This is a few days old by now, but Business Week is reporting about Leapfrog’s new ‘Fly,’ a computer embedded inside a largish pen. The pen interacts with kids through voice commands and writing recognition.

Kids can use it as a calculator, keep a calendar, create and record music, and play complex logic and geography games — all features I tried and found fun and educational.

What’s so cool about this, I think, is that it moves the interface away from the keyboard/mouse/monitor that kids are tied to with computers. Embedded computing is also another way for kids to be more mobile - so they can take more traditional ‘learning activities’ outside of the predictable environments and into their own, more informal spaces.

The downside is that the pen requires special paper (sold separately, of course) in order for its handwriting recognition to work.

After lots of hubbub and grinding on the rumor mill:

• NY Times: Google to Offer Instant Messaging and Voice Communications on the Web
• LA Times: Google to Deliver Instant Messages
• The Rumor Mill (a.k.a Exead): Meetro and Google
  

Google’s new integrated IM/VOIP/EMail client, Google Talk, is online a few hours early. (Slashdot coverage)Note that in order to use it you must already have a GMail account. Is Google trying to centralize its namespace? Seems like it. I forsee JoeSmith4468893006.

Many, many kudos to my friend Joe, who is part of a multi-site team that’s just been funded ($7.5 million!!!) to establish “A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Accurate and Transparent Elections” (ACCURATE). (See Joe’s blog post on the subject.)

This is a huge step and is the first center of its kind, I believe. Since 2000 we’ve all been feeling both the need to understand e-voting issues and, especially in California, fight the rush to bring faulty new voting technologies to the rescue. Bottom line: the solution to bad low-tech voting (i.e. hanging chads) is not bad high-tech voting.

I was just going through a frustrating exercise: we recently completed an online survey which used an iPod giveaway as a mechanism for drawing in participants. So just this morning I generated the fateful random number and selected the winner.

After writing a simple email explaining that our participant had won, I was struck with the challenge of writing a suitable title. More importantly a title that would make it through a spam filter. I originally had ‘Congratulations, iPod Winner!’ but realized that every single element of that title might set off a spam filter, even the damn punctuation. But I didn’t want to abandon the point of the message altogether - a title should relate to the content. I finally settled on a simple ‘UC Survey: Congratulations’. Of course, our winner won’t know what the kudos are for until she opens up the message - IF she opens up the message.

We are at a frustrating point where the efforts we must make to rid ourselves of spam are encroaching on our habits and making us think twice about things we’d otherwise not give a second though. That’s an awful position to be in - technology should work for us, not against us. Inboxes full of spam do seem worse to me, but that’s why we should kill all spammers.

There’s a front page NY Times story today about the effects of high gas prices. It’s a well written and researched article, but surprisingly it doesn’t mention what I think is one of the most practical Google Maps Hacks out there: Cheap Gas, which allows you to find the cheapest gas prices in your area. As gas prices continue their inevitable creep towards $5/gallon I have a feeling I’ll be using it more and more.

(courtesy NY Times)

The Children’s Partnership has just released a new report which might be of interest:

Measuring Digital Opportunity for America’s Children: Where We Stand and Where We Go From Here

By Wendy Lazarus and Andrew Wainer with Laurie Lipper

This report is the first-ever look across four key areas to see whether Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is helping children 1) improve educational achievement, 2) lead healthier lives, 3) increase economic opportunity, and 4) participate in their communities. The year-long study also reveals the disparities that have resulted in an “opportunity gap” for millions of low-income and ethnic minority children.

Innovate Magazine’s Aug./Sept. issue focuses ‘ on the role of video game technology in current and future educational settings.’ TOC to follow:

What Would a State of the Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?
J. P. Gee
Epistemic Games
David Williamson Shaffer
What Can K-12 School Leaders Learn from Video Games and Gaming?
Richard Halverson
simSchool: The Game of Teaching
Melanie Zibit and David Gibson
Changing the Game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom?
Kurt Squire
Game-Informed Learning: Applying Computer Game Processes to Higher Education
Michael Begg, David Dewhurst, and Hamish Macleod
The Design of Advanced Learning Engines: An Interview with Clark Aldrich
Joel Foreman and Clark Aldrich
Places to Go: Apolyton
Stephen Downes

The New York Times Magazine printed a feature piece this past Sunday on Rooster Teeth Productions and Machinima. While Red vs. Blue has been around for a couple of years now, I think this article does a great job of capturing its position in the context of popular culture and the video game debate, recently stoked by Hillary Clinton and GTA3.

