PC Magazine
Rattner describes the future of context-aware computing
The real question, Rattner said, is: Is the market ready for all of this context? Intel Fellow Genevieve Bell (who also led the Day Zero events) arrived onstage to explain that all users have “ambivalent and complex” relationships with technology, and that discovering what people truly love is the key to making context-aware computing work. The process involves conceptualizing and designing potential products, validating that in the real world, integrating the changes, and repeating the process until the users are satisfied. This will involve, Bell said, talking more to users, but also helping them understand that context and life are not different contexts—watching a baseball game, seeing a road sign, or using multiple devices in a living room are all examples of context that can help devices learn more about you and what you need. Bell said, “If we get context right—even a little bit right—it propels an entirely new set of experiences.”

Wired.com > Gadget Lab
How context-aware computing will make gadgets smarter
Small always-on handheld devices equipped with low-power sensors could signal a new class of “context-aware” gadgets that are more like personal companions. Such devices would anticipate your moods, be aware of your feelings and make suggestions based on them, says Intel.
Researchers have been working for more than two decades on making computers be more in tune with their users. That means computers would sense and react to the environment around them. Done right, such devices would be so in sync with their owners that the former will feel like a natural extension of the latter.

Computerworld
Intel: Future smartphones will be assistants, companions [alternate link]
Rattner said that as devices begin to understand the way their users live their lives, they will turn into personal assistants. Within five years, smartphones will be aware of the information on a user’s laptop, desktop and tablet systems, and they will use that knowledge to help guide them through their daily activities.

Fast Company
Coming soon: mind-reading cell phones
Eventually, Intel might actually produce truly psychic cell phones. Earlier this summer, we learned about Intel’s Human Brain Project–a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that uses EEG, fMRI, and magnetoencephalography to figure out what a subject is thinking about based entirely on their neural activity pattern. The technology won’t be ready for at least a decade–and that’s just fine with us.

And there is much more…

A few blogs report on Bell’s contribution, but so far no video is online.

Damian Koh on CNet Asia:

“Aside from asking the right questions, it’s also about learning through engagement and designing a set of experiences. Bell cited one of her latest coup in the last couple of years was that users are now as important to Intel as silicon. One of her biggest breakthroughs was the realization that she needed a roadmap that reflects what users needed instead of a simple processor update. However, she conceded that unless the intended experience of the silicon is very clear, it’s hard to make the right call throughout the entire process of conceptualizing and designing to testing in the homes and labs.”

Rupert Goodwins on ZDNet UK:

“We’re marrying social science with engineering. Taking what we know about human beings,. We have a centre of excellence for understanding people, and one for engineering. The lab thinks about human IO, not just computer IO, and running the gamut with new forms of input method, being playful and provocative. Having engineers makes this happen In the next ten years, you will see some very different things from Intel,” said Genevieve Bell.

Loyd Case on Tom’s Hardware:

“Intel thinks the idea of understanding future user experiences is important enough that it has funded an entire arm of its research organization to this, known as “Interactions and Experiences Research.” Split into design and technology elements, and headed by Dr. Bell, the idea is to understand how users worldwide experience their technology, what they love about it, and what frustrates them.”

Harley Ogier in New Zealand PC World:

“Speaking on Day Zero of this year’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Bell suggested that Intel should begin to “think about experiences as a starting point for designing new technology”. Instead of working around a list of features, she explained that this would require Intel to understand the experiences people have with technology today. With such understanding, the company could focus on creating new technologies to better those existing “beloved” experiences and facilitate new ones.”

Xavier Lanier on GottaBeMobile:

“Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist and Intel researcher spoke about how she is trying to get Intel to think simple instead of complex. She and her team travel the world watching how people use technology in public and at home.”

The panel of local and global communications experts included Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow, Intel Labs, Director, Interaction & Experience Research, Intel Corporation; Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, IBM Software Group; Mark Pesce, futurist, author, lecturer and technologist; and Adele Beachley, Managing Director, RIM Australia and New Zealand.

ZDNet Australia has posted a video of the debate as well as a short debate summary.

Read article

In her assignment, she focused on the ways in which South Australians use new technologies in their everyday lives. Through extensive, often ethnographic, research she helped shed light on new opportunities for broadband and associated communication technologies in the state and beyond, and, equally importantly, how to meaningfully engage all South Australians in these technologies.

