UMBRELLA.net: brella buddies
We were thinking about skipping on Spectropolis, the lower-Manhattan festival for art and mobile media running the first weekend of October. Afterall, we've covered quite a few of its headliners like Bikes Against Bush and the Hotspot Bloom. But when we saw that the festival debuted UMBRELLA.net—a project with 10 Bluetooth and PDA-equipped umbrellas which make up a mobile network—we had no choice but to stop by. When the umbrellas open the PDA software connects with a nearby umbrella buddy, and display three states: first pulsing red while looking for the connection, second pulsing blue if connected to the network, then thirdly flashing (guess this is different from pulsing) blue if tranmsitting data between umbrellas. The PDAs also enable a chat room so that the players can discuss their reactions during the project. Well hot damn, if only real life were so interesting.
[Via Popgadget]
