Project Proposal: Accessibility Explorer or XS Explorer
Accessible Europe is a project of Toegankelijk Nederland.nl – draft 1.3
Summary
In order to collect user generated accessibility data about locations (buildings and travel destinations) and use the great potential of a potentially worldwide user database. I propose an iPhone application named Accessibility Explorer or XS Explorer (as a shortened name). With the Apple iPhone you can survey and take pictures of the location directly from inside the XS Explorer application and use it to visualize specific attention area’s. The iPhone touch screen can also be used to draw a sketch of a room or situation and you could link it as comment to a question. You can even record audio comments making this useful as a real reviewing tool. The build in GPS-receiver will be used to place the location on maps and link it to pda, mobile phones (smartphones) and other navigation devices through Points Of Interest (POI’s).
About Accessible Europe
Accessible Europe’s mission is to chart the accessibility and usability of public buildings, attractions and travel destinations. The primary focus is on people with specific disability challenges like being unable to walk (and therefore use a wheelchair), being unable to see (blind or short-sighted using tools to navigate and distinguish visual information), difficulty with hearing (using special hearing devices or totally deaf, meaning alternative means of communication other than audio or voice. Other specific challenges needed adaptations or requirements in buildings are asthma (COPD), obesity, baby-care and being short.
Accessible Europe collects and shares location based accessibility information about available public facilities (for specific disabilities) in and around buildings (objects) like restaurants, libraries, hotels and museums.
Example
If you’re planning a family reunion in a group facility it is vitally important to know beforehand if your aunt in a wheelchair can sit at the dining room table and if there is a wheelchair toilet where she can go to powder her nose. If the meetingroom is on the second floor you also need to know if there is an elevator and if the doors of the elevator are big enough for a standard-size or XL-sized wheelchair.
Become an Accessibility Explorer
With the proposed multilingual iPhone application all iPhone users can become instant Accessibility Explorers or XS Explorers. The idea is adding new objects on the go. Any (public) building or destination you visit can be added. Keep in mind we're looking for accessible locations. After registration (with username, password and email with confirmation) as an Accessibility Explorer you can use the Accessibility Explorer tool (or XS Explorer for short)
Steps:
1. Stand before the main entrance of the object/location. Press “Add new object”, the current GPS location will be stored while typing in the name of the object. Select the function of the object from the rollbar: (for example Restaurant, Cinema, Public Toilet, Hotel, Retailstore)
2. When the name and function are saved, the online database is checked if this location (300 meters) or if this name already exists in the database. If location and/or name exists you will be presented with the option to review and/or edit the existing data or add a new object. Used Object-ID's will be stored on the iPhone. Active Explorers will be reminded to review and comment visited locations / objects.
3. Add general contact info or URL for the object (usually found on folders, brochures, businesscards found at the entrance or reception).
4. Take a picture of the main-entrance or front of the object. (picture is automatically uploaded in background, after being resized to max. 1024 pixels if needed) Select the categories-types (logo’s) you want to review or chart (default = all); Wheelchair toilet, Wheelchair, Deaf (or bad hearing), Blind (visually impaired), Asthma (COPD), Obesity (extreme overweight), and baby-care (lactation-room and/or diaper changing facility).
5. Fill in the category questions with a score +, +/-, -, unknown (default), not applicable. comment each question if needed. These scoring is based on the ITC (International Accessibility Codes which are in the contextual help on screen with examples to determine the score. Exact measurements (with / length / height in cm) (of doorways or elevators for example) can also be added if the Accessibility Explorer has a measuring-tool available for this.
6. Take pictures or draw a sketch at each critical point (entrance, corridor, leverage angle, turning circles, etc.). Registered XS Explorers also have the ability to draw or sketch on top of a new or existing picture. The original pictures are stored in the archive.
7. Fill in extra info at the notes section. Save all object info on the iPhone.
8. Review the explored object and upload it to the server. (upload with pictures can also be done later when in WiFi-range). Personal comments and notes can be added to each of the questions, categories or rooms.
9. Registered Accesibility Explorers could receive Explorer community points for each object they successfully upload. (The system keeps track of all submitted locations and feedback on the information-quality)
After internal checking of the submitted data the owner from the object will receive an automatic message:
Hi,
Your location "[Location name]" classified as "[object function]" on GPS mapped location [GPS object location] was visited by an Accessibility Explorer [XS Explorer Nickname] on [object visit date].
Please review the data online [XSexplorer object URL/Object ID]
If you feel this information is incorrect or incomplete, please register as Accessibility Explorer and edit the object.
