digital cultures, digital lifestyles – you name it
Another new book — I received yesterday my copy of Suomalainen muotoilu 3 (“Finnish Design 3”), a big illustrated volume, published by Weilin+Göös. My article is an introduction to what research has to say about digital culture and design, with particular emphasis on game and virtual world design. More information is here and here.
DiGRA Finland and the Creation of Game Studies research project have jointly today published the first Finnish Yearbook of Game Studies (Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirja). It provides an overview into the history and present focus areas of games research through multiple research articles, as well as research and book reviews. The yearbook is peer-reviewed and openly available online here: http://www.pelitutkimus.fi/vuosikirja-2009
DiGRA-09 @ Brunel, UK, 2.9.2009, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
This week the bi-annual Digital Games Research Association’s international conference takes place in Brunel, UK (the conference pages are here). Near Uxbridge, outskirts of London, the conference is a rather cosy event, with not exactly similar kind of large crowds that have filled the previous three conferences in Utrecht, Vancouver and Tokyo. This has the double effect of comfortable familiarity on the other hand, and perhaps some lack of impetus on the other. But the quality of research looks fine, and that is the most important single thing, of course. Some more photos in my Flickr account, and you can also search for #digra to see the stream of Twitter updates from the audiences of various ongoing sessions. Really great to be in this kind of conference again (missing my family badly, though.)
It looks this book is now out: Digital Cityscapes – Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces (Peter Lang Publishers, de Souza e Silva & Sutko, eds.) discusses location-based, hybrid-reality and pervasive games, featuring contributions from me and Petri Lankoski, as well as Hannamari Saarenpää from our lab, among others.
More information:
Got finally a camera today that can produce HD (720p) video clips. Testing the low-light characteristics of Canon PowerShot SX200 IX in the shot below: night time, HD and imported directly from .MOV into Youtube — the you can see that auto exposure creates lots of grain. Still some nice sky tones. (Click the “go full screen” symbol below, in the low right corner of the player.)
There will be a couple of more experiments posted into my profile later. My first impressions of this small camera are positive. It is surprising to see how versatile system this kind of pocket camera can today be. Digital photography has gone long way, at least as far as technology is concerned.
I attached a mobile DVB-T television reveiver to the top of my coffee maker couple of days ago. The idea is that I need not switch on my big screen TV in the living room in order to see the morning news while getting my mocha. Nice, but there is no built-in antenna plug anywhere in our kitchen, and I had to “hide” a terrestial digital television antenna also to the coffee corner. Decorative mistake, I was told… (Maximum TV-710 CX receiver: was 99 euros in the local Kodin Ykkönen store.)
YouSat project has made a press release about its goals and scope:
Quote: The YOUSAT project will invent and study new mobile solutions to support interactive exploration of nature-based tourism, including applications tailored to younger generation tourists. Four Nordic tourism associations collaborate in the project together with SICS, a research institute, Idevio AB, a map technology company, and Tampere University. Together they will create a new service that not only makes it easy to share travel experiences via the mobile phone, but also to find interesting local recommendations.
Hannamari Saarenpää from our team is doing work in YouSat, bringing playful experiences, games and user-centred research methodology contributions to the project.
Our new department (INFIM, Dept. of Information Studies and Interactive Media) has opened a peer-edited publication series for our research reports and other studies: Research of Interactive Media. Freely available as downloadable PDF files, you can access the first report (an updated version of the GameSpace final report from here: http://tampub.uta.fi/haekokoversio.php?id=293
Same in Finnish: Informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median laitokselle on perustettu uusi verkkojulkaisusarja “Interaktiivisen median tutkimuksia” (ISSN 1798-0992). Ensimmäinen verkkojulkaisu on julkaistu Tampubissa. http://tampub.uta.fi/haekokoversio.php?id=293
Here is a snapshot from our games researchers’ rooms — Juho Karvinen, the research assistant of Player Barometer/Pelaajabarometri 2009 is here faced with the grim reality of manually handling a survey sample size of 4000 in the form of traditional mail survey forms & envelopes. (Results from the survey hopefully will be coming in the autumn, and then provide us with more information about who really plays and what & how much in Finland today.)
Lying in our garden swing, I can currently see six wifi access points — that’s urban nature for you! 🙂 Comparing LCD screen and paper (Luontokuva magazine), it is clear that traditional paper is still far superior when reading anything outside. The screen in AA1 is very good, but still very pale in sunlight. Wonder if e-ink/ebook reader screen would make a real difference to the benefit of IT? At the moment — closing this webtop and app is the best way to relax, so: enjoy the summer, everyone!
frans goes blog 
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