Mike Kruzeniski's blog: May 2005

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Human-Chicken Interaction

"We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for
humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much
wider significance."

Interesting quote.

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Thursday, May 12, 2005

XBOX sucks (in)

So tonight was the big star-studded unveiling of the new XBOX 360 (though images of it have been leaking out for a long time now). Looks...ok. Much better than the first one I think. The specs and features are looking very nice in any case. I wonder if it the design appeals the hard core game crowd as much as the first, though I'm sure they're trying a lot harder to appeal to the mainstream (what with the MTV launch) and women. The swapable covers is a nice feature, catering to PC modders, the Alienware crowd, and teenage girls alike. Pimp my XBOX.

Microsoft has done a great job of promoting its designers on their website, and included in the XBOX 360 promotional video is a pseudo-interview with Jonathan Hayes, the XBOX design director. Also look to the XBOX site for a more extensive interview and a shot of Hayes sketching his new gaming icon: "In contrast to the current console—which is about energy exploding outward—Xbox 360's concave shape is about the inhale. It's about the moment before the explosion, when energy is gathered. Think of a runner in the blocks before a sprint, or a martial artist taking in a breath of air before a kick."

The design community has already started to weigh in on the new look, and so far it seems somewhat neutral. I still prefer the look of the PS, so I'm looking forward to see what Sony reveals this week at E3.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Spatial / Temporal Video Control

The Khronos Projector is a project from the University of Tokyo that goes beyond temporal control of video, by "giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate "islands of time" as well as "temporal waves" are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that "cuts" the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie." (example image on the left)

The video demo is very cool. This is straight out of the movie Donnie Darko (images on the right).

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Google acquires Dodgeball!

Dodgeball.com sent an email out to all its members today to let us know that they'be been acquired by Google. I'm looking forward to seeing where this leads the software, and what new features will be implemented. I'm really hoping this means that we'll soon see some integration with GoogleMaps. How cool would it be to open up GoogleMaps from your desktop (or phone) and be able to see where all your friends are?

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