You can also change or add more contact information, your opening hours and a description of 2000 characters.
If you score at least one + in the XS Explorer review you may add our "Visited by Accessibility Explorer" Logo and link to your homepage. If a visitor clicks the logo he will go to the review of your location on our webpage. You can choose copy and paste the code or banner from the MyXSexplorer page.
If you want more information on how to make your location more accessible please visit [Accessibility Explorer building tips URL]
Thanks for your support,
The XS Explorer team.
Find accessible object
1. press "search from current location" to check for objects nearby (scalable in "Settings" from 1 km to 50km radius). All accessibility options are selected by default but can be unclicked. The results in unchecked categories will be grey and nearest results with checked criteria with show first. Options to search for object type, name, city, province or radius from current position.
2. Select your location to display Accessibility info and contact info.
3. Click call [name location] to call the specific location.
4. Click Show on map to show the location in the maps application
5. Click Navigate to location to start your navigation application
Extra software features:
· Accessibility Warnings: A dangerous or critical notification about an object / location. (like Wikango speedcamera warnings app)
· For larger outdoor objects like theme-parks you can add sub-objects like wheelchair-toilets and continue from step 4 with a new picture.
Database entries:
XS explorer username, object GPS location(s), object name, object function, date and time of initial data collection, date and time of submission (or mutation) [also: keep mutation history], contact information Location question categories: accessibility streetwalk path (bestrating), entrance, entry level (begane grond), elevator, toilet, wheelchair toilet, bathroom, corridor, primary room, hearing , blind / sighted, obesity and baby care questions.
Applications for other mobile platforms like Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Google Android should be added as soon as the basic iPhone app is running. The accessibility database website should have a mobile / pda-version for viewing on a small screen. Primary connections to Google-maps and augmented reality applications like Layar should be implemented from the start. Being an XS Explorer using Interactive augmented reality while answering questions about the object could a cutting edge application and fun thing to do. This could give the Accessibility Database a real boost.
History
ToegankelijkNederland started in 2001 with zipcode based location information using a paper questionnaire; the answers were transcribed on the input webpages connecting and storing it to the central database. The current database was setup with the presentation in mind and is not ideal for collection of GPS based object-data.
GPS
A few years ago pda’s and smartphones became more and more advanced with build-in camera’s and GPS. XS Explorer collects and charts location based information with GPS. GPS-info is used by mapping and navigation devices. For exchange and connectivity between systems it is more logical to use GPS as a general identifier than zipcodes. It is still highly recommended to also collect the formal address and object information like name and contactinfo (such as telephonenumber, email and URL). The iPhone app is focused on easy data collection and location based retrieval.
Costs & Investment
The initial XS Explorer application for charting Accessibility should be free from the Apple App store to promote the XS Explorers community. Advertising from featured Accessible locations could pay for the community. Integration with other applications or adding other personal location based info could be sold as a paid iPhone application XS Explorer Pro. Spin-offs or combinations with desktop-syncing applications like Evernote are ways to monetize this app.
This app can easily be modified and used for adding meta-info about any GPS-location (like an external addon for MotionX GPS) or object and any questions can be added.
Option 1: Low Budget: An initial investment with a programmer-auction site like Elance.com or rentacoder.com could be around EUR 3500 for the app, database and basic CMS with a monthly cost for hosting and maintenance of around EUR 200.
Option 2: Adaptation or sponsoring by a software-development company showing high valued real useful application of their technology. This is a win-win situation since the company created a new service for a potential group of 15-35% of all people who use one or more accessibility tags for objects. A wheelchair accessibility tag usually means strollers with babies or small children will most likely also fit.
The only condition for sponsoring or Joint Venture is that usage of the accessibility-database is non-exclusive and should be open to anyone. (Also for other application builders).
A new database and community website should be developed for this Accessibility Explorer application. An API for search, import / export and object-mutation requests could be made to facilitate synchronisation and connections between other databases and applications.
Context
AccessibleEurope (ToegankelijkNederland.NL) is currently (December 2009) in the final phase of testing a new accessibility website made in the CMS Joomla. Instructed volunteers from the different disability-organisations will visit specific object locations (like restaurants, hotels, public service buildings and theatres). These volunteers will measure and test accessibility and usability by answering a basic set of questions for their specific disability in all (or most crucial) functions (and/or room-types) in an object.