A dedicated website, SAstories, provides more background on her work in South Australia.

Bell’s final report “Getting Connected Staying Connected: Exploring South Australia’s Digital Futures” has now been officially released and is available for public comment.

“The recommendations made in the report set out a possible future plan for South Australia so individuals, communities, businesses and government can take full advantage of the opportunities created by information communication and entertainment technologies.

Genevieve Bell was South Australia’s 15th Thinker in Residence and her brief was to identify a set of strategies, directions and opportunities for all South Australians with regard to the future of new information, communication and entertainment technologies.

During her time here she traveled over 14,000 kilometres and visited 45 very different communities, from Adelaide to Amata and talked with hundreds of South Australians.

Genevieve discovered South Australians using technology in a huge range of creative and innovative ways to benefits themselves and their communities.”

Download report (alternate link)

See also this Fast Company article on the report release.

Feral Technologies: An ethnographic account of the future [ video | alternate link ]
Genevieve Bell, Intel
3 June 2010

What do rabbits, camels and cane toads all have in common? And why might this be relevant to the future of new technologies. In this talk, I want to explore the ways in which new technologies are following the path of feral Australian pests – in particular, I am interested in the unexpected and unscheduled transformations that have occurred in the last decade. In 1998, an estimated 68% of the world’s internet users were Americans. A decade later that number had shrunk to less than 20%. The complexion of the web – its users, their desires, their languages, points of entry and experiences – has subtly and not so subtly changed over that period. All these new online participants bring with them potentially different conceptual models of information, knowledge and knowledge systems with profound consequences for the ideological basis of the net. These new participants also operate within different regulatory and legislative regimes which will bring markedly different ideas about how to shape what happens online. And in this same time period, the number and kind of digital devices in peoples’ lives has grown and changed. Devices have proliferated with ensembles and debris collecting in the bottom of backpacks, on the dashboards of dusty trucks and in drawers, cabinets, and baskets. Bell explores these feral technology proliferations, in the ways in which they have defied conventional wisdom and acceptable boundaries, and, most importantly, the ways in which they have transformed themselves into new objects and experiences.

Postcolonial Computing: Technology and Cultural Encounter [ video | alternate link ]
Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine
17 June 2010

“Culture” has become a hot topic in computing research as information technologies become enmeshed in global flows of people, products, capital, ideas, and information. However, while much attention has been focused on the problems of “cross-cultural collaboration” and “cultural difference,” a useful alternative is opened up by thinking about culture from a generative, rather than a taxonomic, perspective — that is, as a framework for understanding and interpreting the world around us, rather than a framework for classifying people. In this talk, Dourish outlines and illustrates an approach that he and his colleagues have been developing, which draws on anthropology, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies to help them examine the contexts of encounter between people, information technology, and culture.

Beyond Ethnography: How the design of social software obscures observation and intervention [ video ]
Gentry Underwood, IDEO
8 July 2010

Human-centered design, i.e., the design of products and services with the needs of the end-user or recipient in mind, has long been lauded as an essential skill in developing relevant and usable software. As software tools move from being about human-computer interaction to human-human interaction (as mediated through some sort of networked device), the focus must shift from extreme-user profiling to something more akin to ethnography, only with an intervention-heavy twist.
Gentry shares learnings from his work in the social software field, offering examples of how his training in ethnography helps him do his job, as well as insight as to where the work must move beyond traditional ethnographic methods in order to be successful.

Ethnography: Discovering the obvious that everyone else overlooks
Stephen R. Barley, Center for Work, Technology and Organization, Stanford School of Engineering
15 July 2010

In this talk, Barley focuses on what he has learned over 30 years about doing ethnography, and illustrate what he sees as ethnography’s central payoff for designers of technology and organizations by drawing on a recent comparative study of automobile dealers.

Ethnography as a cultural practice
Steve Portigal, Portigal Consulting
22 July 2010

Culture is everywhere we look, and (perhaps more importantly) everywhere we don’t look. It informs our work, our purchases, our usage, our expectations, our comfort, and our communications. In this presentation, Steve discusses the use of ethnographic research in the product development process and suggest how an understanding of culture is a crucial component in innovation.

Together with these talks, the PARC blog hosts a number of features on the use of ethnography in industry, highlighting the objectives and the methods.

