‘Playful Identities’ research blog

We have probably seen this example of a USB stick that swells up when full, and deflates when empty.

(source: www.smallsurfaces.com)

Although this is a mockup that apparently has been going around for quite a while, I do think these sort of designs are interesting examples how interaction with technology can be made more intuitive.

This phone made by Samsung is real:


(source: www.mobilecowboys.nl)

It’s screen displays a water level that corresponds to the level of ‘juice’ left in the battery.

From www.slashphone.com:

NTT DoCoMo in Japan just started selling the N702is 3G cell phone to its subscribers. The phone has a built in motion sensor. When the screen saver is activated, the screen displays glass-like water. The “water” moves when you move the phone around. The water level also reflects your current battery status, the lower it reaches, the less power you have.

(Via Mobile Cowboys)

British site www.modyourmob.co.uk is dedicated to modding the phone. Modding the phone in moderate ways already happens quite often, I think, as a means of personalize your phone. But now telcom operator Orange has stepped into it and gives away prizes to the best mods.

Interestingly btw how the site at more than one place speaks about how this modding supposedly is “big in Japan and it’s going to be massive over here”. This sounds more like a strategy to encourage people to get into it, since we al now Japan is the furthest of al countries in mobile phone development, craze & hype, and we don’t want to stay behind, now don’t we..?

Textuality.org reports that many of the English(?) office workers have an infatuation for hightech mini-gadgetry such as mobile phones, Blackberry’s, iPods. They are dubbed G.O.S.S.I.P.S - Gadget Obsessed, Status Symbol Infatuated Professionals. The research was done for recruitment firm Office Angels. From the Reuters press release:

LONDON (Reuters) - An iPod and 2 mobile phones are the latest must-have accessories along with Sushi for the status-conscious office worker, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
The poll, conducted for recruitment firm Office Angels, found 67 percent of 1,500 respondents considered so-called “micro-gadgets” like Blackberrys, laptop memory sticks and small mobile phones to be the ultimate status symbols.

Office Angels branded the people in the survey as GOSSIPS (Gadget Obsessed Status Symbol Infatuated Professionals), a morphed version of the archetypal 1980s Yuppie — Young Urban Professional.

Almost half (45 percent) of those questioned thought any ambitious worker should own at least 2 mobile phones — one for work calls and the other for social chit chat.

The survey also found food such as sushi, organic salads and sashimi — thinly sliced raw seafood — were rated highly by office workers compared with traditional sandwiches or burgers with chips.

Nearly a third of office workers also admitted to spending over 10 pounds a week on coffee, even if they could get the beverage for free at work.

Apparently, the smaller the better, casting doubt on the Goffmanesque idea that it is all about external display, the “presentation of self”. Carrying such items with you as little ritual tokens (fetishes) may be more about highly personal feelings of security and confidence.

OK, so I got a new UMTS enabled phone, a Nokia 6233. I got a Dutch T-mobile flat rate internet subscription for € 9,50 a month over GPRS (not as fast as UMTS of course but definitely cheaper). Now I want to use my MacIntosh powerbook running OS X 10.4.7 to go online via my mobile phone over a bluetooth connection. T-Mobile states on its website that using GPRS to connect an Apple to the internet is not possible/supported, but I found out how ;-).

First set up internet access on your phone:
1) On my Nokia, you can set up internet access under Settings > Connectivity > Packet Data > Packet Data Settings > edit active access point > Packet Data Access Point. Fill in “internet” (that’s the access point - or “APN” - T-Mobile uses). Make sure you’re able to browse the internet with you phone.

Now set up your MacIntosh to use your phone to connect to the internet
1) In Mac OS X, choose the Bluetooth panel from the System Preferences. Set up Bluetooth preferences to sync your phone to your computer (I’m not gonna explain that here in detail, just run the Wizzard). Choose the option “Acces the Internet with your phone’s data connection” and tick the box “Use a direct, higher speed connection to reach your ISP…”
2) In the second tab “Devices” of the Bluetooth preferences panel click the button “Edit Serial Ports…”. Add a port and make sure the Device Service is set to COM-1 and the Port Type to Modem.
3) In the third tab “Sharing” of the Bluetooth preferences panel, choose “Add Serial Port Service”. Set the type to Modem, and tick both boxes underneath saying “Show in Network Preferences” and “Require Pairing for Security”.
4) Now open your “Internet Connect” preferences panel from the system preferences. Go to Bluetooth. Fill in at Telephone Number: *99# (for my Nokia that is, Siemens & Motorola: *99***1#, Samsung: *99**1*1#, all other phones also need *99#). I filled in under Account name: guest, and as passwd also guest. Choose Show modem status in menu bar, if you like quick access to this connection.
5) Hit connect et voila, you’re online!

You can check whether you’re connected by typing in “ifconfig” in the terminal. It should say something like this:

macmichiel:~ michiel$ ifconfig
….
….
ppp0: flags=8051 mtu 1500
inet 84.241.202.139 –> 10.6.6.6 netmask 0xff000000

Speed over GPRS isn’t all that bad, I did a test downloading a big file over a nearby FTP connection:

macmichiel:~ michiel$ curl -O ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/DIRLIST
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
3 49.0M 3 1995k 0 0 38437 0 0:22:18 0:00:53 0:21:25 50751

Speed is > 50000 bytes/sec = over 40 KB/s, something I wish I had just a few years back :-D. Quite cool all this, now I am able to get online everywhere, provided there is GPRS coverage.

