Nice write-up of this show from Denise – I greatly enjoyed it, and agree with most of what she wrote. I particularly enjoyed examples of the SLS (3D printing technique) process, notably, the case showing what emerges from the printer – and how much material is brushed away by hand to reveal the object thereafter. Many of the exhibits they showed were magical, and yet they worked hard to remove the magic from the _processes_, and I really think they pulled that off.

Good stuff on prototyping and development – especially around the _pace_ of prototyping.

"…we have tangible evidence that there are ways for a museum to adapt to a world in which all of our visitors have super-powers — aka their “phones” — and to apply those lessons to the way we design the museum itself." This is smart, and tesseract is going into the toolkit.

"x-OSC is a wireless I/O board that provides just about any software with access to 32 high-performance analogue/digital channels via OSC messages over WiFi. There is no user programmable firmware and no software or drivers to install making x-OSC immediately compatible with any WiFi-enabled platform. All internal settings can be adjusted using any web browser." Small, simple, wireless OSC-transmitting board; really nice idea, simply implemented, and noted down as a way of simplifying certain kinds of projects in future…

"A day of support at Mutable Instruments’ is more commonly populated with “If you see a 100kHz square wave at this node, it means the integrator charges itself very fast, probably through the op-amp compensation cap only, not the external cap – check for a bad solder joint on C9” rather than “Have you checked that the power cord is plugged?” (though it happens). Furthermore, once kits get built, ideas of mods and firmware hacks crop up – all requiring expert guidance. All in all, the “support” role at Mutable Instruments is more like “product engineering – the lost levels” – and that’s why, following the introduction of a product – support can be done by no other than the designer of the instruments themselves…" Still, MI's products are getting increasingly lovely. I've always been tempted by a Shruthi, and the Anushri looks lovely.

"Prototype iPhone apps with simple HTML, CSS and JS components." Looks nice; also, lovely splash site.

"One of the most important things I learnt throughout the process was that through ‘performing’ ideas – including getting members of the audience involved – it was evident whether or not the experience/idea/design would be valuable, exciting or intriguing. During the presentations, you could instantly tell if the project was a success. In some ways this combines presentation with a form of fictional user testing, they were performing to know. Here, prototyping is taken to another level, where ideas are exposed to an audience, events are ‘acted out’ and success is evaluated. Performance as a prototyping medium." I like 'performing to know'

"Certainly as delivered through mobile devices, contemporary AR imposes significant limits on your ability to derive information from the flow of streetlife. It’s not just the “I must look like a dork” implications of walking down the street with a mobile held visor-like before you, though those are surely present and significant. It’s that the city is already trying to tell you things, most of which are likely to be highly, even existentially salient to your experience of place. I can’t help but think that what you’re being offered through the tunnel vision of AR is starkly impoverished by comparison — and that’s even before we entertain the very high likelihood of that information’s being inaccurate, outdated, or commercial or otherwise exploitative in nature."

GameMaker-like tool for OSX and Windows – that outputs Flash games, built out of Flixel and Box2D. Niiice.

"Cole Phelps has no health bar, no ammo count, and no inventory. He doesn't write journal entries, and has no safe house or property. He doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't smoke or drink or sleep around or go out with his friends. I have seen nothing of his wife and children, his passions, his hates or his desires. He walks into a crime scene and barks his introductions like a dog, rude and abrasive; petulant and bullying. He carries himself like a child playing dress-up, weak-chinned, pale, and aimlessly angry. Cole Phelps is kind of a prick.

But when I look at what's going on around him, I can't really blame him. What to make of this Truman Show-esque existence, this vast, toothless city? If I were trapped in such a purgatorial nightmare, I'd probably behave badly, too." This is good, and expresses in poetic and critical terms one of the many reasons I just don't care about LA Noire.

"Next time somebody's trying to sell you on the awesomeness of their new data technique, ask to see a prototype. If they haven't got that far, it's snake oil." Everything in this article is, basically, true. It's a really good run-down of all the issues that emerge in the reality of dealing with data-driven products at any scale."

"I want to love books, but if the publisher treats them merely as interchangeable units, where the details don’t matter so long as the bits, the “content”, is conveyed as cheaply as possible, then we may be falling out of love." Phil buys a new volume of Pepys, finds it's now being printed on-demand, and talks a little about the perceived quality of such books. In short: if you're not expecting it, and it's a change to the usual, it makes you feel a bit like the publisher doesn't care about it.

Jones has the keys to the helicarrier: "in summary: Schulze is spending the week in zero-g combat training, Tom is playing with an orangutan genome that he got from some guy in Zurich and I’m building a laser-harp."

Really rather good, from what I've read so far, especially for prototyping.

Really excellent presentation on the basics of SPARQL – lots of good examples, lots of hands-on stuff, and clear. Worth going back to.

"Designed by London architect Julian Hakes, the Mojito shoe is made of carbon fiber—to give it strength and spring—and laminated with rubber on the bottom and leather—from furniture manufacturers in High Wycombe, England—on top." Gorgeous.

"Here is a needlework sampler I’ve made based on the tradition of needlework samplers and the processes used by producers to create contemporary musical compositions."

"Seems to me people help people go through stuff, life and things. Technology and infrastructures are not the only tool we have and social interactions count more in my opinion. When technology fails, you’ll still have to ask for directions whether you like it or not :) and whether you think your laptop is user-friendly or not is absolutely not related to your gender."

"Briefs is a framework for packaging concept screens & control schemes that run live on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This allows you to experience the feel of your concept without the expense of development." Ooh.

"rush is a replacement for the unix shell (bash, zsh, etc) which uses pure Ruby syntax. Grep through files, find and kill processes, copy files – everything you do in the shell, now in Ruby." Equal parts "ooh" and "hunh?", I think.