Here’s a font that the designers created to save printer toner (an admirable goal that I’m also interested in). How does one design a font to save printer toner? Punch little circles out of the middle of each glyph. Uh, I am trying to wrap my head around this novelty, that they claim saves 20% when compared to (I guess, the designers don’t say) Vera Sans, the font on which this is based. And by based, I mean is. With the holes punched in it.

The only interesting part of this project is here, where the designers claim that the experimented with other modifications to the fonts. “We tried lots of possible ink-saving-options. from extra thin letters to letters with outlines only. We have ommited various shapes: dashes, squares, triangles and even asterisks. In the end the circle was choosen as the best candidate for the job.” Can I please see the results of these experiments? They also claim that serif fonts take up more ink, so there is no serif version. Uh, what?

We got our second taste of winter today. Mmmmmmm…. freezing cold. But it’s snowing. I really like the gerund of snow, the snow-ing. I hate it once it stops snowing and goes back to being cold. But the act of snowing is serenely beautiful and transforms the gray and naked trees into a winter wonderland. Also, while it is snowing, the air gets so thick and quiet; the snow dampens the sound in a weird but wonderful way.

Wish me luck on the roads today. Once conditions have moved from “the snowing” to the (regular old) snowed, it’s just a pain in the ass.

I put my slides from my recent CSCW 2008 talk up on slideshare (thanks Joe McCarthy for *encouraging* us…) here. You can also see my slides from my Ubicomp 2008 presentation back in September. Hope you enjoy the slides… They’re not quite as good without me gesticulating wildly during the whole thing.

Me giving a talk on my research on Imprint at CSCW 2008.

Gestural Input. Tasty tasty gestural input. I am not so impressed with the actual gestural stuff as I am with the multiple large displays and the ease with which a user can move windows and views between each display. The tabletop display becomes a potential valuable work area (much less fatiguing to a person to use gestures pointed downward than holding his or her arms straight out) for focused effort, and results can be quickly flicked to a public display for sharing and discussion.

Oblong has a less than totally polished website, which I actually kinda like. Company as blog.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

CSCW MVP - “Best Talk (I saw)” - Emilee Reader (U Michigan)

I can’t very well give awards to talks I didn’t see. So I won’t say it was the very best talk at CSCW 2008. But this talk was great — it held my attention, taught me some things, and showed (I’m convinced of this conclusion, but the talk/paper soft-peddled this) that delicious.com users are tagging for themselves, not for others. Bonus points to Emilee for using all-caps Helvetica for her bumper slides.

CSCW MVP - “Best Question Asker” - Eric Baumer (UC Irvine)

CSCW MVP - “Best Dressed” - Lucian Leahu (Cornell)

CSCW MVPs… I do this at all the conferences I go to, but privately. But let’s go public. So over the next days, I’ll be posting my MVPs.

George: Hey Barak! Congrats I wanted to invite you over to have a chat about the transition.

Barak: I’ll bring my tape measure!

Sometimes, all that aimless websurfing pays off.

Statistical evidence on some personality / psychological measures in each U.S. State. New York is tops when it comes to being neurotic, while Georgia is tops in agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness (and in the 2nd quintile for openness). This matches up very well with my experiences in both states.

In the run-up to this year’s U.S. elections, I’m announcing my candidacy! I am now one step closer to my Ph.D., having successfully proposed my thesis yesterday. Go me. I have some clean up work to do, mostly regarding how I’ll be analyzing my data from the evaluations, and then it’s on to my list of system additions and the big system deployments I have planned.

Upcoming Travel for me…

August 18-25 : Apple’s Cocoa Camp
August 29 - Sept 1 : Labor Day on Cape Cod MA (sweet!)
Sept 9 - 14 : Ubicomp 2008, Seoul, South Korea
November 8 - 12 : CSCW 2008, San Diego CA

At the summer camp I went to as a kid, we celebrated (commemorated? desecrated?) Bastille day via a bastardization of the term Bastille. The oldest kids in camp would rouse everyone from their cabins very late at night by beating on pots and pans from the kitchen. Bash Steel, get it? I guess this parade/mob also mirrors aspects of the holiday where a mob accomplishes a meaningless victory with violence. Way to go mobs. So I’m banging on my all-clad today in solidarity with all those love liberty. And by liberty I mean cooking implements.

The entirety of Ben Fry’s acknowledgments page for his master’s thesis. A picture is worth a thousand thanks. Post script—he didn’t get to do this for his PhD thesis (it’s just a normal “thanks mom and dad!” page).