Can Weblogs and Microblogs Change Traditional Scientific Writing?

The papers are coming thick and fast at the Future Internet Journal - the latest paper describes a follow up Web 2.0 approach to a technology enhanced master course for students of Graz University of Technology.

The lecture “Social Aspects of Information Technology” has a long tradition for using new didactical scenarios as well as modern e-Learning technologies. After using a blogosphere one year ago, this year microblog channels helped to expand the traditional lecture. Students choose (on a voluntary basis) whether they want to participate in a blogging/microblogging group instead of using conventional methods called Scientific Writer/Scientific Reviewer. This study addresses the question whether this method can change the learning outcome into a more reflective one. Furthermore, peer-reviewing groups judge the quality of essays and blog contributions. In this paper we examine if microblogging can be an appropriate technology for assisting the process. This publication comes to the conclusion that an amazing potential and a new way to work with information is opened when using microblogging. Students seem to be more engaged, reflective and critical in as much as they presented much more personal statements and opinions than years before.

The paper is an interesting look at Web 2.0 and blogging in academia - something we know a little about having come under notable criticism a few years ago for putting everything we do in a blog. Personally, the Future Internet Journal is indicative of these changes with fast turn around times and publication in terms of weeks rather than months/years.

You can read/download the full paper via the Future Internet Journal site.

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The Sentient City Survival Kit

The Sentient City Survival Kit is a design research project that explores the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. It takes as its method the design, fabrication and presentation of a collection of artifacts, spaces and media for survival in the near-future sentient city.

- edit, video is now back, via YouTube -

As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, information processing becomes embedded in and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban information systems capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring our behavior within it and becoming an active agent in the organization of our daily lives.

The movie above is a work in progress of an intriguing project by Mark Shepard documenting the development of a set of artifacts, spaces and media for survival in the near-future sentient city.

Of note is the view that 'many are likely to protest when they are denied passage through a subway turnstile because the system “senses” that their purchasing habits, mobility patterns and current galvanic skin response (GSR) reading happens to match the profile of a terrorist'. Personally we quite like the idea of a Sentient City, but perhaps that's just us, head over to http://survival.sentientcity.net/ for more thoughts and views.

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Valencia, Spain 3D City

The 3D cities roll out continues at increasing pace - the movie below captured by YourWorldIn3D details Valencia, Spain:

Its certainly impressive, Google's increasingly strong focus on geographic information is of note...

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Metropolis Art Prize: Drift

The Babelgum Metropolis Art Prize now has over 450 individual entries from five continents. Launched in September 2009 the Babelgum Metropolis Art Prize sought videos, of no more than 5 minutes in length, representing the work of the best and edgiest artists working in any medium, from performance art, painting and photography to sculpture, installation and new media. Last week we featured 'London' by Luke Jackson, this week we embed 'drift', captured using a still camera it is supremely well done:

Artists are competing for three prizes worth a total of $30,000 and prize winners and runners-up will see their videos screened on New York’s famous Times Square monitors on the 17th December. The “Grand Prize” and the “Best Street Art Video Award” winners will be selected by an illustrious judging panel led by iconic art-house actress and video artist Isabella Rossellini and the online and mobile community will vote on the winner of the “Audience Award”.

Head over to http://www.babelgum.com/metropolisartprize to start viewing and voting - click on the thumbs up under a video to vote...

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Colorama - Tilt Shift - Large and Small

At the moment our iMac round the back of the office is churning out our first 'fake' tiltshift test. Its been running for 3 days and has given the poor thing a notable level of screen burn, while that processes and we wait for the results, below is how it should be done:

Colorama - Makeover from Upper First on Vimeo.

The 'giant hand' makes for an interesting take on tilt shift movies. Developed by UpperFirst for Colorama, the idea is to create a visually absurd situation using displacement of scale between the people in frame and the giant hand. It is meant to underline the contrast of small and big, where the hand symbolizes the consumers ability to effect the environment and in the extension his or her own environment.

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Toyota - Norwegian Visualisation

The Toyota advert below was created by Gimpville, a production house based in Oslo, Norway. We don't normally include adverts, but it is so well done its worthy of a post:

Toyota from Apt on Vimeo.

Simple, but charming...

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Epic Announces Free Unreal Development Kit

Epic Games, Inc. has announced the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the game engine and toolset.

The software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers:

There is no charge for noncommercial or educational use of UDK. Over 100 academic campuses currently use Unreal Technology as part of teaching game development-related courses.

Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available. This is quite an interesting development as it could enable some neat architectural ports into the engine.

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Goodbye London - Metropolis Art Prize Entry 2009

Babelgum Metropolis is looking for the globe’s best and edgiest artists for what is being termed'the world’s biggest art show'. Winners will have their work shown on giant advertising screens this December in Times Square, the neon heart of New York City.

Out of the notable nominees is Luke Jackson's Goodbye London video, directed by Murray John. The video features a mix of stop motion photography and drawn 2-D animation using After Effects. Having just moved to the heart of Camden Town ourselves we really like the video, in fact we love it:

Luke and Murray collaborated on the video via email, attempting to capture the bittersweet sentiment of the song's lyric. They didn't actually meet until the video was almost finished.

You can vote for your favorites by clicking the thumbs-up icon beneath the videos over at http://www.babelgum.com/metropolisartprize.

There are some fantastic videos featured, the voting period is 4th November – 2nd December.

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