Sunday, July 8, 2007
The XO-1 (nee OLPC, nee $100 laptop), for those who don’t know, is a computing platform developed specifically for young children in developing nations. It has been designed from scratch to address the needs of this unique audience.
Recently I have become interested in designing devices that empower childen (the “Children’s TV” is my first design in this regard). As part of my research I bought a Texas Instruments “Speak & Spell” which is a computer designed to help the children of the 80’s learn the alphabet and how to spell.
After playing with the Speak & Spell for a bit I realized that the keyboard is a kid-friendly ABCDEF layout rather than the typical QWERTY found on most keyboards.
Perhaps there should be the option for XO-1 users to physically change their keyboards. Youngsters can start with ABCDEF and advance to the less intuitive (but standard) QWERTY layout when they enter grade-school.
~ This post also appears at creativesynthesis.net
Saturday, June 23, 2007
My brain has turned to mush after listening to the host of some PBS show masturbate to wine for the whole afternoon. Just becasue it’s in HD is no longer an excuse for me to watch. Ugh. But it did get me thinking about an idea I had a while ago. The idea? The “Wine Fogger”.
It’s simple really. You place an active ultrasonic transducer (like the one’s found in novelty fog machines) in the wine glass and it creates a wine fog. The idea is to aid connoisseurs with acquiring a wine’s nose, or smell. With the Wine Fogger you can really make sure that you are _really_ getting a good whiff. The Wine Fogger would also aid casual drinkers to really get the most out of their wine drinking experience.~ You may have seen this before on my old MIT Media Lab Blog. I’m just re-publishing it here for convenience.~ OK, here’s an update. I tried a makeshift version of the Wine Fogger. It does work, but needs some tweaking. Anyways, here is a picture of me “experimenting” with it:
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Designer Hussein Chalayan (along with Swarovski) has created a dress bedazzled with LED lights. Adding a second diffusing layer of fabric over his interesting (some say sky-scraper like) pattern really evokes the whole cyberpunk theme. It will be interesting to see if this high-profile design can make the public accept electronics in designer clothes.
I have been working on a similar design (but with a twist) that I call kameraflage™. Learn more about it here soon.
[via 浙江在线新闻网站版权所有]
