document.write('<ol class="tumblr_posts">\x0a    \x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_quote_post">\x0a                <div class="tumblr_quote">\x0a                    <span class="tumblr_open_quote">&#147;</span>Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.<span class="tumblr_close_quote">&#148;</span>\x0a                </div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_source">\x0a                        <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser">Mark Weiser</a>\x0a                    </div>\x0a                \x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">I Love Instapaper</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p><a href="http://instapaper.com">Instapaper</a> is a simple web service that allows you to save web pages to read later. You view your saved pages by visiting the Instapaper site.</p>\x0a<p>Let&#8217;s say I wanted to read this page later.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2708/4323558674_81a41d0777.jpg" width="500" height="425"/></p>\x0a<p>My Safari has Instapaper&#8217;s &#8220;read later&#8221; bookmarklet as the first bookmark in my bookmarks bar so I hit Apple+1 and I get a small &#8220;saving&#8230; done&#8221; message to tell me Instapaper has done its thing for me.</p>\x0a<p>I can then go to my Instapaper account where I&#8217;ll find my list of items to read later.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4019/4323567786_ce9c1ee910.jpg" width="500" height="416"/></p>\x0a<p>If i click the title of the article (there it is at the top) I&#8217;ll be taken to the web page but the thing Instapaper is good at becomes clear when you click the &#8220;Text&#8221; button.</p>\x0a<p>You get this.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2680/4322839911_83f5a3cee8.jpg" width="500" height="416"/></p>\x0a<p>Instapaper has removed all the ads, all the layout, lots of the formatting and is presenting me with the content I&#8217;m interested in and little else. Look at the first screenshot. Which would you rather read? This is where it differs from bookmarking services like <a href="http://delicious.com">Delicious</a>.</p>\x0a<p>That&#8217;s not all. There&#8217;s an <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/iphone">Instapaper iPhone app</a> too. Here&#8217;s my Instapaper account as viewed on my phone.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4029/4323518168_cd6467a28e.jpg" width="320" height="480"/></p>\x0a<p>All this is available offline so I can read it anywhere regardless of network connection. It means I can read all the stuff I&#8217;ve saved for later while I&#8217;m out and about or on the way to and from work.</p>\x0a<p>I tap on the article title and I&#8217;m presented with a version of it formatted for reading on the iPhone. There&#8217;s a tilt-to-scroll option which i quite like even though I don&#8217;t use it much.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2751/4322783893_47d5f8f937.jpg" width="320" height="480"/></p>\x0a<p>There&#8217;s a number of sharing options within the Instapaper app so I could now post the article to <a href="http://www.twitter.com/bashford">Twitter</a> via <a href="http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/">Tweetie</a>, post it to this blog via the <a href="http://staff.tumblr.com/post/81463386/iphone-app">Tumblr app</a> or email it to a friend. If I click on a link in the article I get the option to save that for later too, which means I can carry on reading the article I was reading without losing my place. Really nice touch.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2686/4322784103_15abfffb47.jpg" width="320" height="480"/></p>\x0a<p>Instapaper integrates nicely with some of the other apps I use. <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/INDIVIDUALS/NETNEWSWIRE/">NetNewsWire</a> is an RSS reader for Macs that syncs with my <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/">Google Reader</a> account. If i right click an article in a feed I get the following options.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4322759769_e048322a29.jpg" width="500" height="320"/></p>\x0a<p>RSS to Instapaper. Nice.</p>\x0a<p>Tweetie on the iPhone allows me to save links in tweets to read later too.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4323517796_693435c476.jpg" width="320" height="480"/></p>\x0a<p>Tweet to Instapaper. Pretty damn useful.</p>\x0a<p>All this adds up to mean that Instapaper is one of the few web services that I can safely say I couldn&#8217;t do without. In just a few months It&#8217;s become such an integral part of my daily browsing that I don&#8217;t think I could go back. I&#8217;ve even found myself Instapapering articles to read immediately because it makes them easier to read.</p>\x0a<p>There&#8217;s a few more useful features (some people are doing <a href="http://journal.benbashford.com/post/249681953/things-i-would-rather-read-on-paper">interesting things with its print feature</a>) but I won&#8217;t spoil it for you. You should find out for yourself.</p>\x0a<p><a href="http://instapaper.com"><a href="http://www.instapaper.com">http://www.instapaper.com</a></a></p>\x0a<p>I really can&#8217;t recommend it enough.