mohit.santram

tMobile TXT SMS Code

From John G.

to send an SMS on tMobile, do the following:
sendto address: 500
1st Body line : text destination address
2nd line: body message

AT&T:
sendto address: 0000
1st Body line : text destination address
2nd line: body message

PhotoFrame and Word of the Day Mockups

PhotoFrame:

Screen One:

Screen Two:

Screen Three:

Screen Four:

The Week in Review - 10.25.04

This past week was a productive week in social software. after last week’s disasterous meeting, where we couldn’t agree on a topic, we stripped down the idea down to the bare minimum and started over. I led a session where we though extensively about our project and our interests. We created a bug list and really tried to find some common ground. We began meeting a bit more frequently, though I had to change the meeting one night so derek and i could see the yanks lose to the sox in game 6. grrr. well it’s just baseball!

anyway once we met, last thursday night, we talked about flickr and what we liked. immediately, we all realized the commonalities and shared interests we all have in the project. we all started shooting out ideas left and right and quickly we figured to move on the idea.

we mapped out what we liked and everyone liked my proposal of using basecamp. i just updated it to the personal account, 9 bucks a month, complete project db control. it’s almost like the ProjectDB that we made at TIS. (ah, i do miss lotus notes). Flickr works as it allows people to quickly share images with others, add comments, and add layers of meta data on top of exisiting photos. sounds great right?

Well our idea is that while the broadcast aspect of Flickr is interesting, it’s still broadcast. We want to make Flickr more interactive by pushing the idea. We plan to add games, friendly competition, and group effects to the app. What happens when we introduce a game like Word of the Day where people compete to take photos that best represents the word of the day? Say the word of the day is happiness, what happens when people submit all sorts of pictures that they think emotes happiness? How will people tag these images? How do people build relationships based on these pictures?

These are all questions that we aim to answer. I’m building my PhotoFrame, which will be an avenue to display these pictures. I’ll post pictures of the hardware design in my materials blog. Bickr, it makes Flickr better by extending the idea of group photos, comments, competition, and more.

Bickr PhotoFrame Build

I’ve been working on the PictureFrame, and while there has been much progress on the hardware, the software is an issue.

The Frame:

The ITX BOARD:

The Acrylic Box:

Bickr Word of the Day

Main Index:
Download main Index wml file

Word of the Day Index:Download Word of the Day Index wml file

Word of the Day Rules:Download Word of the Day rules wml file

The Bickr PhotoFrame - User Scenario

I’ve been working on my midterm, but it is not fully functional version as of yet. It’s a complex undertaking.

I changed my initial idea to something which I found more compelling and interesting. The project is called Bickr PhotoFrame, which is a physical photo frame with an LCD panel and mini ITX linux machine built behind it. People can post pictures to the Bickr PhotoFrame via their cellphone and web by sending pictures to an email account (photo@santram.net). The photos get scraped from the email account using Shawn’s photo grabber perl script into a designated folder on my web server(http://www.santram.net/photo). The Bickr PhotoFrame will periodically grab images from the image folder and copy them wirelessly to it’s own hard drive. From an end-user perspective, people can not only view the photos on the screen, but they can comment and vote on the pictures. I’m taking Social Software, Designing Digital Products, Materials, and Embedding Privacy this semester and I wanted to incorporate a bit from each class with what I’m learning in Cellphonia to build this physical device & application.

In Social Software, my group is building layers onto Flickr to push group dynamics through photo sharing, commenting, and voting games. Games will include competitions like Word of the Day, where participants will send in photos that best exemplify the word of the day. So in essence, the project will allow people to compete with others in both shared and remote physical spaces by uploading photos to the PhotoFrame, adding tags, comments, and votes all via their cellphone.

Cellphonia Mid Term Presentation

Bickr PhotoFrame: Photo Sending, Commenting, and Voting via cellphones and the web.

Description
Phase One: The Bickr PhotoFrame application will help people share photos with loved ones who may not be technically saavy.

Users can publish pictures from their camera phone and digital cameras to the Bickr PhotoFrame, by emailing pictures to a specified email address. Once the photo has been received by the email server, a background application will parse the image from the mail file and dump the new image into a specified server folder. Meanwhile, the Bickr PhotoFrame will periodically check the server to see if new images have been added. If a new image has been added, the Bickr PhotoFrame will download the new picture to its hard drive. On the front of the Bickr PhotoFrame, the display will loop through photos that have been posted.