Enabled by Moore’s Law and the performance advancements now available across a continuum of computing devices including the traditional PC, the company’s engagement and experience with technology, according to Rattner, will become much more personal and social through individual user contexts informed by sensors, augmented by cloud intelligence, and driven by more natural interfaces such as touch, gesture and voice.

Rattner said the new division will be led by [anthropologist and] Intel Fellow Genevieve Bell, who has been one of the leading user-centered design advocates at Intel for more than a decade.

“Intel now touches more things in people’s lives than just the PC,” said Bell. “Intel chips and the Internet are now in televisions, set-tops, handhelds, automobiles, signage and more. IXR will build on 15 years of research into the ways in which people use, re-use and resist new information and communication technologies. Social science, design and human-computer interaction researchers will continue that mission – asking questions about what people will value, what will fit into their lives and what they love about the things they already have. These insights will be married with a strong focus on technological research into the next generation of user interfaces, user interactions and changes in media content and consumption patterns.”

- Read press release
- Backgrounder on Genevieve Bell (TG Daily)
- Backgrounder on this new development (Ars Technica)

“Resistance is Futile”: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Paul Dourish, Department of Informatics, University of California
Genevieve Bell, Director of the User Experience Group, Intel Corporation

“Design-oriented research is an act of collective imagining – a way in which we work together to bring about a future that lies slightly out of our grasp. In this paper, we examine the collective imagining of ubiquitous computing by bringing it into alignment with a related phenomenon, science fiction, in particular as imagined by a series of shows that form part of the cultural backdrop for many members of the research community. A comparative reading of these fictional narratives highlights a series of themes that are also implicit in the research literature. We argue both that these themes are important considerations in the shaping of technological design, and that an attention to the tropes of popular culture holds methodological value for ubiquitous computing.”

HCI and Environmental Sustainability: The Politics of Design and the Design of Politics
DIS 2010
Paul Dourish, Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine

“Many HCI researchers have recently begun to examine the opportunities to use ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. This paper examines the way that traditional HCI discourse obscures political and cultural contexts of environmental practice that must be part of an effective solution. Research on ecological politics and the political economy of environmentalism highlight some missing elements in contemporary HCI analysis, and suggest some new directions for the relationship between sustainability and HCI. In particular, I propose that questions of scale – the scales of action and the scales of effects – might provide a useful new entry point for design practice.”

The theme of the 2010 symposium, held at ITP at NYU, was “The city as platform”, which revolved around various sub-topic such as urban informatics, the city as a social technology, pervasive games and government infrastructure/data.

Participants included Genevieve Bell, Julian Bleecker, Ben Cerveny, Tom Coates, Anil Dash, Russell Davies, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Adam Greenfield, Liz Goodman, Usman Haque, Tom Igoe, Natalie Jeremijenko, Steven Johnson, Matt Jones, Jennifer Magnolfi, Mike Migurski, Nicolas Nova, Ray Ozzie, Clay Shirky, Kevin Slavin, Molly Steenson, Linda Stone, Alice Taylor, Anthony Townsend, Duncan Wilson and many more.

You can read elaborate and well-written symposium reports by Nicolas Nova (LIFT Lab) and Dan Hill (City of Sound / ARUP).

By the way, do also check Dan Hill’s urbanistic take on the iPad.

Listen to podcast: part 1 – part 2

“Marrying” anthropology and science

“I still write and publish my work in academic journals. To me, what we do in companies like Intel is the cutting edge of anthropological study.

“We form a relationship with the consumer and represent their needs. It’s a moral obligation to tell their stories.

“We find out what makes people tick, not just so that we can sell them things, but to make life better for them by ensuring that people in small towns and emerging markets can afford it. We want to help create technology for more people.”

Annoying things device-users do

“The top responses for strange mobile etiquette behaviour ranged from making a cashier wait until a cellphone call was completed and texting while driving.

Other responses included using a laptop in a public toilet, as well as hearing typing and conversations at church, during a funeral, and in a doctor’s office.”

Better television

“My engineering colleagues were desperately convinced that everything was a PC waiting to happen.

“What is needed is to meaningfully blend television and the Internet. My research conclusion was clear – consumers love television and only put up with their PCs because they want to connect to the Internet.

“It’s clear that people care about social networking and its technologies so how to we bring that into TV sets?

“Imagine accessing Flicker or Twitter on your television without turning it into a PC ? We desire for television to do more but it must not be too complicated. The challenge is to create technology that can accommodate local content,” she says, noting that there is a huge space for advancement in consumer electronics, especially to “make television better”.