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_quote_post">\x0a                <div class="tumblr_quote">\x0a                    <span class="tumblr_open_quote">&#147;</span>Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality.<span class="tumblr_close_quote">&#148;</span>\x0a                </div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_source">\x0a                        <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_and_Ray_Eames">Charles Eames</a>\x0a                    </div>\x0a                \x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">SenseAware</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p>Here&#8217;s a talking box.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://www.senseaware.com/SA/images/so_box_1.jpg" width="363" height="353"/></p>\x0a<p>Yes, it&#8217;s a talking box.</p>\x0a<p>Late last year <a href="http://fedex.com/">FedEx</a> announced a service they&#8217;re launching called <a href="http://www.senseaware.com">SenseAware</a> - a fantastic example of a useful Internet of Things based service.</p>\x0a<p>The Senseaware service is based around a small device containing a small array of sensors. It knows its location, speed, temperature and whether or not its box has been opened or dropped. Clever little thing.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2495/4321969809_c33a269193.jpg" width="500" height="262"/></p>\x0a<p>Here&#8217;s the talking box again.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://www.senseaware.com/SA/images/so_box_4.jpg" width="363" height="353"/></p>\x0a<p><img src="http://www.senseaware.com/SA/images/so_box_2.jpg" width="363" height="353"/></p>\x0a<p>Great. But before you go &#8220;yeah but what use is that to me?&#8221; The thing that makes it so cool is that the little device has a data uplink that allows it to &#8220;phone home&#8221; and tell you all this stuff as it happens. All its sensor information is relayed to a central system and is available to you through a web dashboard or via alerts you can set up for specific events.</p>\x0a<p>The SenseAware site says it can monitor items that are:</p>\x0a<ul>\x0a<li>Unique or rare — such as samples from clinical trials.</li>\x0a<li>Temperature sensitive — such as pharmaceuticals.</li>\x0a<li>Light sensitive — such as film or art</li>\x0a<li>Time critical or location critical — such as human tissue and organs.</li>\x0a<li>Highly controlled or regulated — such as materials requiring chain-of-custody certification.</li>\x0a<li>Biohazardous or dangerous — such as explosives.</li>\x0a<li>Highly valuable — such as medical equipment.</li>\x0a</ul>\x0a<p>You can see how valuable something like this could prove to be.</p>\x0a<p>If you want to know more here&#8217;s the <a href="http://news.van.fedex.com/senseaware">full press release</a>.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_video_post">\x0a                <div class="tumblr_video">\x0a                    <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="300" data="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8569187&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=0&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF"><param name="quality" value="best" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="scale" value="showAll" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8569187&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=0&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF" /><embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8569187&amp;server=www.vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=0&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object>\x0a                </div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_caption">\x0a                        <p>I really hope the future isn&#8217;t like this.</p>\x0a                    </div>\x0a                \x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">Obligatory iPad Post</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p><img height="343" width="500" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4067/4309864123_75f798f142.jpg"/></p>\x0a<p>Apple launched the <a href="http://apple.com/ipad">iPad</a> yesterday. If you don&#8217;t know what it is you&#8217;re probably reading the wrong blog.</p>\x0a<p>As usual people are saying &#8220;Meh, it&#8217;s a big iPhone, It won&#8217;t do Flash, and it won&#8217;t multitask&#8221;. This sort of thing always happens when Apple launch a new product.</p>\x0a<p>I think what these people are failing to see is that the majority of iPhone/iPad/mobile users probably don&#8217;t even know what &#8220;multitasking&#8221; is. They can probably only think about the one application they&#8217;re running at that very moment. Multitasking to these people would mean running out of processor power and memory, not realising it&#8217;s because they have 3 apps churning away doing their thing and only noticing the impact to the experience of the one app they&#8217;re focussing on right then.</p>\x0a<p>Multitasking would introduce so many levels of complexity they clearly designed it <b>out</b> of the iPhone/iPod/iPad experience.