Prototyping Weeknotes #23 (16/07/10)
Monday. We really want to launch Zeitgeist but we’ve got to just get some final Ö÷²¥´óÐã clearance. Apart from that it’s working brilliantly and Theo’s blog post is ready to publish. Duncan’s having to fix up an old prototype because it’s being taken on by Audio & Music and they want to use our prototype as a guide. In the afternoon he’s installing our smart energy kit in the office and connecting it to his laptop, the printer, the water cooler and the fridge. Plus we’ve got a wireless doorbell. I’m writing some notes for Wednesday when I’ve agreed to speak on camera about innovation. Regretting it. Sean writes an XMPP bot to relay to the MythTV socket interface so it can change channel using IM and Duncan converted his Strophe client to talk to the bot. So now we can remotely control MythTV from our iPhones and other web clients.
Tuesday. We discuss the programme guide project. The design team stay in the meeting room for a quite a while afterwards but they come out with some defined directions - a passive supportive screen and an idea for reductive search, inspired by . Later in the week we develop a plan for the whole work area, we’ll be concentrating on that next week.
Wednesday. We launch . Interestingly Ö÷²¥´óÐã News have just relaunched which means we need a little hack that Sean promptly deploys. This is almost immediately followed by a project retrospective - things that went well, things that went badly and things we’d do differently. Since launch we’ve had lots of good feedback on it including some new contacts from within the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and from outside. It’s interesting how sometimes only by launching and writing about something do you reach people within the Ö÷²¥´óÐã itself. One of the characteristics of a large organisation like this I guess. Sam and Sean have finished the first stage on SyncTV, they’ve got the DVB-IP bridge running locally and Sam has built a simple client demonstrator.
Thursday. We have a really good meeting about connected remote controls with other parts of R&D; there are a couple of approaches, some better for prototypes and one more likely to make it into the real world. I’m just making sure we’re joined up across this and some common interests in other areas of the work. Meanwhile Theo and Vicky are meeting people in W12; Ulyssa about some second screen prototyping work and Mike about the which we might concept test as a TV remote input device for users with limited mobility. Vicky’s also talking to Fraser about his UX team working in parallel on a low-end device version of the programme guide in HTML5. Chris B has started to work on connecting the iPad Digital Programme Guide to the MythTV/XMPP work which should give us a more complete system for trialling and testing. An afternoon brainstorm about future work and possible European collaborations. We’re betting on AI-controlled remote news drones.
Friday afternoon. Children’s R&D come to visit and show their recent work including a fantastic staring contest demo. Theo’s blog post on Zeitgeist has appeared in the blog chart on Zeitgeist. No comment.
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