Also check out unmediated’s post on this subject.

My paper has been accepted to the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Washington, DC. It has been a challenge for me to learn to bridge the gap between technology and anthropology in other forums, so it’s good to know that the AAA pays a bit of attention.

I did this work in the spring in conjunction with a wonderful course I took with AnnaLee Saxenian and Joyojeet Pal called ‘ICT for Development: Context, Strategies, and Impact.’ What I really liked about the course is that it was a fantastic synthesis of many disciplines - economics, sociology, anthropology, computer science and engineering. We had participants from all these fields, and together I think we were able to expose the problems with much of the ICT-based development work that’s going on today. I blogged recently about an abstract I wrote for EPIC (rejected) about how companies that explore markets in the developing world (the mythical ‘other’ 3 billion) are essentially doing development work without realizing it. This paper is a first step in trying to make that process more acceptable.

A Case for Culturally Appropriate Kiosks

Judd D. Antin
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California Berkeley

Though many anthropologists have long recognized the need to tailor interventions to specific cultural contexts, that revelation has come more recently to technologists and information scientists in other fields. Ethnography has been recognized by some in the information technology fields for its ability to inform the design of sustainable new programs and assess and modify existing ones, but for others it is still seen as unsuitable or impractical. Few attempts have been made to use ethnographic methods to create culturally appropriate information and communication technologies (ICTs) and programs based upon them. Kiosk programs, which provide public access to computers and computer-related services for a variety of purposes including education, communication, and access to government services, have become one of the primary means for bringing the power of modern technology to underserved populations in the developing world. However, though many kiosk programs have been implemented, few have become sustainable or widely used. Beginning with the premise that successful and sustainable programs are those that adapt themselves to local cultures, this paper will explore the application of ethnographic methods to the assessment and design of culturally appropriate kiosk programs. Using several case studies, this paper will describe the unique challenges of designing culturally appropriate and sustainable kiosk programs, and illustrate how cultural factors can contribute to the success or failure of a kiosk project.

Fine Wine - Skill - Mystery - Passion + Commercialism = Enologix

See the NY Times Article.

I’d like to share in the kudos for Lorenz at anthropologi.info for creating a useful ‘newspaper‘ page which aggregates the RSS feeds of a variety of anthropology-related blogs.

If you’re new to reading anthroblogs, I suggest you stop here. I think Lorenz has included most of the current greatest hits.

I think this recent Engadget post titled Pilot program brings handhelds to Kenyan students strikes just the right tone on efforts to bring new technologies to schools in the developing world. On the one hand, ICTs can provide a wealth of information and opportunities for creativity, skill building, and education to communities that are short on all three. On the other hand, I think we need to ask serious questions about the best use of limited resources.

Are Pocket PCs better than textbooks? Maybe they are more information rich - certainly as in the program linked above where the PocketPCs can receive constant updates over the Internet via satellite. But Pocket PCs are fragile and require a steady power supply to keep batteries charged, as the Engadget article points out. Pocket PCs also malfunction and require constant maintenance in a way that textbooks just don’t. Once we factor in the cost of skilled personnel, maintenance, and access, is a Pocket PC the most valuable, sustainable solution? By itself maybe not. I think we ought to be skeptical of high-tech solutions when low-tech solutions will fit the bill. The best idea may be to use ICTs to supplement and enhance existing, durable, and familiar technologies. That way of the reliability of the technology becomes a problem the kids don’t miss out altogether.

Let me know if you’re as annoyed (and surprised) by this as I am:

Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation

The biggest problem, defense lawyers say, is the language barrier between an immigrant store clerk and the undercover informants who used drug slang or quick asides to convey that they were planning to make methamphetamine.

They’re not really paying attention to what they’re being told,” said Steve Sadow, one of the lawyers. “Their business is: I ring it up, you leave, I’ve done my job. Call it language or idiom or culture, I’m not sure you’re able to show they know there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing.

And yet somehow if store clerks everywhere started taking a particular interest in what I buy, I might not like it. I’d prefer it if no one commented on my buying Preparation H and pickles. I appreciate this lawyer trying to defend his client, but maybe this isn’t the perfect spot for the cultural defense.

The article also says this:

So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

As though, ‘Oh my goodness, that silly Indian man didn’t know what it means to “finish up a cook.”‘ That must be because of their culture. Or mine, since I’d have no clue what that guy was talking about either.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Georgia police would exhibit this kind of ignorance in dealing with people with different backgrounds. It does surprise me that the New York Times would publish a piece that treats the issue so callously.

