Urbanflow proposition, a joint effort of Nordkapp and Urbanflow (founded by Adam Greenfield) aims to take advantage of urban screens as means to provide not just locally-oriented information (maps, points of interest, etc.) but also to provide a wide range of more generic information about the city (air quality, traffic, etc), converting what used to be a static snapshot of information into an interactive window towards the ins and outs the city.

I found here in Düsseldorf a very interesting example of a realtime sculpture – The Energy Pyramid which displays in realtime the amount of energy, gaz and warm water being consumed by the city.

As robots begin to inhabit the world alongside us, how do they see and gather meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us?

Read more about it @BERG

With iPhone 4, Apple showed us that glass (or better aluminosilicate glass)can make amazingly beautiful and resistant devices, but last year a company called Corning went one step forward and published a video with a vision beyond small devices – “A Day Made of Glass.”. A vision centered around glass, where and if combined with the right technology and high speed wireless networks, glass can be so much more and help technology be even more present and all around us.

It’s an interesting video, and there’s a bit more info at Corning website if you’d like to read more about their vision.

I probably the love for it because of my father, although not sure, if from over exposition to his drawings or as a side effect of his “forced styling” on my early calligraphy! Whatever it was, I got it in here

But I decided to post the video here as a tribute to a more recent friend, Peter, who has been sharing his journey on letterpressing and by doing so, teaching me so much about it!

So I can safely write here that I like typography but I need to thank them both for making me love it!

Ever since the organization of the first SHiFT one of our key mottos have been that we already have plenty of technology, we’re just not doing enough with it, we’re constantly looking at the next big thing, forgetting and not valuing what we have today… feels strange when put like this, but just look around you and imagine how many people go without access to basic technology, does it need to be like that?

Today I came across a project entitled Earth 2.0 which seems to a step into raising awareness that we do need indeed to do more. The video combines some rather interesting and futuristic statements of innovative and to me far sighted individuals. Earth 2.0 seems to have it’s sole purpose around a message of sustainability, a movement for change, a path to the future. So I’m rather curious to see upcoming updates to it… let’s see

Today I came across the Robots @ School, a study conducted by Latitude in collaboration with LEGO Learning Institute & Project Synthesis. Together they interview 348 kids across globe (Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, UK and US), their objective to understand kid’s social, creative and learning aspirations using robots as a proxy instead of engaging directly with them as adults.

The findings are remarkably interesting and I strongly advise to anyone interesting in reopening that long forgotten door to read the entirety of the report they produced here.

I was particular keen on been remembered that for kids:

• Smart = Social
• being Smart is a key for social success
• technology empowers them
• technology encourages and allows them to take risks, make mistakes without the not always so positive feedback from adults.
• intermingling creating and learning is the rule of business, two sides of one same coin
• when learning becomes fun play becomes knowledge

for each of the insights above the report does a pretty good job of explaining what and how each of them is sustained, so I’ll skip repeating it here, what I will mention is how this study once again shows me that the direction that we technologists take in our doings must be more human, it must assist, generate and foster a richer type of relation, a relation as close to “human” as possible, where sensing and personalization must become a crucial part of our future developments.

What I do understand is that this guys have something special when it comes to producing their video clips! Some time ago they rocked the digital media world with their video clip – Bright Siren – featuring 250 flashes from Canon cameras powered by Arduinos, yes 250 and an entire video clip done out of still shots.

Well the new video, it’s rocking the digital stage again but this time, it’s not just about light but also animatronic, futurist toys starring a bouncing rocker capable of … expressing itself accordingly.. nice toys hein?