Phase Two: The next step of the Bickr PhotoFrame is to build upon the existing strengths of Flickr, while incorporating commenting and voting abilities. Flickr is an easy to use application that allows users to post pictures via a camera phone and web application. Users may tag images as they post them, but they may not comment or vote upon these images. Bickr leverages the strengths of Flickr, while adding group effects accessible through a cell phone.

Background: This project was born out of a need to share pics with my family in a medium they could easily use and interact. I wanted to share pictures with my family, but lacked the time and money to send prints. My family, while interested in the pictures, lacked the time and technical resources to view internet based slideshows or cumbersome photo sites.

Notes from the Road

http://www.kottke.org/04/10/design-for-web-20

- Blogs democratized publishing, now “tags” could be considered to democratize information architecture. What’s behind this? Are powerful tools in the hands of millions really better than well-trained experts?

we discussed the idea of tagging objects and pieces in the web world for our project. is this something we should re-evaluate? I’m looking up RSS feeds, though I’m not sure how to add them to a page or a blog.

http://www.4d.com/rss.html

Social Software Fresh Ideas

I was reading some prior posts about the Social Software assignment. After we met on Monday with Clay and as a group after class, I came away thinking that we’re now ready to move forward. I already see some tension in the group because of our stutter-step. We’ve got only a few days left until the midterm presentation, and I really want to make sure that we are ready with some coherent ideas. I reread and have posted some thoughts directly from Clay’s syllabus.

We’re going to meet this evening for what I hope is a much more productive meeting. Until then, I’m going to be working on ideas to propose to the group.

Radio Free Europe

Radio Free Europe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a radio and communications organization which is funded by the US Congress. The organization exists in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It broadcasts more than 1,000 hours per week; in 28 languages, via shortwave, AM, FM and the internet. RFE/RL’s mission statement is: “To promote democratic values and institutions by disseminating factual information and ideas.”

The National Committee for a Free Europe was founded in June 1949 in New York. RFE was the broadcasting arm of this organization. The headquarters was established in Munich and it transmitted its first short-wave program on July 4, 1950, to Czechoslovakia.

The organization received its funds from the US Congress and until 1971 the monies were passed to RFE through the CIA. The broadcasts were part of a general CIA psychological warfare campaign directed behind the Iron Curtain. The CIA created general guidelines and had daily input into the handling of news items.

The CIA funding of RFE was not publicly acknowledged until 1971 at which point the organization was rechartered in Delaware as a non-profit making corporation, oversight was moved to the Board for International Broadcasting, and the budget was moved to open appropriations. In 1975, RFE was merged with a very similar Congress funded organization called Radio Liberty (RL, founded in 1951) and the group name was officially changed to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The mission of the Board for International Broadcasting was transferred to the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 1994.

Soviet authorities regularly attempted to jam RFE/RL broadcasts and these efforts did not end until 1988.

From 1985 until 1993 the organization also ran Radio Free Afghanistan.

The collapse of the Soviet Union reduced the budget for RFE and its headquarters were moved to Prague in 1995 and European operations were curtailed. However operations were expanded elsewhere, in 1994 Radio Free Iraq was started as well as a Persian service and in 1997 in Kosovo. New services are also intended for Afghanistan and further into northern Asia.

Social Software Rollback

Sarit, Derek, and I met with Clay today. We spent time talking about our ideas and the impasse we had reached. We need to all be together if we are able to move the idea and project forward. So based on his suggestion, we rolled back our thoughts and tried to attack the problem head on. I led the meeting afterwards as I thought we needed to jump start the thought process. I’ve added the screen shots from our brain storming session.

