This last week I did a small update to feesta.com which has a large effect on how I share information on the site. I separated the ‘blog’ posts from the ‘project’ posts. Previously they were all equal prominence in the long list of colored entries but that was not useful for the purpose of the site. I’m now adding some posts and older projects and hope to be more active with the blog now. I’m still tweaking things like permalinks for blog posts but most of the site is functioning well.

I had a day of bug fixes on Confessor and resubmitted the app to Apple. The initial interface is extremely simple and has only needed a few tweaks. As it’s being used, I’m learning where the needs are and where the next major development push should be.

I’m also exploring some new ideas to pursue now that Confessor is released. Work has been a bit slow lately so I’m taking advantage of the time to get lost in my experiments. More on those later!

The iPhone app for handling your lifestyle needs.

Guilt for our actions and inactions, justified or not, can strike at anytime. Society’s tools for this are limited and haven’t adapted to our fast-paced, interconnected world. Confessor connects you anonymously to someone willing to hear your confessions. Also, you participate by offering forgiveness to others in need.

When you confess using Confessor, the message is sent anonymously to a random Confessor user. The user chooses to send you forgiveness or not.

   

Confessor is a continuation of my previous Guilt Phone/Mobile Penance project which addressed the subconscious guilt many of people have, originally focusing on xenophobia. Through sharing our secrets and reading/judging another’s, empathy is nurtured.

The limited context no space to explain the decision, Confessor forces you to project yourself on the unknown subject. You read beyond the 140 character message as shame/anger/gluttony/obsession are transferred via the iPhone from someone in need to yourself.

   

The app is free and available now.

(Objective-C/Cocoa Touch for iPhone app and Python for Google AppEngine backend)

(Google Appengine, RaphaelJS to draw the diagram, and jQuery for other javascript)

The talkWheel is a diagram tool for mapping relationships in online communication.

In the midst of London’s snowiest Winter in decades, I started a design studio with fellow RCA alums, Joe Malia and Jon Ardern. We shared an interest in bridging the digital experience and the physical world through thoughtful and experimental projects.

While I am now single-handedly manning the bitFarm America office, our paths will cross again allowing more collaborations.

I agree a bit but I believe the American relationship with products is more complex than that. I think America has more focus on the family unit and less on your part in society. The family tries to fill the need for love in our lives so why do we need products to do that? Efficiency is good enough and leaves us more time to spend with those we care about. As family structures change into uncharted territory of fewer marriages, fewer children, and more support from non-traditional communities, the products in the US need to adapt. [disclaimer: not that I like the changing social structures, we aren't likely to go back.]

Reasons for this:
(1) although the US tries to maintain a separation of church and state (compared to the UK or Germany who have state religions), the society in the US is more affected by religion. I believe the values of religion are helpful for maintaining strong family relationships but religion doesn’t seem to be sustainable. it has mostly become obsolete for much of the Western world and nothing yet has come along effectively to replace it.

(2) The US has been engaged in war for the last 7 years. Passions are tied up in it on either side of the issue. Activists are protesting the war rather than addressing domestic issues. Also, financial expenses of the war haven’t allowed the US economy to be as productive as Europe/Japan. Poetic products are culture and I think the US has been starved for sweet, rich culture that makes us cry and dream and fuels more creations.

(3) [I'm not sure if this is a reason but I will ramble anyway...] Americans are good at marketing… selling things… economics. Post-WW2 we made the move on the global stage partially by exporting culture. Making movies that people wanted to watch and making them think they wanted to watch. I hear people in London refer to the American-entrepreneurialism and how that is lacking in Europe. The American dream is to start something new and get rich or die trying. This is where our economic theory is so strong… the efficiency or utility of a product is important. What features will sell the product? An American asks, ‘What’s the best bargain for my money?’. This approach of efficiency means if you can offer a product that seems to have the same features but is cheaper because it has less unmeasurable loveliness, you will probably sell more. It’s more of an engineering/economic approach that considers users as predictable objects rather than thinking and feeling beings.

I think the recession is an exciting time to be a designer. I am spending most of my time tinkering and trying to figure out ‘new’ types of products. I have the hope that by the time I’ve finished them, the world will be ready to consume them. I’m spending lots of time thinking of the future and trying to create a vision for myself of what our future will look like.
2009 will be a gem and 2010 a gold-mine.

Bridging was easy:
Under Wireless>>Basic Settings, set Wireless Mode to Client Bridge.
Set the SSID to the same as your host wifi router.
Set the WEP or WPA (under Wireless Security) to be the same as the host router.
‘Save’. ‘Apply Settings’. This is pretty straight forward but it didn’t go smoothly the first time but I found I was getting access through the router so I stopped futzing with it.

This week I removed the WEP passcode on the house wifi so some visiting friends could easily connect their laptops. To maintain the bridge, I also had to remove the WEP key on my DD-WRT router. This worked fun, but today when I put the WEP key back on the host, the DD-WRT router wouldn’t accept the WEP key. The web interface form had inputs for Passphrase, Key 1, Key 2, etc. I just needed the 64bit WEP key (10 digits) to be saved into one of the ‘key’ slots. DD-WRT would have none of it. It wanted me to enter a password into the Passphrase then press the Generate to create the hex-code for the keys. As I wanted to maintain the same WEP key my flatmates already have stored, I didn’t want to generate a new one.

My chosen angle of attack was to SSH (ssh root@192.168.1.1) into the router while plugged directly to the DD-WRT router (and wifi on my laptop turned off). I had used the nvram command on OpenWRT so I gave that a try. nvram show spit out tons of settings. nvram show|grep wep spit out the settings with wep in them. nvram set wl0_wep_gen=”1122334455″ followed by nvram commit to save. I didn’t have much confidence in this attempt, but when I typed reboot, my laptops networked apps, like skype, sprung back to life.

I was profiled in Design Week magazine along some fellow recent graduates.