Design with Intent

High frequency wave files back up again

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

They’re back up (well, the wave files anyway), thanks to the Internet Archive.

ZDNet: DRM train wrecks

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ One comment

ZDNet’s David Berlind has started to compile a Del.icio.us list of examples of ‘DRM train wrecks’, i.e. situations where the use of DRM has a distasteful corollary for consumers unaware of what they’re getting themselves into.
“Most people don’t realize how much they’re giving up when they consciously or sub-consciously use solutions that depend on [DRM]. [...]

BBC: Bram Cohen on network neutrality

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 31, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

This BBC Newsnight story, by Adam Livingstone, about the possibilities of a two-tier internet – ‘BitTorrent: Shedding no tiers’ – has an interesting fictional ‘architectures of control’ example to illustrate the possibilities of price discrimination in networks (see also Control & Networks):
“So there’s me driving up to Homebase… and I get to within half a [...]

High frequency ringtone download

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 25, 2006 ⋅ 54 comments

High frequencies being tested in the urban badlands: see, no teenagers here!
A lot of people find this site through searching for something along the lines of ‘Mosquito high frequency anti-teenager ringtone’, and are presumably disappointed when they find that there is no such ringtone to download, even if just because they’d like to test it [...]

Brake-Fast Doggie Bowl

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 23, 2006 ⋅ 6 comments

Image from www.brake-fast.net
Thanks to Steve Portigal and Page Sands for bringing this to my attention: the Brake-Fast Doggie Bowl is designed to stop dogs wolfing down their food quite as quickly as they would otherwise, which can cause painful (and dangerous) bloating. The raised prongs act like ‘traffic calming’ to slow down the dog’s eating. [...]

Changing norms

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 18, 2006 ⋅ 3 comments

Via Steve Portigal’s All this ChittahChattah, a short but succinct article by John King, from the San Francisco Chronicle noting just how quietly certain features have started to become embedded in our environment, most notably (from this blog’s point of view), anti-skateboarding measures, traffic calming and security barriers:
“…woven into the urban fabric so subtly [...]

Another possible avenue for the Mosquito

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 15, 2006 ⋅ 4 comments

Hot on the heels of the news that Cooper-Menvier/Fulleon is to take on global manufacture and distribution of the Mosquito, my server logs show that someone found this site through looking for mosquito download mobile phone free high frequency.
Now, he or she might simply have been looking for a ringtone that sounded like a mosquito. [...]

New Scientist : Crowds silenced by delayed echoes

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 15, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Via Boing Boing – ‘Hooligan chants silenced by delayed echoes’, a New Scientist story looking at the work of Dutch researchers who are using out-of-sync replayed sound to disrupt synchronised chanting at football matches.
“Soccer hooligans could be silenced by a new sound system that neutralises chanting with a carefully timed echo.

Controlling Shoppers

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 12, 2006 ⋅ 4 comments

The ‘anarchitect’ group, Space Hijackers* have an interesting A-Z of Retail Tricks To Make You Shop – mostly psychological – including a couple of fascinating examples which aren’t well known, e.g.
“Supermarkets used to have a trick placing slightly smaller tiles on the floor in the more expensive aisles of the shop. When a customer entered [...]

The Anti-Sit Archives

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 12, 2006 ⋅ 8 comments

Transfer has an amazing collection of images of ‘Anti-Sit’ devices, mostly in New York but also internationally.

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Archive for May, 2006