One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

Radio Shack - 120-0626 - PORTABLE AM/FM RADIO W/CLOCK Specs

USING THE SNOOZE FEATURE

the radio frequency appears.
mode. The time appears if the radio is off. If the radio is on, pressing [MODE], the radio automatically returns to the previousNOTE: If you do not set the alarm time within about 10 seconds afterdisplay. The alarm time appears. To view the alarm time, press [MODE] until ‘ON TIME’ flashes on the[ALARM] until the ‘ALARM’ indicator disappears from the display. To set the alarm so the radio does not play at the set alarm time, pressonce. ‘ALARM’ disappears from the display and the radio turns off. To turn off the alarm before the two hours have passed, press [ALARM]alarm time. the display. The radio automatically turns off two hours after the setThe radio automatically turns on at the alarm time and ‘ALARM’ flashes on and ‘ALARM’ appear on the display. 5. Press [MODE] once to return to the normal time display. Both ‘CLOCK’ the alarm is on. 4. Press [ALARM] once. ‘ALARM’ appears on the display, indicating that Press and hold down [MIN] for rapid setting. 3. While holding down [TIME], press [MIN] to set the alarm minutes. set the alarm hour. Press and hold down HR for rapid setting. 2. Press and hold down [TIME]. While holding down [TIME], press [HR] to1. Press [MODE] until ‘ON TIME’ flashes on the display. Follow these steps to set the alarm time: SETTING THE ALARM are listening to the radio. NOTE: Press [MODE] twice to return to the radio frequency display if you hold down [MIN] for rapid setting. 3. While holding down [TIME], press [MIN] to set the minutes. Press and set the hour. Press and hold down HR for rapid setting. 2. Press and hold down [TIME]. While holding down [TIME], press [HR] to1. Press [MODE] until ‘Clock’ and ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ appear on the display. Follow these steps to set the time: SETTING THE TIME Clock Operation (120-0626) Operation Faxback Doc. # 49089 AM/FM Travel Clock Radio

USING THE SLEEP FEATURE station replaces the previously stored station. To change the stations stored in memory, repeat Steps 1 to 5. The new the station’s frequency appears on the display. to store the station in that memory location. ‘MEMORY’ disappears and5. While ‘MEMORY’ is displayed, press one of the memory buttons (1 to 5)4. Press [MEM]. ‘MEMORY’ appears on the display for about 5 seconds. 3. Press [TUNING < -] or [->] to tune to the station you want to store. 2. Set [FM/AM] to the desired band. 1. To turn on the radio, set [ON/OFF] to ON. button.can instantly tune to the stored station by pressing the designated memoryYou can store up to 10 radio stations (5 AM and 5 FM) in memory. Then youSTORING STATIONS IN MEMORY 5. To turn off the radio, set [ON/OFF] to ‘OFF’. reception, extend the telescoping antenna to its full length. Rotate the radio for the best AM reception. For best FM NOTE: The radio has two antennas. The AM antenna is built-in. that frequency. radio finds the next active station in that direction and locks on To scan, press [TUNING < -] or [->] for more than one second. The station. 4. Press and hold down [TUNING < -] or [->] to tune to the desired 3. Adjust VOLUME to a comfortable listening level. to show which band you have selected. 2. Set [FM/AM] to the desired band. ‘AM’ or ‘FM’ appears on the display1. Set [ON/OFF] to ON to turn on the radio. Follow these steps to operate the radio. PLAYING THE RADIO RADIO OPERATION 24 hours later. 2 hours, the radio will not come on again until the set alarm timeNOTE: You can use the snooze feature repeatedly for up to 2 hours. Afterminutes, press [SNOOZE]. This silences the radio for about 9 minutes. If you wish to silence the alarm, but want it to sound again in a few

(EB - Rev. 3/15/99) (wr 05/09/98) again.To turn off the radio before the set sleep time has passed, press [SLEEP]minimum is 1 minute. in 10 minute increments. The maximum sleep time is 90 minutes and theTo reduce the sleep time, press and hold [SLEEP]. The sleep time reducesoff automatically after 90 minutes. After about 5 seconds, the normal time display appears. The radio turns plays. 2. Press [SLEEP]. ‘90′ and ‘SLEEP’ appear on the display and the radio1. Set [ON/OFF] to ‘OFF’. To use the sleep feature, follow these steps: turn off. You can set the radio to play for up to 90 minutes, then automatically

Radio Redesign - 1st Pass

Radio Redesign - Radio Shack 12-626 Portable Radio

Exisiting buttons:

Lock - Trips the buttons on the front of the radio until released.
On/Off - Turns the radio on or off.
FM/AM - Switches the band of the radio.
Volume - Amplifies or condenses the radio’s speaker.
Snooze -
1 - Changes the AM/FM frequency to preset value.
2 - Changes the AM/FM frequency to preset value.
3 - Changes the AM/FM frequency to preset value.
4 - Changes the AM/FM frequency to preset value.
5 - Changes the AM/FM frequency to preset value.

Set - Mem/Alarm/Time - When mode is set to radio, button will set one of five memory settngs. When mode is set to time, holding down set button will activate hour and minute buttons to increase (but not decrease) hour or minute of the currently set time.
Sleep - Triggers the radio timer to 90 minutes when pressed once. When held down, the radio timer decreases in decrements of 10 minutes until 1 minute remains, then stops radio timer.
Tuning/Hr-Min - Raises or lowers the radio’s band frequency.
Alarm - Turns the alarm on or off.
Mode - Toggles display from three modes - radio, clock, alarm set

http://support.radioshack.com/parts/20173.htm

120-0626 PORT AM/FM RADIO W/CLOCK Faxback Doc. # 20173

To order parts call 1-800-843-7422 or visit your local RadioShack store.

