Some of my favorite sites — like Instructables, xkcd and Boing Boing — and others I use all the time — like YouTube and Wikipedia — are a product of and are only possible in an open internet that promotes the free exchange of knowledge.

Even a tiny site like mine is only possible in a world where I’m not in legal jeopardy if I link to a site anywhere online that has any links to copyright infringement (how could I possibly police that?).

Legislation currently pending in the US congress — H.R.3261 “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and S.968 “PROTECT IP” (PIPA) — threaten, at a minimum, to significantly undermine our (that’s all of us on the web, people) ability to communicate with each other and encourage collaborative learning through linking to and direct sharing of resources and ideas. At worst, some of our favorite websites could disappear from the web without warning, and without due process of law.

So PLEASE take just a minute to contact your representatives in congress. For more information about what these bills could mean for the internet, there are more resources over at the EFF.

Thanks!

Bend over, come closer… is there a cool breeze whistling down your butt crack? Is the world jingling its pockets for change to stick in your coin slot? Then I have the Instructable for you: the coin slot detector.

Multimedia artist Amy Khoshbin has combined a Lilypad Arduino, vibrating motor and photoresistor to solve the (hopefully not sticky) problem of plumbercrackitis. The photoresistor measures the amount of light beaming down your foul line. If there’s light, we’ve got visual contact and the vibrating motor is triggered. Time to pull it up, baby!

Unnecessary you say? Just plain silly? The waste of a perfectly good microcontroller which ought better expend its cleverness to flash a cheerful sorority of bright whites?

Oh, I beg to disagree, my friends, lest you find a photo of your broad smile Flickring for all to see.

No, this is not yet another review of the vaunted iPad. Yes, I did swing by the local Apple store on Saturday to check it out: it looked/worked like my iPod Touch ballooned a few times larger, with lots more fingerprints. Enough said. (If you want an iPad review, you can read a ridiculous number of iPad stories from Wired.com or just go and play with an iPad yourself.)

What you may not have heard due to all the Apple mania, is that the JooJoo tablet also came out this past weekend. Originally dubbed the CrunchPad, it’s had a tortuous journey to market and looks a little like the iPad’s ugly stepsister (see also Engadget’s unboxing video).

Soon there will be more and more tablets to choose from, just as there are now a plenitude of netbooks on the market. So the question is: Which is the future — tablet or netbook? Or neither?

Both tablets and netbooks are taking two user issues into consideration: size and functionality. Ideally, we users would like all the functionality of our desktop or laptop computers in a smaller (more portable) form factor. Or, we want at least the functionality of our smart phones in a larger form factor. The netbook partially solves the first issue and the tablet partially solves the second. There’s also the creator vs. consumer issue. The netbook makes it easier to be a creator with a built-in keyboard and access to productivity software. The tablet makes it easier to be a consumer with a simple touch interface and ready access to entertainment and social networking.

Of the two, the tablet has captured the imagination in a more concrete way. According to Wired, the tablet “will change the world.” (A mini-entertainment center is a lot more fun than a mini-workhorse.)

But in fact we kind of want it all, don’t we? We want small size (phone size) and high functionality (desktop functionality). We want to be able to create at times and consume at times. But how many devices do we want to purchase and carry around and have to sync? Instead of more devices, what about one small device and many surfaces?

This is where something like Skinput comes in. It projects an graphical user interface (GUI) on your arm, then reads the vibration when you tap your arm. The example they show in the video of controlling another device strapped to your arm is where you can see its utility. It wouldn’t work for typing, for example, because you’d be one-handed. But imagine being able to project a GUI or a keyboard wherever you want — like the Virtual Laser Keyboard (VKB), only smaller, more accurate, more graphically extensible.

Now imagine a tiny device in your pocket that transmits to a tiny projector that you can use for input and output, or to a “screening” surface that you can fold up and stick in your pocket. Now that’s the future. The tablet is merely the right now.

TEI Studios from jay silver on Vimeo.

So I went to the TEI Conference last week and had a fantastic time — learning, meeting people, having braingasmic fun. This conference concerns itself with the interlinking of the digital and physical worlds through tangible interfaces, whole-body interaction and interactive surfaces.

There were about 230 attendees from around the world and everyone was brilliant, accomplished and collaborative. Although English was the lingua franca, people were gabbing in German, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese (just to name a few) — a refreshing breeze through my Brocas since I live in very white Vermont.

Of course, right off the bat, I went to the wrong building. Somehow I didn’t know that MIT has built a brand new Media Lab building, a cross between an Apple store and Kubrick’s 2001 — very white with lots of glass, a floor-to-ceiling central atrium with wrap-around labs and walkways criss-crossing from one side to the other. Apparently I have no sense of direction at all whatsoever, because the second I was off the conference floor I was lost. (Though quite happily so.)

I had planned to tweet during the papers, but I couldn’t get past the rudeness of having a computer in my lap while someone’s presenting. I know from first-hand experience that it’s awful to look out at an audience and not find anyone looking back at you. And I didn’t tweet from the hotel because you had to pay for wifi, which I refused to do (yes, I’m cheap).

However, I did shoot a few videos, and this week’s Geek includes a couple that describe the breadth of the work shown at the conference.

The Soft and the Hard

We all use interfaces every day — our phones, microwaves, light switches, cars. We push a button, click a mouse, swipe a finger. We expect them to be where they always are which is, in fact, considered to be good design.

