Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

works in progress.

The blog has left the building

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My time at Parsons and thesis are finished, so this blog will now exist purely as an archive.

Pigeon and my work in mobile phone applications continues to live on, and I plan on launching a new blog soon.  In the meanwhile, I’m posting to twitter.

Written by drewcogbill

September 12th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

Posted in The life beyond

Pigeon Thesis Bibliography

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Articles

Books

  • Katz, James, ed. Handbook of Mobile Communication. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.
  • Manuel Castells. Mobile Communication and Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.
  • Unwin, Tim, ed. ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

PhD Dissertation

  • Burd, Leo. “Technological Initiatives for Social Empowerment: Design Experiments in Technology-Supported Youth Participation and Local Civic Engagement.” PhD. diss., MIT, 2007.

Videos and Presentations

Websites

Written by drewcogbill

May 15th, 2009 at 11:06 am

Posted in Papers

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Post-grad Pigeon

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I complete my MFA in Design and Technolgoy studies a week from tomorrow, and will be graduating a few days after that.  It has been wonderful to work on Pigeon at Parsons.  I’m hoping to launch Pigeon as a full time venture moving forward.  Pigeon will start by focusing on US immigrants and the people that matter to them back in their home countries.  I’m currently exploring running Pigeon as a for-profit that has an eye on social investment (perhaps as a registered B Corp).  We’ll see what happens, but I’m excited for the next step.

Written by drewcogbill

May 11th, 2009 at 12:05 am

Posted in The life beyond

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NYTimes: One Internet Village, Divided

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The “One Internet Village, Divided” article in today’s NYTimes is about the problems that poplular internet sites (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace) are facing with creating revenue from traffic in emerging markets.

The video site Veho has gone so far as to block users from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.  MySpace is creating a default low bandwidth profile for users in India, and Facebook is focusing on member acquisition before worrying about monetizing.  YouTube had been developing localized versions of its service in Brazil, India, and Poland but has now switched to trying to make money with reports that it may lose around $470 million this year.

This news confirms my instinct that I should be exploring a business model for Pigeon that is not ad supported.  How can Internet companies balance the obviously huge demand for content and a need to monetize?  How can web-like services tap into the demand for content and be sustainable?

Written by drewcogbill

April 27th, 2009 at 11:40 am

Parsons MFA Design and Technology 2009 Symposium, May 2-3, MFADT09

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dtsplash

Next weekend, I’ll be presenting Pigeon at the Parsons MFA Design and Technology 2009 Symposium being held in New York City.  The event will have I’m on a panel with the theme of “Take It With You: The Mobile Movement” on May 2 from 5-6:30pm.

All of my friends and classmates will also be screening their short films, exhibiting their installations, and playing on their instruments.

Complete weekend schedule (pdf).

Written by drewcogbill

April 25th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Pigeon now available Spanish!

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Pigeon is now available in Spanish.  I’m not exactly a Spanish expert, so if you hear any problems let me know.

The translation and recording wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Kevin and Venessa!

Written by drewcogbill

April 14th, 2009 at 2:13 am

Posted in Prototypes

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callpigeon.com

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Pigeon now has an official online home: callpigeon.com.  There’s general information about the system, and you can also sign up for an account.

Check it out and let me know if you have any thoughts.

Written by drewcogbill

April 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm

Resume

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I’ve been working on my resume.

Written by drewcogbill

March 25th, 2009 at 9:49 pm

Posted in The life beyond

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Weekness at GDC

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weekness

My team and I are at the Game Developers Conference this week, thanks to Nokia.  We presented and demoed our game, Weekness, today.

Weekness turns your text messaging habits into a game.  In one player mode, users guess who text messages were sent to and received from, from weeks past.  In the two players mode, uers play in real time on one phone with another user to guess each other’s most often text messaged words.  In both modes, a new social interactions can be created, extending the pre-existing socail usages of the phone.

Rabia Malik , Yumi Endo and I were the Weekness development team.

Written by drewcogbill

March 25th, 2009 at 7:18 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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Unheard messages

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Pigeon now cues up your unheard messages first and tells you which messages are unheard when listening to your contact’s Pigeon messages.  Let me know if you have any problems with this.

Very soon, Pigeon will tell you as soon as you log in if you have any unheard Pigeon messages from your contacts.

Written by drewcogbill

March 20th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

Posted in Prototypes

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