There’s something a little amazing that happens every time you set up a video projector. All the cables get connected, you turn the projector on, and during the process of placing it, the image may show up on an unexpected surface. It’s cool, so you move the projector around to see what it looks like in other places. For example, at home, we often watch movies outside on a screen, but have tried projecting onto…
 
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There’s been a lot of Kinect-based experimentation lately, and, like so much of it, this new research project from the MIT Media Lab looks pretty cool. But it’s more than just another Kinect-hack — it’s full of intriguing ideas of how video-conferencing can adapt if it’s more than just a “dumb” carrier of video. It asks the question, “what would video conferencing be like, if it knew about the participants?” The team has come up…
 
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In February 2009, David Merrill gave a TED demo of Siftables – a project he was working on at the MIT Media Lab along with Jeevan Kalanithi and Pattie Maes. He described Siftables as “an interactive computer the size of a cookie.” But it’s not just a cute phrase, for it also communicates the approachability and playfulness of the devices. Well, Siftables are now an actual product — for sale from Sifteo. And the sample…
 
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Today, the MIT Media Lab starts its big 25th anniversary bash. And I’m sad that I’m missing the event. But the next best thing to being there is reminiscing, right? Twenty years ago, when I was a student there, the Lab was celebrating its 5th anniversary. As part of the schwag for the party, the Lab printed a book. It wasn’t big, just 6×6 inches and 32 pages, but it perfectly captured the mood and…
 
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All of John Maeda‘s work is amazing and inspiring, but I find his series of Reactive Books to be among the most engaging and thought-provoking. Created between 1994 and 1999, each book explored the use of a different input: microphone, mouse, time, keyboard, and video. At a time when interactive media was trying to be more and more, the simplicity and focus of these pieces set them apart. Their visual simplicity allowed you to really…
 
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How adorable is this… with Drawdio you can turn almost anything into a musical instrument. (Unlike most posts on this blog, this isn’t screen-based — but creating interactive drawings in addition to designing interactivity with physical objects seems pretty cool.) Developed by Jay Silver at the MIT Media Lab (I promise to try and stop using them as a source for posts here… but there’s a lot of cool stuff there)… The Drawdio circuit-craft lets…
 
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It looks like we’re one step closer to the Luminous Room. Take a look at this demo of LiminAR. It’s a project by Natan Linder, a student of Pattie Maes in her Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. LiminAR is made up of two components, the Bulb and the Lamp: The LuminAR Bulb combines a Pico-projector, camera, and wireless computer in a compact form factor. This self-contained system enables users with just-in-time projected…
 
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TED.com just posted a talk from this year’s TED2010 by John Underkoffler on his research into gesture interfaces. John is best known for his work on the interfaces in the film Minority Report but has since founded Oblong Industries. The talk demonstrates Oblong’s point-and-touch interface called g-speak. I have to admit, having never actually used the system myself, that it looks a bit baffling. How does a user know what to do? Don’t your arms get…
 
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Small Design Firm‘s recent Pledge Wall for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a beautiful interactive installation with a unique pen interaction. David Small, the firm’s founder, is a friend back from when we were both students at the MIT Media Lab. I’m a little jealous, as his firm has gone on to create some remarkable projects, while my former firm, Triplecode, is in deep hybernation. But despite that I’m super-glad he was able to take…
 
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Check out this recent interview with Nicholas Negroponte on The Engadget Show. A little background: Nicholas founded the Architecture Machine Group (or ArcMac) at MIT in 1967. His aim, partly inspired by Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad was to create an “architecture machine” — an active partner to help architects design buildings. The group also was responsible for the Aspen Movie Map, anti-aliased text, telepresence research, and online personal news aggregators. He then founded the MIT Media…
 
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