no, i like the icon idea. he could have made their meanings more obvious tho.

Posted at 5:05 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by andrew

I use this VBS script to change my screen saver text.

http://lifehacker.com/374795/instantly-set-a-screensaver-away-message

Posted at 5:05 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by Boter2099

Capacitive sensing on the door knob to administer a mild electric shock.

Posted at 5:18 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by tony

i think they’re icons from pm software. whatever, it’s just a proof of concept and not a finished project

Posted at 5:53 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by jim

It appears they’re the icons from…either the official MSN client or AMSN. Something like that. I’ve seen them before. He probably just pulled them off his IM client because he didn’t wanna make his own :)

Posted at 6:34 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by Urza

Regurgitated Windows icons.

Posted at 7:16 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by BigD145

I’d use one of those LCD picture frames that’ll take [sprite_tm]’s hacked firmware. Those 4D Systems jobs are about as expensive as a refurb 19″ LCD.

Posted at 7:56 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by pokey

The icons are from MSN.

Posted at 8:52 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by epicelite

Well. Which icons i would use, depends on the Size of the Screen. For a little screen, and a high viewing range i just would use colors. Red, if im not there, yellow, when im taking a break, green, if im there.

Posted at 11:36 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by FreXxX

Hmm. I did this nearly 20 years ago. I used a red and green LED wired in reverse parallel attached to a line on a serial port. I took advantage of the fact that the serial port line would swing from a positive voltage to a negative voltage, thus would light only one of the LEDs. The LEDs were outside my door. The serial port was on my PC. A small program on my PC changed the state of the serial line and had an on-screen mimic display.

Kids today with their fancy-shmancy OLEDs. Pah!

Posted at 11:54 pm on Mar 19th, 2009 by Andrew

meh… but those 4d oleds are pretty cool. expensive, but nobody else supplies these to the hobby scene. the visual on these things can be really great. it changes a lot of things from the lcd paradigm. when these take over in consumer devices, you will see an obvious change in interface design. it will come. you will see.

Posted at 12:07 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by charlie

andrew, the staff offices at my secondary school which was built in the 60s had red or green lights to indicate whether anyone was in. it’s not a new idea :)

but this implementation is great; the OLED looks really smart. if I were doing it, though, I’d think about using some text – maybe alternate between the ‘away’ logo and some text saying ‘back in x minutes’, or even a snapshot of my teaching timetable (i work at a uni). and you should be able to send a text message to the system containing updated information, so if you get stuck in a traffic jam/meeting/long conversation you can give a new arrival time.

actually, i want one of these…

Posted at 2:21 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by dan

No build information? what a farse. I’d rather not know about something that gives me no information on what they did, hoping to learn from it and recreate part of it to learn things for myself. Bleh.

Posted at 6:59 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by Life2Death

rather than an OLED, a moat and drawbridge. that should make my status pretty clear.

Posted at 7:10 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by Etan

PSP would work… with the windows screen extender.. then you could write a program to display what ever, and as long as your computer was running you could text through the web to your prog..

Posted at 8:23 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by neil

Why not go with something simple light red, amber and green? Red when he is out of the office, amber whne he is present but busy and green when he is free?

Could also implement some custom images for the project with maybe animated varients? A red animated varient depicting he is at lunch, with what else, a cartoon type guy eating something lol, a red dude driveing a car towards a driveway to indicate he has gone home etc.

Pretty fun idea, one I would look into if I gave a damn about people bothering me all the time hehe.

Posted at 8:57 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by Saf

A wifi photo frame can do the same for far less money and far far easier.

Old hat. been there done that 2 years ago.

Posted at 11:33 am on Mar 20th, 2009 by fartface

@Boter2099
It’s all cute and well to set screensaver text but this is the 2000’s and we by now all know enough to not use screensavers but have the monitor go on standby instead and so use upto hundreds of Watt less.
Screensavers are so 80’s.

Posted at 12:47 pm on Mar 20th, 2009 by Wwhat

@fartface
You make it sound like wifi photoframes are dirtcheap, that’s not how I experience them to be.

Posted at 12:50 pm on Mar 20th, 2009 by Wwhat

He says on the flickr page about the icons:
“Thanks for the comments. It’s a proof of concept; Rev 2 will be better. I used OLED because I think OLED is beautiful. The icons were quick ones that looked good on the display and matched the corporate IM software where I work. “

Posted at 12:52 pm on Mar 20th, 2009 by Wwhat

The whole idea is to use MSN IM icons…. cute and clever. If someone at MS doesn’t get it, they prolly should find another job. HAhahaha!

Posted at 12:54 am on Mar 21st, 2009 by Angie