Hey Mac OS X geeks ;) I just installed this launcher for the location-based service Plazes. I like Plazes since it's a very simple LBS in which you define where you are and it tells you what people are in the vicinity (and whether or not they are part of your social network).
This mac os x launcher makes the process event simpler, you just have to login in the status bar of your operation system and then you have your Plazes Buddies around. The cool point is that you can directly set your iChat status with your location, it goes like this:
Why do I blog this? As a researcher focused on location-based technologies I try to test various applications. This one is relevant and interesting, the cost of using it low and it works pretty well. I like this iterative construction of the location database (plazes I mean, not the launcher).
Locative Media
Workshop about Location Awareness at ECSCW
Might be good to submit something here: ECSW Workshop 5 - Location-Awareness and Community:
Tracking and positioning technologies, such as GPS, 802.11, Bluetooth and RFID tags, have become mature enough to be widely adopted and employed in systems linking information and communication to geographic places and people. While technical challenges remain, social and usability challenges are proliferating.We are particularly interested in how presence information from multiple sources can be collected, processed and then presented to users in a useful, usable, and unobtrusive way. There are technical challenges such as how to transform raw data into user meaningful representations. And there are associated social challenges ranging from negotiation of what is public and what is private to what kinds of inferences are actually useful (“This seems like your usual route home” is very different from “are you going to the bathroom again?”). Finally, this raises the issues about what are useful applications for these kinds of data and interfaces.
This workshop is designed to bring together practitioners and academics from a range of disciplines and approaches to address these issues within several thematic areas: Algorithmic solutions, Conceptual Design, Interaction and User Interface Design. The workshop will predominantly focus on interactive work around a common scenario where the participants' differing viewpoints can help shape potential solutions to a common scenario.
Pervasive gaming design and evaluation: a literature review
A very nifty document on the iperg website (do not pay attention to the crappy flash interface): "Literature Review, Design and Evaluation Methods for Pervasive Games", February 2005. Edited by Steve Benford and Mauricio Capra, The University of Nottingham Contributors:University of Nottingham: Steve Benford, Mauricio Capra, Martin Flintham, Andy Crabtree, Adam Drozd, Leif Oppermann Fraunhofer Institute: Uta Pankoke-Babatz Interactive Institute: Staffan BjörkSwedish Institute of Computer Science: Annika Waern University of Tampere: Laura Ermi, Anu Jäppinen, Markus Montola.
This review identifies and describes the key design and evaluation techniques to be used in IPerG. It summarises key previous work from the field; clarifies the challenges involved in using these techniques for pervasive games and in IPerG in general and also clarifies the mapping of techniques to showcases. The review is intended to act as a resource to be used across IPerG, especially within the different showcases, and then eventually outside of IPerG, providing a resource for the pervasive game development community at large. The following design methods are reviewed: participatory design, scenario based design, ethnographic field studies of current games, cultural probes, game design patterns, game space and artefacts, player game presence, public performance as a research method, and ethical aspects. The following evaluation methods are reviewed: cognitive walkthrough, questionnaires, ethnography of trials with prototypes laboratory experiments and critical review. These methods will be used in different IPerG showcases, providing a broad experience of design and evaluation methods across the project.
Of course this document came out one year after I was struggling finding such kind information ;) But here it is, this EU project deliverable is a nice account of pervasive gaming evaluation methodologies.
Among all those methods, I would just point that there is a lack concerning interaction analysis, since collaboration is an important issue in pervasive computing. I would also add sequantial analysis and some concrete datamining like the ones I described previously today.
Rendezvousing and mobile technology
Another paper about mobile technology and rendezvousing by Jeff Axup: Usability of a Mobile, Group Communication Prototype While Rendezvousing
Mobile phones are increasingly being used collaboratively by social networks of users in spite of the fact that they are primarily designed to support single users and one-to-one communication. It is not well understood how services such as group SMS, SMS-based discussion lists and mobile Instant Messaging (IM) will be used by mobile groups in natural settings. Studying specific instances of common styles of in situ, group interaction may provide a way to see behavior patterns and typical interaction problems. We conducted a study of a mobile, group communication probe used during a rendezvousing activity in an urban environment. Usability problems relating to group usage, phone interface design and context were identified. Several major issues included: multitasking during message composition and reading; speed of text entry; excessive demand on visual attention; and ambiguity of intended recipients. We suggest that existing mobile device designs are overly-focused on individual users to the detriment of usability for mobile groups of users. We provide recommendations for the design of future mobile, group interfaces, used in similar situations to those explored here.