</p>\x0a<p>The iPhone can and does fetch data whilst other apps are running which means things like your email is up to date and you can do &#8220;stuff&#8221; whilst you&#8217;re downloading new apps and iPad almost certainly does the same thing. I really think that&#8217;s all the average person needs and If you say you need more than that then it&#8217;s obvious the iPad isn&#8217;t for you. There&#8217;s the 13&#8221; <a href="http://apple.com/macbook">Macbook</a> or <a href="http://apple.com/macbookpro">Macbook Pro</a> which will more than likely do everything you need to do and are still very portable.</p>\x0a<p>What&#8217;s really cool is that the demo for the NY Times iPad app showed what can be done with content as feeds rather than content delivered as websites. The bulk of it would be installed as part of the app meaning it&#8217;s only the content that needs to be downloaded and the experience can be so much more fluid and rich. The current Guardian iPhone app is great, but the NY Times one with it&#8217;s embedded video and hooks into the guts of the iPad&#8217;s processor and OS looks set to completely change the game of digital news publishing. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s the beginning of the end for websites but I&#8217;m really excited to see what other people come up with in the near future.</p>\x0a<p>Flash is cool, but it&#8217;s really such a small part of the web experience that I really don&#8217;t think it&#8217;ll be missed that much (sorry, you can wait for me after school if you want to beat me up). The days of the fully immersive flash website are over for all but the tackiest sites and it&#8217;s now only really being used for interesting data visualisations, interactive narrative or rich media modules that can be easily done with HTML and some JS skills.</p>\x0a<p>If anything I think the fact iPad doesn&#8217;t support Flash will begin to discourage clients and accounts teams blindly requesting Flash solutions to problems that can be solved in more open and (arguably) accessible ways. The last stronghold of Flash is video players and HTML5 solves that with the &lt;video&gt; tag and open video formats. I believe Google&#8217;s Chrome Frame is part of a strategy to drop Flash from Youtube in the long run. If you&#8217;re embedding video in an iPad app you can use native Quicktime (in HD if you like) which solves the problem nicely too.</p>\x0a<p>Flash ads. Meh.</p>\x0a<p>Then there&#8217;s games. Flash games have been ported to run on iPhones with varying levels of success. It&#8217;s entirely possible though and it&#8217;s about learning how to do it well.</p>\x0a<p><img height="416" width="470" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4311760827_f3157434a4.jpg"/></p>\x0a<p>The fact that you can flip it over and show people what&#8217;s on your screen in a natural, fluid way is amazing. More important than you might think. It suddenly makes the iPad a more social device. The iPad is something that can be passed around easily and used to show people things meaning it&#8217;s now a fluid part of a group computing experience - and that can only be a good thing.</p>\x0a<p>I think people that are moaning or criticising the iPad on it&#8217;s technical merit may be missing the point. Apple have created a product that <a href="http://www.designsojourn.com/naoto-fukasawa-without-a-thought/">dissolves into natural behaviour</a> and if you ask me I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s what&#8217;s so beautiful about it.</p>\x0a<p>That said, I do think it should have GPS and a screen side video camera.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">Designing Social Interfaces</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2480/3994076179_3713198502.jpg" width="500" height="333"/></p>\x0a<p>Last night I went to a great talk by <a href="http://xianlandia.com/">Christian Crumlish</a> from Yahoo! about design patterns - specifically design patterns for the social web. It was basically an hour long ad for the book he&#8217;s written called <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Social-Interfaces-Principles-Experience/dp/0596154925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1263993253&amp;sr=1-1">Designing Social Interfaces</a> but I didn&#8217;t mind because it was actually very informative and entertaining.</p>\x0a<p>He ran through the history of design patterns, from the book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1263993720&amp;sr=8-1">A Pattern Language</a> which was written by architect <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander">Christopher Alexander</a> in 1977 as an attempt to demystify and democratise architecture through to <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-patterns-elements-reusable-object-oriented/dp/0201633612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1263993919&amp;sr=1-1">Design Patterns</a> which is considered to be a seminal text for programmers (if you know what MVC means it came from that book) and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction/dp/0596008031/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1263994000&amp;sr=1-8">Designing Interfaces</a> which is the book that took the pattern based approach to designing user interfaces and inspired the excellent <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/">Yahoo! Pattern Library</a> of which he is now curator specialising in social interaction patterns for the modern web.