musings of a social architect

Taking The Upload Out Of The Camera Phone Process

Great article at The Feature on taking the upload out of the camera phone process. This is an exciting development -- I hope it catches one.

Useful Lists of Socially-oriented Mobile Games & Apps

Here's a list of experimental mobile social software apps from Elastic Space. And also a list of location-based mobile urban games from Near Near Future. Very useful to see these all described together -- lots of creative ideas are being explored!

Tip o' the hat to Clay over at Many2Many for the links.

The Shape of Song

What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see--literally--the shape of any composition available on the Web. The resulting images reflect the full range of musical forms, from the deep structure of Bach to the crystalline beauty of Philip Glass.

I luv iTunes Party Shuffle

I've finally ripped most of my CD collection into iTunes, and I'm having a blast with the PartyShuffle feature -- a real-time auto-playlist feature which chooses tunes semi-randomly from my music collection. I like ALMOST everything I hear in this mode - and when I don't like something, I can tweak the setting to fix that. It. Just. Works.

25 Location-based Mobile Games

AdMblog links to an article listing 25 Location-based mobile games. Very useful.

Conversational Interfaces

I've been thinking lately about conversational interfaces for mobile phone apps. People use their mobiles to engage in 'extended aynchronous conversations' -- so it seems natural to use the extended conversation as an interface metaphor.

One inspiring example of conversational interface design is the work of Jellyvision, the creative minds behind the hit game You Don't Know Jack. JellyVision is kinda a one-trick pony, but it's a REALLY GOOD TRICK. Check out their ICI demos and the Jack Principles. Thought-provoking stuff.

BTW -- their entire site is in Flash, which makes it hard to link into :-(

Back from Jazz Camp

We're back from our family vacation at Jazz Camp 2004. We had a FABULOUS time - 8 days and 7 nights of playing music, drumming rhythms, singing gospel, and communing with 300 people (from babies to senior citizens) who all love music as much as we do. Here are some photos from camp. The image on the left is my son Gabriel, wailing away on the congas. I can't wait to go back next year!

TheFeature :: The (Mobile) Games Women Play

A new study reports that women play MORE mobile games than men, but are LESS LIKELY TO PAY for the experience. I also noticed in a recent study that said women outspend men on downloadable ringtones. Hmmm...