Finally..

Well the presentation for eMCy went very well... or should I say, better than I expected?
The point where it was referred as kitsch actually, intentional. I wasn't searching for a high-art design (what a term!), but more of a subtle but goofy design. Actually I can hardly call it a design, it's more of a rapid protoype to be worked on.
After the presentation I figured out something new: the rapid prototype of eMCy is actually encouraging people of whatelse it can be: Can it be a journal? Can it connect to the internet and create a whole map of moods? Can it be shaken in order to delete a sound clip? Can be built by an accelerometer? or with a tilt-switch? Can it be prettier? The more feedback I'm having, the crazier it became.

eMCy, the great toy for recording the sound of the loved ones and share it with moments of different moods, can be the direction I would like to go for my thesis. I am willing to work on it during the summer to see which way I am going with it.

For the sake of documentation:
This is the presentation for eMCy ( a cheezy little powerpoint) and this is the documentation of eMCy.

.. and my secret for hard days: http://icanhascheezburger.com/ lolcats tagged for your convenience.

Let's get physical

Here are a couple of updates;
- The option to record a mood is added, not just to make things harder for myself, but it feels like maybe a total stranger may not be a good idea.. Needs a little bit of thinking..
- The cube pretty much looks like this:

- Some playtesting is done with the cube and interestingly boys asked for it to be more colorful. I'm having some issues with its' color, it didn't turn up the way I was imagining. I'm totally satisfied with the fact that the fabric is veeery cozy :)
- Name suggestions: Mood dice. Possible.

What's the next step?
I will get all the mood expressions on and probably ditch the idea of recording.. or postpone it. Another point is I would really like to have the oppurtunity for the users to connect it to their computers and build up a network... yeah that sounds good.. After getting the prototype all fancy and going, the next step will be to build an interface and therefore a network, where it's possible to see other people sharing your mood.

coming together.. slooooowwwllyyyyyy

ok, I haven't found a name for the toy yet but I'm still looking for it. During the creativity process, I guess the worst part is the naming! I bet it's going to take a lot longer than building up this whole thing.

So here how it goes:
Growing up rocks in many means:
- you can buy booze and show your ID with total confidence.
- have a house of our own and call friends over whenever and however you like.
- hook up with people not be forces to explain it.
- freedom of bedtime.

but after a while the doom of the city-life / adult-life takes over:
- Managing bills turn into a huge hastle
- "So how am I going to afford a plumber after Jack's success in the bathroom?"
- Why can't anybody go out?
- I miss mom..
- Deadlines for projects.. I can't even make a joke about this situation.
- I just wanna lay done without worrying about entertaining someone.
- I need someone here.. Someone who I can turn on and off whenever I want.

The birth-idea of the cube is this: When the "lived-in" space changes, there are certain issues to be taken care of, especially when the previous space is our homeland and the new space is the other side of the world. I realized that the more I grow up/old and apart from my parent, the more and grander my responsibilities are. As I said in my previous presentation some people go through this phase in a longer period and some in a shorter one. Mine happened all of a sudden, so did many of my friend's as well. But I know a couple of people who went through this phase one by one in a longer time, like 3 years.
No matter how old or how mature a personality can be, there is a certain point in life where social interaction with a stranger as an outsider's view can support more than anyone else's. An outsider's view is considered as a must in most creativity processes, but here the situation is a little more emotional.
There are two situations in life: when something goes goes, a different part of your life gets screwed up OR when one thing goes wrong, everything falls apart. In these kind of times, a person usually feels vulnarable and it's not a common act to show one's weak side. Here's where the cube comes in.

yeah.. I'm gonna name it "something" cube.. needy cube?.. naah..

multividual cube! I wish it could be a cuter name though.. By the way Multividual means :

"a multiple individual that embraces many selves and in a technological perspective can possess multiple bodies.

As early as 1970s, psychologists indicated the emergence of a proteic type of personality who combines the properties of different individuals. This is not a schizophrenically split personality, but the one rich in roles and selves, a multividual who cannot be confined to a single self.

