Posted

Thu Jun 3 2010, 11:11am

By Aaron Parecki

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Press

Tagged

Oregon Business Magazine – On the Map and In the Future

Excerpt: “Open Source Bridge is a completely volunteer-run conference dedicated to the concept of “open source citizenship:” in which developers learn from one another and connect across projects.

Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case and PHP developer Aaron Parecki presented one such project of their devising, a yet-to-be-released program called “Geoloqi.”

Geoloqi will track a user’s location at all times, and use this data to provide various services. A user can leave himself a note to receive when he gets to a certain location, for example, a reminder to pick up batteries when he’s in the store. The user can send a real-time map to a friend or client, to take the mystery out of when he or she will arrive. People meeting will know exactly what time to expect you if they know exactly where you are—you can even set up an automatic message to send to your boss if the software can tell you’re going to be late for work.

One of the goals of Geoloqi is to automate a certain amount of existence. Case and Parecki seek to make the interface “ambient,” that is, require very little actual interaction with the software in order for it to work. For example, if you set up Geoloqi to turn your lights on at your house when you arrive, you won’t need to interface with the light switch. If you have an automatic alert that will give you the next bus departure time when you arrive at an airport, you won’t need to seek that information out on your phone”.

Read the full article at oregonbusiness.com

Posted

Thu Jun 3 2010, 10:10am

By Aaron Parecki

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Press

Tagged

Willamette Week on Open Source Bridge and Geoloqi

Excerpt: “To hear Case and Parecki describe it, as they did yesterday at the Open Source Bridge conference, the uses for Geoloqi are multifold. Sure, you can tell a client when you’re stuck in traffic and running late to a meeting. But you can also tell friends when you’re on your way to the bar, sending an automated SMS message to their phones when you get within a certain range; automatically “check in,” Foursquare-style, when you show up at a certain place; if you have the right adapter, you can turn you lights off and on when you leave and return to your home—no switch required. And so on.

Plus, the application can communicate with you—the future you. If you need the future you to remember to pick up eggs at the store, you can leave yourself a geo-tagged note on a desktop map. Then, the next time you show up to the store, you’ll get a text message: Pick up eggs. If the future you will be traveling to a city you don’t know very well, leave the future you notes about what bus route to take, what the building your going to looks like, which restaurant to eat at. And of course, whoever you’re planning on meeting in this city can know when you show up. All in real time.

Knowing where someone is in real time can have real benefits, beyond just the coolness of knowing. Instead of waiting patiently for someone to show up, you can carry on with whatever else you’d rather be doing—playing Google Pac-Man or whatever—until a text message tells you they’re right outside. And rather than standing on some random street corner staring at your phone hunting for directions, texts with embedded maps will pop up on your phone, showing you exactly where to go without you having to search for it.

Of course, having others know where you are can be problematic, privacy-wise. You don’t want your boss to see that you’re at the Beavers game when you’re supposed to be sick in bed. You don’t want your ex to know where you are—ever.

Parecki says that’s exactly why the application has two ways to hide your information—according to both who you want to see it, and how long you want it shown for. For your friends, you can, in a sense, turn off your signal. Most of your friends don’t care to see where your are at all hours of the day, and vice-versa. For other people, like business for example, you can simply send out a link with to a map of your GPS data that expires whenever you want it to—in a half-hour, and hour and so on.

Read the full article at Willamette Week – June 3rd, 2010 – Geoloqi Will Let Everyone Know Where You Are—If You Want

Posted

Wed Apr 21 2010, 12:12pm

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

Events

eComm – Solid to Liquid to Air: Cyborg Anthropology and the Future of the Interface

On April 21, 2010, Amber Case presented Solid to Liquid to Air: Cyborg Anthropology and the Future of the Interface.

We are now entering into an era of liquid interfaces, where buttons can be downloaded at will, and software flies through the air. Phones have been untethered from their cords and are free to colonize our pockets. They cry, and we must pick them up. They get hungry, and we must plug them in. We increasingly live on interfaces, and it is their quality and design which increases our happiness and our frustration.


The best interfaces compress the time and space it takes to absorb relevant information, and the worst cause us car accidents, lost revenue, and communication failures. We are tool using creatures. Prosthetics touch almost every part of our lives. Until recently, humans have used their hands and bodies to interface with objects. Early interfaces were solid and tactile. Now, the interface can be anywhere. This speech will discuss how the field of anthropology can be applied to interface design, and how future interfaces, such as the ones employed by augmented reality, will change the way we act, feel and communicate with one another. Topics will include non-places, time and space compression, privacy, user flow, supermodernity, wearable computing, work and play, gaming, history and prosthetic culture.

View the presentation on slideshare.net