Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 636

Augmented Reality: Junaio Glue

*Kind of a grumpy Web Semantics flame here, but…. Why do they have to name themselves "Metaio" and "Kooaba," and have platforms with names like "Junaio" with apps with names like "Glue?" Wouldn't it have been simpler to cut to the chase and name yourself "Glue?" "We're Glue. We glue virtual images onto real stuff." Would simple, user-friendly names have been so very hard to create?

Arphid Watch: RFID Injections for Senile Wanderers

*Haven't heard from the Verichip human-injection schemers lately. Makes sense they'd show up with Newt Gingrich in tow.

*The "Center for Health Transformation." Yeah, that's transformative health all right: you're an old, weak, helpless, broke Baby Boomer in a wrecked society top-heavy with the elderly. Livestock tracking injections, utter lack of privacy? A small price to pay!

*Maybe I can get my Facebook profile to boot up automagically when I bring my subcutaneous scanner tag within...

L'Artisan Electronique

*It's an elaborate mash-up of a gesture recognition system, a modelling system and a fabricator. And it makes, uhm, plastic sculptures. Did I mention the lasers?

via @generatorx

http://www.creativeapplications.net/openframeworks/lartisan-electronique-openframeworks/

Setting up L'Artisan Electronique at Z33 from tim K on Vimeo.

Showtime: 419 spammers perform the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch

*I really don't know what to say. Maybe it's a scam. A fraud. A charade. Except it's free, and didn't ask me for money. I'm confused.

*Also, it's three years old and only had 57,000+ hits. Surely it oughta have at least fifty million.

Share Festival: Smart Mistakes

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ENGLISH VERSION

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Newsletter 05.31.2010

Piemonte Share - /SMART MISTAKES/ Share Festival 2010

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VI Piemonte Share...

Share Prize for electronic artists; deadline coming up

*It is my pleasure and privilege to judge this thing. Are you an electronic artist? Does the prospect of hanging out in glamorous Turin munching grissini and swilling Barbera appeal to you? Do you realize that Share Festival will fly you and your hardware over here? Send in an entry.

Dear friends of the Share Festival,

we are proud to announce our call for entries for the Share Prize 2010, an international prize for digital works of art.

Entries to the competition should be submitted from...

The Facebook Suicide Bomb Manifesto

Sean Dockray wrote:

Everyone now wants to know how to remove themselves from social networks. It has become absolutely clear that our relationships to others are mere points in the aggregation of marketing data. Political campaigns, the sale of commodities, the promotion of entertainment – this is the outcome of our expression of likes and affinities. And at what cost? The reward is obvious: we no longer have to tolerate advertisements for things for which we have no interest. Instead our...

You'll Be Sorry That You Gleefully Messed Up Those Gestures

*Donald Norman may be a curmudgeon, but he's the thinking man's curmudgeon.

http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/gestural_interfaces_a_step_backwards_in_usability_1.html

"…some critics claimed that it is reasonable to experiment with radically new interaction techniques when given a new platform. We agree. But the place for such experimentation is in the lab.

"After all, most new ideas fail, and the more radically they depart from previous best practices, the more likely they are to fail. Sometimes, a...

Showtime: Arc Attack Tesla Coil Dr. Who Theme

*This thing is achieving fantastic new heights and lows of fanboy mashup schlock at the same time.

Showtime: Destino, by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali

*Okay — "Destino" was just a blue-sky effort from 1946, a Dali-Disney collaborative project that was never produced. Not until it was reinvented and released as this pastiche-effort in 2003.

*But boy, is this thing ever weird. It really and truly feels like it comes from some radically different version of the 20th century. Maybe one where Andre Breton is prime minister of France. This is mainstream commercial American Surrealism. It's like Norman Rockwell on acid.

*It's that schlocky...