The CE 3.0 website is rich in content, but more than that, it exemplifies the relevance of a user-centred approach in the design of new and innovative technology-based products and services.

A few weeks ago, I reported on a few articles that dealt with the problems and challenges related to digital storage in the home.

Today, I will provide some user-centred design links on the topic of the changing TV experience:

Usage models in the digital home: some simple advice
by Dr. Genevieve Bell, anthropologist and director of Intel’s User Experience Group

“Our findings show, at the broadest level, something many of us knew intuitively—people love their televisions. In many different cultures, in many families, TVs emerged as a beloved, if not sometimes annoying, companion, friend, and constant in the home. Wherever we live, TV content engages us at an emotional and visceral level—it is more than simply entertainment, it is about a kind of engagement and about nurturing us as people. TV has our stories, and the characters become extensions of our families. The irony is that while the industry tends to talk about new technology, consumers want to talk about their family, their constant companions, and the comfort and nurturing that TVs bring. To avoid unintended consequences, we as an industry must learn to listen to people, and to be clear about their perspectives.

We need to be clear about the single purpose of an object—why people use it, care about it, desire it, buy it and keep it. The lesson here is not to be seduced by the impulse to increase the number of things any piece of technology can do, or to confuse its purpose with the functions it could incorporate. We must be very careful to identify the purpose of CE devices from a consumer perspective. It would be bad if we broke what people liked most about the television experience. In making consumer electronics devices smarter for instance, potentially increasing their number of functions and features, we should also keep their purpose in mind.

Violating this principle is a recipe for disaster.”

Opening a window into the lives of TV viewers
Q&A with Brian David Johnson, consumer experience architect within Intel’s Digital Home Group

“Our group includes two teams. The first team consists of social science and design researchers who spend time in people’s homes all over the world. This team is really dedicated to getting a sense of what makes people tick, what they care about, what frustrates them, what they aspire to. This research is focused around getting a sense of the larger cultural patterns and practices that shape people’s relationships to and uses of new technologies. [...]

After we have observed people in their homes, our ethnographers get together with our second team, the human factors engineers and research designers. This group takes the data, and the opportunities we have identified, and begins to build them into platform requirements and product specifications.

Through a set of rigorous processes and methods, the team creates personas, usage models and experience assessments that help drive the development of genuinely user-inspired and user-centric technologies. This process provides Intel with a uniquely valuable reference for our long-term product roadmap as well as a means of validating that our product development will meet the consumers’ needs.”

The changing TV experience – Recent findings from the Intel User Experience Group
This article by Françoise Bourdonnec, director of Home Experience Research & Exploration at Intel’s Digital Home Group, looks at what recent Intel research tells us about how Internet technology may change the TV experience – and some of the important questions that remain to be answered.

Listening to the ‘Voice of the Customer’ helps Intel Design to redefine new digital home experiences
Q&A with Jason Busta, a Voice of the Customer (VOC) researcher for Intel’s Mobility Group, and Kimberly Swank, primary VOC researcher for the Digital Home Group

Catalyst for the digital home: 1. Evolution of the fourth-generation user interface
In this first article in a two-part series, Gary Palangian and Randy Dunton of Intel’s Digital Home Innovations Team discuss the evolution of Consumer Electronics user interface.

Catalyst for the digital home: 2. Intel’s fourth-generation UI research
In this second article in a two-part series, Gary Palangian and Randy Dunton of Intel’s Digital Home Innovations Team describe Intel’s ongoing UI R&D program, and share some of the results to date.

Making the leap: the internet comes to the living room
Excerpts from a keynote address by William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel’s Consumer Electronics Group, at the Digital Living Room Conference, March, 2008

The next-generation TV experience (video)
Interview with William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel’s Consumer Electronics Group

Widget Channel: Personalize, enjoy & share your favorite Internet experiences on TV
In collaboration with Yahoo! Inc., Intel has developed a full-featured software framework named Widget Channel, that allows TV viewers to enjoy rich Internet applications called TV Widgets while watching their favorite programs.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a mobile application known as Sun Dial, which alerts Muslim users when it’s time to perform the five daily prayers known as salat. The device is currently being discussed this week at the human-computer interaction conference, CHI, in Boston.

