Samanunga

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade – a bland grey.(…)

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

full article @ news.bbc.co.uk

On the risk of publishing old news, still thought it was interesting to blog this article (released feb 09) in the light of the previous message:

Nature Words Dropped From Children’s Dictionary

To make way for modern tech terms such as BlackBerry, blog, voicemail and broadband, the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has opted to drop terms pertaining to nature. No longer can a child check this dictionary and learn more about the blackberry, dandelion, acorn, heron, otter, magpie, sycamore, or willow.

Full article @ ecochildsplay.com

The NPR, the National Public Radio (USA), asked their audience about what children do with technology. The responses gave a nice overview of the current momentum of technology in the life of the very young.

“We saw a bit of trend in your stories: cell phones + water = gadget death. A surprising number of variations on that theme involved toilets, pet water bowls and kid drool. Still a whole other category involved stories of repeated 911 dialing, hiding tech toys from stressed parents and inserting all sorts of food into drives and slots of all kinds.

But not all stories involved destruction or police knocking at the door. Below are some of the standouts (…)”

Submitted through Twitter:

• 4 year old learned to type his name on my first blackberry
• Last night my daughter used my cell phone as a flash light in bed after lights out.
• …etc – more in the original article

full article @ npr.org

Being a speedy cyclist I hope this phenomenon stays on the other side of the Canal: British police is using a lasergun to catch speedy cyclists in Bournemouth; preferred speed is 10mph (16,1 km/h). That is s-l-o-w—m-o-t-i-o-n!

Okay okay, that is on a promenade along the seaside.

full article @ BBC
hele artikel @ volkskrant

First thing I am going to look into after my PhD is EBD for User Research. The first time I heard about this approach was when Marc Hassenzahl explained the similarities between usability specialists and GP’s in his keynote at the CHI-NL conference 2007. Rob Tannen convinced me again of the fruitful approach in User Centred Design.

Read his article @ Use8

Very excited to hear Hiroshi Ishiguro. He is professor and director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory in Osaka, Japan. In robot development, Professor Ishiguro concentrates on the idea of making a robot that is as similar as possible to a live human being. He is famous for creating various replicas of persons, such as himself.

On the side of UX-methods it is interesting to hear Gilbert Cockton speak for our community. At the CHI Nederland Conference 2009: Change! Gilbert Cockton will talk about ‘Quadricentric Design’, arguing that a design process should not proactively privilege one perspective, but shift attention as needed between designed artifacts, design purpose, design beneficiaries and design evaluation.

More keynote speakers @ chi-conferentie.nl

Modestly bringing to your attention that I will be presenting too, track Reflection/Methods; reflecting on the use of creative methods in HCI.