Positive Technology Journal

Via Pasta and Vinegar 

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design: 

The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design is a new initiative happening in Denmark. The two key promoters of this initiative are Heather Martin and Simona Maschi.

The aim is to create a high profile design institute, which is small but dynamic and which interfaces with academia and industry. The institute will become an international setting for new thinking in design and technology in Copenhagen. The institute will encourage multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary learning, teaching and consulting in Interaction Design. We imagine that people both from the academic and the industrial world will come to Copenhagen to work with us on innovative products, services and technology for the future. The institute aims to become an international centre of excellence in interaction design and innovation by 201

From Networked Performance

Within the field of interactive dance technology, a number of projects have experimented with dancers producing music in real time from their body movements, as opposed to following the music. In MusicViaMotion (2000) for example, dance movements are captured with a video camera and mapped to sound synthesis in real time. In MIT Medialab's Expressive Footwear project (1998) and Katherine Moriwaki's Music Shoes (2000), the dancers wear sport shoes respectively chinese slippers, equipped with a range of sensors. In Alfred Desio's Zapped Taps, sensors are also used, this time on tap shoes. In all these projects, the sensed movements actuate and modulate artificial sounds.

From KurzweilAI.net

Parsons School of Design teacher Manuel Lima has constructed striking images that represent complexity.

Re-blogged from World of Psychology (original post by Sandra Kiume) 

The Design for Our Future Selves awards 2006 from the Royal College of Art offered seven awards for ‘An architecture, design or communication project which addresses a social issue or engages with a particular social group in order to improve independence, mobility, health or working life.’

Christopher Peacock won the Snowdon Award for Disability Projects and the Help the Aged Award for Independent Living with his invention handSteady. It’s an innovative device enabling people experiencing tremor (involuntary shaking caused by Parkinson’s disease, side effects from some medications and other conditions) to stabilize objects as they hold them.

Sohui Won, a finalist in Interaction Design, created psychological tools for treatment of loneliness in a project titled Weird Objects - Objects for autophobics and for all of us who experience loneliness and autophobia (fear of being alone).

Among the creations:

BJ Fogg's Persuasive Technology Lab (Stanford University) is sponsoring Mobile Persuasion 06, a one-day conference on how mobile technology can change people's beliefs and behaviors.

From the conference website:

Mobile Persuasion is for innovators, researchers, and companies creating mobile technologies that change people’s beliefs and behaviors. Applications include health, commerce, activism, social networking, addiction, advertising, gaming, and environmental conservation. This full-day event will feature expert presentations and panels on how mobile technology can change attitudes and behaviors.  

 

The event will take place November 10th at Stanford University. Free registration is available for a limited time.

Via Mind Hacks 

PBS has a fun flash game where you can recreate Wilder Penfield's brain stimulation experiments from the safety of your own desktop on a virtual human. 

Link to brain probe game.

Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Lab at Osaka University in Japan, has created a robot clone of himself. The robot, dubbed “Geminoid HI-1”, looks and moves exactly like him, and sometimes takes his place in meetings and classes.

Link to Wired article on Ishiguro's android double.

See also the Geminoid videos 

Via Medical Connectivity Consulting 

FitSense Technology's ActiHealth Intelligent Network provides an end to end system that collects, transports and presents physiological data automatically. Data that can be viewed instantly by the user as they go through their day. In the ActiHealth network, the body sensors monitor several health indexes, including physical activity, calorie burn, weight, body fat, blood pressure, blood glucose, heart rate. 

According to the company,  the system can be used in  a range of health care applications, such as  programs for weight management, health & wellness, and disease management.

Via Medgadget