The Mobile City

Author: Michiel de Lange

  • Virtual fashion from The Sims in physical H&M stores

    Dutch marketing blog Adformatie writes that an outfit designed by a player of virtual life game The Sims will be sold in almost 1000 H&M stores in Europe, starting July 6 2008. The outfit is the result of a design contest in which all Sims players could participate. The challenge was to design a piece…

  • PhD position “Ubiquitous Urban Games to generate Mental Maps”

    Oswald Devisch from the department of Architecture and Arts, PHL University College, Belgium emailed us with the request to put up the following announcement: Job description At the department of Architecture and Arts, PHL University College, Belgium there is currently a PHD vacancy ‘A research on the use of Ubiquitous Urban Games to generate Mental…

  • Exhibition ‘Augmented Reality: Superimposing the virtual’ in <>TAG, The Hague

    We received an info-mail from Tim Terpstra announcing the opening of an exhibition in <>TAG in The Hague, Netherlands called “Augmented Reality: Superimposing the virtual”. From the “curator statement”: <>TAG presents a symposium and a series of exhibitions on the work of artists and scientists working with Augmented Reality (AR). The extensive programme on AR…

  • The Web and Beyond: Mobility (2) – the others…

    […continued from last post] Thursday May 22 2008 I visited the CHI conference The Web and Beyond: Mobility in Amsterdam. Keynote speakers were: Adam Greenfield (Everyware); Jyri Engeström (Jaiku); Ben Cerveny (Playground foundation, Flickr); Christian Lindholm (Fjord, Nokia). Jyri Engeström talked about how mobile technologies have become social objects. Social network theory is good in…

  • The Web and Beyond: Mobility (1) – Adam Greenfield

    Thursday May 22 2008 I visited the CHI conference The Web and Beyond: Mobility in Amsterdam. Keynote speakers were: Adam Greenfield (Everyware); Jyri Engeström (Jaiku); Ben Cerveny (Playground foundation, Flickr); Christian Lindholm (Fjord, Nokia). I was particularly impressed with Adam Greenfield‘s presentation. He had a very rich and dense talk based on the material of…

  • Two exhibitions in Belgium: Hybrid City / PLACE@SPACE

    While here in the Netherlands the month of April is the month of philosophy, with special theme The City, just across the border Belgium hosts some very interesting events the coming month. The first is a symposium in Genk called “De Hybride Stad” (hybrid city) taking place today – April 18 – starting at 15:00,…

  • KPN & Hyves cooperate: proximity-based social networking

    Dutch tech/nerd blog tweakers.net report that Hyves, Holland’s most popular social network, has struck a deal with operator KPN (the biggest telcom in NL) to add locational information to text messages Hyves users send to each other. According to KPN, questions such as “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” are often asked by…

  • Mobile phone access for Cubans: the ‘mobile’ as rhetorical force

    Another interesting item: The BBC reports that Cubans get access to mobile phones, as Raul Castro lifts the ban on possessing them: Cubans are to be allowed unrestricted access to mobile phones for the first time, in the latest reform announced under new President Raul Castro. … Some Cubans already own mobile phones, but they…

  • Hackers attack epileptics forum: crossing digital borders

    Just a few more or less recent items that I find interesting (cutting it up in multiple posts): Wired reports that hackers have attacked an online forum for epilepsy patients. They placed fast-moving images on the forum, which resulted in a number of epilepsy patient getting a seizure. Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support…

  • Videos (and slides) of keynotes available

    Dear all, We have put *.mp4 encoded video registrations of the keynote speakers online, together on one page with the presentation slides. The video registrations are made by Tomaat.org (TOdays Magazine About ArchiTecture) and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. The videos are hosted by Ourmedia.org and Archive.org and can also be…

  • BBC article about internet of things

    The BBC website has a read-worthy article called “Smart tags hail the web of things“. Not only are RFID (radio frequency identification) chips unique identifiers of the object/animal/person they are attached/inserted/injected into. The article explains that radio tags are becoming smarter and more communicative, by networking with other objects. “We are trying to embed a…

  • Call for presentations/participants closed today

    Dear all, the call for participants (workshop day 27 Feb.) and presentations (main day 28 Feb.) has closed today (31 Jan.). We have received a high number of interesting proposals for both the workshops and the main day. This means – unfortunately – that we have to say no to many, as slots and seats…