The Digital Cloud

I’m way too busy to blog this properly, but you must read about this. There is a new project from an international team of architects and designers to create a giant floating connected and publicly accessible cloud in the London skies. The project will be sponsored on a donation basis, which has some chances of failing, but then again, could inspire some rich pockets if they get sufficiently inspired by it.

The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data. The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used an observation deck and park.

Its designers plan to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people.”It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News. “We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

‘Data streams’

The Cloud was shortlisted in a competition set-up by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The structure draws on work by artist Tomas Saraceno, a German-based designer who has previously shown off huge inflatable sculptures.

It is envisaged that the spheres would be made of a plastic known as Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), the material used to build the Beijing Aquatic Centre. The different spheres would act as structural elements, habitable spaces, decoration and LCD screens on which data could be projected.

“We could provide a custom feed of…searches made by Londoners during the Olympics to give a real time ‘barometer’ of the city’s interests and mood,” said Google, one of the supporters of the project, which has also offered to provide the information feeds.Ramps, stairs and lifts would carry people to the top of the structure to look out over the city.

‘Zero power’

The inflatable elements of the building would sit on top slender, lightweight towers, stabilised by a net of metal cables. Damping technology, similar to that used in Japanese skyscrapers to resist earthquakes, would prevent the towers being buffeted by the wind.

The structure would also be used to harvest all the energy it produces according to Professor Ratti. “It would be a zero power cloud,” he said. As well as solar cells on the ground and inside some of the spheres, the lifts would use regenerative braking, similar to that in some hybrid cars. That way, the designers say, potential energy from visitors to the top of the tower can be harnessed into useful electricity.

The team have launched a fundraising website called raisethecloud.org and are now looking for a site for the tower.

 

Wrap rage

Dear TrustWilliam, how does your packaging system make sense in your head? Seriously, I got this in the mail yesterday and I could easily fit a bulky academic book in that box that is in addition filled with heaps of styrofoam. Honestly, you can’t find a better way to pack a bottle the size of a thumb? Please back off with your goodness statements till you figure this one out.

Just as this happens and I spill my guts here, I read Amazon’s latest Wrap Rage statement and feel even fuzzier at heart about their brand as a result.

All those moments of rage when you try to use anything from your teeth to scissors to a screwdriver to get through a piece of plastic to be gone forever and less crap to dispose of? Oh, how I wish.

[Via @tobeconfirmed]

Public-centered design (please!)

I’m from time to time thoroughly startled and unimpressed by how public services and businesses work around time. Businesses and public services exist by getting money out of the public. In other words, the public (yes, we), pay their wages and allow them to exist. The question I have is then this: why don’t public services in particular serve the public in times of day that are more appropriate for the public? How is it meant to be agreeable to not be able to see a doctor or register at a GP in the UK without having to take off work? Seriously, something is way off here.

I can let go of why businesses work 9-5, it is their decision about when and how much money they want to make and what kind of customer relationships they want to build. Nevertheless, I don’t quite understand why they stick to their working hours as they do – opening your shop for longer or different hours would give you a better competitive edge over other businesses and possibly make your customers happier. Businesses already ‘get it’ in the south of Europe – it’s nothing unusual to find shops open at 2pm and closing at 10pm. To sum it up, later opening hours could bring businesses:

1. higher income
2. better customer loyalty
3. better competitive edge

Any thoughts? Is it too much to expect people who want to profit from me to let me give them money when I choose to? Or having public services available when the public is?

There is good service on the Amazon line

I’ve always had good experiences with Amazon. Things are usually delivered on time, sold at rates cheaper than in brick and mortar spots, not to mention the fact that you can read customer reviews and compare your purchases to recommended alternative options .

Amazon is also the only brand I know that also doesn’t make you wait in a queue to answer your call. What’s even neater, once you did chat to them they send you an email with a summary of the problem discussed, a suggested solution and a link to online help resources. Yesterday I called them a couple of times to try to change the speed of my delivery, but it was too late in the process. Irritating, but fair enough. Still, just this morning I got an email from them saying that after all they managed to change the delivery speed, that they’re sorry for not being able to do so yesterday and that they won’t charge me a penny extra for it.

As such, I’m now officially waiting for my Canon G11. I’ve been camera-less for a while and I’m very excited to be going back into the world of photography this autumn.

KJFG

Very simple animated shorts by Alexei Alexeev. If you liked 2 Stupid Dogs, you’ll fall for these. Enjoy.

You can find more at Drawn

Art on the fly

This was thrown at me at work a while back. I have no clue where they found it, but I love this collection. Must introduce this to my father who religiously goes on fly crusades in the Polish countryside.

Mind bubbles

Information distribution has changed dramatically over the last decade, but people really haven’t. Though there is more information and opinion available than ever before and though we may consume it differently, we actually select the information in ways similar to how we’ve always done it. Most people still read only sources that they ‘like’ and sources they ‘like’ most often offer information and opinions compatible with those of their own.

a social network analysis of the purchase patterns of political books since 2003

Social networks, apart from niche ones like Ning or Twine (more semantically rather than socially structured), aren’t built around political compatibility, but my guess is that a lot of the networks would have a high degree of political homogeneity. People tend to choose or subconsciously migrate towards groups, neighborhoods and people who share their political views. Thus, if one shares or reads information through something like Facebook, there is a good chance that what you’re looking at comes from a person with views similar to those of your own.

RSS readers are an obvious example: we subscribe only to selected ‘liked’ information providers and the cycle goes on. With Twitter things seem to have a potential of getting more open since it’s a space of everything from everywhere with no clear thematic structure, but ultimately the system has a good chance of resembling the RSS system to the users.

In the age of disaggregation, the money is in giving people what they want. Unfortunately, what we want — and don’t think you’re different — is to have our existing opinions confirmed. You and I and everyone else are going to be far more likely to click through from a headline that confirms what we already believe than from one which challenges us. “I don’t need to read that,” we’ll say, “it’s clearly just biased crap.” The computers will see this, and any sort of recommendation algorithm will quickly end up as a mirror to our preconceptions.

So, provided we actually would like to do it, how could we break past the opinion and information bubbles we’re all in? Some, like Jonathan think that the solution is maps so that ‘instead of trying to decide what someone “should” see, you just make clear to them what they could see.’ This could work since visualisations can be very impressive, but from my experience they’re more of a thing you look at once or twice with interest and then walk back to your safety net. I, for pure user convenience sake reasons, think you could have a system that searches for an alternative version of whatever you’re reading and lets you click a link with a headline on a sidebar to create a mirror of what you’re missing.

Would anyone actually want these kinds of services? Would it lead to a better understanding of things we might be fighting for and against on a regular basis in the political sphere? Opinions welcome!

[Via Jonathan]

Google Wave: a bit of a balloon boy indeed.

Much as Made by Many did, I’ll ask this: ‘is it just me or is Google Wave a bit of a squib?’ Granted, much like Gmail, it is still in its beta, but for all the buzz and expectations (akhem, ‘reinventing email for the 21st century’), it managed to create over the last few months, so far it’ s a bit of a flop.

The Wave definitely has its cool features such as real time translation, sharing within the waves, being able to integrate it with Twitter and such, but unless you’re working on a project in a team of friends or professionals, it’s still a bit of a mess. The user journey is nowhere near being intuitive and though Google Wave brings a touch of Real Time Web to email, it seems like a bit of a scary option to have it as a main hub of communication.

One of the beauties of email is that one can read an email at a time and answer (or ignore) one at a time. With Google Wave, I have a nightmarish vision of real-time communication flowing at me from all directions and people expecting me to be responsive as they type. (That’s great, but no thanks!) Like I said, this is a vision as so far I have far too few contacts on Google Wave to be able to really communicate with it.

On a more positive note, this is an early stage of the Google Wave beta. The ideas behind it are very exciting, much as the video of the developers’ conference was. We can’t entirely blame Google for people expecting a lot from it, since it has delivered incredibly useful services throughout its history. For now, I’m going to crawl back to Gmail and wait for Wave to become a little more seamless and intuitive in use. That’s all folks!

[Via Made by Many]

The Fun Theory

I’ve decided to re-post this post as I think the idea of The Fun Theory supported by VW deserves a little more attention. My first encounter with it was I believe in Swedish and this is what I said back then:

I have no idea what any of the narrative means, but I love these little projects, especially the piano one. Disrupting people’s routine with play settings can create new ways of interaction among strangers. For the win.

Well, turns out that these ‘little projects’ weren’t just cute ways of disrupting public’s behaviour but a part of The Fun Theory, which is a competition hosted by VW. The goal is to generate the best projects that change people’s behaviour through making things we don’t do enough, enough fun to make us want to do them.

Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do?

To throw rubbish in the bin instead of onto the floor shouldn’t really be so hard. Many people still fail to do so. Can we get more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground, by making it fun to do?

This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, just so long as it’s change for the better.

I like really this project. Educating the public is very important, but often ineffective. Making things really simple or fun should be at the center of service design across most levels. As in this campaign, making things fun has better potential in resonating with more audiences than a regular tone of voice of most campaigns seeking to change behaviour.

[Via @inahill]

Reverse phone vending

Of 140 million cell phones sold in the US in 2007, only 10% were recycled, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. EcoATM is a sort of a reverse vending phone machine that allows people to drop their old phones into it and get credit for it in form of store or charity vouchers if their old phone has any resale value. If it doesn’t have any resale value, they just get to feel better about themselves and not create an extra pile of plastic rubbish.

At no cost to the retailer, ecoATM provides self-serve electronic eCycling stations which quickly inspects and assigns real-time secondary market value, collects/bins portable devices, provides payment to the consumer, and administrates any additional trade-in promotions / discounts loaded by the OEM and/or retailer.

The one thing not quite clear to me is why mobile phone manufacturers and service providers are semi-expected to make things recyclable, while there is much less pressure on the overall e-hardware producers and retailers, whether we look at laptops, printers or scanners.

[Via Springwise]