This will be the last post concerning work and research at ITP, particularily from their recently closed winter show, as you can have too much of a good thing.

Anne Hongs work concerning networked objects, Smart Shelf (image above and below left) and Storyteller (image below right) are a series of works which caught my interest because they show simply how new technogies can be highly intuitive for their users and build on existing systems of interaction outside of the computing paradigm.

The Smart Shelf is a system for tagging books with RFID tags to keep track of who uses them and for how long to identify readers with shared interests and create reading circles based on this. The page documenting the project illustrates three scenarios that this could happen in to show its flexible uses:

I. Personal Use - Smart Shelf on a personal level will allow the user to create several reading circles, and these connections will be denser.
II. Public Use (such as at a Barnes & Noble store)
III. Public Use - In a Community Setting, Library in Japanese Room.

The tagging system can be taught of as something similar to an amazon.com wishlist except there is none of the conscious adding and organising that you get with lists. Instead here lists of your interests are being created by the books you pick up, how long you view them and then comparing your list with other readers lists based on this.

Storyteller builds on the technology or system proposed in the Smart Shelf to provide another specific use, you know for kids:

I plan on hooking an Xport and Arduino to connect the shelf to the reader. This tag will be on the book. I will have pre-recorded readings stored in our dial plan. When the child takes the book off the shelf, he/she will receive a call from the Storybook Reader, who will tell the reader what page he will be reading from. When the child is ready to hang up, Asterisk will store the caller ID and information of the chapter the child left off for the next time he/she takes the book off the shelf again.