“We have to understand religion because it’s such a central part of peoples lives,” explained Susan Wyche, doctoral candidate in the College of Computing and GVU Center at Georgia Tech.

- Read full story
- Download paper (“Sacred Imagery in Techno-Spiritual Design”)

The researchers have clearly been inspired by the excellent paper “No more SMS from Jesus: ubicomp, religion and techno-spiritual practices” by Intel researcher Genevieve Bell.

Intel has for years heavily invested in on-the-ground observation and ethnography.

Its focus is often on understanding deeper issues that can affect the future uptake of technology, on better understanding the various cultural and social paradigms in order to avoid forcing a Western concept of technology on societies and cultures that have different viewpoints, or even on influencing strategic business directions.

Genevieve Bell and other Intel anthropologists are keenly interested in researching concepts such as the use of technology to support religious practices, cultural differences in storing and archiving, the various concepts of the home, what sharing might mean in the social and cultural context of Asia, and “the rituals, practices, markers, and triggers” that can influence how technology gets used in the healthcare sector.

This has led to many of Intel’s innovations, including the Classmate PC and the Community PC, but now it is actually influencing a major strategic business decision: an investment of more than $250 million over the next five years for the research and product development of home-based health technologies.

From the press release:
“The combination of Intel’s leading capabilities in ethnographic research and technology development combined with GE’s world-class expertise and global distribution strengths in healthcare IT, electronic medical records, critical care and passive monitoring is a strong strategic fit.”

Read more: New York Times | Electronics Weekly

Part of Bell’s job is to help the company understand quirks of human behavior that could determine whether its strategies fly or flop.

With computers taking new forms and turning up in new places [...], that job is harder than ever to do.

These days the tech landscape is an unpredictable jumble. A sampling: Consumers (particularly in Europe) are clamoring for shrunken, underpowered PCs called netbooks, much to the surprise of the major PC makers.

Amazon’s Kindle 2 wireless e-book reader is in high enough demand to claim the No. 1 spot in its electronics store — beating out the iPod Touch. (Not bad considering Steve Jobs last year dismissed the Kindle’s chances because “people don’t read anymore.”)

Foreclosures are reaching historic highs — yet in the depths of the worst recession in recent memory, consumers are still ordering movies from Netflix, buying downloaded software for the iPhone, and shelling out for wireless data plans.

You need an anthropologist to begin making sense of it all.

Read full story

Dr Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and ethnographer with both an academic and industry background. Her research has provided considerable insight to the importance of culture in the adoption and adaptation of technology. She is currently the Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group in the United States.

Listen to lecture (mp3, 48 min, 16.5 mb)

[Or, what cities and regions have to go through to attract the "creative class".]

The current Adelaide invitee is Dr Genevieve Bell, an Australian-born anthropologist and ethnographer, who is currently the Director of User Experience in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group.

During her residency, Bell will examine what people are doing with technology, what their aspirations and frustrations are, what people want to be when they grow up, and how technology fits into that. She said the internet, TiVo and mobile technologies were giving us more to worry about than ever before and that people were still trying to work out the issues and boundaries.

Read full story

Bell used an ethnographic lens to examine what the Internet might look like in 10-20 years from now. She began by noting that the internet is not just about technology: it a social product; it is ideas; it is a set of forces. In other words, the internet comes with cultural baggage wrapped around it. And now, the internet, according to Bell, is fragmenting into a series of technologies.

Bell outlined six different signs that the next internet revolution is currently underway.

1. The internet is “feral” and on the move.
2. Language on the web. (“not just a translation problem”)
3. Infrastructure and the range of upload and download speeds. (“the costs associated with participation is likely to increase not decrease, and the concept of a free and open internet is unrealistic.”)
4. Regulation of the internet.
5. Porn, trolls, and social regulations. (“Everyone lies on the internet”)
6. Socio-technical concerns. (“Today, we worry about authenticity, ownership of information, digital literacy, and the identity of ‘Big Brother.’”)

Read full story

Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies by Michael Schmitz surveys the different kind of interaction design sci-fi movies envisioned during the past decade. It also interestingly describes how the film technicians made prototype possible and legible.

Make It So: What Interaction Designers can Learn from Science Fiction Interfaces by Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel is a nice presentation from SxSW08 that looked at sci-fi material as well as industry future films to show design influences sci-fi and vice versa.

The upcoming paper by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell entitled ““Resistance is Futile”: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing that investigates how ubiquitous computing is imagined and brought into alignment with science-fiction culture.