Reference # Cat.No. Description NP Part #

Social Software Meeting PIcs

We’ve been trying to hammer out our ideas for Monday’s class. This afternoon, Sari, Derek, and I met to talk about our direction. Dedi also met with us, but wasn’t able to attend until the end because of Mid Terms. Here are some pictures from our session.

Whiteboard #1:

Whiteboard #2:

I’m worried about the direction, mainly cause Dedi is not on board. Her fears stem from the use of video, which are just, but we need to motor. There will be oroblems inherent to any project that we choose. Currently I am worried about the broadcast of messages. Will they ve from one to many? Or will our system spawn communication between people via a stationary booth. We’re going to meet with Clay Monday morning at 11.

Social Software Reading Notes

A Happening is an ad hoc multi-modal group event. Three modes were used actively during the event for different means:

* Mode 1: Conference Call
o 17 participants (some elected not to participate because of the cost of international calls)
o Mean: moderated turn-taking discussion
* Mode 2: Chat
o 23 participants
o Mean: moderating turn-taking for the call
o Mean: backchannel open discussion
o Mean: signalling and voting
o Mean: whispered one-to-one communication
* Mode 3: Wiki
o 23 participants
o Mean: open note-taking
o Mean: linking to resources
o Mean: forming creative network action groups
o Mean: a place for continuity

By using multiple modes of communication simultaneously to foster group collaboration the bandwidth of conversation is increased. As was the case with Clay Shirky’s social software summit that used In-Room Chat as a Social Tool, similar patterns were observed with social software in distributed use. Clay’s central observation, that “under certain conditions, groups can find value in participating in two simultaneous conversation spaces, one real and one virtual” was confirmed by a vote of participants. In this case, the real conversation space was the conference call and the virtual was chat and wiki.

——-

Most of the identity crisis are between second year students, or the town elders, imposing their beliefs upon the community. As often is the case, part of this crisis stems from the timing and the events of the larger world.

——-

Now, Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, talked about grooming in his paper on neocortex size and social group size in primates. He said we have a maximum cohesive social group of about 150. That’s the maximum stable size of your community in a given context — so, we find that scientific research specialities have a size of about 150 people. My mum has about 150 people on her christmas card list. It was the size of early villages across the world 8000 years ago, and in comparable cultures now. It’s been the size of army units through the ages. It’s the maximum number of buddies the AOL instant messenger server allows you to have.

Actually, 150 is the number of people the social computing centres of your brain can work with. You know, if you’re keeping track of who you owe favours, who nicked your berries last time you climbed a tree, that kind of thing. 150.

But actually that number is dictated by how much time you spend grooming your primary network. Primary network? This large social group is made out of many smaller networks.

——-

So SMS is brilliant. The two most important things for what it means to be human: figure out the pecking order in your community and getting dates.

——-

“My colleagues and I at PARC think that the idea of a ‘personal’ computer itself is misplaced, and that the vision of laptop machines, dynabooks and ‘knowledge navigators’ is only a transitional step toward achieving the real potential of information technology. Such machines cannot truly make computing an integral, invisible part of the way people live their lives. Therefore we are trying to conceive a new way of thinking about computers in the world, one that takes into account the natural human environment and allows the computers themselves to vanish into the background.” –Mark Weiser, “The Computer for the 21st Century”

“Ubicomp is an unusual project for an engineer, for two reasons. First, I took inspiration from anthropology; and second, I knew that whatever we did would be wrong.” –Mark Weiser, “The Technologist’s Responsibilities and Social Change”

Mark was best known for his contributions to the field of mobile computing. He was often referred to as the father of “ubiquitous computing”. He coined that term in 1988 to describe a future in which PCs will be replaced with invisible computers embedded in everyday objects. He believed that this will lead to an era of “calm technology,” in which technology, rather than panicking us, will help us focus on what is really important to us.

——-

But, the problem here is that no-one was advertising themselves as visionaries and geniuses. There was no advertising at all. The Wiki Andrew found was private: it wasn’t written as publicity for the camp. Sure, the invite talked about “changing the world” and “smart people” - but these words have different meanings when you are trying to flatter and cajole your friends to come to your house for free. And when people say to one another “oh, you’re all so smart”, it’s not a festival of mutual self-congratulation. It’s what you say to people you’ve met who seem quite smart. Well, you do if you’re not sitting fifty yards from them, arching your eyebrow significantly.