Data example
Normal wheelchair accessibility for example requires a minimum passage with of 80cm including enough space for a a turning circle of the wheelchair; this is scored as +/-. For an extra large wheelchair you should have a minimum of 100cm and a larger turning circle; these entries and passages are scored +. Examples of other measured aspects are height-differences (should be minimal), toilets, (bathrooms / showers), elevators (is it big enough and can it be operated from within the wheelchair?), reception or service-desks (can it be used from within the wheelchair?), lockers (within reach), usable table height, and available exits.
I need help setting this up. If you have experience with building iPhone apps or like this project please contact me for more info.
Toine Fennis.
toine@accessibilityexplorer.eu
Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPhone. Show all posts
January 06, 2010
May 28, 2009
Technology on the move - a personal history
Most technological inventions need some time to get acquainted to and settle in. Although I consider myself an early adopter for general technology and gadgets, at the current rate new technology and systems are being introduced it is a real challenge to keep up tacit knowledge by using and adopting all the available technology. In this short personal history I will review some changes in technology (related to games, music and available networks) I experienced in the last 25 years.
Around 1984 I had my first walkman (for playing my home-recorded cassette-tapes with music) that I used in the early mornings on my newspaper delivery route. We had a Commodore 64 computer (64 kByte that is) with a cassette tapedrive for external memory that I used for loading games. Before turboloader a large game could take up to 45 minutes to load (possibly limited by the maximum lenght of a tape?), later an application called 'turboloader' brought it back to a minute.
Back then you had friends at school who introduced and helped with using new gadgets and technologies. Handheld pocket games like Donkey Kong (from Nintendo) and PacMan were a real rage back then, to the point that it was forbidden to take it to school. Surprisingly these games are still very popular today on several gaming platforms. Parents now would probably call it peer group pressure since the result of playing with a technologically privileged schoolfriend was also getting or begging for one yourself.
In 1985 I got introduced to 27 MC (CB) and bought one 22 channel (0.5 watt), in 1986 I started buying and experimenting with larger CB (4 x 80 + more lineair power), FM transmitters (building them) and pirate stations (with a few CB friends) since I was inspired by the story of Radio Veronica. My vinyl recordcollection grew these years from 3 to more than 800 12 inch album records mostly from Koninginnedag (Dutch Queensday) and fleamarket sales. In the early 90's I added some more to my current 1200+ vinyl record collection (about 80% various artists albums). The reason I bought second hand LP's on fleamarkets initially was that it was affordable. An average between € 0.50 - 1.50 per record. An interesting observation for me is that the perceived value of a secondhand Compact Disc (CD) is still much higher (€ 1.00 - 5.00) than that of an LP even if it is the same album. Same is true for secondhand and even more supprisingly new VHS-tapes (low price) and DVD's (high price), it is even more interesting because the productioncosts of a DVD's are less than 25% than that of anVHS-tape. Yes of course do I know VHS is phased out in favor of DVD-R and memorycards but my point is it seems to follow a common trend when substituting old with new technology.
Around 1987 I bought myself an autoreverse walkman with external mic-recorder and FM radio-receiver. There was no music-station on the Dutch radio during my early morning paperroute, so I had my personal FM music broadcasting station (Radio GoGo) in Hilversum during my paperroute. The whole idea of creating a music compilation on tape as my personal radiostation with jingles and then broadcasting it to myself appealed to me. The radio broadcast was fulfilling my personal need for early morning uptempo music but possibly serving a much larger audience of spontaneous listeners who just happened to scan for radiostations from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m.
In 1988 the media-laws in the Netherlands changed and commercial radiostations were permitted to broadcast the ether, including these early hours. There was no explicit need anymore and of course no way I (or any of my friends) could compete with these commercial stations. The RCD (Radio Control Service) also became more strict and held frequent coordinated razzia terminating all amateur pirate radiostations. Some larger / professional pirate stations applied for FM-frequencies and continued legally. Radiolegends Adam Curry and Jeroen van Inkel have their roots in the Amsterdam radio-piracy scene.
I continued making thematic cassette-tape compilations from my record- and growing CD-collection untill I went to college in 1992. To me it is still a real art to compile a lineair 90 minute tape (or CD for that matter) with a fixed moodsetting or theme and still have an interesting but balanced set of songs. You're searching for a good complete experience, like a composer. You need a strong beginning and end, variation in vocal vs. musical, man vs. woman, solo vs. group, fast vs. slow, rhytm-compatibility, and familiar (popular) songs vs. unknown jewels. Creating a playlist on an iPod (CD / MP3-player) is much easier because it is shuffled automatically and you can skip a song with one click.