Julian Bleecker’s presentation from Design Engaged and SHiFt 2008 also addressed that topic.

Personally I would add Bruce Sterling’s work in general, as a major direct and indirect inspiration for interaction designers all over the world.

In early August, the group discussed a draft manuscript from Paul Dourish (UC, Irvine) and Genevieve Bell (Intel) that is currently under review, entitled “‘Resistance is Futile’: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing”.

Abstract
Design-oriented research is an act of collective imagining – a way in which we work together to bring about a future that lies slightly out of our grasp. In this paper, we examine the collective imagining of ubiquitous computing by bringing it into alignment with a related phenomenon, science fiction, in particular as imagined by a series of shows that form part of the cultural backdrop for many members of the research community. A comparative reading of these fictional narratives highlights a series of themes that are also implicit in the research literature. We argue both that these themes are important considerations in the shaping of technological design, and that an attention to the tropes of popular culture holds methodological value for ubiquitous computing.

Download paper (pdf, temporary available at this url)

(via Nicolas Nova)

Group actions just got easier! – Clay Shirky jump-started the second day of PICNIC 08 with stories about the problems and challenges of social media. In each story he showed how social dilemmas or needs facilitate new ways of sharing, collaborating and social action. Sharing of social objects such as images, tools and questions enables the starting of a discussion leading to a gathering of an interested community with a trail of conversation. Group rules on Flickr ‘Black & White Maniacs‘ address the social dilemma of getting attention by asking people to comment on to previous photos in the act of posting their own, therefore spreading the opportunity of getting seen and acknowledged throughout the community of practice.

In a second example Shirky documented the re-emergence of simple tools to facilitate fast uptake, sharing and synchronization with others. Limited features and clear rules of engagement (no shouting – visual text changes) help to divide the attention across the bulletin board members.

His discussion of the Pluto page on Wikipedia showcased the powers of collaboration of reciprocal sharing and syncing in creating exhaustive content with extensive links. 5000 edits by over 2200 users showed the distribution of a long tail curve demonstrating an ecosystem where everybody can participate on the level they desire. The Galileo page on the other side has still the trappings of a five hundred years flame war resulting in the disabling of editing capabilities.

Lastly he demanded an extension of the power of social media to not only show how we think but to also cover how we can act. Harnessing collective actions require a built-in acknowledgement of the assembled insights and opinions and resulting new group structures.

100% of user on online dating sites lie – Genevieve Bell, a leading anthropologist at Intel’s Digital Home Group, spoke about the complicated daily constructions of truth and lies in personal life on and off the web. How to resolve our daily Secrets & Lies in new engaging social media where the devices and media keep trails forever. The uncoordinated intentions of individuals and their revealing devices will lead to tensions between cultural practices and ideas about secrets and lies and ICT applications. This poses complicated questions for e-Gov, national security and reputation indices.

Mike Fries, president of Liberty Global, discussed O3B Networks – the other three billion initiative – of Google, HSBC and Liberty Global in bringing high-speed satellite telecommunication access to underserved populations in emerging markets. His Future of Television conversation focussed on the delivery of more tailored and personalised content supported by advertisements, changing viewer behaviours of random access to digital TV and time shifting viewing habits.

Michael Tchao, the manager of Nike Techlab, spoke in his Tools, Things and Toys presentation about how to use information to inspire runners and convert physical activities into digital connect and communities. The Nike+ collaboration with Apple focussed on supporting runner motivation in designing sexy tools, engaging interfaces, synched running cycles and community challenges. The Nike+ HumanRace initiative used web tools to connect individual aspirations with local running communities to organize a series of worldwide races on 31.8.08.

Nabaztag co-inventor Rafi Haladjian (blog) presented his search from connecting rabbits to connecting everything else. What will be the effortless, spontaneous information providers of the future? How will they enable limited attention bandwidth? In extending his hold on emotive objects he showcased the new and very cute Naonoztags. The newest Ztamps and Mirror by Violet is a passive RFID reader and sensors enabling fast connections between tangible object and web-based information. Examples shown were links between drug packages and your personal health site, direct access to news sites or personal photo collections.

For more Picnic reporting, check also Bruno Giussani, Hubert Guillaud (writing proficiently in French), Ethan Zuckerman, and Ernst-Jan Pfauth and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten.