I've Been Thinkin'

What am I gonna do for my research paper?
Dunno yet!
I have a few ideas, but none of them seem to be solid enough to research thouroughly. Nothing original.

I'm inclined to be leaning towards film and tv meets the internet and the possibilities of a kind of 'Multimedia' T.V series.
People like to mimic TV characters and follow their lives on screen so why not let the viewer commincate with the character, or learn more about the character when they are not on the tv screen. What i'm trying to say is give the character more life than just what you see on the tv screen. Video blogs of the character, the characters could have a 'My Space' account,the real character not the actor of the character, creating more life for the character Something in which the viewer could get to know the character and identify with them thus making the show more real to the viewer.
I dunno I jus think TV can be more thyan just TV, there's so much more you can do with it. Crossing over narrative from one form to another, creating new narrative in another form that ties in with the story being told. Kinda like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.
You have all these parts and when you put them together you get so much more than just TV show.

Manoi the Humanoid Robot

Soon to take of as the next big thing in Japan, is 'Manoi' AT01 the robot. The name, 'Manoi', comes from the word humanoid, or rather inspired by (thats what the article I read says).
Here's a link to the article

'Manoi' is a self assemble robot for the home. It's not even out on the maket yet, but there's a pretty big market for these household robots. 10,000 and the company that makes them, Kyosho Corp. says that thats more than enough

The cool thing about 'Manoi' is, according to the article I read to get this info, you don't have to be a scientist to assemble the thing.
It took the reporter a mere eight hours to assemble, ha ha ha only eight hours!!
But he did of course have the help of Kazuho Shiroma. this guy's a robot expert who has been know to put three of these bad boys together in one session.

The price of Manoi is $1,260, which is about this 993.3775 much Euro. (thank you free currency coverter!)

There has been alot of robot activity in japan lately, but what makes this one really cool is, you can download the actions for it ie. walk, sit, wave, run etc.
and you dont't neccessarily have to program it yourself.


Here's a pic that explains where Manoi got his/her/its name.

Watch a video of manoi

Initial research and all links came from the bloggers of slashdot.org

The pics were taken from Here the Kyosho companies website, who design and manufacture 'Manoi'

And the Video Is thanks to another Blogger on 'slashdot' who did a bit of online research to find it, so cheers to that blogger.


Slan go Foil

I think I'm turning Japanese..... I really think so

What's this Crazy gal at??

Well she is recieving information from a poster, in Shinjuku station.
It's an application for your mobile called Mobile Suica.
Here's the Wikipedia explanation of what Mobile-Suica is.

"Mobile Suica (モバイルSuica, Mobairu Suika^?) is a service for Osaifu Keitai mobile phones, first released on January 28, 2006 by NTT DoCoMo and au in Japan. Suica is a prepaid rechargeable contactless smart card mainly used to pay for fares on the JR East railway network.

Just like traditional Suica cards, Mobile Suica can also be charged when the remaining balance gets low. Other features supported by the mobile phone includes the ability to review past Suica transactions via the mobile's display. Suica uses Sony's FeliCa chip for its main functionalities. Mobile Suica interacts with the FeliCa chip using Java technology."

So now we know!

This application is an add on of Mobile-Suica called SuiPo, which means Suica + Poster. Very smart indeed.



So basically you just move your mobile past the scanners on the poster and information about the poster is sent to your phone, cool! Handy for films and stuff I guess. You can probably get the cinema times or if it was a poster for a gig I'd imagine you could get ticket prices and dates thus leaving the poster free for more art than info.


Information Taken from here
Images Taken fromhere
^
This site has more info about SuiPo but its in Japanese so Good Luck!

Slan go Foil

4th year dissertation stuff

As my lawor, I just thought you should know... I've killed alot of people...


Maybe thats how I got into 4th year multimedia, maybe not or maybe we'll never know how it happened. The main thing is I'm here (in 4th year, not inside your computer).


This year I'll be mostly eating borboun biscuits and researching for my dissertation, which is due in around Easter. I'll also be trying to come up with a fantastic concept for a final year project that will astound and amaze people.


But the first thing I have to do is, get this blog up and running, start researching and blog some more!


Slan go foil