Silence = Thought

There are so many books I wish I had with me… now that I really have time to read and reflect. I’m not online much at the moment, so that aspect of my research has slowed and will be slow until August. The digital silence has been productive, though. I am thinking at a level or depth that is rare during the school year and capturing it on paper.

QR Coded Tombstones in Japan

Hi-tech tombstones in Japan let mourners link to images, videos of deceased - Mainichi Daily News

A gravestone manufacturer here is helping bereaved families remember their loved ones with a touch of technology -- mobile phone QR codes on tombstones that link to photographs and video clips of the deceased.

The tombstones are being sold by stone processing company Ishinokoe. Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code -- a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive.

Cell Services

State Of the Art - Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free - NYTimes.com

Mobile Phone Usage Collage

mobile phone usage collage - data visualization & visual design - information aesthetics

a mobile phone application, freely distributed for Symbian phones, that visualizes personal mobile communication usage patterns. the application sits on the periphery of the machine, monitoring the connectivity through the number & type of calls received, & then subtly displaying those in the form of a generative graphic. "some days will be really colorful & wired, others quieter & more reflective, either way the resulting visuals will always be personal, unrepeatable & unique."

each new contact (phone number) in a cycle is assigned a color throughout a cycle. a color transparency mirrors the level of a call's intensity, measured by how long one takes to attend the call. duration. the size of a call symbol, full circles: incoming calls, open circles: outgoing calls, expresses the duration of the call.

CADA


Samples

Lights. Camera. Cellphone Action

Lights. Camera. Cellphone Action. - New York Times

Mr. Lee, the director, is teaming up with Nokia, the cellphone maker, to direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and adults using their mobile phones.

New Works with Mobile Phones [London]

Networked_Performance — Live Stage: New Works with Mobile Phones

The Centre for Research in Art, Education and Media (CREAM) invites you to presentations and discussions of new work using mobile phones by Mark Amerika, Chris Fry and Max Schleser.

TXTML

TXTML

The markup language for Subversive (Mobile) Storytelling.

Together with its interpreter and messaging engine, TXTML (TeXT-message Markup Language) comprises a system for creating interactive text-messaging applications.

TXTML encourages natural and open-ended exchanges that emphasize context over commands, allowing the author to dynamically tailor applications to the current location, time, and history of the user. The language is an elegant, domain-specific XML-variant which calls on an extensible library of functional modules. These include methods for natural language processing, user administration, content management, dynamically generated content via Atom/RSS feeds, and location tracking. The language's nonlinear structure enables complex applications to be simply composed, whether narrative artworks, games, surveys, or interpretive content.

TXTML was not designed to create standard text-message applications such as mailing lists or lookup services. Rather, it is a experimental platform for investigating text-messaging as a narrative medium. It's inspired by INFORM, AIML, and VXML, but with the particular interactive concerns of text-messaging in mind. An outgrowth of Brian House’s design thesis, it powers artwork by Knifeandfork, including a forthcoming piece called The Wrench. Knifeandfork coined the term Subversive (Mobile) Storytelling to describe their recent work -- the use of mobile phones to transform our experience of narrative by intertwining it with daily life.

Denso Wave

QR Code.com

US QR-code test

From the NY Times: Bar Code Sales Tool Is Failing Campus Test

In parts of Asia and Europe, marketers have been using bar code technology to help sell things to people on their cellphones. A consumer can point a phone at something intriguing that bears a signature black-and-white square, then get information about a product or service or an offer to purchase it.

In the United States, the spread of this technology has been slow, in part because cellphones here are not equipped with the necessary software. There have been a few small-scale tests, but judging from the experience of one under way at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the technique is nowhere near ready for widespread use.

Books have arrived...

I’m starting with this one, because I know Jarice from when she was the Dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University:
24/7: How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Jarice Hanson

I plan to post annotations to the bibliography as I read the books. I have ordered some handy research tools to make this easier... more on that later - PB’s Research Toolkit...

QR-Code

The Kaywa Reader

From Wikipedia:

Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context spanning both commercial tracking applications as well as convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users. QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that a user might need information about. A user having a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. A user can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

Books Ordered

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, Misa Matsuda

Cell Phone Culture: Mobile Technology in Everyday Life
by Gerard Goggin

Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life
by James Katz

Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance
edited by James E. Katz, Mark Aakhus

The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social Transformation
edited by Anandam P. Kavoori, Noah Arceneaux

The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society
by Rich Ling

Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone
by Jon Agar

The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication
by Heather Horst, Daniel Miller

24/7: How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play
by Jarice Hanson

Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society
edited by Peter Glotz, Stefan Bertsch

Working bibliography to be posted soon...

Mobile Media

This is where I will be documenting my work and research on mobile devices for the next year.