Friday, February 10, 2006

How cute...

Apple has created a 'sad ipod' icon, for when things really go wrong.
This is how it describes identifying the problem on it's website
You might see these symptoms:
: A sad or unhappy iPod icon appears on the screen.



Makes me think of Sherry Turkle's work on our emotional relationship with objects:
Now, I believe that a new kind of computational object — the relational artifact — is provoking striking new changes in the narrative of human development, especially in the way people think about life, and about what kind of relationships it is appropriate to have with a machine. Relational artifacts include children's playthings (such as Furbies and Tamagotchis), digital dolls that double as health monitoring systems for the homebound elderly (Matsushita's forthcoming Tama), sentient robots whose knowledge and personalities change through their interactions with humans, as well as software that responds to its users’ emotional states and responds with "emotional states" of their own.

The computational object is no longer affectively "neutral." People are learning to interact with computers through conversation and gesture, people are learning that to relate successfully to a computer you do not have to know how it works, but to take it "at interface value," that is to assess its emotional "state," much as you would if you were relating to another person.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

world-tracker.com

A website that allows you to track any mobile phone around the globe has been launched in the UK.

The World Tracker GSM mobile phone tracking service will cost 16p for every request made, but does mean you can keep track of children or cheating husbands.All you need to run the service is either a mobile phone, or a computer with access to the internet. There is no other hardware or software required!

The service promises to track a mobile phone accurately between 50m to 500m, however the company says this may from telephone service provider to telephone service provider. The system is compatible with any handset working on the four main UK Network providers – O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile.

Once a phone is added, we then send an SMS to the phone. The text sent to the phone is like this: Tom Smith (07712345678) has requested to add you to their Buddy List! To accept, simply reply to this message with 'LOCATE'.

world-tracker website

Spots

© 2005 Bernd Hiepe
from 33QPM by R. Lozano Hammer
If you´ve ever wanted to ask a deeply personal question on a gigantic media facade, then as from 13 December 2005 you can by taking part in the interactive art project 33 Questions per Minute by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Passers-by can type whatever questions are occupying them into a terminal that is installed within viewing distance of the SPOTS light and media facade. As the name suggests, 33 Questions per Minute will display 33 questions each minute.
Visitors were able to access the terminal from 29 November 2005 to 8 January 2006. It was located at the corner of Stresemannstrasse and Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany.


That is what visitors wrote:

13.12.2005 14:41:51
7UI9?

13.12.2005 14:43:49
DIES IST EIN TEST?

13.12.2005 15:12:25
WIE GEHT DAS?

13.12.2005 15:34:31
SOLLTEN WIR DAS RUN?

13.12.2005 15:35:23
FRAGE?

13.12.2005 15:36:14
UND AUCH AO???

13.12.2005 15:41:47
TTEST?

13.12.2005 16:29:17
TEST?

13.12.2005 16:34:56
TEST?

13.12.2005 16:38:34
HALLO?

13.12.2005 16:40:36
TESTEN SCHEINT SINNVOLL?

13.12.2005 16:47:45
WANN IST FEIERABEND?

13.12.2005 16:49:27
WO IST ULRIKE?

13.12.2005 16:50:19
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?

13.12.2005 16:52:36
TWISTWED SISTERS?

13.12.2005 16:55:20
WELCHER TAG IST HEUTE?

13.12.2005 16:57:42
0110000 011111010 01111 WAS WAR FALSCH?

13.12.2005 17:00:23
WAS KOSTED DIE WELT?

13.12.2005 17:20:48
HALLO?

13.12.2005 17:33:01
WANN GEHT ES WEITER?

13.12.2005 17:38:32
POTSDAMER PLATZ ?


basically, there was a distinct lack of deeply personal questions.....
why does SMS seem to most people, an unispirational and banal communicative medium?