Tales from the Loonybin

As a part of my research, I’ve developed a tool, called The Buzz, to help people to keep aware of a wide variety of information sources. You can download it here.

The Buzz runs on an extra monitor or as the desktop background on a Mac. Every minute or so, it cycles through a different collage, automatically generated from some information source. For example, you might see a collage of news headlines from the BBC or stories from Boing Boing. You could keep up with your favorite baseball team or webcams from exotic (or not-so-exotic places).

You can subscribe to different information channels to customize what you see, or create your own. Please give it a try and let me know what you think. I’m particularly interested in what kinds of channel people like you want to see. Don’t see one you want? Feel free to create it yourself, or ask me for help in the comments below!

The CEDIA awards for the Best Dressed Wiring Installations were referenced recently by Slashdot. They depict some really beautiful wiring installations, but they are horribly un-maintainable.

My work-study job in college involved wiring up the dorms for ethernet. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about wiring. Amongst them was the fact that these systems are constantly changing.

As network installations are made in new locations, or as faults are found in the networking infrastructure, the physical wires or terminations need to be changed. If everything is neatly tied down and bundled with such care, replacing a single cable involves unbundling the entire installation.

A useful installation needs to be orderly, but still support a rapid exchange of cabling. Just a couple of velcro straps will do much more nicely than a zip-tie for each and every port in the patch panel!

Apple and Nike today announced a brilliant idea: integrate the iPod with a sensor in one’s running shoes. As you run, the sensor in the shoes detects your pace, distance run, timing, and even calories burned. It relays that data to your iPod, which can then display that data on screen, or synchronize it with your Mac for historical purposes. It’s a great idea — as people run, they often listen to music. Furthermore, the extra feedback can provide an added motivation for those who sometimes need a little extra nudge to workout.

But, the integration is incomplete. Although the system will support the notion of a “power song,” a song the runner can select to give him or herself an extra boost, it does not actually integrate any of the pacing data with the music selection. During our introductory course to the PhD program, I designed such an interface. At the start of the workout, the runner inputs a target pace. As the runner exceeds the pace, the system selects music with a slower beat. As the runner slows, the system selects music with a higher pace. Alternatively, a non-verbal “pulse” can convey a similar sense, without having to superimpose an annoying “Your pace is seven-fifteen” voice-over on the music. I know I’d certainly love to see such a “smart-shuffle” feature added.

I recently returned from CHI 2006 in Montréal. CHI is the conference on human-computer interaction, with thousands of academics and practitioners alike swarming in attendance.

As always, the CHI experience is mostly about the networking — meeting with the many colleagues and peers scattered about at different universities and labs. If, for no other reason, CHI was a tremendous success. As for the technical program, however, there really was no session in particular that blew me away. Nonetheless, there were a few that intrigued me and gave me some ideas.

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I had the chance to have lunch today with Luis von Ahn. He’s a fascinating guy and does some really cool work on Human Computation. What is human computation? It’s the process of using the computer to have people solve problems that people are good at, but computers aren’t. For example, people are really good at looking at an image and seeing what’s in it, but computers are pretty lousy at it.

Human computation uses people to do all of the work of labeling the images. How do you get people to actually do the work? By turning it into a game. The ESP Game pairs random players on the internet. Each player has to guess the same word as the other player. The only thing they have in common is that they see the same image.

Give it a try — it’s a lot of fun (and addictive!). The best part is, even though you’re “wasting” time, you’re doing something productive!

What other things could we turn into a game? Could I get a bunch of random people on the Internet to write my dissertation?