!blog - corey menscher

How Users use an Elevator

- User approaches elevator and presses one of two call buttons…one for vertical ascent, and one for vertical descent. The buttons are usually positioned on a panel relative to their respective direction, but they may also be labelled with icons (arrows). The button typically illuminates to let the user know that a car is being routed.

- The user waits until a car is available to be routed to their current floor. An algorithm in determines the resting position of the cars (ground floor, midway, top floor) unless all cars are in use.

- When the car arrives, the user enters and selects the desired floor by pressing a numerically labelled button. The button then illuminates to indicate the selection. The doors contain proximity sensors to determine whether the user’s position will block the doors from closing. Once the doors are clear, and sufficient time has elapsed to wait for additional users to enter the car, the doors begin to close. If another user attempts to catch the elevator from from afar, the user presses the “close doors” button repeatedly.

- The car travels in the desired direction while constantly “listening” for other users on floors whose intended destination intersects with the current travel direction. If one is found, the car stops and lets the additional user on board. The new user presses the desired floor button, whether or not the button has been previously selected…which is indicated by the button being illuminated.

- When the car arrives on a user’s desired floor, the car stops and the doors open. The doors remain open until the proximity sensor determines they are not being blocked and continues along the current path, has reached the minimum or maximum floor, or is re-routed to a floor with another waiting user if all users for this session have been dropped off on their floors.

So our assignment was to produce a digital “exquisite corpse” image. That is, we are to create an image from other images in Photoshop, and then pass the final product to one of three people in a group. Each member will do the same, and as we pass along the images to each member, we will add our own touches to the evolving image. Thus, we will each start an image, edit an image after the initial composite has been made, and then finalize a third image. Here’s my initial image…

…and the three images that were used to create it.

Here’s my edit of Eddy’s image…

Here’s Eddy’s original, and the image I used to composite it…

Here’s my edit of Kim’s image…

Here’s Kim’s original and the image I used to composite it…

After reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric S. Raymond, I am wondering where else we can apply the open source mentality to change the rules of complex projects? By this I mean in what industries and markets can we harness the power of self-motivated communities to do a better job than the longstanding processes that currently exist…and are blatantly inefficient and unproductive?

One that comes to mind is in construction and architectural. There is a recent project called Architecture for Humanity(http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/network/index.html), which aims to provide open solutions for affordable housing and infrastructure. The target audience are municipalities in developing countries that can benefit from previously-developed solutions. But what about those of developed nations? Why does the construction industry maintain such a tight grip on resources? Why don’t skilled tradesmen want to participate in jobs that they can take pride in? In what other ways can we harness communities to physically build structures and spaces without succumbing to the inherent inefficiencies of an industry that maintains a tight control on skilled labor?

WTF?

Originally uploaded by Yamil_G
Blue Screen of Death on some alien consoles in Halo 3. Brilliant!

If you were out and about in the city on Friday, you may have run into one of thirty “pocket parks” that were set up by Transportation Alternatives to promote urban re-use of parking spaces. Here’s TA member Ian telling us a little about them. (Sorry for the extended closeup…I had to stay close to make sure he was audible.)

Here’s my response!

I looked at three video sites today. YouTube.com…the Goliath owned by Google. Blip.TV, the scrappy upstart with the seemingly most producer-friendly site. And Virb.com, which is more of an aggregator than a video site.

YouTube is great because of its reach. Millions of people view thousands of videos (or even millions of videos) every day. Its content has been aggressively ported to portable devices, including a huge focus in Apple’s iPhone, Nokia’s N800 tablet, and a number of other devices. I even found a Casio Exilim point-and-shoot camera that has a “YouTube” mode that shoots in a specific resolution and file format which is supposedly optimal for hosting on YouTube.

 YouTube’s uploading tools are among the best around. Uploading a video is extremely easy, and they even give you the ability to capture directly to the site with your webcam. YouTube’s “Channels” are a good way to provide regular content of consistent quality, but to be honest they tend to get buried in the sheer volume of content. Only the most popular “channels” get much publicity. However, I’m sure it’s a safe bet that some of the more popular channels get massive amounts of traffic, which alone would put the other two video sites I explored to shame.

 And then there are the advertisers. Paid content permeates YouTube like the massive media blackhole that it is. Unfortunately, a lot of the videos are simply attempts at starting viral marketing campaigns for various products. This seems to dilute the pool of valuable and genuinely interesting content…although it’s hard to call Joe Bob sitting in his dark bedroom in front of his Webcam mumbling a “video response” to some other schmoe’s “video response” compelling content.