The multiplicity of selves often reveals itself in the acts of inspiration and artistic creativity. Eventually these multiple selves will acquire not only symbolical and imaginative embodiments, like in theater, but also independent bodies. Like a bio-species is exemplified by a multiplicity of individuals, a multividual will become a psycho-species exemplified by various organisms. Such multividuals will reach across continents assuming various material guises and performing various social and professional roles, and simultaneously they will be aware of their unique destiny and moral responsibility. "
urbandictionary.com

Here are the six moods:
- So what's up? mood : Just a normal friend hanging out and checking on you now and then
- Are we there yet? mood: Everybody needs a coach. Ok, not all of the time and there are situations where coaching would be wonderful. This mood is focusing on deadlines and get you on working. Sometimes it can get a little annoying, but who's perfect anyway?
- Shit happens.. need some booze, boss? mood: In some situations, all someone needs is something that can listen to the shitty consequences of life. I'm not if there is an idiom in English but there's a great way to humiliate someone who nags about the bag things happening: Go, turn on the water and talk to it!.. No need for taps anymore..
- I am preeeetyyyyy, oh so preeetyyyyyy mood: Happiness is said to be contagious.
- You just called me a hussy? mood: This easily-offended mood is present so the user will miss the other personalities. Just for the sake of promotion.
- zzz mood: chilling around..

So how's this going to work?

Every side has it's own button. When the side is to be activated, it is placed in the proper position that will get the button to be pressed. The button activates the mood.

So what's up next:
I'm still not sure whether I should get the cube to speak or just to flash lights. I guess I have to decided on it today, to get the playtesting on going. What I really want is, to get the Cube speak/ask question in every 30 seconds - two minutes. Not the same one of course!

a mail from the future?!!

I was cleaning up my bulk folder of one of my addys and this is what I came across with.

A couple of ideas at the same time

The last I spoke in class I had two choices: Toys as a diagnostic tool or toy as a rhythmic social interaction. As I went on digging about both of the concepts, I realized that I'm getting into something pretty deep, but my heart leaned on the idea of the social rhythmic device. So my target audience changed as well.

BUT something interesting happened:
I had a comment on my presentation post! The best part is she is not any person: She is a mother of two adorable children with autism and she's blogging about them often. I know who my first playtesters are now :) Here's her blog:
http://whitterer-autism.blogspot.com/

Now I'm in between of making a playful device for people suffering from light depression and a tool for children with autism.

CHILDREN:
I've been searching what kids like to play with and came across with this entry:

“Children of most ages and genders love to build (lego, blocks, anything) and they love things that can go fast or do cool maneuvers. They can use bits of anything (junk, or interesting other bits) and turn them into anything they imagine. They love the process, and are often less concerned with the final product. Younger kids really need to move their large muscles when they play. Older kids use more of their small motor muscles, but also like to move around. Kids tend to like things that are multi-faceted…have lots of possibilities. (I’m thinking of rejects now: silly putty is fun for a few minutes, slinkies tend to gather dust once they’ve been made to descend a flight of stairs, etc.) But duct tape lasts forever. You can do ANYTHING with that stuff. Kids are very creative, really, so given raw materials, they like to make and design things. Things like paper airplanes fascinate some kids.
Many kids of the female persuasion tend to want to cut, draw, paste and color…and also knit, etc. as they gain dexterity. Boys also love to draw, and some tend to black and white renditions of vehicles, cartooning, war battles, etc. Some stereotyping, eh? Most kids are quite social. Almost all kids like games. The classics never fail to amuse: Checkers, chess, card games. Strategy possibilities and complex maneuvers in any game give it merit. Some kids shy away from the competitive aspect of games, but manage to invent ways to play games where there is cooperation and accumulation of cool ideas for strategy rather than direct competition (winner, loser).
Kids love group games and so we play them every morning. Some involve chanting and/or music. Some favorite games are: Kooseeki, In Plain sight, “Down By the Banks”, A cold wind blows, Zoom, Alibi, and many more. If you want me to describe any of these games to you in more detail, I’d be happy to.
The role playing stuff. Much of this happens spontaneously with kids in any kind of play. “I’ll be the _______, and you be ________” etc. Many classrooms for small kids are set up to encourage this (House corners, etc.) Just thought I’d mention that. Kids are natural actors and learn empathy from stepping into a different character.

These interesting in-sights from a teacher helped me a lot in thinking about how children play with anything.

ADULTS:
I was about to go with a toy for 18 and up that aims for smoothing depression of life.