In 1991 I bought a secondhand 80-286 PC with MS DOS on 2 720 Kb floppy-diskdrives from my school and used a spreadsheet (Lotus 123) and database (dBase) for the first time. That's when I understood the real potential of computers. In 1994 I created my first free mailaccount from DDS (a so called 'digital city' or virtual community) which I could read twice a week from the University Library computerroom. I also made my first homepage in DDS. Software was shared through BBS. For messaging (me) I had a Seiko Message Watch a 16 character pager, the prequel of SMS. My roommate had a computer running windows 3.1 a 80486DX50 with 8 MB RAM and a 4 speed CD-Rom with a 15" monitor. Around that time we played all the levels of Lemmings and Wolfenstein3D.
I bought my first greyscale handheld scanner to scan pictures and OCR textpages from books for college and my first 16 bit Gravis Ultrasound (full duplex) soundcard with wavetable and oncard memory. Although clipart in documents was very hot, printing real (greyscale) pictures was not very common then. Around 1995 I assembled my first PC, a 80486 DX 66, all the components were bought on a computer fair. Unfortunately the intel processor was dead (I had traveled to the supplier of the motherboard, that board was tested OK and he sold me a new processor after which my PC worked). Months later I went to another computerfair and located the supplier of the original defective (DOA) processor who gave me my money back, the price had dropped 30% in 3 months. Moore's law still seems valid. The 56k6 baud modem was introduced (for a faster dial-up connection to the Internet). Storage devices also became larger. I have used the portable iomega Zipdrive (with 100 MB disks instead of 1.44 MB floppydisks) for several years untill I had my own CD-burner. Nowadays most people use USB-flashdrives. Interestingly not all input devices change: I still use my single line OCR penscanner from 1996 occasionally; I did needed to upgrade the driver and OCR software from Irislink so I also bought a USB version. A pen scanner is still recommended for students and researchers quoting lines from (paper) books and magazines.
In 1996 CD-burners (CD-ROM) and inkjet color printers became popular. The new operating system Windows 95 boosted sales and multitasking (more than 1 program open and working on your computer desktop) became common use. Wordprocessor WordPerfect 6 became ancient and MS Word became the new standard in the computer room. Midi and Mod audio-files were replaced by .wav and MP3 after ripping whole CD-collections using CDDB for track info. In 1997 I bought a Sony MiniDisc-player/recorder with optical I/O and USB as a possible non-lineair (random-access) replacement for my cassette-tapes. Since transferring MiniDisc recordings to a computer took a lot of time (only real time single speed transfer, meaning a recording of 80 minutes takes 80 minutes to transfer) and some optical output limitations for consumers probably resulted in the fact that MiniDisc didn't make it as a new audio-medium. I really liked the ability to edit MiniDisc tracks and recordings with a portable recorder and add track info (Text) to an audio-track. Unfortunately it was not possible to tranfer this MiniDisc trackinfo directly to the audio-track on the PC or to CD-text when burning it on a CD-Rom. MP3 as an alternative did have the ability to add track info like: artist, title, album, genre, tracknumber and comment (read: Meta-information) to a file with the ID3-tag preferably added automaticly through CDDB.
I'm still using MP3 as my primary audio storage-format today. Since 1987 I ripped most of my CD-collection to MP3. I stored it by putting it on CD-Rom, later on DVD-Rom and now I have an audio collection of more than 300 GB. At first only PC's and some DVD-players could play MP3-files but nowadays almost all audio-hardware can play MP3. Portable MP3-players became popular around 1999. I know that around the year 2000 I bought a portable NAPA MP3/CD/VideoCD player with ID3-display. This player definitely substituted my walkman and tapes, the MiniDisc was only used for recording.
I had my first portable GSM cellphone around 1998: A large Motorola 8800 with only a day of standby time, but what a freedom feeling being able to call while riding a bike. Before my gsm I had a portable housephone with large (extended) range around the house (approximately 2 km range, somewhat illegal but effective). After the pocket-pagers hype around 1995 with short text-codes, GSM introduced text messaging to the masses with SMS.
Currently (june 2009) Twitter (on twitter.com) is the hottest trend introducing gps tagged broadcast messaging by cellphones, smartphones or pda's connected to the Internet. Twitter is mostly used as a micro-Blog (with only 140 characters in 1 message) but also as a social networking application. Twitter is a logical follow up of instant messaging or chat (irc) which was a popular application from the early 90's on the Internet.
