Events

Maker Camp is doing a virtual field trip to one of our launches today! Join the live hangout at 11am PDT to see what I do, or at least what I support (they’ll hopefully show a bit of Mission Control after the launch — that software is the part I’m responsible for). Originally shared by […]

This should be interesting:

Designing Cute Interactive Media
in conjunction with The ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems

Cuteness has an effective design philosophy that can be used in many areas to make emotionally engaging user interactive systems, as well as evaluate existing systems. Cuteness can also be included as an engineering design framework that can assist designers and engineers when creating engaging interactive systems that motivate the user in a happy, positive manner.

The main goal of this workshop is to provide designers with a better understanding of developing ways to enhance the positive experience and effectiveness of interactive media by utilizing the psychological and culturally developed effects of cuteness. We would also like to explore a range of interactive experiences involving the idea of cuteness and examine the related components. Based on these experiences, the next generation user interfaces can be built to take advantage of the cuteness factor and its unique effects on the experience which can establish and maintain more meaningful relationships with the users and encourage happiness, self confidence, motivate the user to action, and provide overall positive experiences.

This coming September 1st (Saturday of Labor Day weekend) at about 11:36 ± 20 minutes UT (4:36 am PDT) the Earth will be passing through the dust trail of Comet Kiess, the only known case of crossing the dust trail of a known long-period comet in our lifetime. It’ll create an impressive meteor shower called the Aurigids, since the meteors will appear around the constellation Auriga. The shower will be visible from California, Oregon, Hawaii and the Eastern Pacific, with best viewing towards the East and NorthEast.

Wonder if it’d be visible from Black Rock City?

The Instructables Show and Tell (formerly Squid Labs Light Salon) is this Friday in Alameda and Saturday in Boston. Not sure if I’ll be able to make it to this one but the last one I went to was a blast.

This Wednesday through Sunday at The Crucible in Oakland: The The 6th annual Fire Arts Festival.

Two talks that look interesting at BayCHI this Tuesday, July 11 at 7:30 at PARC in Palo Alto:

• The Dunbar Number, Unstructured Trust, and Why Groups Don’t Scale, Christopher Allen, writer & columnist, Life With Alacrity

• The Real Nature of the Emerging Attention Economy: Seen As a New Level in the Massively Multiplayer Game Known as Western Culture, Michael H. Goldhaber

(Thanks to Perlick for the heads up.)

For those in the Bay Area, Will Wright (creator of “Sim City” and the forthcoming “Spore”) and Brian Eno (British musician) will be speaking at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco next Monday (June 26th) at 7pm as part of The Long Now Foundation’s seminar series. Reservations are $8 ($10.50 after fees) from City Box Office, and are highly recommended because this will sell out fast.

(I just picked up my ticket — if you’re going let me know and I’ll keep an eye out for you.)

For those in the SF or LA area, Negativland is performing live in San Francisco on June 10th and two shows in LA on June 12th.

If you’re a SF Bay Area local, this Wednesday Joel Birnbaum (head of research at IBM in the 70s and HP in the 80s) will be speaking in Mountain View on The History of the Future of the City. I’d be going, but I’ll be in Boston for the MIT Media Lab’s Things That Think Spring Event.

(Thanks to Perlick for the heads-up…)

For you local folk, on Monday evening Douglas Hofstadter will be giving a special lecture at Stanford University on Analogy as the Core of Cognition. The event is free and open to the public. (Thanks to Perlick for the link.)

Update 2/7/06: Perlick and I both attended, and he posted a summary on his blog.