There are two inspirations for this toy:
One is myself: I've been in this very interesting state where I realize I'm growing up and having more and more responsibilities in my life and greater problems when I used to have as a kid. Even though I have my cute little toys to play with, sometimes I just need someone who can listen to me and someone to talk about stupid topics.
The second: When Tracy spoke about her depression-relieving jacket, I realized that I'm not the only one thinking about it. So this must be a bigger problem than I thought
On the other hand I would really like to work with something related to kids as well.

Well, being in a dilemma is better than a “creator's block”, right?

REFERENCES/INSPIRATIONS:
http://www.frogdesign.com/?p=21
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/8811/27877/01244338.pdf
http://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/archive/2002/june/features/toy_story.shtml
Heepon interacting with voice and movement.
http://univ.nict.go.jp/people/xkozima/infanoid/video/keepon-contact-joint.mpg
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn11434&feedId=online-news_rss20

Concept:
Samsung's new PCs
http://geekologie.com/2007/04/samsung_concept_pcs.php
Blood pool pillow
http://geekologie.com/2007/04/blood_puddle_pillows_look_like.php
Hamster- papershredder
http://geekologie.com/2007/04/hamsterpowered_paper_shredder.php

Toys:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredphotos35/
Soundball: (the so-what factor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMeVleitNo
Sony's danging Robot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRIO
Roboraptor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roboraptor

When the familiar target audience for toys are taken out, all we're left are 18 and up. Usually these kind of toys refer to sexual content:
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/grownups/
http://www.nbc10.com/news/10432522/detail.html

at last!

R2D2 mailbox!
http://geekologie.com/2007/03/usps_introduces_r2d2_mailboxes.php

CES 2007: The Wootable Awards

http://www.woot.com/Blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=1952

S.o.S

Last year we had problem during our brainstorming for our final. So we listed everything we like and spotted our common likes. We didn’t use that concept at the end but it was a good icebreaker and a starting point for brainstorming.

Later I realized that I worked on something similar at the beginning of the semester, which lead me to a realization that I love new things; something being created or discovered.
Especially kids are very fun to watch when they are playing with something new. I worked with kids who were likely to be diagnosed with autism, but recovered later on. The aim it was to get the child to know different personalities and get socialized easily. It wasn’t that long but still I really find it very interesting how different they interpret with toys and systems. Once a 3 year old kid was playing with a lego and all of a sudden he stopped and asked
“Why is this called a Lego?” Usually kids tend to have those “why? Why? But why?” moments a lot but this one led to something else.
“Because the brand named that toy Lego”
“But why? Why is it not called "Gofa" but Lego? Why L E G O is related with this thing?”
It blew my mind how this kid related to a very basic topic of Semiotics.


So I started researching about child psychology and learning:
As a starters point I picked up Sophie’s World: there it suggests that the purest form of a philosopher is a child because she / he is not exposed to the whole world of learning and can look at everything with a objective point of view.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/
http://www.otizm.org
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/
http://www.crafttoys.com/toys.html

“A variety of colors creates excitement, however, certain colors
stimulate the brain to associate colors with certain objects at an early stage in development. Most parents pretend that it is okay as "artistic or self expression" for children to color grass pink or cows purple. Deep down inside, the parent usually feels uneasy or uncertain that their child is "learning" or understanding reality properly.” Karen D. Hill

As for my concepts, I would like to stick to my interests I listed earlier and add some more on to them:

Here are my interests: Sociology, Semiotics, Psychology, Technology, Interactivity, Physical Computing. Interestingly, these topics are based on more than one person. Well most of them are.

Perception, “Learning”, lack of verbal language (inspired by Carolina). As a kid who grew up bilingual, I find myself lucky and unlucky at the same time. Lucky in the sense that I can understand both languages (as much as I can), unlucky because I can not translate one language to the other.

Design elements: Color, size, shape, texture.

Target Audience: Children. (with disorders: autism + dyslexia ?)

Well, when all of these come together, they lead me into a specific direction: toys/games… Interesting..

