Category Technology
“The next big thing is us” or Time Magazine’s take on what’s next
Business Innovation Insider reports on the cover story in this week’s TIME Magazine which looks at cutting-edge developments in nearly every sphere of human endeavor, including politics, technology, sports, medicine and fashion: There’s one unifying theme here: “We are on…
Gadgets and the consequences of their design
Man versus machine in newsreader war [Wired News]
How the masses will innovate [Business Week]
Bruce Sterling on the internet of things
Wireless networking baffles some customers [Reuters]
Jim Wicks on weaving design into Motorola’s fabric
What do European businesses and citizens think of widespread RFID use?
The role of ethnographic research in driving technology innovation – Lessons from Inside Asia
In a story in Pakistan’s Daily Times, Bill Siu (whom I presume to be an Intel Vice-President), shares some of the insights gained from Intel’s ethnographic research in Asia. The Inside Asia project team, led by Dr Genevieve Bell [which…
Improving usability to drive customers to self-service
In the fourth quarter of 2005, Forrester Research conducted a survey of more than 100 companies with annual revenues of $200 million or more. According to Nate Root, the author of the resulting study, one trend became crystal clear: Respondents…
Wi-fi set to re-wire social rules [BBC]
Once the net becomes ubiquitous like power and water, it had the potential to be “transformative”. The divide that separates people from their online lives will utterly disappear. Instead of leaving behind all those net-based friends and activities when you…
Britain turns off and logs on [The Guardian]
More time is now spent on the internet than on watching TV, according to Google survey Television addiction has been Britain’s national pastime for years, but experts agree that viewers around the country are increasingly switching on their computer screens…
Digital media ’empowering users’ [BBC]
As more media become increasingly available in digital formats, and traditional models of media packaging and distribution start to unravel, “the customer is king” is fast becoming the industry’s new catchphrase. During a session at the Financial Times Digital Media…
Most web users only visit six sites
Web users now have almost 76 million sites to choose from, yet most only visit six on a regular basis, it was revealed today. The research, published today by Directgov, points to a new era in the use of the…
Complexity causes 50% of product returns [Reuters]
Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday. Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design,…
Sun making user interaction intuitive through SPOT sensors [San Jose Mercury News]
What if you could transfer the address book from your old cell phone to a new one by tilting the old phone like a pitcher and wirelessly pouring hundreds of numbers into the new phone — instead of punching in…
Media Lab director on confronting social problems and user-driven innovation [Christian Science Monitor]
A long article in the Christian Science Monitor reflects on the new directions for the MIT Media Lab, including how it will relate with its sponsors. Director Frank Moss also speaks about confronting social problems and user-driven innovation. Moss wants…
The art of building a robot to love [The New York Times]
If robots can act in lots of ways, how do people want them to act, happy or sad, bubbly or cranky? Reporting on the recent conference on human-robot interaction in Salt Lake City, Henry Fountain of the New York Times…
Upcoming conferences on intelligent environments
Two upcoming conferences are exploring some of the implications that widely distributed technologies in our living environments (also called ambient intelligence, intelligent environments or ubiquitous computing) might have for people and the way we live. International Symposium on Intelligent…