Other popular Internet applications from around 2000 were ICQ, MSN. and peer-to-peer MP3 filesharing Napster (P2P filesharing later evolved to Kazaa and torrent-sites). Videochat or videoconferencing became more popular when broadband Internet (by ISDN, Cable and ADSL) and webcams became affordable. Skype (introduced in 2003) set a standard (by reaching a critical mass of users) for connecting Internet-telephony to normal PSTN telephone-lines. Voice over IP (VOIP) is now offered by ISPs as an acceptable alternative or substitution of the (old) analog PSTN telephone system.
Mobile phones became more advanced, starting with WAP (only textbased) and and specially designed WML Internet pages. After my 2 relatively cheap Motorola phones I invested in a (more advanced) Nokia 6210 with build in 9k6 modem so I could fax and email with a laptop. A bit later around 2003 the pocketPC with Windows mobile became the new standard for handhelds. Personally I used an HP iPaq 4350 with wireless connectivity: bluetooth & wifi and a seperate (bluetooth) gps receiver for use with the TomTom Navigation Software.
Portable music became a new lifestyle with the Apple iPod. I personally ignored and even rejected the overhyped adoration of the early iPod adopters for a long time but I got more acquinted to the idea of thematic playlists. And lists based on specific ID3 metatags. USB-stick MP3-players were only able to shuffle and play folders (usually an album). Also Apple Inc. introduced a music marketing and purchase model through iTunes. The popularity and maybe also the acceptance of iTunes as a music store and library environment on Mac and PC was hugely enhanced by the easy way to find and subscribe to (free) podcasts. FYI: A (current) comparison of online music stores.
The iTunes musicstore introduced $0,99 per song in the USA, frustratingly this was copied to the European countries to €0,99 (with the current exchange rate Europeans pay more than 40% extra!). It was not until 2007 that I bought an 80 GB iPod video, now referred to as iPod classic (the 5th generation) which makes me late mayority in gadget marketing and innovation adoption terms. My main motivation for buying one was the long playing time (over 20 hours) and the fact that iPod is the industry standard (a leading example for others) which means several accessories are made specially for- or compatible with the iPod like docking stations, speakers and microphones (this is my favorite mic for recording with iPod:griffins italk pro).
When Apple marketed (and hyped) the long awaited iPhone in the summer of 2007 I was even more sceptical than with the iPod. I decided to wait and see. That fall of 2007 I did buy a new HTC P3300 smartphone running Windows Mobile with 2 MegaPixel camera, wifi, touchscreen, and build-in-gps to replace my Nokia 6210 (after almost 8 years).
And yes, I finally bought an iPhone 3G 16 GB with a T-Mobile business package deal in march 2009 and I must say: I really like the iPhone. I am a great fan of the App-store (more than 50.000 apps available in less than 2 years on the market). The intelligent use of the build in sensors and features makes the iPhone so unique. Somebody just thought of the idea that a Multitouch-screen feature creates the opportunity of playing multi-finger piano on the iPhone. That is creativity and brings back the fun to technology.
Personally I am not a gamer but throughout the years I have played some PC based computergames. My favorite game was a turn based strategy game named Civilization 2. I was not really into shooters like Doom and DukeNukem 3D although I liked the idea (concept) of modifying and creating your own levels and putting your own pictures on top of the monsters. The adventure shooter TombRaider had nicer graphics but I never took the time to play the whole game. Black & White was the last big (God)game I spend serious time on. I liked this game for originality and for the AI-features in the game. About two years ago we bought two DDR dancepads which I liked for fitness and interactivity (this gaminggenre is now referred to as Exergames). Recently we got the handheld Nintendo DS (now mostly used by my 6 year old daughter) and the interactive Nintendo Wii using the Wii-remote and Nunchuck with build-in 3-axle motion-sensors. I extended our Wii-system after a few weeks with the Wii Fit + balanceboard. My wife uses the Wii mostly for fitness and training.
[On the side: A really thought provoking TED-talk about the history and future of games]
Skipping to conclusion:
What I think we need is a gadgetized playground or sandbox to get acquinted to gadgets and new technology first before we use them as new tools, but what we get is a mass marketed, overhyped, interconnected network of electronic stuff with unpredictable spinn-offs and possibly unwanted symptoms like information stress. Too much info and stuff without a real (physical) context or place to put it. Don't get me wrong, I like gadgets and technology a lot, but we need to put things in perspective. Aim for ideals and goals that really matter. Use technology as a tool and not as a target. I'm trying to make a point here but I am unclear about the form. I will stop here and leave this writing as is. Later I will write more about connectivity, technology and the iPhone as a technological milestone in particular.
