IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative aims to show how increasingly smart systems can increase efficiency and progress. This is done by monitoring sometimes complex data from the physical world, interpreting meaning from it and then reacting to this and changing the physical world in some way. An example of this would be to ease congestion by automatically redirecting vehicles to different routes or adjusting the flow through a city by manipulating traffic light timings.
At the university the main room we use for the Digital Art and Technology course in the Babbage building is an IBM Smarter Planet lab, although we still call it the DAT Cave. The room has been set up to make use of some of this IBM technology. The Smarter Planet concept meshes closely with both the work we have been doing in the Everyware and Realtime modules.
Before creating an entirely new product the company would offer a range of different colour options for the Temperamental, giving some individuality to them.
Later models would also include new features, such as a greater range of sensors, an improved display and redesigned shell.
Before creating an entirely new product the company would offer a range of different colour options for the Temperamental, giving some individuality to them.
Later models would also include new features, such as a greater range of sensors, an improved display and redesigned shell.
While exploring funding options for the start-up business, the popular crowd funding website Kickstarter stood out as a great platform for getting projects off the ground for a number of reasons.
The original prototype ‘Fickleduino’ built for DAT301, served as the basis for Temperamental.
The equipment was then used for other projects and was later completely rebuilt for Temperamental featuring a temperature sensor instead of a range finder and light sensor.
The prototype effectively demonstrates the core functionality of the device.
The elevator pitch is a quick 30-120 second pitch that would often be used by a entrepreneur to pitch to a potential investor to spark interest. It gets its name from the idea of opportunistically getting in an elevator with the person you want to talk to and pitching them the idea in the time it takes for them to reach their floor.
For Temperamental having done a 2 minute pitch I was interested in seeing how I could get across the idea behind it in around 30 seconds.
Hello, My name is Jo Redwood, I am an inventor and entrepreneur and would like to speak about my product Temperamental.
Temperamental is a small spherical toy that senses its environment and then complains about it on a small display, only by changing its surroundings you can make it stop complaining. If it’s above a certain temperature it complains of being too hot, below it and it complains about being too cold. Temperamental also acts like an indoor weather station that can stream live data over the web giving it a wide range of other potential uses. The website would allow owners to compete to create the right conditions for their Temperamental and share their score via social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
The elevator pitch is a quick 30-120 second pitch that would often be used by a entrepreneur to pitch to a potential investor to spark interest. It gets its name from the idea of opportunistically getting in an elevator with the person you want to talk to and pitching them the idea in the time it takes for them to reach their floor.
For Temperamental having done a 2 minute pitch I was interested in seeing how I could get across the idea behind it in around 30 seconds.
Hello, My name is Jo Redwood, I am an inventor and entrepreneur and would like to speak about my product Temperamental.
Temperamental is a small spherical toy that senses its environment and then complains about it on a small display, only by changing its surroundings you can make it stop complaining. If it’s above a certain temperature it complains of being too hot, below it and it complains about being too cold. Temperamental also acts like an indoor weather station that can stream live data over the web giving it a wide range of other potential uses. The website would allow owners to compete to create the right conditions for their Temperamental and share their score via social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
The way that humans interact with computers is constantly changing. It seems that this change is usually spurred on by advances in technology as opposed to changes in thinking. An example is the transition from the computer mouse to touch screen devices. The first mouse prototype was developed by Douglas Engelbart in 1963 and featured in his 1968 demonstration which has come to be known as ‘The Mother of All Demos’.
Later designs incorporated a ball with the wheels against it rather than the wheels directly contacting with the surface as in Engelbart’s design. Over time mechanical mice have been superseded by optical mice which make use of photodiodes to detect movement. With miniaturisation of computers themselves came laptops which made it necessary to integrate a small pointing device into them, to do this touch pads are used. With the PDAs and early tablet computers such as the Intel Web Tablet a stylus was used for pointing. With resistive and now capacitive touch screens users need only touch the screen to interact with a device. People can now use gestures giving a wider scope for control and making it more intuitive. With technology like Microsoft’s Kinect and Leap Motion, it is conceivable that touch screens may too become obsolete.
Throughout all of this development the basic idea of controlling a specific point in a virtual space and then carrying out an action based on what that area of screen represents. The clicking on an icon to start a program, the icon isn’t the program it is merely an image on a screen yet through interfaces we create these object based metaphors. To access something we want, we us in the case of a mouse an agent that represents our focus.