Discovering Personally Meaningful Places from Location Data
An Experiment in Discovering Personally Meaningful Places from Location Data by Changqing Zhou, Pamela Ludford, Dan Frankowski, Loren Terveen at CHI 2005 . My notes in this abstract:
Abstract: As mobile devices become location-aware, they offer the promise of powerful new applications. While computers work with physical locations like latitude and longitude, people think and speak in terms of places, like "my office" or ``Sue's house''. [That's for sure, read Harrison and Dourish, 1996 to get more insights about this topic -nicolas] Therefore, location-aware applications must incorporate the notion of places to achieve their full potential [Of course! places are meaningful for end-users whereas GPS coordinates does not make sense to anybody - nicolas]. This requires systems to acquire the places that are meaningful for each user. Previous work has explored algorithms to discover personal places from location data. However, we know of no empirical, quantitative evaluations of these algorithms, so the question of how well they work currently is unanswered. We report here on an experiment that begins to provide an answer; we show that a place discovery algorithm can do a good job of discovering places that are meaningful to users. The results have important implications for system design and open up interesting avenues for future research.
Interesting quantitative evaluations of the algorithms that turn location data into places.
Collaboration and interaction with very large computer graphics images
Ubiquutous Graphics is a project carried out by Johan Sanneblad at the Future Application Lab in Goteborg.
The project shows how position-aware handheld displays can function as "magic lenses" that allow seamless access to both overview and detail on a large display. The system also allows several users to collaborate and add free-form annotations and graphics to a shared workspace.
Mobile and handheld devices have become ubiquitous and are now a natural part of daily life. The same can be said for large information displays, which are now seen in most public places. Large plasma displays and projectors are used for a wide variety of purposes, from showing today's menu at a restaurant to presenting an overview of the subway network. This project integrates these two common technologies to create a system that can be used on any networked mobile device together with any large display, in any environment.
New mobile devices are constantly gaining more features; the latest mobile phones even have built-in GPS navigation and wireless LAN for short-range communication. Hardware for ultrasonic positioning might be one possible feature for mobile phones, if sufficiently interesting applications exist. Ubiquitous Graphics might be one such application, and could encourage hardware manufacturers to add positioning hardware to future mobile devices. (...) The system allows multiple users to add annotations and other graphics to the workspace that are propagated across all displays. Users interacting with a handheld display can do that either by using a two-handed navigation technique, or they can work away from the projection and use the GUI of the handheld display to change the display offset on the large workspace. The position of each user's display and the annotations are always shown on the projected background picture and on the other displays.
That's a very compelling project; The idea of connecting both mobile tech and large display seems very relevant to supprot collaboration.
Nearest toilet locator: Dial-a-toilet
(via):
Dial-a-toilet launched in China The world's first telephone toilet location system is to be launched in Shanghai next month. The move was announced at the First World Toilet Forum held in the Chinese city, reports City Express. Users dial a special number and the system tells them the location of the nearest public toilet. In the future, it will also give them information such as whether or not the conveniences are free of charge. Sun Guizhi, director of the Shanghai city cleaning office, said: "The system is mainly for tourists who come to the city for the first time."
Obviously, Location-based services at its best!
Gridlockd
(via mauro), Gridlockd by Mohit SantRam at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University:
GridLockd! is a large urban game where four teams compete to capture as many grid positions within a half hour on a city-based game board. Loosely based on Othello, which is a two player game of tiles, these four teams must be the first to photograph as many unique semacodes placed in 36 city intersections.This project is meant to display how semacodes, camera phones, ad-hoc groups, and social dynamics are effected under time pressure.
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The game scenarios are smart: 12 people compete in 4 groups of 3 people. The game board is made up of 36 unique semacodes placed within intersection points on a 5 block by 5 block city grid. Using their camera phone to photograph a semacode, the first team to send it to semacode@gridlockd.net will win possession of the intersection. Whichever team captures a point first claims the intersection. Another team can claim that intersection by capturing two surrounding intersections. The winner is determined by the team who captures the most points within 30 minutes. In Assassin mode, opposing team members may eliminate their counterparts from the game. Elimination occurs by successfully photographing a unique semacode on the back of an enemy's t-shirt. These photographs are sent to a live GridLockd! moderator who will verify the photograph and determine if a participant has been eliminated. |
Remapping High Wycombe
(via the PLAN mailing list)The blog Remapping High Wycombe describes the development of a project by Cathy & John Rogers. The point is to
remap the area of High Wycombe earmarked for town centre re-development (formerly Project Phoenix). The remapping is to be undertaken in collaboration with community groups in High Wycombe by staging a psychogeograpical event, a walk, a ‘derive‘ within the boundary of the re-development area, the results of which will be used to animate the town centre with a temporary art installation.
There are going to release an interesting event:
a live performance around the hills of the town. This performance which is actually a walk to link up significant sites, will be broadcast via a mobile phone video camera to a base station in the town centre.