Somehow, though, that only makes things worse. Oh sure, they weren’t telling the world that they were geniuses, the critics roar. They were meeting, secretly, to say it to each other. Without telling anyone.

Far creepier.

——-

The problem here is one (ironically) of register. In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t. You can have a private gathering, but it isn’t necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones.

——-

But in the real world, private conversations stay private. Not because everyone is sworn to secrecy, but because their expression is ephemeral and contained to an audience. There are few secrets in private conversations; but in transmitting the information contained in the conversation, the register is subtly changed. I say to a journalist, “Look, Dave, err, frankly the guy is a bit, you know. Sheesh. He’s just not the sort of person that we’d ever approve of hiring.”. The journalist, filtering, prints, “Sources are said to disapprove of the appointment.”.

Secrets have another register. They are serious (even when they are funny secrets). We are both implicated when we share a secret. We hide it from the world. Secrets don’t change register - when they are out, they preserve their damaging style.

On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world.

This is why, incidentally, why people hate blogs so much. My God, people say, how can Livejournallers be so self-obsessed? Oh, Christ, is Xeni talking about LA art again? Why won’t they all shut up?

The answer why they won’t shut up is - they’re not talking to you. They’re talking in the private register of blogs, that confidential style between secret-and-public. And you found them via Google. They’re having a bad day. They’re writing for friends who are interested in their hobbies and their life. Meanwhile, you’re standing fifty yards away with a sneer, a telephoto lens and a directional microphone. Who’s obsessed now?

——-

Your challenge is to define, design, and build something interesting. If you
succeed, going open source can magnify that success. It cannot, however,
replace it.

Designing Digital Products - Thoughts

1. We start with Mo’s user Tony & his use of the Time warner DVR. We map out his experience & the mental model he follows. Here is where I am getting lost, what is the format for the experience map & mental model: should it be a chart or diagram or is that up to us?

2. Redesign based on the mental model of the user. In this case, we could work around Tony’s frustrations about some of the features

3. At some point, Robert also said we must redesign based along some other vector: for instance, I understand this DVR system as based along tasks, what if we redesigned along time or tools?

primarily your design. the analysis is what you presented this week. you will need to refer to the patterns and findings from this week but focus on articulating the interaction model for your redesign and how it fits with the perceived mental model and experience of your subjects.

hi robert,
the presentation should be the analysis of what’s existing, our own redesign of it, or both?

some questions have been raised around the format for this week’s assignment. and, in truth, the format is flexible. but I am looking for two things:

1. articulation of the experience map / mental model / interaction model (one or more of these expressed visually, through a some kind of diagram or one act play)

2. illustration of how the interaction model works, played out across a few key tasks. Your assignment should cover both the screen display and hard controls on remote the display and hard controls of the remote (this would be expressed literally, through wireframes and screen designs)

please let me know if you have any further questions. also please come early if you need to load up content ahead of time. and please deliver this and all asisgnments to me as a set of self contained files so that they can be archived and viewed offline.

thanks
RF

Social Software Thoughts

The meeting went well yesterday, though we need to spend more time thinking about different ideas and approaches. It seems like we’ve walked away from the first four ideas, some of them just don’t seem practical. We looked at a bunch of different ideas and even spoke about the music sharing platform. whomever can figure out how to make sharing files between devices, platforms, users, and language barriers will indeed make a lot of money. we spoke a lot about games and what we liked and disliked. What if we ran a huge version of The Amazing Race in NYC? Should this be a project for Frank Lantz’s Big Games?

I’m not sure where the project is headed so far, but I’m really excited from the talk that Marko Ahtisaari from Nokia gave to us at ITP yesterday. It was quite exciting to hear about the activity and energy that they are putting behind cell phone development. Phones as a Hackable Platform.

Mobile Phones are:
*ubiquitous
*personal
*mobile
*essential
*small

The small UI of a phone requires that we not only consider the presentation, but the interaction between humans and their cell phones. More notes and thoughts to come.

-Mo

Random Thoughts

I’ve been thinking a lot about social software as of late. In fact since I’ve been freed from my “job”, i’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what i did there. I’ve also been thinking a lot about Lotus Notes, Groove, Centra, Peer to Peer software, and collaboration. I’ve thought about some other notes, but primarily they are listed in the class and my personal wiki.

so far the class has been great. much more condusive to idea generation than design expo. so much better and friendlier. i’m excited!