</p>\x0a<p>He introduced the five underlying principles of social web design</p>\x0a<ol>\x0a<li>Pave the cowpaths</li>\x0a<li>Talk like a person</li>\x0a<li>Play well with others</li>\x0a<li>Learn from games</li>\x0a<li>Respect the ethical dimension</li>\x0a</ol>\x0a<p>then explained some key steps to creating community,</p>\x0a<ol>\x0a<li>Give people a way to be identified</li>\x0a<li>Give people a way to distinguish themselves from others</li>\x0a<li>Give people something to do</li>\x0a<li>Enable a bridge to real life events</li>\x0a<li>Let the community elevate people &amp; content they value</li>\x0a</ol>\x0a<p>talked about the patterns in the book and gave some examples of &#8220;anti-patterns&#8221; to avoid.</p>\x0a<ol>\x0a<li>Cargo Cult</li>\x0a<li>Don’t break email</li>\x0a<li>The Password Anti-Pattern</li>\x0a<li>The Ex-Boyfriend Bug</li>\x0a<li>Potemkin Village</li>\x0a</ol>\x0a<p>Excellent talk. Even though I knew quite a lot of what he was talking about and have put it into practice a number of times it was really very good to hear someone talking about these things in such an engaging way.</p>\x0a<p>There&#8217;s a great <a href="http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page">wiki</a> to support the book but I think I&#8217;m going to pick up a copy anyway. I&#8217;d also be really interested to have a look at the card game he&#8217;s developed called <a href="http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/index.php?title=Social_Mania_Game">Social Mania</a>.</p>\x0a<p>In the Q&amp;A afterward I got an attack of the nerves but I wanted to ask this question. It&#8217;s based on a comment <a href="http://speedbird.wordpress.com/">Adam Greenfield</a> made at a talk I saw recently - and I&#8217;ve been thinking about it a lot.</p>\x0a<p><i>&#8220;Given the fact that people that design websites tend to be (lets face it) slightly obsessive, often with social difficulties of their own we can&#8217;t ignore the fact that most of the early social developments online possibly stemmed from these people needing to design less stressful ways of communicating with others. With that in mind don&#8217;t you think the core of some of these concepts - things like explicitly declaring your friendship with someone are a little odd? Do you think these patterns are ossifying ideas like &#8216;friends lists&#8217; when we should really be investigating more human ways to deal with social connections?&#8221;</i></p>\x0a<p>I should have asked it. I might have got a free book.</p>\x0a<p>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/halans/3994076179/">Halans</a> on Flickr.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">Data Driven Objects</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p><img height="375" width="500" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2550/3987533119_fd421e236d.jpg"/></p>\x0a<p>This is a diagram of a brief set by <a href="http://russelldavies.typepad.com/">Russell Davies</a> when he visited students at the the <a href="http://www.aho.no/en/AHO/Institutes/IDE/">AHO Instititute of Design in Oslo</a> last October. It encapsulates so much of what I find exciting about the potential for &#8220;post digital&#8221; thinking.</p>\x0a<p>Data driven manufacturing. How cool is that?</p>\x0a<p>In the future when we have all these smart objects logging and reporting an infinite amount of data about us and our surroundings as part of <a href="http://journal.benbashford.com/post/269742677/the-internet-of-things">The Internet of Things</a> how are we going to view all that information in a way that&#8217;s not just <a href="http://lastgraph.aeracode.org/">graphs and charts behind glass on a screen</a>?</p>\x0a<p>What if you hooked something like <a href="http://journal.benbashford.com/post/342557464/withings">Withings</a> or Nike+ up to a &#8216;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fabricator">fabber</a>&#8217; (3D printer). Something capable of turning digital input into real tangible output? What if you could hook up entire factories to datasets?</p>\x0a<p>Think about it for a bit.</p>\x0a<p>Cool isn&#8217;t it?</p>\x0a<p>There&#8217;s already <a href="http://www.newspaperclub.co.uk/">Newspaper Club</a> which is allowing people to output to a full newspaper printing press. It&#8217;s in beta at the moment but I can&#8217;t wait to see what people end up doing with it.</p>\x0a<p>This is a <a href="http://blog.newspaperclub.co.uk/2009/10/16/data-gov-uk-newspaper/">data driven newspaper</a>. It&#8217;s a demo of what could be generated using open <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8311627.stm">government data</a> specific to a London postcode.</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2453/4016848724_1f2e3c5959.jpg" width="500" height="281"/></p>\x0a<p>(Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/scraplab/4016848724/in/photostream/">Tom T</a> on Flickr)</p>\x0a<p>I love <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheesypeas/3971271439/in/photostream/">this work</a> by Svein Inge Bjørkhaug (one of the students at AHO). It uses small wooden blocks to represent the time you spend using applications on your computer. Each week you get these small blocks in the post.</p>\x0a<ul>\x0a<li>More time on an application = bigger block.