Extra: Just a Meta-Idea
While writing this piece I realized a personal gadget history (or going through your past by telling stories about your stuff) could be an interesting cultural or sociological perspective indicating (technology driven) changes.
If you publish(ed) your own technological or gadget (toy)-driven personal history just put the link in the comment.
Thanks, Toine.
Around 1984 I had my first walkman (for playing my home-recorded cassette-tapes with music) that I used in the early mornings on my newspaper delivery route. We had a Commodore 64 computer (64 kByte that is) with a cassette tapedrive for external memory that I used for loading games. Before turboloader a large game could take up to 45 minutes to load (possibly limited by the maximum lenght of a tape?), later an application called 'turboloader' brought it back to a minute.
Back then you had friends at school who introduced and helped with using new gadgets and technologies. Handheld pocket games like Donkey Kong (from Nintendo) and PacMan were a real rage back then, to the point that it was forbidden to take it to school. Surprisingly these games are still very popular today on several gaming platforms. Parents now would probably call it peer group pressure since the result of playing with a technologically privileged schoolfriend was also getting or begging for one yourself.
In 1985 I got introduced to 27 MC (CB) and bought one 22 channel (0.5 watt), in 1986 I started buying and experimenting with larger CB (4 x 80 + more lineair power), FM transmitters (building them) and pirate stations (with a few CB friends) since I was inspired by the story of Radio Veronica. My vinyl recordcollection grew these years from 3 to more than 800 12 inch album records mostly from Koninginnedag (Dutch Queensday) and fleamarket sales. In the early 90's I added some more to my current 1200+ vinyl record collection (about 80% various artists albums). The reason I bought second hand LP's on fleamarkets initially was that it was affordable. An average between € 0.50 - 1.50 per record. An interesting observation for me is that the perceived value of a secondhand Compact Disc (CD) is still much higher (€ 1.00 - 5.00) than that of an LP even if it is the same album. Same is true for secondhand and even more supprisingly new VHS-tapes (low price) and DVD's (high price), it is even more interesting because the productioncosts of a DVD's are less than 25% than that of anVHS-tape. Yes of course do I know VHS is phased out in favor of DVD-R and memorycards but my point is it seems to follow a common trend when substituting old with new technology.
Around 1987 I bought myself an autoreverse walkman with external mic-recorder and FM radio-receiver. There was no music-station on the Dutch radio during my early morning paperroute, so I had my personal FM music broadcasting station (Radio GoGo) in Hilversum during my paperroute. The whole idea of creating a music compilation on tape as my personal radiostation with jingles and then broadcasting it to myself appealed to me. The radio broadcast was fulfilling my personal need for early morning uptempo music but possibly serving a much larger audience of spontaneous listeners who just happened to scan for radiostations from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m.
In 1988 the media-laws in the Netherlands changed and commercial radiostations were permitted to broadcast the ether, including these early hours. There was no explicit need anymore and of course no way I (or any of my friends) could compete with these commercial stations. The RCD (Radio Control Service) also became more strict and held frequent coordinated razzia terminating all amateur pirate radiostations. Some larger / professional pirate stations applied for FM-frequencies and continued legally. Radiolegends Adam Curry and Jeroen van Inkel have their roots in the Amsterdam radio-piracy scene.
I continued making thematic cassette-tape compilations from my record- and growing CD-collection untill I went to college in 1992. To me it is still a real art to compile a lineair 90 minute tape (or CD for that matter) with a fixed moodsetting or theme and still have an interesting but balanced set of songs. You're searching for a good complete experience, like a composer. You need a strong beginning and end, variation in vocal vs. musical, man vs. woman, solo vs. group, fast vs. slow, rhytm-compatibility, and familiar (popular) songs vs. unknown jewels. Creating a playlist on an iPod (CD / MP3-player) is much easier because it is shuffled automatically and you can skip a song with one click.
In 1991 I bought a secondhand 80-286 PC with MS DOS on 2 720 Kb floppy-diskdrives from my school and used a spreadsheet (Lotus 123) and database (dBase) for the first time. That's when I understood the real potential of computers. In 1994 I created my first free mailaccount from DDS (a so called 'digital city' or virtual community) which I could read twice a week from the University Library computerroom. I also made my first homepage in DDS. Software was shared through BBS. For messaging (me) I had a Seiko Message Watch a 16 character pager, the prequel of SMS. My roommate had a computer running windows 3.1 a 80486DX50 with 8 MB RAM and a 4 speed CD-Rom with a 15" monitor. Around that time we played all the levels of Lemmings and Wolfenstein3D.
