I’m decompressing after the Social Computing Symposium held here in Redmond, a nice end to my time here in Seattle. Anna and I are going to drive east in a few days. ITP was well represented with Lili hosting the event and Clay, Kevin and Gilad speaking. On the project side ITP also represented with a symposium tailored version of social genius and Terence’s models appearing in Matt’s presentation of Boku. Justin.tv was also in attendance with his real-time stream.

What am I excited about after attending the symposium? Well new visualizations in Dopplr, FireEagle and anything Clay has to say. Not to mention this photo which shows public sharing of flickr content on a map. Red means less, green means more:

According to the interweb, I have “social problems”. I was checking out pipl the other day to see what kind of research on me is available to potential employers when I found out that I have “social problems” (see image) which links to this picture on Flickr. Huge context-specific misunderstanding, I was just hanging out with Daniel at the Seattle library. I hope this kafkaesque ledger doesn’t impact my health insurance premiums.

After spending a whole summer here, Anna put together a list of the pros and cons of living in Seattle, with invaluable input from Terence and Martine.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Real time plane location! I love it.

I have about a month left at Microsoft, after that a few weeks more in Seattle and then we drive back east. Demetrie and Rob have been hard at work using Google MyMaps (we say Microsoft Virtual Earth whenever anyone is in ear shot) to plan our drive back. Then it’s time to make some decisions about my post ITP life. It’s going to be cool, whatever it is. I’ve met so many great people along the way we’re bound to do something incredible. Just as long as we don’t settle.

My two main projects at Microsoft are a persuasive game for ad-hoc networks and interfacing with Boku, an xbox game that teaches kids programming. The persuasive game project is at the analysis and data visualization stage while the technology we built for Boku will be put to use in the next few weeks as testers start creating content for the game. Along the way and in spite of myself, I have to say i’ve gotten pretty deep into .net, web standards/services and now have a cursory understanding of XNA. The community components Demetrie and I have built are now so ingrained in the xbox application that it will not build if our services don’t respond. How’s that for impact? Oftentimes interns are off on their own but even as I write this, at MSR there are full time Microsoft employees who can’t do a build unless my stuff is up. Feels like i’m making a real contribution.

I’ll put up screen shots of these projects later. I’m way behind on photos.

Seattle has been a good time. Anna has been sewing up a storm and we’re planning on camping in a rain forest in a few weeks. We have also been doing our best to make the weekly screenings from the Jacques Tate festival. Miss everyone and can’t wait to get back!

Also I have to say — what is up with Facebook? My old coworkers are on facebook, my present boss, my friends in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s my friend’s 18 year old son, my colleagues, the ITP alums, everyone is on Facebook. I don’t think i’ve seen a social network have such a strong attraction to everyone I know or have ever known. Something is going on.

Today Microsoft gave me a Zune! Now I know i’m going to get flack for having ‘the social‘ (sounds like some unfortunate disease) but it was still really nice of Microsoft to give me one. Even if I don’t use it for its intended purposes (I don’t even think I can use it with a mac) I now have a handheld device with a 3″ screen, a 30 gig hard drive and wi-fi! I am woefully uninformed when it comes to the Zune but i’m sure something interesting will come of this acquisition.

I’ve also had the opportunity to assist on some user experience testing in an actual lab like the kind Yelena showed me at her office. One way mirror, screen video recording, ominous voice coming over the loud speaker, the works. I’ve been making things with computers for years but this was my first experience actually seeing someone external to the company use something I have built. Very surreal and a humbling experience everyone should go through.

Finally, today was the Design Expo, a design presentation showcasing the winning projects from 7 major design schools (including ITP). I’ve always consider ITP to be off to the side with respect to conventional design schools and systems of critique so it was interesting to see the ITP group present alongside groups from Carnegie Mellon, Hong Kong and Brazil among others. The ITP group came up with a Tamagotchi like device where your virtual character gains strength and skills as you physically exercise. The device is (of course) networkable but what’s more interesting is your character also gains strength if your parent matches your exercise regiment. 80% of overweight kids have at least one overweight parent.

The group from India devised a game which discouraged smoking during break time for call center employees. The game’s villains were the ’smokidemon’ which reminded me of QuitNet’s Nicodemon.

The image above is of a napkin we passed back and forth cataloguing the amazing quotes from the expo.