Super niche geek humour

ncomment posts super niche geek comics, mainly it seems on the state of play amongst link aggregators such as Digg and Reddit.

For the least threatening possible insight into current social mores in geekdom, you could do a lot worse than keeping an eye on his Flickr pages.

User submissions: Content and Commentary

“Bond Art + Science explores the state of the art in inviting users to participate in the conversation online.

In the past, user participation in editorial publications was limited to writing “letters to the editor.” On the web, users take an active role in shaping the message through their comments and debates.

Bond Art + Science looked at how traditional media and online publications invite, manage and benefit from user participation, and we identified some best practices and common pitfalls:

* How are users asked to register to contribute?
* How do site moderators manage comments to ensure quality?
* What are the best ways to treat user comments as content?”

http://bondartsciencefair.com/audits/

30 years of little Lego men

30 years ago, Jens Nygaard Knudsen added little plastic men to the Lego universe.

Iconeye hosts a gallery of some of the more famous of their kind. Whilst I’d like to see more of the working class depicted, it’s a good gallery!

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography Primer

A video by Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel at The IIT Institute of Design, a graduate school of design dedicated to advancing the methods and practice of human-centered innovation.

In the spring of 2008, they talked to professors, experts, and students about the process of interviewing the users of “a truly universal article of clothing” – denim jeans.

The result is this video full of statements and examples about interviewing practice. Agree or disagree with all of it, but not a bad primer for those of us who like talking to people about their lives.

Watch the video here

Turning back time between 60 & 90 minutes

Project C-90 immediately stopped what I was doing and made me post this.

A visual catalogue of cassette tapes with a large catalogue of manufacturers and models, this ode to a disappearing technology is a real find for lovers of the beautiful old skool.

From their site:

“Philips - the Dutch electronics company, invented and released the first audio compact-cassette in 1962. Previous to this time, the only way of recording voices or music was by reel-to-reel tape recorders. The cassette system came about as a way of increasing portability and not involving manual threading of sensitive and brittle tape. It needed too to be much more portable than vinyl records. Philips used high-quality 4mm polyester tape produced by BASF. Recording and playback was at a speed of 4,75cm/second. The following year, sales began in the US by the Norelco Carry-Corder dictation machine that used the new cassette tape. In the early years consumer demands for blank tape was totally unanticipated by Philips as the format was never really designed for personal home recording.”

Project C-90

Urban golf is not a myth!

We encountered a group of urban golfers in Paris last weekend.

According to the BBC, players use a leather ball stuffed with goose feathers to minimise damage to surrounding vehicles, buildings and people! However I’d note that the ball’s these guys were hitting were white, not brown as seen in the BBC images.

Yahoo reputation patterns

Yahoo’s design patterns library outlines a number of reputation systems for social networks. Each offers comparative levels of competition, achievement and exclusivity.

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/parent.php?pattern=reputation

Translating ethnography for internal audiences

I found an old interview with Ken Anderson, (then) Manager of People and Practice Research at Intel, where he talks about the role ethnographers play in Intel’s organisational culture.

He talks about the role of ethnographers to bring the outside in to corporations, and how having fieldworkers on staff helps this process because they understand the culture of the organisation as well as the research.

“Our job is as much about understanding translation as understanding people. If you’re on the outside and you do a really excellent study but present the results in a way that doesn’t match the company’s culture, it’s not going anywhere. A lot of innovation dies because people can’t articulate it in a way that makes sense.”

This is a common problem. Keeping insights alive through the life of a project is often as much about having fieldworkers on hand as about crafting the insights in the first place.

Read the full article

PDF me, baby!

Smashing Magazine have posted a great list of PDF based magazines. These make a welcome change from the increasingly homogenous blog format, with great design and a collection of content rather than a single, often recycled entry as the main content (I’m as guilty as everyone else!).

I’m interested in what the reader dynamic is here. Are these being read onscreen? Or printed off on sheets of A4 (doublesided?). What does the phenomenon have to teach the growing crop of specialist printed magazines for whom the “production of something tactile and beautiful” is everything?

Transport informatics

Dan Hill has posted a frankly immense article on City of Sound about access and use of transport data. His point is that transport usage data should be available as openly as possible to enable empowered usage.

Particularly cool is the real time Helsinki public transport map. Each bus and tram apparently has a linux server and GPS, raising the possibility of bus-specific services.

I can’t help also thinking, is that all they’ve got in the way of buses and trams!