I bought my first greyscale handheld scanner to scan pictures and OCR textpages from books for college and my first 16 bit Gravis Ultrasound (full duplex) soundcard with wavetable and oncard memory. Although clipart in documents was very hot, printing real (greyscale) pictures was not very common then. Around 1995 I assembled my first PC, a 80486 DX 66, all the components were bought on a computer fair. Unfortunately the intel processor was dead (I had traveled to the supplier of the motherboard, that board was tested OK and he sold me a new processor after which my PC worked). Months later I went to another computerfair and located the supplier of the original defective (DOA) processor who gave me my money back, the price had dropped 30% in 3 months. Moore's law still seems valid. The 56k6 baud modem was introduced (for a faster dial-up connection to the Internet). Storage devices also became larger. I have used the portable iomega Zipdrive (with 100 MB disks instead of 1.44 MB floppydisks) for several years untill I had my own CD-burner. Nowadays most people use USB-flashdrives. Interestingly not all input devices change: I still use my single line OCR penscanner from 1996 occasionally; I did needed to upgrade the driver and OCR software from Irislink so I also bought a USB version. A pen scanner is still recommended for students and researchers quoting lines from (paper) books and magazines.
In 1996 CD-burners (CD-ROM) and inkjet color printers became popular. The new operating system Windows 95 boosted sales and multitasking (more than 1 program open and working on your computer desktop) became common use. Wordprocessor WordPerfect 6 became ancient and MS Word became the new standard in the computer room. Midi and Mod audio-files were replaced by .wav and MP3 after ripping whole CD-collections using CDDB for track info. In 1997 I bought a Sony MiniDisc-player/recorder with optical I/O and USB as a possible non-lineair (random-access) replacement for my cassette-tapes. Since transferring MiniDisc recordings to a computer took a lot of time (only real time single speed transfer, meaning a recording of 80 minutes takes 80 minutes to transfer) and some optical output limitations for consumers probably resulted in the fact that MiniDisc didn't make it as a new audio-medium. I really liked the ability to edit MiniDisc tracks and recordings with a portable recorder and add track info (Text) to an audio-track. Unfortunately it was not possible to tranfer this MiniDisc trackinfo directly to the audio-track on the PC or to CD-text when burning it on a CD-Rom. MP3 as an alternative did have the ability to add track info like: artist, title, album, genre, tracknumber and comment (read: Meta-information) to a file with the ID3-tag preferably added automaticly through CDDB.
I'm still using MP3 as my primary audio storage-format today. Since 1987 I ripped most of my CD-collection to MP3. I stored it by putting it on CD-Rom, later on DVD-Rom and now I have an audio collection of more than 300 GB. At first only PC's and some DVD-players could play MP3-files but nowadays almost all audio-hardware can play MP3. Portable MP3-players became popular around 1999. I know that around the year 2000 I bought a portable NAPA MP3/CD/VideoCD player with ID3-display. This player definitely substituted my walkman and tapes, the MiniDisc was only used for recording.
I had my first portable GSM cellphone around 1998: A large Motorola 8800 with only a day of standby time, but what a freedom feeling being able to call while riding a bike. Before my gsm I had a portable housephone with large (extended) range around the house (approximately 2 km range, somewhat illegal but effective). After the pocket-pagers hype around 1995 with short text-codes, GSM introduced text messaging to the masses with SMS.
Currently (june 2009) Twitter (on twitter.com) is the hottest trend introducing gps tagged broadcast messaging by cellphones, smartphones or pda's connected to the Internet. Twitter is mostly used as a micro-Blog (with only 140 characters in 1 message) but also as a social networking application. Twitter is a logical follow up of instant messaging or chat (irc) which was a popular application from the early 90's on the Internet.
Other popular Internet applications from around 2000 were ICQ, MSN. and peer-to-peer MP3 filesharing Napster (P2P filesharing later evolved to Kazaa and torrent-sites). Videochat or videoconferencing became more popular when broadband Internet (by ISDN, Cable and ADSL) and webcams became affordable. Skype (introduced in 2003) set a standard (by reaching a critical mass of users) for connecting Internet-telephony to normal PSTN telephone-lines. Voice over IP (VOIP) is now offered by ISPs as an acceptable alternative or substitution of the (old) analog PSTN telephone system.