Keepon!

das ist meine Venn Diagram

Probably I spelled that wrong but yeah, here is the holly Venn diagram.
Generally the website I'm planning to work on is aiming to get people to taste the before they go and try out a restaurant. There are two ways to do it: Either everybody needs a printer that can print the flavor or different senses will be triggered to get the taste.
One of the greatest reasons why I'm doing this is: I'm always having people over, my family, friends, ex-boss, uncle's boss and so on. As everybody has a different personality, they seek for different tastes or ambiances. I'm a citysearch.com user and love it because there so different views from a lot of people that can help me to judge the place easily but doesn't help me taste-wise. So I'm looking for a website that can give me an idea of what the food tastes like.
I always find other people's opinions no matter what I'm doing. Because no matter how hard someone can work on a topic, they can not see every single detail in that project. A new eye always beings a new perspective. In this case, again I find it very valuable.

an article on art and design

Art vs Design, nice article
http://bokardo.com/archives/five-principles-to-design-by/

bunch of videos

umm.. any ideas?

Well, here is one I've been thinking about. It seems a little impossible but still it's an idea, nope?
I wish the net had a site that had every kind of food with pictures and tastes. Let's say, you're going to go out to some fancy cafe with people you want to impress; wouldn't that be great to be able to nibble a little of that food and be sure how it tastes like?
Or let's say you're traveling somewhere, and you need some good advice on food: what to eat, what to avoid, what NOT to be scared of.
As a solution: well I'm not sure what I can offer but here's something I've heard a while ago. Every taste refers to somewhere on our body. When the nerves referring to that body are triggered, we feel the taste in our tongue.
This just sounds creepy..

A map of everything.. Wouldn't that be great? I know that's way too general but let's say it's a map for a city you have never been to but planing to move to. It can give an idea about the best restaurants, the rent rates, the crime percentage, the live expenses and etc.
Obviously everybody is moving somewhere new and most of the time they come across with problems which has a lot different answers. Moving in New York is a good example actually; let's take someone who has no idea about New York but just got accepted from school. Getting to know the city for living but not for touristic purposes can have hard consequences. What if we had a website that could list the security, rent rates, deli's, living expenses of five boroughs? Wouldn't it be easier to find a good spot to live? Not only for New YOrk of course, it's for all over the world.
It's not that hard to build up a database for this, anybody who has access to the internet can write down a couple of lines just like in urbandictionary.com or answers.yahoo.com and voila, there's your database.

I heard this project was coming to life but I couldn't find it online yet. It's not online or it's my poor search skill..
I wish the net had a site that can let me sing in and find which song I've been singing for a week. There's always a song stuck in your mind and sometimes this song can be foreign or just the instrumental part of a song. When the lyrics are stuck in your mind, it's not a huge deal to look it up on the net, but when it's the instrumental part, it's just messed up. I've heard that they are building up a database of songs for a website where you can sing right away with your mic and the website will be able to pull up that annoying song you've been singing since you got up.
In a way it's like myheritage.com's celebrity finder, just a little bit different than that.
http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/tryFaceRecognition.php

It's on!!

Rather than agreeing and disagreeing on the article, I've found it informative. So it's hard to point out ideas which work for me or not.

The idea of having every document to be linked to each other reminds me of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the book that knew everything about everything. It feels very powerful even thinking about having a guide like that and wondering in foreign spaces (not places, spaces!) However, I'm not sure how this can save the world from stupidity. As information gets accessible to people, they'll be willing to give less effort looking for it, because it's already there, "I can get it whenever I need it!" Knowing that information is already present in a very easily accessible network may work good on stupidity but it will also make it a lot harder to be (or look) smarter. Is it only me or isn't it scary to think about everybody know about everything? - ok, I'm getting confused, let's jump to something else.

But I can not agree more with Kevin Kelly in not being able to
see what the web has become. "Any hope of discerning the state of the Web in 2015 requires that we own up to how wrong we were 10 years ago." got me thinking of what we might be doing right now. Thinking about ten years later is not as hard as thining what we are doing wrong right now. I have a guess though: People will get so sick and tired of dating site or self-representative sites (like myspace, facebook, xuqa and etc.), they will look for something maybe less entertaining but more interesting/smart: an interaction that is not based on interpersonal relationship, but more on “informational” relationship. About ten years ago, when I was a younger loser, I was subscribed on almost every chatting website. I was so all over the place, I became a tester for a couple of Turkish dating websites. Right now, I spend most of my time either on Wikipedia, Yahoo or Eksisozluk.org , kind of a Turkish urban dictionary but the entries are done by users.