 Blip.TV is a significantly smaller site, although it is growing. I’m starting to see Blip.TV posts in more blogs. And it’s certainly polished. But there’s definitely more of a elitist air to it…a sense that those who post to it are posting high quality content, as opposed to the plebes on YouTube. Its interface is considerably more stark, but it has a nicely designed feel that projects a bit more professionalism. This may be why professionals tend to prefer it, even though its audience can not touch YouTub.e

 The other reason professionals may prefer it are its upload tools. First and foremost, producers can access (and distribute) the original file format and resolution that was uploaded. This is a HUGE advantage over YouTube’s mediocre-quality Flash Video player. Users are granted “channels” by default. And they truly are channels. They can be accessed from a simple URL (username.blip.tv). They are given a choice of distribution rights (Creative Commons!) from which to select. They can even make money through advertising. But beyond that, the site just FEELS nicer…right down to the gorgeous progress bar for uploading, and the elegant flash player. Whereas YouTube gives you a cryptic spinning icon with an approximate time to upload, Blip.TV provides a proper “thermometer” gauge. Little things like this, as well as its minimalist design, make it a pleasure to use.

 Virb.com’s focus is more on social networking and music. It allows you to aggregate a number of media within your account, which you can then share among the internet public or among your Virb.com “friends”. When I signed up, I was soon inundated by indie band accounts that wanted to add me as their friends, which gave it a slightly sleazy MySpace feel. Of course, the interface is WAY slicker than MySpace, and the site has some interesting tools. There’s a lot of AJAXy drag-and-drop functionality to move your media into albums, as well as to “pimp out your profile”. Virb’s flash player is of decent quality, but it has no controls other than play/pause. Not even a full window/full-screen mode. You can view the video with a darkened overlay behind the player to hide the site, but I’m not sure of the point.

 Its a well designed and hip-looking site, and works well, but its content is so heavily focused on music that there’s hardly any non-music related video to explore. I haven’t gotten a sense of its growth, but it doesn’t seem like it’s very well known. This may change, but the odds are that it will be bought by a larger entity a lot sooner than it will hit a critical mass.

 Blip.TV is certainly the most promising of the three sites, and has far-and-away the best Flash video quality and player. (Full screen viewing of identical files showed that Blip.TV completely blew YouTube out of the water.) But nothing can beat YouTube in terms of library. You can never get bored exploring YouTube. And you also have many more options of viewing their content on multiple devices. Virb.com’s focus on music gives it an edge in the ever-widening field of video sites, but that focus may also result in a smaller less-generalized library that may be needed to attract many viewers…and content providers. It’s likely that YouTube will remain the King of video for the foreseeable future.

Today I created a pair of digital chopsticks. Using the Arduino and breadboard, a pair of chopsticks, a force sensor, and some foil…I created a pair of chopsticks that when used correctly, activate some LED’s on the breadboard.

This sounds pretty boring, but it’s kind of interesting. The green LED lights only when the user holds the chopsticks properly. That is, they must put pressure on the top of the upper stick a few inches near the tip. This activates the force sensor. While the force sensor is being held down, the foil on the tips acts as a switch. If a user picks up a conductive material, or simply closes the chopsticks together, the yellow LED lights…but ONLY if the force sensor is also pressed (and the green LED is lit).

The logic is performed in the Arduino…the breadboard only holds the two voltage divider circuits so that one analog input and one digital input can be read by the Arduino. Here’s a video to demonstrate:

Here is a 55-word story…

The Accident

Cold headlights temporarily blind Travis as he races down the interstate. His passenger, less nervous about the excessive speed Travis has attained than what awaits them when they arrive at the hospital, grimly sucks on his third cigarette in twenty minutes. A cellphone rings…a nervous greeting…a slight gasp. Too late, she is dead.

1. Ong uses the term interactive several times in the reading in discussing the crucial difference between chirographic/typographic media and orally based media. Given the growth of so-called interactivity on the web, the blogosphere, do you believe his statements are still relevant on this point? Do they need some qualification?

I think when he used the term “interactive”, he did not mean that the audience was truly interacting with the speaker. That is, the listener did not affect the orator’s performance in an appreciable way…whether in content or style. However, the orator’s performance may be considered interactive for the listener in the sense that multiple senses are used to internalize the subject matter. The orator not only used his voice, but certainly used body language as well. Additionally, there would have been voice inflection to provide audible cues to listener.

Actually, on  further reflection I suppose one the arguments against literacy was that the written word can not be asked questions.  So that is probably the most significant example of interactivity in a primary oral society.

Today’s “interactivity”, while sometimes incorporating senses other than sight, is more often about directing the content in some way. Blogs, “web 2.0″ sites, and wikis all rely strongly on community to both discuss and contribute content. This would be almost unheard of in an oral tradition as orators are often specifically trained (through repetitive listening, mnemonics, and other techniques) to recite that which was imparted to them orally. Yes there is an essence of individualism presented as well…but the basic gist remains the same.

2. Ong calls computing an outgrouth of writing. How has computing changed the consciousness in your field? What has been lost? In most cases there are those who’s crafts cease to be useful (printers, spot retouchers, typesetters, etc). But have the psychodynamics of your field changed? How?

This is a difficult question to answer, because as a web application developer my “field” is directly related to computers! However, I would say that the basic nature of digital computing, and the technologies that exist on top of it are constantly evolving. Like the languages Ong references that may have once existed but were incorporated into other languages, programming languages tend to evolve as performance and bandwidth improves, and application platforms fade (remember ATG’s Dynamo?) as better solutions come to market.