</li>\x0a<li>More applications = more blocks.</li>\x0a</ul>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2458/3971271439_86873b7694.jpg" width="500" height="333"/></p>\x0a<p>(Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheesypeas/3971271439/in/photostream/">jørngeorg</a> on Flickr)</p>\x0a<p>I also love <a href="http://reallyinterestinggroup.com/datadecs/">Datadecs by RIG</a> for the same reason. They&#8217;re Christmas decorations made from snapshots of data frozen in time and there&#8217;s something fascinating about that. It&#8217;s almost the opposite of digital photography.</p>\x0a<p><img height="254" width="500" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2785/4262611914_0d3e0490f7.jpg"/></p>\x0a<p>(Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/benterrett/4262611914/">Ben Terrett</a> on Flickr)</p>\x0a<p>As you can probably tell I&#8217;m completely sold on the concept of &#8220;post digital&#8221; thinking and I desperately want to do something useful with it. I just hope I get to work on some projects that allow me to think in this way.</p>\x0a<p>If you know anyone&#8230;</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">Withings</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p><img height="375" width="500" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4065/4287102545_78532cd643.jpg"/></p>\x0a<p>This is <a href="http://www.withings.com">Withings &#8220;The Wi-Fi Scale&#8221;</a>. It&#8217;s a bathroom scale that connects to the internet.</p>\x0a<p>You step on and it recognises who you are before it weighs you, measures your fat and uploads the data to the internet. You can then access your stats privately (nicely visualised of course) alongside those of your family <a href="http://www.withings.com/en/bodyscale/monitoring">via a web control panel or via an iPhone app</a>.</p>\x0a<p>That&#8217;s not all. You can use it to publish statistics via a widget you can embed on your website or over Twitter. Yes, Twitter. You step on a thing and it tells the world how fat you are. Nice.</p>\x0a<p>We&#8217;re going to see a lot more products like this. They&#8217;re expensive now, but they won&#8217;t be for long.</p>\x0a<p>Something really useful would be if Withings (and all manufacturers of smart devices like this) adopted an open format so other things can hook into their data. I suppose a good example of this sort of thinking would be your <a href="http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_GB/">Nike+</a> setup combining its data with your Withings via a <a title="Can you tell I love Pachube?" href="http://www.pachube.com">data broker</a> and a third party web service feeding off them both to visualise it nicely, helping to calculate a full fitness plan.</p>\x0a<p>Exciting times. Hope we get it right.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a        \x0a            <li class="tumblr_post tumblr_text_post">\x0a                \x0a                    <div class="tumblr_title">Augmented Architecture</div>\x0a                \x0a                \x0a                <div class="tumblr_body">\x0a                    <p>\x0a<object height="281" width="500" data="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8468513&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">\x0a<param name="data" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8468513&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1">\x0a<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true">\x0a<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">\x0a<param name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8468513&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=00ADEF&amp;fullscreen=1"></object>\x0a</p>\x0a<p>This is the <a href="http://vimeo.com/8468513">N Building in Tokyo</a>. The entire front is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code">QR Code</a> that you can point your mobile phone at to see the building augmented with a digital overlay.</p>\x0a<p>There&#8217;s something about it that irks me.  It&#8217;s far from rubbish. No, I think the implementation is fantastic. Hats off to <a href="http://www.sonasphere.com/blog/?p=1288#english">the team that made it happen</a>. I&#8217;m really very glad people are doing stuff like this - but the fact that it needs special software and a mobile device that you need to hold aloft, pointed at the building makes me feel a bit weird. Why expect people to do that?</p>\x0a<p>It&#8217;s a bit like <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/setr/4255266354/in/photostream/">this</a>&#8230;</p>\x0a<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2686/4255266354_fb7ba46be8.jpg" width="500" height="375"/></p>\x0a<p>Surely you can display useful (and fun) information about the building, it&#8217;s status and its inhabitants without resorting to making people hold their phones out or up in the air.</p>\x0a<p>Don&#8217;t ask me how it should be done because I don&#8217;t have an answer yet - but that&#8217;s the feeling I get. I&#8217;ll have to get back to you on that one.</p>\x0a                </div>\x0a            </li>\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a\x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a        \x0a\x0a                        \x0a    \x0a</ol>');