first idea was a dating service using cellphones: People can have profiles with a picture on their phone, when they come in range of others with a compatible profile, their phones will let each other know, exchanging profiles, pictures, and contact information.
Quickly after searching for this in google, I had found that some MIT students had already done this, or at least come up with the idea. Blind Dating Via Text Messaging
Second idea: I was thinking that restaurants, stores, clubs, drug dealers, and other businesses could somehow send out a text message to people who come within range, with their information such as special events, prices, menus, special offers, etc. Bluetooth in Grocery Store
Third idea: With your cellphone, you would be able to purchase products in an actual store while physically in it. For example, if you a see a cd and want to buy it, but don't want to wait in line, you can use your credit card to purchase it on your phone. A signal would be sent that turns off the signal emitted by the cd so that when walking out of the store, alarms would not go off.