Looking to create better communications channels for families who live far from each other, Mimi Son, a designer from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design has created the “Here and There” diary object.

The photo contains a screen broadcasting footage from the 16 camera installed on the bus. At some point you have to wonder…

The Onion News Network, America’s leading parody news team, recently posted an interesting commentary on privacy in our hyper-networked world. It’s a video about a new “Google ‘Opt-Out’ program” for those concerned about their daily need for technology and the fears of data collection.  Leaving it all behind has never been so easy, The Onion has more:

In an age of greater transparency, a special page on Google’s site let’s web users know what the tech-giant thinks about them. The page gives a list of interests it has monitored from your search and click-through activity – this list, obviously, is also used to target ads.
Above is Google’s analysis of my interests – I feel rather disappointed. What a boring list. Nothing naughty at all! I’ll just have to add something risque to the list.
Google
[via Stephen Baker]

At a recent Mindshare event in San Francisco organizers mined attendees Facebook and Twitter accounts for personal information and opinions then presented them as thought bubbles when that attendee faced the screen with a readable badge.

Ged Carroll spotted this protest sticker that twists the image of London’s Oyster transport card to make a statement about British surveillance society.
An article by the BBC last year detailed the extent the Transport for London organization shares its information on travelers:
Police regularly use information on the adult Oyster card system to get details about passenger movements. BBC London has learned that in the past year they made at least 3,000 requests for information.
….Transport for London [has] made it mandatory for children aged between 11 and 18 to carry an Oyster photocard in order to gain free travel. [...]

Seth Godin writes about an interesting example of Red Coat Black Coat issues when a friend Googles potential housekeepers and finds all three applicants with less-than-hoped-for backgrounds or published opinions. Godin says that we need to overcome any negative stuff about us on the web by adding as much good stuff as possible:
The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.
Godin: Personal branding in the age of Google
PSFK: Privacy: Red Coat, Black Coat

Swiss Air has redesigned their first class cabins to offer passengers additional privacy, space, and connectivity. The new design includes a 23″ screen for movies, fold out tables for work and dining, a full length bed, and a touch screen remote to control all your seating and rest arrangements.
A quick 360º tour of the cabins from the airline’s site.
[via Wallpaper]

With the intention of stimulating discussion and debate on how digital networks are transforming our notion of public and private space, the recent Radiator Festival featured numerous projects challenging the dominant forces at work in urban environment and exploring the new territories opened up by hybrid spaces.
One of our favorite projects came from Köbberling&Kaltwasser, who meticulously mapped out all of the spaces within Nottingham city that escape the gaze of CCTV cameras.  In these ‘blind spots,’ they built small wooden structures from found materials and made them available for anyone to step into at any time for “un-determined acts.”
The German [...]

Blogger Robert Scoble recently shared a personal health problem he’s dealing with on his Friend Feed page. His revelation prompted an interesting debate about the benefits and downsides of public problem solving. And while by being open about his condition led to suggestions on how to better handle his condition, he also wonders about the future, and value of medical privacy in our increasingly open world. Looking up information on “Doctor Internet” and commiserating with others is all well and good – but if a public trail exists about your condition, could it lead to being denied future health insurance [...]

In an unprecedented move to address the growing concerns of privacy advocates, Yahoo announced that they will be reducing the length of time they retain personally identifiable search records from 13 months to 90 days.  The company’s two biggest rivals, Google and Microsoft, currently keep this information for 9 months and 18 months respectively.  Whether or not this action will force the hands of these competitors, however, remains to be seen. 
Still, Yahoo thinks this maneuver will accomplish two things – removing them from the heated discussion surrounding these privacy issues and handing them a clear advantage amongst users that wish [...]

It’s about that time when most people carve a minute or two out of their busy schedules to think about the year that was – to recount, reflect, and learn. For the last three, Nicholas Felton has been taking the exercise several steps further with his Feltron Annual Report: a statistical analysis of the things he did, saw, consumed, and performed over the preceding year, compiled into one visually stunning anthology. Felton, a NY-based graphic designer, has been recording nearly every aspect of his daily life to uncover patterns in his behavior and share them in a telling and compelling [...]

Oleg Teterin, president of Russian mobile phone advertiser Superfone announced that the Russian Federal Patent agency has granted him the trademark for the popular emoticon ;-).  Though many doubt the legality of this move, owing to the symbol’s long life in the public domain, Teterin says that he’s only expecting money from corporations that wish to otherwise use it for free.  Furthermore, he wishes to keep it affordable, offering interested parties use of the symbol for a small annual fee in the realm of “tens of thousands of dollars.” What might be even stranger, is that this isn’t the first [...]

Good Ideas In 2009 : Make Histories
Best watched in Full Size

Making histories doesn’t have to be about huge gestures or wide-spanning narratives. By capturing, cataloguing and visualizing stories over time, we lay the groundwork for interesting patterns, connections and ideas to emerge that help us better understand groups, people, events, places and ourselves. By bringing to life our daily movements, both real and virtual, we leave a trail for us and others to add to and learn from.
This is an excerpt from PSFK’s newest book Good Ideas in 2009. For more information and to purchase the complete report, we [...]

Violet, a company devoted to building products based on “calm and emotional technologies,” recently unveiled their new Mir:ror device.  The cleanly designed product resembles a USB-powered cup holder, but it’s essentially a simple RFID tag reader paired with some innovative software.  The idea behind Mir:ror is to streamline your physical life by scripting digital events through RFID tagged objects.  For example, you affix one of the provided colorful RFID stamps (called Ztamp:s) to your car keys and after waving it over the Mir:ror pad your computer reads you the traffic report for the morning commute. The slogan is to create [...]