This shift has already begun; by blogging. I do agree a lot with Kelly on everything he says on blogging and it is amazing to see how valuable it is to share certain experiences. Usually I read a couple of blogs before I go out and try a new restaurant, I never read magazines or rely on their websites. True experience can only be present in a true user’s blog, who is not seeking an economic outcome of what s/he is writing.

“The human brain has about 100 times that number - but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The Machine is.” What if we compare how complex they get every year? The Machine is created by people, it’s easy to predict where it is going, but the brain is still carrying so much mystery, it’s hard to guess the upcoming 5 minutes of it.



Oh, by the way, it was hilarious to see where baloney Cliff Still was!
Thinking about everything being linked to each other, here is a sweet site on data visualization:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

The awesome movie

So not related with elegant design

Kelly is actually a male comedian, Liam Kyle Sullivan. S/he getting pretty famous on myspace and youtube. A friend from work made a lot of fun about me when I told him I had no idea about her/him. As a very generous person, I won't like you guys to be in the same position.. so here you go:

My favorite two lyrics:
"I'll go Alanis Morisette on you"
"I'm gonna blog and text and post and host, podcast your bastard coast to coast!"

Also s/he has a music video on shoes as well...

You are coming to a sad realisation, Cancel or Allow?

I laughed pretty hard at this one. As a PC user, I do hate the obsessed security/firewall/whatever. Here you go:

Nooooo!!!

Last minute hiccup.. Well it's more a vomit than a hiccup. Three of our motors decided to die on us. Luckily we have a couple more to work on with.. but still.. this is way too depressing..

Brainstorming

As I started brainstorming about putting everything together, my day got pretty frustrating and I do need a drink right now!

At the moment we have a hat, a helmet and a remote. These three pieces have to be on the user and it takes time to get them on. So we're going to figure out something for that.

Also there is a possibility to put the breadboard in the helmet and have a relatively small remote, which I think will help us in user-testing.

horray friday

feel the helmet

As the haptics person for the helmet, it's going pretty good actually. We are having some problems with the code but they'll be ok (I hope). In this session, I added two more motors to the helmet, so in total we have 5 motors (yay). Two of them on the front, two of them at the back and the main motor on the top.
Also the wires are tagged from now on, because it's getting pretty annoying to figure out which is going where. YAY!

so we have four modes for the motors:
GAME START: Front motors. they will run during the game on a small pace
SHOOTING: Back motors and the main motor
SHIELD: Starting from the front all of them.
GAME OVER: ALL OF THEM!

Right now, GAME START and GAME OVER is working. The SHOOTING is OK, only the SHIELD needs some work. Also the accelerometer is not in good shape, but the screen is going pretty good!

I'm planning to sew the motors in the hat so we'd get rid of the catastrophic tapes. Well, let's see..

bbbooooooooooooooooooorrrrrredddd!!

things to do when you are bored:
http://www.beseechfanclub.com/bored/

Our cute little bear will have lungs and a cute little heartbeat :) The idea of the suicidal bear got quite hard in many ways, but especially because of the usage of touchsensors gets complicated, we decided to postpone the idea to another project

Pong Prototype

The Pong Prototype came out a lot easier than the helmet. All we have is a wood, two motors and a pack of reese's. The power of these two motors change depending on which side the "ball" hits.

Helmet prototype

On our helmet project, we tried to prototype a shooting game but the aim is not to shoot.. It's to escape from being shot! here is the little video

shooter

this is arduino decided to be a shooter. Rather than using a box, we've got two wood stuck together shaped like a gun. The trigger is a little cute push button and the vibrating motors are giving a feeling of a machine gun.. and yea.. it's cool...

heartbeat

First we tried to get the heart beat on going. Later on, we decided to put it in a dead mouse (don't ask why), so it will give a nice feeling. When we stuck the vibrating motors under some stuffing, the feeling became a lot more realistic.