(From www.bright.nl.)

If you’ re in dire need of someone to call you to save you from a boring obligatory drink with colleagues, or to impress your company, here is the Popularity dialer. Via the website you can subscribe to make a call at a certain time of choice. Escapism through the mobile phone! Now let’s hope you have internet on your mobile phone to quickly subscribe in the toilet when you are in a café with boring people…

kablog-j2me 2.0.8 for Nokia6233

Let’s see if this will work as smoothly as the last post.

—–
—–
[edit: had to edit the image width and height to fit the space]
[edit2: I can live with a little self-advertising by the software that goes along with publishing a picture]

A couple of days ago i bought a new UMTS-enabled phone, finally :-). It’s a Nokia 6233. So now i’ll be able to publish from anywhere, thanks to this app i found, called Kablog.

According to a yearly recurring research by Dutch consultancy bureau CheckItOut (a Newcom branch), teenagers as well are annoyed by people talking too loud in their mobile phone, or having stupid ringtones.

47 % thinks loud conversations are a nuisance
46 % dislikes irritating ringtones
38 % doesn’t want to listen in on other people’s conversations

The poll was held among 585 young people between 12 - 25 years.
———–
———–
Among the total Dutch population, the numbers are even higher, according to the Telecom monitor 2006 (source www.nu.nl):

62 % is annoyed by loud conversations
60 % hates listening to other people’s conversations
40 % hates annoying ringtones
37 % doesn’t like his/her partner to answer the phone during a normal conversation
35 % doesn’t like loud ringtones

source: EU website

The European Commission has started a public consultation about the issue of child safety and the use of the mobile phone. The consultation is undertaken within the framework of the “Safer Internet” programme.

A “Public consultation document” (PDF file, 142.2 KB) has been released that describes the issue. In short, the EU sees the following risks:

1) “Exposure to illegal or inappropriate content” - Children may be exposed to unwanted or illegal content via the mobile phone.
2) “Ease of contact by predators, bullying” - Children may be prone to harassment via the mobile phone.
3) “Risk of high expense, exposure to advertising by mobile marketers and phishing” - Children may lose a lot of money by unknowingly using services or being tricked.

The report suggests a couple of solutions:

1) Content classification
2) Opt-in versus Opt-out
3) Age verification
4) Filtering and blocking (including blacklisting)
5) Notice and take down procedures
6) Moderation of chat rooms
7) Raising awareness
Dedicated mobile phones for children

Doing something about all this hovers, as always, between legal rules and restrictions on the one hand, and self regulation of the industry on the other hand.

The whole report breathes ’social impact’ thinking, whereby new technologies are portrayed as an outside force, threatening the current stability and order of things. Apart from that, what is conspicuously lacking from the document’s list of possible ‘risks’ or ‘challenges’ - in my view - are the more interesting sociological and philosophical questions. For instance:

• Question of ‘digital divide’ - Is there any ‘risk’ in not having access to the mobile phone (e.g. due to financial situation of family; geographical coverage; lack of education; etc.)? What does it mean for the social position of the child not to have a mobile phone, especially when his/her peers all have one?
• Questions of parental trust and educational development: What does it mean for a child to be given the trust to use the mobile phone, or conversely, what does it mean not the be allowed one by the parent(s)?
• Questions of social networks - What is the contribution of the mobile phone to the formation of social ties with other children? Is the mobile phone an indispensable tool for creating social bonds?
• Question of personal identity development - What influence does the mobile phone have on the development of personal identity and autonomy of the child? Is it aiding the development of a sense of personhood? Or is the mobile phone creating a “distributed self”, a form of selfhood beyond singular and autonomous, but interdependent and distributed?

Yes yes, still here.. after finally moving to my own apartment in the east of Amsterdam and becoming responsible for my own dirty dishes, and after finishing Sources of the Self, the magnum opus by Charles Taylor’s (yes, the Liberian dictator-philosopher it’s time for a little update on what I’ve been up to lately:

• Writing on my paper about mobile communication as gift culture. Unfortunately it was turned of for the book by Katz, Ling and Campbell.
• Reading: i.a. Taylor, and a lot of literature on mobile communication.
• Succeeded in getting the NWO grant for the art/science project. Really cool: I joined a preliminary plan by artist Esther Polak and anthropologist Ab Drent who want to work with the perceptions and visualisations of space amongst the pastoral Fulani herdsman in west-Africa. The project as it is planned now would take place in Nigeria. The idea is, as said in an earlier post, to let scientist and artist cooperate in a project, with both of them learning and gaining insights from the other. I’ll write about it some more as when the plan gets more concrete
• Done some other stuff: thinking about the site www.playful-identities.nl (not even working properly, so no clickable link here..); going to some symposia too: Christiana Seidel’s symposium about selfhood; ICT yearbook by SCP & Rathenau in The Hague on Monday May 15.