Paper Bits

Aug 30

Via everyone in the world on twitter today:

Wacom introduces Inkling, a new digital sketch pen that captures a digital likeness of your work while you sketch with its ballpoint tip on any sketchbook or standard piece of paper.

This is exciting. Unlike the LiveScribe, which only works with its own (cheap, shitty) paper, this product is supposed to work with any paper.

I wonder how the pen will feel on the paper? Will I want to write with it? The feel of the pen in my hand, and how the nib scratches across the surface of the paper will make or break this product. I can’t wait to try one.

Jul 5

bashford:

The eagerly awaited SVK by BERG, Warren Ellis and Matt Brooker is a comic that lets you read the character’s minds with the SVK Object - a black light torch.

“It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.”

You can buy it now.

So much love for SVK right now.

More thoughts later, when the brain is less non-worky. For now, I point and gesticulate wildly at this thing. Seriously, go get it.

Jun 4

Icon’s “Rethink”: turning receipts into ‘paper apps’ – Blog – BERG

We’ve added semi-useful info-visualisation of the foods ordered based on “what the till knows” – sparklines, trends – and low-tech personalisation of information that might be useful to regulars. Customers can select events or news stories they are interested in by ticking a check box.

We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper “app” and be valuable in small and playful ways.

Barcodes and Beer Mats

I am extremely excited about the possibilities inherent in printable, phone-readable codes like QR Codes.

And constantly appalled by the way they are being used.

The sad thing is, we saw this coming. Aaron Straup Cope on barcodes in 2007:

Wow!

It’s a good thing I only have to wait until March 2007 to have my every need fulfilled. In a barco…I mean, a beer-mat. My problem with this scenario is not that I, in the course of the last few paragraphs, have suddenly decided that barcodes are a tool of the Man designed to commodif…I mean, fulfill my every need. Rather that the opportunity to do something useful and exciting is being crushed by the same kind of dumb, lazy and greedy lack of imagination that gave the world WAP.

Emphasis mine.

Jan 23

scraplab — Admiralty Chart Correction Tracings

Paper diffs.

I have a box, in my office, which contains several binder-clipped sets of yellowed, rustling trace paper bundles. They’re student drawings: nothing worth sharing, certainly. But they tell a story. At bottom, the first idea, then layers of correction, experimentation, indecision. Like git commits in Prismacolor pencil.

How do you take these corrections and produce a final, correct result? I suspect you read through them, and draw a new map. The layered old charts tell a story and present an idea, but it’s up to us to make sense, interpret, and start over.

Via oh yeah, paper!

Jan 19

ekstasis:

When I first heard rumor of the iPad, I hoped it would be a fax machine. That is, I’ve been waiting for a tool that would allow me to jot a note, or draw, or make a chart (my preferred method of note-taking) with the same ease as writing on a piece of paper, transmissible to every corner the internet can now reach. There are so many tools that make laying down information so easy, yet I’ve never been able to find something that could let me handwrite. But the iPad is an enormous eBook. Flatbed scanners are unwieldy and unreliable. I’ve tried a handful of “smartpens,” each less satisfying than the last. The beauty of a fax machine is one to one correspondence, paper to paper. What else?

(Emphasis mine.)

More on this later, I think.

Jan 15

Health workers in remote areas of Thailand and Cambodia needed to report diseases, but language and SMS implementation issues presented a barrier. InSTEDD designed a syntax for reporting these diseases, but found that the workers were having serious difficulty communicating those reports via SMS.

On our way back from the visits, feeling discouraged over the challenges ahead, an idea arose. What if we decouple the process of structuring the report from the channel through it was sent? If you ask someone to send a telegraph, he does not need to know Morse code. In the same way, we could allow health workers to create the report outside the constraints of the tool being used to transmit it.

Thus, the reporting wheel; simple and robust technology, used to address a serious problem in the field.

A better application than some…

Nuclear Bomb Effect Computer

Dr. Strangelove calculates the effects of nuclear fallout

(Via oh yeah, paper!)

Jan 14

haacke news (oh yeah, paper!)

If anyone enjoys my feeble bloggery here, then they owe it to themselves to read Mike Migurski’s far superior offering, if they aren’t already.

Dec 9

Tree of Codes

Amazing book by Jonathan Safran Foer

Dec 8

Tableau: physical email (by John Kestner)

John Kestner : Supermechanical objects : Tableau physical email

Tableau acts as a bridge between users of physical and digital media, taking the best parts of both. It’s a nightstand that quietly drops photos it sees on its Twitter feed into its drawer, for the owner to discover. Images of things placed in the drawer are posted to its account as well.

Tableau is an anti-computer experience. A softly glowing knob that almost imperceptibly shifts color invites interaction without demanding it. The trappings of electronics are removed except for a vestigial cable knob for the paper tray. The nightstand drawer becomes a natural interface to a complex computing task, which now fits into the flow of life.

Dec 1

tree.growth.redux by Christian Flaccus

Munich designer Christian Flaccus used my tree.growth source code to create this amazing print, which shows all of the source code used to render the tree. It’s giant - about 84 x 120cm, and is printed at 400dpi.

Nov 30

Proof of concept:

If you print a URL with a thermal printer, and it fits on one line, with whitespace surrounding it, Google Goggles can find the link and make it clickable.

So if you want to create printable permalinks, QRCodes are nice, but not absoutely necessary.

Fantastic.