However, what if an interface is temporary, ephemeral? Do we really need to know where it is all the time if we know what it is? And what if the interface requires great care in its handling? Does this make it more precious or the work it accomplishes more dear? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind with the work of Tanja Doring, an integration of art and technology:

With Soumitra Bhat, however, we have a lovely synthesis of music, technology and social impact. He has created TouchTone, an electronic musical instrument for children with cerebral palsy. It’s a clever way of giving these children access to the joy and therapeutic benefits of making music. Normally, their limited physical abilities make it impossible for them to play a musical instrument.

These two innovations describe the breadth of work presented at the conference — from concrete applications of interaction design to more abstract ideas of how we might use the various properties of physical objects in combination with either current or projected computational and/or electronic capabilities.

Stay tuned for more next week — workshops (and kits). The video at the top is just a tease of how cool they were.

Cellphone Beanbag Chair
Why does your cellphone need a beanbag chair? Because it needs to relax after getting poked all day by somebody’s gigantic meaty fingertips. Never made a beanbag before? It’s easy: 1) cut out 2 circles of fabric, 10 inches in diameter each; 2) put the “right” sides (the sides you want to show) of the fabric facing each other and sew the edges together, except for about 2 inches; 3) turn the fabric rightside out; 4) pour in dried beans until the bag is about 75% full; 5) stitch up that 2-inch hole. Now if this is too much work for you, ThinkGeek is selling them for a mere $9.99. Be sure to check out the customer action shots. Those are some happy, relaxing devices.

RFID-Blocking Wallet
What’s RFID and why do you want to block it? RFID is radio frequency identification — the technology used to tag and track animals in the wild. It’s also used in some credit cards, many corporate IDs, and in U.S. and Euro passports. Why should you care? Because an RFID can be hacked with $8 worth of gear. So for $8, a thief can steal your credit card name and number or any other information stored in your RFID-enabled card. Or weirder yet, your movement could be tracked if someone wanted to know where you were.

But with a little aluminum foil and duct tape, you can make your own RFID-blocking wallet. Yes, I know, this sounds suspiciously crazy, as though I’m telling you aliens are reading your brain waves — beware! But RFID isn’t alien; in fact it’s pretty simple technology. And the ease with which it can be hacked is well known. In fact, there are RFID-blocking wallets and cardholders on sale at Amazon for as little as $14.39. But wouldn’t it be more fun to Macgyver your own? (My husband wants one of these.)

Touchscreen Gloves
It’s getting cold here in Vermont, which means I’ve switched from my zip-up fingerless driving gloves to my boring-but-vastly-warmer fleece-lined gloves. This also means that in order to use a device with a capacitive touchscreen, such as my iPod Touch, I need to take off said fleece-lined gloves. Brrrrr. Instead, I would prefer to be able to control my device with those toasty gloves still on my hands. And no, I don’t want sew some funky fingerhoods on fingerless gloves and have to fool with them every time I want to poke my device. What to do?

Easy fix. Sew patches of conductive thread on the tips of your gloves. This allows the conductive property of your fingertips/thumbtips to reach your device. I must admit, this is my favorite project of the three here and I will soon be updating all my winter gloves. You can find full instructions at GirlieGirl Army. And yes, you clever cheap geek, conductive thread is not cheap compared to everyday cotton thread. But there are many fun things you can do with conductive thread. For example, you could mod gloves for your friends, make a robot t-shirt with LED eyes or create a winter hat that lights up from front to back. To see more projects, go to Instructables.

It’s funny how once you become aware of someone, they suddenly pop up everywhere. That’s what happened to me with Turkish-born, England-based fashion designer Hüseyin Çaglayan, aka Hussein Chalayan.

A couple of months ago, I came across a video of Chalayan’s 2007 Spring/Summer collection which was more of an art performance than a fashion show—dresses morphing from 1906-style to 1916 to 1926, from 2009 to 2029, zippers v-ing, panels spreading, hemlines magically lifting, ruffles self-plumping. Right up my alley—a gorgeous melding of fashion and technology. Although it did also occur to me how useless the clothes were, purely conceptual and unwearable.

Then, not one month later, I read a report that Michelle Obama wore a printed silk dress from his 2009 Spring collection when she was in London. Lo and behold, Chalayan is one of those rare artists who can balance blurry long-range vision and mundane sharp focus. He creates both fascinating and technologically sophisticated “art” shows of fashion while producing wearable fashion separately.

Which makes me wonder, is it necessary to do these two things in isolation from one another?

LINKS:
- Hussein Chalayan

Okay, I was initially impressed by Becky Stern because I loved this ASCII Heart necklace she made in her metalworking class.  Then I saw the LilyPad Arduino Blinking Bike Bag Patch tutorial she submitted to Instructables.  What I especially like about this project is that she’s using the ability to illuminate clothing for a purpose.  She’s someone to watch.

LINKS:
- Sternlab (Becky Stern’s website)
- Craftzine.com: ASCII Heart Necklace

Remember Diana Eng from Season 2 of Project Runway? Leah Buechley’s work is much cooler. In fact, she’s created a kit you can use to make your own interactive fashion — from turn-signal biking jackets to LED tank tops.

Once you know how the electronics work, sew away. Or once you learn how to sew, add the electronics. Wearable tech is the wave of the future, both as decoration and tool. Be on the vanguard.

Links:
- Leah Buechley [UPDATED: this is her new position at MIT]
- LilyPad Arduino
- Diana Eng

Xeni [Jardin] goes backstage at a wearable technology fashion show held at the San Francisco Exploratorium, and tries digital and analog clothing on for size.

LINK:
- Jeni’s BB story