Developer Mike Bukhin talks about the thinking behind his work, which includes WayMarkr, CrowdScapes and his latest project, What’s Your 20.

Mike is a computer scientist exploring how new technological tools can facilitate personal narratives, connections and discoveries. In the last few years, he’s found himself drawn to mobile programming because it allows users to get away from the screen and bring technology out into the world.

Mike is the co-developer of WayMarkr, which you can read about in Jose’s “How to glog and more with Waymarkr” article. He also developed CrowdScapes, a wap application that shows localized photographs based on a participant’s most used tags. His latest project, What’s Your 20, leverages Fire Eagle, Twitter and your mobile device to help you keep track of your location.

Mike and I met up recently to discuss his work.

Your projects have a common theme in that they seem aimed at finding importance in ordinary moments. Why are you drawn to this type of work?

A number of my projects iterate on the same theme, finding beauty in the everyday and giving new perspectives to the ordinary. I want my participants to reevaluate the exceptional moments in their lives - I want them to feel that their everyday life is in fact exceptional. And if they don’t feel that their everyday is exceptional, I want to provide them with tools that will help them change. While we are caught up in the minutia of the everyday, we tend to lose perspective and close ourselves off to other possibilities. My work tries to remedy this condition.

I try to build tools and mobile experiences that are low overhead and low commitment. With the applications I build, you don’t have to step out of your life to get an alternative perspective on your everyday. It is either presented to you automatically or is alongside you, available whenever you are interested in something new.

What’s Your 20 gave me an excuse to experiment with Yahoo’s new Fire Eagle platform. It’s also given me a reason to reference one of my favorite shows, The Wire. (”What’s Your 20?” references the radio transmission code for “what’s your location?” often used by police officers.)

My frustration with applications that publish an individual’s location is that there is too much emphasis on out-of-the-ordinary trips such as vacations and business trips. They encourage a person to make note of, report on and publish their location when they think they are somewhere that deviates from their normal routine. WY20 points out that considered in a certain light, all of our travels, even the ones viewed as mundane, have some unusual aspect. WY20 is saying, “Hey, your current location is always important.”

WY20 is a natural progression from all my other projects and is inline with my thinking around how technology can augment by existing alongside a user’s experiences.

How does What’s Your 20 work?

WY20 occasionally nudges a user, asking them once in a while to report on their location. There are a number of custom solutions for automatically updating one’s location via a mobile device but WY20 uses self-reporting via text messaging so that everyone can participate. The location is sent in through a Twitter short code and then passed off to Fire Eagle. Fire Eagle can then disseminate the user’s location information to any other applications that have been authenticated against Fire Eagle, such as a Facebook widget or a Dodgeball-like application.

Where do you want to take What’s Your 20? What are you future plans for it?

As in most everything I do, I build first for myself and then see if anyone else is interested. Now that WY20 has users, I will most likely enhance it in line with user feedback. One of the enhancements I am most excited about is a gazetteer or geographical directory to the application. That way, instead of having to text your work address, you can just send the word “work” and WY20 will translate it for you. It’ll be much easier to use WY20 if the text strings you are sending are shorter.

Also, Fire Eagle does not keep historical location information. As soon as a new location is sent, the old one is wiped out. WY20 keeps track of your historical location information, which I plan to display on maps, time-based visualizations and syndicated feeds. These interfaces will allow a user to reflect on their trails as well as encourage them to use WY20.

What have been the most interesting and unexpected things that you’ve encountered with your projects?

I would say how much the idea that technology should be used as means versus an end resonates with other people. What I’m doing isn’t necessarily technologically innovative. Technology can be very intimidating when it is just for technology’s sake, but people are much more likely to relate to it when it is encompassed in a narrative.

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