Architectures for Conversation (ii): What Communities of Practice can mean for Information ArchitectureView more presentations from andrewhinton.

Finding Utility in the Jumble of Tweeted Thoughts – NYTimes.com.

“Twitter reverses the notion of the group,” said Paul Saffo, the Silicon Valley futurist. “Instead of creating the group you want, you send it and the group self-assembles.”

Most homes waste considerable amounts of energy, but solutions such as replacing appliances and renovating buildings are prohibitively expensive, and few people are vigilant about unplugging unused equipment and turning off lights. Econetix is developing a home energy kit that’s easy to install and will theoretically save enough energy to pay for itself in about a year.

The kit includes a “smart” thermostat that automatically optimizes heating and cooling, remote-controlled light switches that install into sockets rather than walls, and power strips that turn off standby power to unused devices. All of the kit’s elements can be controlled from a Web … Continue Reading

The phrase “ubiquitous computing” was coined by the late Mark Weiser, in work at Xerox PARC that dates back to the late 1980s. He saw ubicomp as the next logical step in our relationship with the digital tools we use, an inevitable consequence of the historic shift from many users sharing one machine to many devices serving one user. As Weiser described it, ubiquitous computing is information processing that has left the desktop behind, and been distributed throughout the built environment: “invisible, but … Continue Reading

Greener Gadgets | SmartSwitch | Peter Russo & Brendan Wypich, Stanford University 2009.

A classmate and I partnered up on a project last quarter for our master’s thesis. The result was a device we called the SmartSwitch. We entered it into a design competition and we’ve made it to the semi-finals. If you have a moment, please vote for our project! The top 10 will be judged in NYC in February.

Originally uploaded by formulapuff

Last Friday the 2nd year Design students presented their Personal Statements. I haven’t had a chance to document my work yet, but here is a picture taken by Minjeong Kim, a classmate of mine who was kind enough to document the works on the night of the exhibition.

Also here, some pictures taken by Andreas of the event…

DIY KYOTO

An award-winning way to help you save money and do some good for the environment. The system features a hardware component (Wattson) and a software component Holmes.

The Xantrex™ Communication Gateway

The Xantrex™ Communication Gateway bridges the gap between a Xantrex GT or XW System and the system owner’s computer, making it the central component for a residential or small commercial remote monitoring system.

The Gateway logs performance data directly from the Xantrex GT or XW System, and transmits it to the included Yahoo™ Widget based monitoring software for a simple and graphically rich view of system performance. … Continue Reading

Connecting demonstrates in a very real sense the ways in which human “being”, culture and technology cannot be understood separately, but as always bound up with each other. This paper explores the ways in which our culturally mediated understandings of human selfhood, materiality and community shape the development and enactment of technological connection and connectivity. Connections, both inside and outside of our bodies, involve growth, existence and functionality on the one hand whilst simultaneously impacting on the production of subjectivity on the other. Mapping bodies, movement and systems of exchange foregrounds the centrality of connection to human life. Connection is … Continue Reading

Tonight at Campfire One at the Googleplex (http://code.google.com/campfire/), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.
Google Press Center: News Announcementhttp://www.google.com/friendconnect