Context Frames: Creating an Inexpensive Social Network
I want to create a platform (hardware,
network, software) which is so easy and useful that my grandma and most
tenured faculty can use it. It needs to be inexpensive and easy
to build using off-the-shelf and surplus parts. It needs to be
simple to use: just glance at it like a clock. For
the developer, it needs to be easy to program and
extensible.
Once we have some basic hardware, a network and some software in place,
we can start customizing, extending and generally building out the
particulars. The end result will be a socially-centered network
for sharing media and information with friends and family.
Hardware and Software Basis
We'll start with digital picture frames. Commercial Digital picture frames
hint at social connectivity, but are expensive, require subscriptions,
are closed platforms and are often limited in capability and display power.
We'll build digital picture frames using old laptops and real picture
frames. Then we'll create some software that uses RSS (blog format) to
beam stuff through the internet. We'll need to modify and extend RSS
since it is a bit limited in its pure form, maybe kick in some AJAX.
figure 1: an old laptop becomes a picture frame
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figure 1: an old laptop becomes a picture frame
