Mike Oren.com

Over the past week, my group and I have been working on finalizing our proposal for our computational perception class. We will be connecting up to eight Wii remotes to a computer running GlovePie to handle the communication between the Wii remotes and the computer. The program will have a jam session component, where you can do a free for all session to create music--with different remote gestures creating different notes/sounds and standing in different locations will allow you to play different instruments. If you're feeling more competitive, then you and your friends can compete in a game of HORSE. One person starts out by creating a simple pattern of sounds and then the action continues as the other players try to repeat the pattern and add on to it until only one person is able to perform the pattern. If you're in the Ames, IA area and want to try it out, then just let me know. We're going to be doing trial runs with groups of potential users with each prototype as we create them, so there should be plenty of chances to try out one of the prototypes and give us your feedback. The finished game will be demoed at Iowa State's Emerging Technologies Conference on April 25th.

According to my Awstats report, I had over 500 unique visitors (about 150 over the previous record) to my web site last month, with an estimated 30-some percent of visitors bookmarking the page. With that said, the increased traffic/bookmarking is almost assuredly from my posts regarding geting a phone interview with Google. I think there are better entries about interviews (I don't really discuss the questions), but if people enjoy my posts, then that's always good.

Speaking of interviews, I think I might have another interview with IBM in the near future as well--I just found out on Thursday that the IBM representative I spoke to on campus found out the hiring manager for the IBM internship I'm interested in and contacted him regarding my application. I'm, of course, most interested in the Google internship, but I've never believed in putting all my eggs in one basket and if for whatever reason things don't work out with Google (my 2nd interview is March 14th), then I feel that the IBM internship would be a great experience as well. While IBM does not have quite the same focus on user experience research that Google has, they still have a decent focus on usability so I think it would be a great experience for me.

Hopefully over spring break I'll get a chance to work on the redesign of this site, and I also upgraded my hosting service so I can add some new features, new content areas, etc. If there's anything people want me to add to this site or to see more of then just post a comment and let me know. Thanks!

posted by Mike Oren  # 6:28 PM