I may be behind the times on this (again), but if you haven’t seen it check out Yahoo’s Konfabulator. Yahoo recently acquired Pixoria and made this super-neet software free. Those of you who have seen or use Apple’s Dashboard applications will recognize this Javascript runtime engine.

Once you install the Konfabulator you can use thousands of little widgets that reside on your desktop and do everything from visualizing your system statistics to showing you the weather or putting a task list on your desktop.

There’s also fun stuff like putting a Hal 9000 eye on your desktop:

or a desktop LiteBrite:

And it’s all very pretty.

Update: Fair and Balanced: Check out The Register’s take on why Yahoo is stupid and Konfabulator isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I recently discovered a new and interesting source for BSODs. When I reboot or startup my WinXP machine with my iPod (4g, 4gb) plugged in via USB, I’ll get the BSOD and a reboot. Grrr.

Here’s what I found out:

The BSOD looks like this.
I have SP1, but SP2 is also a problem according to other reports.
fastfat.sys, the driver implicated in this error, is related to disk allocation. This problem apparently appears when your machine is formatted with NTFS.
This is a not a critical error. To continue without rebooting, change Windows automatic reboot settings by following the instructions here.

As to solutions, there’s the easy one and the hard one:

Easy: Unplug your iPod before your reboot or startup your machine.

Hard: I had to dig around even to find a reasonable sounding explanation of the problem. Here’s something (unverified) that I found:

This is a documented problem. It seems that a combination of WinXP, iPod (current firmware) and USB 2.0 cause this BSOD for some people. (link)

Vague, but it comes with some solutions:

Tweak your USB settings so it anticipates a external drive (I have no idea how to do this and would award points for this solution), or take the iPod to a Mac and do a low level, complete (all zeros) format with the OSX format tool. I have no idea why the last one works, but several threads on Apple.com indicate this as a viable solution. I don’t know anyone nearby with a Mac and OSX, but there is an Apple store in town, but I can imagine how long a format would take. (link scroll down)

Since the specific firmware version is implicated, try updating to the latest version. As of 8.2.2005 the latest versions are:

iPod Updater 2005-06-26 includes new iPod Software 1.2 for iPod with color display, new iPod software 3.1 for iPod with Click Wheel and new iPod software 1.4 for iPod mini. iPod Updater 2005-06-26 contains the same software versions as iPod Updater 2005-03-23 for all other iPod models.

I resisted the urge to create a new category called ‘Infantile’:

Fun at the Airport

It’s been reported in a few places today (Red Herring and ZDNet, to start) that Intel created a new group called the ‘Channel Products Group’ with four field offices around the globe: Bangalore, Cairo, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. According to Intel:

The Channel Products Group will seek to expand on Intel’s success in global markets by combining into one organization existing groups focused on developing and selling Intel products to meet the unique needs of local markets worldwide.

Intel is hiring teams of local researchers to do ethnography. Intel appears to have a real investment in ethnography as a means to tap emerging markets. What I particularly like about their approach is that they aren’t just sending Western researchers overseas, they’re hiring local folks to help understand their own communities. Intel seems so committed to this being an international effort that they are headquartering the new group in Shanghai.

That said, this seems like an appropriate moment to bring up a topic that I have been thinking through with the help of Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami over at BRIE. We’re thinking of writing a paper on the topic of ethnography, culture, and market development in the emerging world. Here is an abstract that we wrote for EPIC (sadly, rejected… I’m telling myself because it didn’t quite hit the conference theme on the head) with corporate research into emerging markets in mind:

The Dangers of Development in Disguise:
Market Research as Development Work, and the Mandate for Cultural
Assessment

As companies seek out new markets in the developing world, they often find themselves working with poor and marginalized populations. While this work is often characterized as mere market research, in the context of the developing world market research is often tantamount to development work. This paper will argue that understanding the true nature of this kind of work requires that companies take a more holistic and ecological view which incorporates an understanding of sociocultural factors. Taking sociocultural factors into account – especially the potential for culturally-based barriers to business – is necessary to provide the foundation for effective and sustainable market development. As development agents companies must also act on their ethical obligation to consider the potential consequences of introducing new technologies into developing regions. This paper will present an argument for addressing sociocultural issues, as well as a methodological framework based on rapid ethnographic assessment procedures (REAP).