Can’t say I’ve ever heard of this magazine, but bless them for covering our app. Graziadaily.co.uk will feature Publk, Inc’s Love Machine in their upcoming issue for print and web. Will they accurately portray what Love Machine is all about? Who cares? We’re published! Here’s a preview of the article.
Tweet every text. Text every tweet. Twitter and SMS users connect.
Textmarks keyword = Twitter hashtag
The challenge was to get the most possible users contributing to a communication system from my most possible devices while allowing all users to feel like they are contributing to the same thing and providing an added bonus for smartphone users. The solution is TweetMarks.
TweetMarks is a marriage of regular ol’ SMS and Twitter. It includes the most possible users while adding some cool functionality for smartphone users. Users who opt for the SMS version will receive tweets, and users who prefer the custom Twitter client will receive the text messages sent from the short code. Users are also free to use their preferred Twitter client. However the advantage of using the Twitter client, of course, is the ability to follow people who are at the event but you didn’t already know. It’s a web-based app, so users don’t have to worry about installing anything to their devices when they arrive at a museum, conference, bar, or club and find out there’s a cool communication tool available that they don’t have.
To achieve this I just added functionality to my Twitter client to send tweets as SMS through Textmarks. Likewise, SMS messages are tweeted. Hopefully this includes mostly everyone at an event who wishes to participate in a group communication, and users can use their preferred method of messaging. I’m really excited about this. There are limitless possibilities for this application not only at bars and clubs as originally envisioned, but any large space where people who don’t know each other gather.
On Wednesday, April 8 we will implement this system for singles night at Hugs in Brooklyn. We’re going to project all these messages onto a big screen. The system we customized for them looks great! Have a look. New messages slide in on the projection screen thanks to Scriptaculous. I didn’t do device detection on this one so you can check it out on the web or your mobile device. TweetMarks will also be the engine that drives BarTalk, our 1′ 2′ 10′ project.
Messaging client:
publk.com/hugs
Projection:
publk.com/hugs/projection
Since the BarTalk application is really just a metaphor for a system that can be used in any situation where there might be mingling, the entire application is being customized for the ITP Spring Show. What makes this application widely applicable is the addition of a third modular piece that is unique to the event or venue. The theme is still the same; there will be text communication and photo contributions.
The third component for the Spring Show application will be a visualization of projects. It will be a map with dots indicating a project’s location. There will be a yet undecided amount of information regarding each project in the visualization, but our text component includes a “Respect” field in which the user will enter a project identifier. The more respect a project receives, the more its corresponding dot pulsates on the map.
People have toyed with the idea of visualizing projects at the show in this sort of way. Some have challenged the idea claiming that it turns the show into a popularity contest. However people come to the show with a completely different perspective. There are so many projects, so much noise, and so very many people finding interesting projects may be a challenge in and of itself. If an excellent project gets stuck in the back corner behind 1000 patrons it may never be seen without a little help. Our visualization will help to democratize the projects in the show. And let’s face it, every project in the show is excellent.
The text component is a custom-made Twitter client designed for mobile devices. It will be available on the web on the night of the show. The client will act just like your current client, with access to your own personal content, but it also includes a special #itpshow feed. Every message sent from the client is appended with the hashtag, and our client will give you all Tweets corresponding to it. You can read what people are saying about the show and projects, do some networking of your own, or find out if any of your friends are around. You can follow anyone who tweets with the hashtag, so you are sure to make a few new contacts.
It is completely unstyled, but please see the prototype. Just log in to see what we mean.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~jkb315/bartalk/login.php
Say you’re having a party and want to send guests a welcome message when they arrive, or you want to notify your employees as soon as they walk into the office about a last minute meeting. It is quite easy to detect Bluetooth devices in your area and send text messages to them using Processing, Textmarks, PHP and MySQL. The hard part is associating a Bluetooth ID with a phone number and making sure devices have Bluetooth enabled.
The easiest way to do this would be to use OBEX to push the device’s Bluetooth ID to itself in the form of a message and instruct the user to forward that message to 41411 + keyword (of course, the device’s Bluetooth still must be turned on). That way the user has to do no signing up or digging around for their Bluetooth ID. You can parse the ID and store it along with the corresponding phone number. Then the device will receive subsequent messages when it is detected by the app.
Here are a couple files to get you started. The Processing file is modified from the bluetoothDesktop library to include a HTTP request to the script that checks the database for devices and sends messages. You will also need Textmarks class files.
I iPhoned my blog! Visit summermittens.com on your iPhone to see how this site is formatted for the device. I scaled the site down to just recent posts and images, my skills and contact information. I’m working on making the navigation bar nicer, but it’ll do for now. This post is redundant on iPhones. Enjoy!
In forging a stronger relationship between the mobile device, desktop, and TV I thought AJAX might have great potential. With the iPhone’s Safari browser supporting AJAX there is lots of fun to be had. I made this little application that turns the iPhone into a remote control for the desktop or TV. When you visit the page on the iPhone you get a number of images that when clicked display a larger image on the remote screen. Likewise when you visit the same page on a desktop or TV, you will see only the image that you chose to see using your iPhone. This page is equipped with device detection, so you will automatically be directed to the proper page for your device.
Give it a try! http://summermittens.com/1210/10 (mobile & desktop)
If you don’t have an iPhone, you can still try it using http://summermittens.com/1210/10/iphone.html as the controller.
If you would like to make this yourself and need a script, use this one.
For our final project, Matt Young and I will design and develop BarTalk, our idea for a social network centered around bars. BarTalk will allow bar patrons to interact with each other and the bar as a whole using their mobile device. It allows for patrons and bartenders to interact in new ways.
A user’s mobile phone is automatically detected via Bluetooth when they walk into the bar. Once this happens, the user will be able to interact with the bar and with other BarTalk users in close proximity, resulting in a mobile social network of complete strangers in your immediate surroundings. Development will include a mobile component that will be the primary interface communication, a web service for new users to register with and for bars to run the application on, and a TV to display user-generated media and facilitate participation.
This project expands upon the first iteration of BarTalk.
Here are a few ideas to change current UI:
For 1′ 2′ 10′ our first assignment was to redesign the New York DMV Homepage. It is currently rather cumbersome and not so user friendly. Below is my ink and paper wire frame of how I might redesign the homepage. I entirely eliminated the navigation bar in the header and separated mostly everything into 4 large images/buttons that users can click on to enter a new sort of homepage with unnecessary information left out. From there the user can always return home to start with a new section. How does it compare to the current homepage?
