Yellow Line http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog Rants and rumblings on my personal views on life, business and other amusements. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:46:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.1 en Monday morning at the IDII http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/02/20/monday-morning-at-the-idii/ http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/02/20/monday-morning-at-the-idii/#comments Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:04:50 +0000 penzo IDII http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/wp/?p=9 As previously anticipated I spent a nice morning at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Milan listening to a couple of thesis project (which are now approaching 50% of their completion). I was invited to listen to Vinay Venkatraman presentation: a bright minded Indian guy who came out with this nifty prototype of a new way to interact with web content for visually impairedusers.

The main idea is that actual screen readers (Flash Voice exluded, I dare to say :-) are specifically linear (e.g. they scan the page top to bottom and have the transformed in interactable synthetized voice. full stop.) while we (and with we I mean someone who can see) usually interact with web content in non-linear ways. So Vinay came out with a solution which translates web page elements into different sounds: a TNICK for a form, a PLICK for a paragraph, a TRSTCH for a link and so on; everything is controlled via a motion-feedback enabled roller which is USB connected to the computer and manipulated by the user.

His prototype (which is made for nearly 70% of wood) targets developing countries thus trying to be EXTREMELY cheap to be built and based on open source software and ready-to-build hardware kits. Vinay is probably taking into account that the 100$ laptop is really becoming a smashing hit in the next few years (after the speech I suggested him to take into account the 20$ cellphone too). I tried to test the prototype but - thankyou Murphy - all the app crashed and didn’t re-started; I’m looking forward to retest it soon.

My visit ended with a quick chat with Fabio and a Pizza with JC /thankyou for spreading the word on Flash Voice!), Phil Tabor and Neil Churcher, with whom I had an enlighting discussion on the future of mobile television.

]]> http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/02/20/monday-morning-at-the-idii/feed/ Getting things done http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/02/16/getting-things-done/ http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/02/16/getting-things-done/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:08:20 +0000 penzo IDII Innovation Research Redesign http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/wp/?p=10 Ok. Let’s say I’m plenty with things to blog, so that I’ll have to summarize a little bit.

Research: I had the Innovazione+ technical commitee meeting this wednesday and I have to say we came out with some REALLY interesting ideas to be presented to the next IST FP6 call. One of those is based on something we’ve been researching for the last couple of months to support ageing population (cannot say more, sorry); it’s going to be a tough competition but we’re really working hard to win those funds.


Interaction design institute: I’ve been invited today by Aram Armstrong to attend to the IDI thesis presentations next monday. I’m looking forward to listen to the Open Builder project by Vinay Venkatraman: a prototype of a tactile browser for sight-impaired people.
I’m also going to meet with Fabio Sergio for the second time in the same months, this is a guinness that’ll be partied with a Guinness.

I’m also managing a tough delivery for a whole site redesign. It’s going live tomorrow (let’s say: before tomorrow night). Some serious debug to be done. Damn.

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