I recently watched a Frontline episode on avatars and virtual worlds that summarized some really interesting research going on at Standord's Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL). This short clip is a good overview: The projects underway at VHIL show a lot of really exciting potential for collaboration in virtual worlds. They have a number [...] Read More…
My initial reaction to the Google Wave demo at I/O was luke warm. C'mon, it's just a nifty UI over publish/subscribe messaging! Along with pubsub, the federated aspect of Wave---the seamless integration of users across multiple domains---is just standing on top of vanilla XMPP. From a cynical point of view, Wave is [...] Read More…
One of the reasons that Twitter has become so popular is that it is a successful ambient awareness tool. With each tweet from a friend or person of interest, you get a subliminal sense of what he/she is up to. Each tweet also represents an opportunity for ad hoc, informal communication between Twitterers: In [...] Read More…
I've been reading Michael Ignatieff's CBC Massey Lecture The Rights Revolution and I had to laugh a little when I came across this section regarding authenticity: The central idea I absorbed then---chiefly, if not exclusively, from feminism---was that each of us has a right to choose the life we lead and that we must fight [...] Read More…
Now that I have my master's degree wrapped up, I am officially for hire! I am primarily looking at opportunities in the Seattle area. If you are on the hunt for a creative, smart, and hard working Software Engineer, have a look over my resume and feel free to get in touch. [...] Read More…
I recently came across LizardFeeder, a "compilation of data feeds representing activity within the Mozilla community." I think it's a pretty nice tool. It shares some ideas in common with my awareness tool for developers, especially in that both tools aggregate discrete events in a software project. Obviously, the scale of our [...] Read More…
I've put together a demo version of the tool (code name: Aufait) that I developed for my research. Feel free to try it out! If you haven't been following my work, I developed Aufait as an awareness tool for software developers. Specifically, it is designed to support awareness of peer activities and [...] Read More…
I've made my thesis paper available online for those who might be interested. It's entitled How Developers Use an Awareness Tool: Patterns and Scenarios and I've included an abstract below: Software developers consult numerous sources of information in order to maintain awareness of what happens within their teams. They seek information about what their [...] Read More…
MIX Online recently released a social timeline prototype that has a lot in common with my research. The MIX tool is essentially a visual FriendFeed: I thought it was extremely apt to see a FriendFeed timeline because I've been describing my tool to others as "a visual FriendFeed for your software development team." I [...] Read More…
Today was my last official day of graduate studies at the University of Toronto. My thesis readers approved my work, we filed all the paperwork required for me to graduate, and that makes me a Master of Science in Computer Science! Well, you know, save for the convocation ceremony. A lot of the research [...] Read More…