Das ist eine video of it:

R2D2

Who doesn't love Artoo?
As I get more and more into physical computing and smart toys, I started thinking about the robots I like. Nowadays I'm in my Star Wars Diet; which means I'm watching Star Wars anytime I can!
This is for y'all fans out there..
http://www.astromech.net/Lists/Part%20Listings/currentitems.htm

william meyers

http://www.telehaptics.com/pages/projects/

wii guts

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/present.php?p=Wii-Internals

Recipe for a vibrating motor

- An arduino board
- A vibrating motor (can be found in allelectronics, in your phone, maybe the lab :) )
- wires (d'uh)


A possible code with a photosensor:



int motorPin = 9; // this is the analog output pin for the motor
int sensorPin = 3; // this is the digital input pin for the photo sensor
int photoSensor = 0; // this is a variable to hold the state of the photo sensor

void setup() {
pinMode(motorPin, OUTPUT); // set the motor pin as a analog output
pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT); // set the photo sensor pin as a digital input
}

void loop() {
photoSensor = digitalRead(sensorPin); // read the photo sensor
if (photoSensor == HIGH) { // if the photo sensor is sending 5 volts
digitalWrite(motorPin, HIGH); // turn on the motor
}
else {
digitalWrite(motorPin, LOW); // turn off the motor
}
}



hooking up the vibrating motor:
http://a.parsons.edu/~tina/wireless/archives/000087.html

how to make a vibrating motor:
http://www.instructables.com/id/ELD4XXZPWDEUK7R4W5/

guess who's coming to class tomorrow

one of my favorite toys. It can be quite annoying when you are not expecting a screaming monkey flying towards you. It's a nice way to explore haptics.. not totally, but a little.. i hope..
http://www.stupid.com/stat/SLNG.html

Haptic links

Long story short, haptics refer to any interface that can create a touchable communication between the user and the computer. This can be achieved by vibration, sound, force and maybe even electroshock. (??)
Here is a bunch of links for haptics, toys and vibrating motors..

Haptics in wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic

Cyberglove:
http://www.immersion.com/3d/products/cyber_glove.php

A great site for DIY:
http://www.instructables.com/

Haptics on youtube:
If only:

Billards:


I'm a quite pervert of myself, so here are some links to dildonics:
Slashdong (very creative name)
http://www.slashdong.org/

wiki for dildonics:
http://opendildonics.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

finest toys:
http://www.hamleys.com/

adding on knight rider

So this is a little setup with knight rider; when the photocell emits less light, the knightrider slows down. More light gets the lights blink faster..

Gutting an owl

This the Hip hop Pet.. and I'm not kidding. Seriously they named it Hip Hop Pet.
Rather than bulking up the blog with images, here is a little flash slideshow thingy. It's a little big, so bear with me :)

Man on the moon

Seriously high-resolution images brought together.
They are shot on the moon. I loved how Jay comment is as:
"There is no Apollo 13 because they couldn't make it."
I'm not sure why that sounds funny..
click this or this

arduino, the basic stamp killer

Interesting little blog entry.. click me

Pingu, my hero

It has nothing to do with class, but I love this character :)

A computer makes mistakes, but it makes mistakes so rare, people can't notice.

This is my dad!.. not really.. Bruce Schneier is the security guru who wrote Beyond Fear, an informative and funny book about security. Beyond Fear is also the name of the podcast.

Seriously entertaining! The way he interprets about security is so cool, I think this is a pretty good podcast about how "fuck-ups" happen in security and how it is possible for people to blow up the twin towers.

The general atmosphere of the podcast is about cryptography and secret code and security. People love finding out secrets, people love gossip. I don't believe there is one person who doesn't like it. I think the best sign of this idea is how Da Vinci Code got so famous and sold like crazy. Even though people didn't know that much of about art, they bought the book because of one of many reasons; revealing a secret code is one of the greatest reasons.

The feedback loop between defender and attacker is the most astonishing thing I heard about. As things get safer, the attackers actually work on more harmful solutions. When car alarms kicked in, thieves started carjacking. So there is a crazy game going on here. As a solution he suggests going after the terrorists rather than securing the airlines. It's so interesting how he approaches to the question. Actually it reminds me of an "arabic" way of solving things. I know I'm going to sound stereotypic, but don't take it personal. In old Arabian tradition, they try to find the "bad guy" and hang him, rather than putting up signals or keeping a guard. It's so interesting how the old Arabian tradition comes as a solution for a up-to-date problem.

