Hello world. This one to tell i am still alive, despite the lack of blog updates.
I’m here at CHI 2008 in Florence, just started attending, have a poster to present for the MICC, an Engineering SIG to facilitate and, hopefully, some interesting things to get excited about in the world of Human Computer Interaction.
If this is the case (whichi i am sure of), i will keep this post updated.

Give your sketches a kinetic feel
K-Sketch is a work presented by Colwell and Landay, it’s about creating a sketching user interface that speeds up the animation process. There is a lot on sketching, and these guys tell it’s for “novice” animators. My feel of it is that it is an awesome technique that could be in a pro tool too. Maybe multitouch?

Computational Textiles
For the soft and tangible interface lovers. Lilypad Arduino is about embedding technology in dresses, but not only that. Technology doesn’t look like that, dress does look like something more. And girls become passionate in programming and start computer science courses!

Get something more serious than a Wiimote
Had an interesting talk with Stephen Hughes, who was presenting his work with the U. of Glasgow on tactile input. He is actually the engineer founding SAHM-Engineering, that provides an integrated architecture of wireless sensors packed into a small box. That is very similar to what U. of Bologna does as the hardware platform fo TANGerINE, and a good sign that these micro-architectures are growing in market demand.
Side our booth there was also Pamela Jennings with her project “Constructed Narratives”.She is using tangibles with smart sensors too, to construct blocky “things” that map to conceptual structures, using WordNet as API and other text mining. Very different use of this technology!

Media Spaces: a panel lacking the future
The panel featured Buxton and other famous researchers. Very good intro about the history of media-spaces (which you could name also telepresence), and some insight about the present, but.. the future? No real answer, and a shared feeling that the market of mobile devices is driving it all. Buxton said: “more is less! (more technology, in the right place, becomes less complexity).

A taste of digital Pen & Paper
I missed some workshop in the past and still wasn’t able to use the digital pen&paper technology. Hopefully ETH Zurich booth with Beat Signer showed their iPaper suite for digital annotation (and much more), and also a poster from Jurgen Steimle about, i would say, the future of Post-It.
Both use Anoto technology, and both say that Anoto (who is the only widely available provider of APIs and tech) is “holding back” too much in terms of licensing agreements, and that is one of the reasons why digital pen&paper isn’t still widely used.