Media Technology

MarsFlag is a new search engine in Japan (went live in March) that provides links as thumbnail images of returned results instead of text, with larger-version pop-ups when you rollover with the mouse. Supports full-text search (e.g. this search on wearable computer) as well as pictorial topic areas like movies, fashion magazines and motercycles.

According to Internet Watch [JP → EN], the search engine at least in part determines results ranking using bookmarks kept by the 35,000 subscribers to the Mark Agent web-based bookmarking service that the company also owns. MarsFlag claims this helps thwart attempts to gain page rank by creating link farms, a process called search engine optimization. (Presumably that’ll only work until SEO companies start generating fake Mark Agent accounts…)

Tech-On reports that Matsushita (Panasonic) showed off a new prototype color eBook reader with a 5.6″, 210 points-per-inch display at the NE Technology Summit 2005 event held in Tokyo yesterday. Given that their current grayscale Σ book uses a bistable display made by Kent Displays, I would hazard a guess that their prototype is using Kent’s new color ChLCD display (but that’s just a guess). Bistable displays like the ChLCD and eInk‘s microcapsule display (used in the Sony LIBRIé) take power to change an image but not to maintain it, so they’re incredibly low power for low-framerate applications like eBooks.

(via engadget by way of Steve)

Another nice Google Maps reuse: gmapPedometer. Chart your bike/running/walking/tourism route and see how far you’ve gone (not to mention get a pretty satellite image, and a URL you can use to bookmark or email to friends).

(Thanks to Jill for the link!)

Interesting tidbit from Ian Smith (Intel Research) here at NPUC 2005, who says that Beki Grinter at Georgia Tech predicts that within a generation doorbells in Europe will be obsolete. Apparently teens in Europe SMS or phone their friends instead of ringing the doorbell so they don’t have to risk talking with parents.

Technorati tag: npuc2005

Quick resource tip: Spark Fun Electronics is a cool little online electronics & prototyping-supply shop. Good descriptions & spec sheets with the hardware hacker in mind. (Thanks to Thad for the link!)

I tested the battery on my iPod yesterday to see if I qualified for the $50 store credit Apple’s offering to settle a class-action lawsuit. No dice for me — my 3-year-old first-generation 10 Gig iPod (specced to last 10 hours) does, in fact, still last around 9.5 hours continuous play from a full charge.

About a year ago I mentioned how the “virtual band” The Bots had put up a public-domain database of G.W. Bush audio clips to help would-be remixers get started. Their own rap Fuzzy Math is fun, but IMO succeeds mostly on the novelty of hearing GW saying things he’d never cop to in real life. The mixes over at The Party Party (by the band (me)™)) take GW mixing to the next level. The music stands on its own, and they turn the inherent choppiness of the mixing process into an advantage by fitting it with the natural rhythm of the music. (Be sure to especially check out My name is RX, a cross between Bush, Sympathy for the Devil and Slim Shady.)

A couple fun tools that’ve crossed my path the last few days:

• GMapTrack: Make your own paths and waypoints in Google Maps (via Nivi)
• Rastorbator: Rastorize images into PDF files, for printing wall-sized posters (via Jofish)

(I was going to post GMerge as well, but it’s been taken down after receiving what has to be the most friendly cease-and-decist letter I’ve ever read…)

This year’s UbiComp 2005 conference will include a one-day workshop on Ubiquitous Computing, Entertainment and Games:

The theme of this workshop is ubiquitous computing entertainment, playful social networking, and games. Our goals are to provide a productive forum in which international researchers, members of the entertainment industry, game players, game designers, and game publishers can discuss key issues in ubiquitous gaming, present and future uses of ubiquitous computing that create compelling, playful and socially beneficial gaming experiences, and to facilitate an exchange of ideas that will allow ubiquitous games to break out of their current “niche” and into the mainstream.

The workshop will be September 11th, 2005 in Tokyo.

The PostSecret blog is a “community art project where people mail-in their secrets on one side of a homemade postcard.” Some are thoughtful, some disturbing, some kinda silly, but almost all are high quality. I think Sarah Boxer’s NYT Arts Review nails why that’s the case:

The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself. That one constraint is a great sieve. It strains out lazy, impulsive confessors.

For PostSecret, you write, type or paste your secret on a postcard, and then, if you want, decorate the card with drawings or photographs. Next the stamp and then the mailbox. Yes, it’s work to confess. And it should be, if only for the sake of the person who might be listening.

That’s a lesson we need to remember as we design for more and more frictionless communication — sometimes a little friction is exactly what you want. (A special thanks to my dad for the link.)