LUCI Blog

From:ABC News. Here's a snip:

"I'm sure we all have a GPS horror story to tell. Those nifty devices sometimes takes one on longer routes than necessary, lead one down roads that no longer exist or always seems to find the worst traffic.

A Swedish couple vacationing in Italy may win the GPS booby prize. The BBC reports that the couple wanted to visit Capri, off Italy's west coast near Naples. When they arrived at their destination they asked around for directions to the island's famed Blue Grotto all ready to take in some sun and the stunning sights of rugged cliffs plunging into the sparkling blue Mediterranean.

Instead they were informed that they were 400 miles off course in the industrial town of Carpi in northern Italy. Pilot error... or how two transposed letters can change everything."

Data Scienist > Data Geek > Designer ｫ Visualizing Economics

"Reading Nathan Yau's recent post about the Rise of the Data Scientist inspired me to take a look Ben Fry's dissertation on Computational Information Design in which he describes the process for understanding data as follows:"

Interesting graph showing the amount of tweeting vs the number of followers on Twitter. This is from a data dense report: Sysomos | In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World. Another sound bite-y quote "5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity"

I had to blog about this cool little gadget. It's a time-lapse camera, not unlike the Microsoft SenseCam. Add batteries, configure, and forget. Come back in weeks and download the timelapse video. Nice and easy. It seems ripe for cool social hacks.

"Weatherproof time-lapse camera for watching your greenery!S et it up in one minute and shove it into the ground near your prized chrysanthemums. When the growing season is over, you'll have a visual record of their growth. This camera does time lapse photography the easy way"

From my favorite geekery site: thinkgeek.com

Garnet Hertz has been hanging out with us in the LUCI lab for the last quarter or so while he finishes up his Ph.D. He is continuing his research and has put up a web page with the concept that he is currently developing. For the sake of letting everyone know what everyone else is doing in LUCI, here is a little summary of the project:

This project is motivated by the following concepts:

1. Un-Simulation of Driving - This project un-simulates the driving component of a videogame. Driving game simulations strive to be increasingly realistic, but this realism is usually focused on graphical representations. Instead, this system pursues "real" driving through a videogame as its primary goal.

2. GPS Navigation Parallax & Mixed Reality - Driving with a GPS navigation system can be game-like. This project explores the consequences of only using GPS map data as a navigation tool for driving. The windshield of this project's vehicle only shows GPS data, and as a result, driving it in the real world is often difficult or dangerous. As a result, this project explores and investigates how GPS data differs from the physical world, and what happens when an augmentation of reality envelops and obfuscates reality.

Okay, so I don't get out much, but last night I was at South Coast Plaza and stumbled across this iPod vending machine. I had heard that such things existed before, but I didn't think I would run into one unless I was in an alley in Japan. It turns out that there is one in Macy's.

It is iPod branded, but has Sony and other other company products in it also. There is one screen in the upper left with marketing videos running in a loop and a touch screen on the right for picking your gadget.

There was clearly a security concern as there was a special video camera watching it and it was in the middle of a Macy's, not in an alley in Japan.

So now, if it is too much trouble to get your iPod from the Apple Store 50 feet away, you can use the vending machine instead.