« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
Conversion
Public phone box in London's Earls Court converted to accommodate an ATM.
British Telecom has been fairly pro-active about finding alternative uses for its high-street public infrastructure. Whilst the rise of mobile phones means there is less demand for public phones the physical structure of the phone box still provides users with shelter, privacy and dampens street noise. And it saves other people from the torture of listening to one side of a conversation.
Should mobile phone carriers/manufacturers be paying for public infrastructure to support mobile phone use? Do they already?
Writing from London | May 17, 2005 | Permalink
TV & Mobile Fone
Mural in Kreuzberg, Berlin - mobile phone joins television as symbol of mindless consumerism.
Writing from Berlin | May 16, 2005 | Permalink
Information & Location
This noticeboard outside a restaurant near Grunewald, Berlin plastered on both sides with motorbike related advertising. How does the reader know whether the advert is still valid and the object still for sale?
Writing from Berlin | May 14, 2005 | Permalink
A,B,C,D,E,F ... Z
Get your education from the streets.
Writing from Berlin | May 13, 2005 | Permalink
Top-ups Via Vending Machines
Top-up phone credit via vending machine. Remarkably graffiti-free for Berlin.
Writing from Berlin | May 12, 2005 | Permalink
Emailing From Public Terminals
Public email kiosks + free email accounts =
This has evolved very quickly. Photo from London's Victoria station.
Writing from London | May 11, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Robot-napping
A colleague recently showed me an Aibo automatically posting images to the web. Its impressive in a 5-second-oh-gosh-sort-of-way. Its easy to imagine remotely directing your home based Aibo to check on something in the home whilst you are at work for example.
When will be the first reported instance of an Aibo being robot-napped?
What if the Aibo was replaced with a hacked clone and reported what it sensed in real time to its new masters?
Would the Aibos owner notice that it has been replaced?
Has it happened already?
Hmm, would the owners be happy to have a replacement Aibo using a backup of the originals software?
The Sony Aibo guys have probably spent years thinking through these issues. My assumption is that sooner or later pretty much everything is hackable, and Aibo has been a target for hacks since day one.
(aibo photo randomly picked from aibo pool on flickr)
Writing from Tokyo | May 4, 2005 | Permalink
« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
Or browse the Future Perfect archives by keyword