I'm gonna buy his book... It sounds very genius!

Why would you use a computer if it's not connected to the internet?

The other digital divide is a podcast by Jon Udell and his guest Scott C. Lemon.

Personally I take the digital divide as people who "think" they know a design program (like photoshop) and some who seriously do know and rock our world.

The problems they start talking about is upgrading hardware. When I was getting into this whole upgrading computer stuff, I thought every brand would go with another apparently it didn't. I met one of my best friends who is now holding the whole power of adsl in Turkey (I know he visited my computer in Tr a couple of times!). When he opened up my computer to check what is happening, he couldn't get over it for two weeks and it took him to fix my mess a month.

Scott also points out that there should be a bridge between the geek world and "outside". Well, yea I do agree. I can't really consider myself as a geek but I am aware of what's going on with the whole computer power and I like Star Wars, so if not a total geek, I am a small one.

I'm working with a starving artist who just opened up an ad agency to earn some money. She has no experience with programs except microsoft word and she's been using it for designing logos. now.. wait a minute.. you are worling with Word to design logos and you think it's the greatest program ever??? When I showed her what photoshop can do (gradient in one click), she called it to complicated and still thinks Word is the coolest program ever. When Scott talks about his wife and exchanging photos, I can totally understand him. Most artists are not really aware of the power of a computer. The worst part is, these people think they are right and refuse cute little girls like me to help.

There's another side of the medallion; the upcoming generation is growing up in this internet power and can hardly recognize the use of a computer without internet connection.

I love what they said about owning something just because cool kids have it. One of them is talking about how he bought an iPod but ended up using his MuVo. It got me thinking: Are we getting atypical? I know I am, but there is a general sense that people are not doing what others are trying to do. Or maybe I feel like that now 'cuz I got out of my "wanna-be environment" and grew up.

Also there's another point I can't stop agreeing: I don't want something expensive that will give me a heart-attack every time I drop it. Personally I own a acer 5100 laptop (700$), a ipod nano (100), a mac mini (cant remember) and a LG whatever phone came free with the plan I chose. I can't work with something that can easily be damaged because I'm trying to learn stuff and my head is always busy. So I can forget something behind or it may fall of my pocket or something. I don't want to cry after it. Of course I'd love to have the coolest laptop or the greatest mp3 player, but I just can't take the responsibility.

What this podcast made me realize is that: I'm a lot more geeker that I though I was. If you wanna chill out, take a look at it but it can be quite boring as well..


wow.. long entry..

kung fu fighter

my new toy!

my desktop buddy

a small little stop motion animation we did while we were looking for a motto for one of our customers. boooringggg..

Doggy

The dog with serious issues..

My favorite toy: F*cking plush

this little bear has been with me since I was 5 (now I'm 24). We traveled a lot and I always kept it in my bag (not in my suitcase because I thought it will get offended).

Well beside of it's cuteness, FP has a healing power. We traveled a lot when we were kids and I got sick a lot of time. Whenever I put FP on my tummy I knew I'd get better and I did! :)

Uptil last year, FP had no name. While my brother was talking about a movie they saw that night, he improvised the character from the movie who threw a small fake fur to the bad woman and called both of them "Fucking plush". Since then, it's name is Fucking Plush, in short FP.

first blog. first post. first. first. first.

Yaaaaaaaay!!!
It feels so powerful to have a blog and have total control of it.. yeah..!
ok, so here's a little about me.

I got my BA in Communication and Design from Bilkent University in Turkey. After that I struggled in the market and worked in a small advertising agency, which felt bad at that time but now made me realized that I actually learned a lot. not only about the business but mostly about the people; boss, colleges, customers, print people and so on. Now I'm working freelance with a small ad agency and in school in the faculty equipment center.

I hate growing up and I still consider myself as a I kid. Because kids get amazed by everything they see around them and I always feel that way. I love technology, though I don't really count myself as a master of technology. The best part is, not only technology fascinates me; sociology, human psychology, animal psychology, inventions, creations, life stories, children and their brains and etc. It makes me feel a little dumb but still.. I like being fascinated. I related myself to the 14 year old character in Sophie's World and how she gets excited whenever she reads something new about philosophy.

ok, enough, boring..
later!