Brooders.net

A while back I stumbled across The OpenEEG project. This is a no warranty, Software and Hardware DIY EEG resource.

EEG or Electroencephalography is a measure of brain activity. EEG readings can be obtained form placing sensors on the head. This provides a non-invasive approach to reading braing signals.

This stuff is largely experimental in trying to control devices with the activity in your brain. Probably also measuring responses to different stimuli, audio, visual or physcial.

So what’s this good for .. well over at wired they talk about A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind (using EEG).

This reminds me of Davros from the BBC series “Doctor Who”, who was an evil mastermind who created the Daleks.

However, the wheelchair article is a much more humanitarian and useful approach at creating a motorised vehicle controlled by quadraplegics mind.

This is quite cool, because it’s Non Invasive. Not only that if it was coupled with voice recognition software it could provide different control of device.

Back over at OpenEEG there is a list of resources. Interesting Zany things from Brain/Mind Fingerprinting, BCI (Brain Computer Interface), Multi-Sensor Computer Interfaces and Entertainment.

I just wish I knew a nutty professor who was into this stuff …

Following on from Digital Tabletops - Putting Humanity Back into the Interface and Jeff Han’s Touch Interfaces we now have another video example of these interfaces at work.

( Link to orginal at FastCompany)

(Via Infocult - The latest tactile screens from Jefferson Han)

Edward Tse is working to Digital Tabletops. From his Edward’s blog

a blog about my PhD research on supporting people’s natural interactions over digital surfaces such as large tables and wall displays. Notable examples include Warcraft III and Google Earth on Digital Table. More detailed info can be found at www.edwardtse.com including images and videos.

It’s interesting work.

Needless to say, check out Edward’s Videos demonstrating multi person touch interfaces.

Here’s a teaser of two people playing warcraft.

This is similar to Jeff Han’s work on touch Interfaces.

It will be interesting to see when the price point drops to be affordable to all. Who know if this will actually be useful in the workplace? Will this be only useful to visual workers and gamers?

Rough Type’s article Is Wikipedia a blackhole? first allerted me to the “no follow” link strategy to deal with spam. This “no follow” links is an attempt to not pass on good Google ranking (e.g. High Ranking Wikipedia site to no name spam site).

I see three issues with that:

1. Spammers don’t care if the links are no follow or not - All that wordpress spam has no follow, but still it continues - Akismet helps this
2. Is it really addressing the problem ? or treating a symptom - Is the unauthorised entry really about getting more links? This solution doesn’t address information quality
3. Need to display credit where it’s due, this removes that respect to good information on other websites

Solutions? .. I have some ideas

• Perhaps an aging of the links .. e.g. A link that have been there unmoderated for 3 months are ok so make them followable by search engines
• If it exists somewhere else in Wikipedia as a safe link (or close to a safe link) there is should be ok

Also at Rough Type, he talks about The link of least resistance and the perils of the positive feedback loop and single point of failure when many people use wikipedia by default.

It’s an interesting problem Wikipedia have, I don’t think just changing to “no follow” will change the mind set of spammers to game other sites for link karma instead. And clever spammers who can write might game a wikipedia article anyway .. a favourable piece of prose to persuade people to visit anyway.

We’ll see how this unfolds I guess as Wikipedia implement and re-adjust.