Dr Laura James's writings

After working on research, product design, and finally development, AlertMe is now taking pre-orders from friends and family for a limited edition release before we launch nationally. This is an incredibly exciting moment for all of us, as the system we've been working on is finally becoming a real product. If you'd like to be one of the first 100 customers of a new kind of home awareness system, email me asap! We won't be billing anyone until we ship kits out, and we'll reconfirm your order before shipping. After all this time in development, and with so many great features, it's sometimes hard to step back and see the real user value in the system rather than just the overwhelming coolness and flexibility we have to offer. There will be more content on the website soon, but I can do no better today than to quote my colleague Nik in Marketing: What: AlertMe revolutionary home security & more! You’ll have the ability to check on your home and receive alerts

Since signing up for twitter , along with the rest of the world, to see what it was like, I haven't thought of many genuinely useful things to do with it. It could, of course, be a way to alert people to things happening at home for AlertMe . But there are many other ways to do that, too. We used to use a whiteboard in the office as an IN/OUT board, and this worked well when there were three of us there on most days. Now there are 18! In addition, we now have phones, which ring when people aren't at their desks, leaving one wondering where they've got to. The solution is clearly that we all use twitter for our current status/location, and that we have a CamVine screen showing the latest tweet for each of us on the office wall. This means at-a-glance where people are information, and it can even be updated remotely using SMS. It's a great idea, only partially marred by the unreliability of twitter. As I thought of it earlier, and explained to my Instant Messaging but u

Both Michael and I have won places on this year's NESTA Crucible scheme. This is good - three weekends to visit new places and to meet people and work on our interdisciplinary creative thinking - and bad, as Michael being there too makes one fewer new person to meet!

It seems like an age ago now that I ordered a Wattson from DIY Kyoto . It arrived on Friday. This is a very highly priced "limited edition" product (mine is the 89th of 250), made from translucent white acrylic and wood, and £350. This seems a huge amount, and probably is, but is slightly less painful when compared to the Electrisave , at £60-£80. The Wattson is a much more attractive unit, and also comes with a USB link so you can log and process your data yourself (although this requires the use of one of those high-power-consumption computer doodads) - a major selling point for me. Also, as well as a numeric display, there is an ambient colour indicator of how much power you are using. The box is fairly simply made, but looks good. The manual is large and friendly. My first hand-stitched manual. This is the first page of the manual - great text there. Over the years I have bought many products which came with cloths - usually screen cleaners. This is the first to come wit

Last week Michael and I went to Paris, and filled my camera (!) with photos ( one , two , three , four ). This week, I am in London for Usability in Practice training camp. The basic camp is probably not as intensive as you might expect, but it gets more so if you use the filler time to write out a detailed plan for your own company! We are all dedicated enough to attend on a Sunday and a Bank holiday, anyway. There's a lot of people here, from all around Europe and beyond, mostly web people, more non-profits than you'd expect. I'm envious of those who simply have an e-commerce site to test!