tim wright: digital writer

Handy compendium of cross media projects & current thinking

The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of Cross-Media

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What is circuit bending?

more action men

http://www.myheritage.com

Action Man Lookalikes

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

Post-Playtime

What a great time we had at Playtime last Weds. All the speakers and participants were excellent (see Download playtime_schedule.pdf ). And I got a great deal of inspiration - plus texts images, vids and audience participation - for my golf on the moon project. Thanks to everyone who took part.

For relevant links check out http://del.icio.us/timwright1964/playtime.

For pics check out http://www.flickr.com/groups/golfonthemoon/.

Some moongolf related vids are on http://www.youtube.com/group/golfonthemoon.

I know too that both Frank Boyd and Tom Hume have blogged the event. Do let me know if others have.

I'm working on full online documentation for the day and an all-new golfonthemoon site, to be completed within the next couple of weeks.

Action Man is 40

To celebrate his 40th birthday, various artists gave Action Man a makeover at the AM4040 show (see http://www.am4040.com/).

If like me, you missed the show, you can still catch up with the various indignities they put our middle-aged hero through here. I'm assuming that he'll be buying a sports car, piercing his ear, taking up a dangerous sport and hanging out at young people's discos any time soon now, just like the rest of us mid-life crisis males. Or was that what Action Man did in his youth anyway when we weren't looking?

I dug out my old Action Man recently (1970 model and therefore four years younger than me), and realised that he may be a useful member of the moongolf team. He could be used to model the mission proper, with him as me - or me as him.

All I need to do is grow a beard, get a scar on my right cheek and acquire some very large pink pants...

smart rabbits

"I'm a newborn bunny, one of a unique species of intelligent, smart objects. I'm 23 cm tall, I wriggle my ears, I sing, I talk and my body lights up and pulsates with hundreds of colours. Thanks to Wi-Fi technology, I'm always connected to the Internet."

http://www.nabaztag.com/vl/FR/index.jsp

Lego on the brain

Have had a lovely day at RIBA playing with Lego, as organised by the very wonderful Stuart Nolan (check out his flickr pics). It's all part of his research into the power of 'play' in the workplace

I have to admit that I started the session with a slightly heavy heart and cynical mind - but after just one exercise it was obvious that playing with the Lego in order to model and explore concepts, organisational structures, emotions and personal situations was actually very powerful and revealing.

Naturally, I ended up building a large rocket (nothing phallic there then) and started thinking about how the creation of objects in Lego could lead to a set of 'real' objects appearing on the Web.

Build a Lego car in the real world - and hey presto - a photorealistic car appears online. Could audiences perhaps manipulate a series of toys in order to generate an online drama in this way? Hmm.

This morning I got a mail from Lego, advertising a complete airport kit, and - even better - a pack of 50 different tiny hats for tiny Lego people. Imagine owning 50 hats!

All aboard the Sony PSP

Three incidents in recent weeks have made me realise that I probably do need to track the PSP a bit more closely:

1. Bill Thompson pulls a PSP out at a conference and explains how his daughter is using it for games AND school homework.

2. At an InSync soiree about 'kids as digital consumers' the PSP is heralded as the current supreme object of desire amongst the wired young.

3. I am mailed a flyer with links to the Portable Gallery, where a bunch of groovy people are already creating desperately cool content.

Mindstorm developer programme

Early this morning the LEGO Group announced that it had selected 100 finalists — out of an applicant pool of more than 9600 people — for the Mindstorms Developer Program (MDP)

http://nxtbot.com/blog/?p=48

Can't help feeling that XPT should get involved with this. Have always imagined there might be a way to programme a Lego robot to cut people's hair in the night.