Mobile phones became more advanced, starting with WAP (only textbased) and and specially designed WML Internet pages. After my 2 relatively cheap Motorola phones I invested in a (more advanced) Nokia 6210 with build in 9k6 modem so I could fax and email with a laptop. A bit later around 2003 the pocketPC with Windows mobile became the new standard for handhelds. Personally I used an HP iPaq 4350 with wireless connectivity: bluetooth & wifi and a seperate (bluetooth) gps receiver for use with the TomTom Navigation Software.
Portable music became a new lifestyle with the Apple iPod. I personally ignored and even rejected the overhyped adoration of the early iPod adopters for a long time but I got more acquinted to the idea of thematic playlists. And lists based on specific ID3 metatags. USB-stick MP3-players were only able to shuffle and play folders (usually an album). Also Apple Inc. introduced a music marketing and purchase model through iTunes. The popularity and maybe also the acceptance of iTunes as a music store and library environment on Mac and PC was hugely enhanced by the easy way to find and subscribe to (free) podcasts. FYI: A (current) comparison of online music stores.
The iTunes musicstore introduced $0,99 per song in the USA, frustratingly this was copied to the European countries to €0,99 (with the current exchange rate Europeans pay more than 40% extra!). It was not until 2007 that I bought an 80 GB iPod video, now referred to as iPod classic (the 5th generation) which makes me late mayority in gadget marketing and innovation adoption terms. My main motivation for buying one was the long playing time (over 20 hours) and the fact that iPod is the industry standard (a leading example for others) which means several accessories are made specially for- or compatible with the iPod like docking stations, speakers and microphones (this is my favorite mic for recording with iPod:griffins italk pro).
When Apple marketed (and hyped) the long awaited iPhone in the summer of 2007 I was even more sceptical than with the iPod. I decided to wait and see. That fall of 2007 I did buy a new HTC P3300 smartphone running Windows Mobile with 2 MegaPixel camera, wifi, touchscreen, and build-in-gps to replace my Nokia 6210 (after almost 8 years).
And yes, I finally bought an iPhone 3G 16 GB with a T-Mobile business package deal in march 2009 and I must say: I really like the iPhone. I am a great fan of the App-store (more than 50.000 apps available in less than 2 years on the market). The intelligent use of the build in sensors and features makes the iPhone so unique. Somebody just thought of the idea that a Multitouch-screen feature creates the opportunity of playing multi-finger piano on the iPhone. That is creativity and brings back the fun to technology.
Personally I am not a gamer but throughout the years I have played some PC based computergames. My favorite game was a turn based strategy game named Civilization 2. I was not really into shooters like Doom and DukeNukem 3D although I liked the idea (concept) of modifying and creating your own levels and putting your own pictures on top of the monsters. The adventure shooter TombRaider had nicer graphics but I never took the time to play the whole game. Black & White was the last big (God)game I spend serious time on. I liked this game for originality and for the AI-features in the game. About two years ago we bought two DDR dancepads which I liked for fitness and interactivity (this gaminggenre is now referred to as Exergames). Recently we got the handheld Nintendo DS (now mostly used by my 6 year old daughter) and the interactive Nintendo Wii using the Wii-remote and Nunchuck with build-in 3-axle motion-sensors. I extended our Wii-system after a few weeks with the Wii Fit + balanceboard. My wife uses the Wii mostly for fitness and training.
[On the side: A really thought provoking TED-talk about the history and future of games]
Skipping to conclusion:
What I think we need is a gadgetized playground or sandbox to get acquinted to gadgets and new technology first before we use them as new tools, but what we get is a mass marketed, overhyped, interconnected network of electronic stuff with unpredictable spinn-offs and possibly unwanted symptoms like information stress. Too much info and stuff without a real (physical) context or place to put it. Don't get me wrong, I like gadgets and technology a lot, but we need to put things in perspective. Aim for ideals and goals that really matter. Use technology as a tool and not as a target. I'm trying to make a point here but I am unclear about the form. I will stop here and leave this writing as is. Later I will write more about connectivity, technology and the iPhone as a technological milestone in particular.
Extra: Just a Meta-Idea
While writing this piece I realized a personal gadget history (or going through your past by telling stories about your stuff) could be an interesting cultural or sociological perspective indicating (technology driven) changes.
If you publish(ed) your own technological or gadget (toy)-driven personal history just put the link in the comment.
Thanks, Toine.
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