As explained on the flickr page:
A Walker will embark on a ritualistic perambulation around the town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire on June 18th 2005, to link up the Significant Sites, that surround it. He will use the town's matrix of ancient footpaths to achieve a circuit.
Using a video phone he will document his journey and send moving images to a base station in a prominent position in the town centre. YOU will be able to interact with him feed him with information about the sites, your own thoughts and stories about the places he passes through and suggest alternative routes.
To participate, wherever you are, txt: 07986 357156 or email wycombederive@yahoo.co.uk or check out his progress on remappinghighwycombe.blogspot.com.
Bluetooth and proximity interactions
n application that use Bluetooth to indicate and start proximity interactions - i.e. people within 10-30m of you. You create a folio - like a little web page - that others in your physical location can see.
The website gives more detail:
Nokia Sensor is a spontaneous, sociable application for spontaneous, sociable people. With Nokia Sensor you can create your own personal pages - called a folio - on your phone. Then you can check out the folios of other Sensor users nearby, exchange messages, and share files. (...) Nokia Sensor uses Bluetooth wireless technology, which means that it works within a 'circle' of up to 10 meters around your phone.
When other Sensor phones come within this circle, your phone can 'sense' them and you can see their folios and send them messages. As soon as you step out of each other's circles, you are no longer able to communicate via Sensor.
I like the 'buddy alert' (first picture: "When you buddy with another Nokia Sensor user, you can use Buddy alert which regularly checks if your buddy is nearby, and if so, notifies you about it.") and this scanning thing (second picture: "If another Sensor user is found, his or her folio will be downloaded to your phone and listed in your scan results."):
Mobile phone as cultural experience
I recently came across this project: A Mutual Friend:
A Mutual Friend attempts to explore how your mobile phone can act as a platform for cultural experiences; as a medium for reflecting on the human condition and as a means for making creative interventions in daily life.The project sets out to propose and develop a mobile phone application which engages with the developing patterns of social behaviour in relation to mobile phones.
The project included the development of an interesting application:
prototype mobile phone application called ‘Hitchers’ that might form the basis of a range of future experiences. A hitcher is a small program that can be created by a user on their phone and released in a given cell in the network. Hitchers pass from phone to phone and cell to cell, moving across the country, interacting with people and collecting information as they go. The creator of a hitcher can view its progress using an online interface, seeing where it has been, who it encountered and what it found out, as might people who have given it a ride.
Here is the interface:
In Hitchers, the streets are full of people who are trying to hitchhike their way across the city or up and down the country. Hitchers are trying to find their way home, reach a specific destination, carry out a mission, or just share a journey with a stranger.
Ubiquitous Computing, Entertainment and Games
Interesting workshop at Ubicomp 2005: Ubiquitous Computing, Entertainment and Games:
The workshop’s topics of interest include • New ubiquitous game designs • Mixed traditional and ubiquitous game design • Studies or reports on the compelling aspects of existing ubiquitous games • “Post-mortems” on past ubiquitous game experiences • Taxonomies of ubiquitous games • New, existing and emerging technologies supporting ubiquitous gaming platforms • Mechanisms to evaluate or test ubiquitous games • Design elements that can be learned or adapted from popular console/PC games for creating compelling ubiquitous games • Business models that will enable ubiquitous gaming to be successful in the marketplace
Great people on board! (hi Timo!) Maybe it would be nice to submit something about CatchBob ;)
Stories and GPS tracklogs
(via the locative media list) On narrative, abstract and location: a few words on location based data in art (pdf) by Paul Thayer. Some exceprts I quote here:
If we produce a work of art that is based on data aqcuired from a locative device such as GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi the fact that it tells a story of some sort, is a given. It's inherent. To produce the data, the device would have to physically move from point A to B to C etc.. So if I show someone the following and explain that it's a tracklog, downloaded from a GPS device, the fact that it describes a story is unavoidable: Trackpoint N67 53.037 E12 59.075 6/21/2004 1:42:58 PM 76 ft 94 ft 00:00:03 Trackpoint N67 53.047 E12 59.102 6/21/2004 1:43:01 PM 75 ft 84 ft 00:00:03 Trackpoint N67 53.055 E12 59.324 6/21/2004 1:43:18 PM 76 ft 510 ft 00:00:17 (...) If I'm made aware of the fact that this is a GPS tracklog, I know that there must be some form of narrative regardless of whether or not I'm actually able to read any of it. This is one of the most important aspects of locative media as an art medium. Regardless of how we choose to present it, it's always a record of a sequence of events. A story. (...) And the reason that this is important is that we can choose to present the data in a variety of different ways.
Also check his alst project: Autodrawn: Sketching landscapes seen through my windows.
2 cool mobile applications
Read in Information Week (in a paper about how AI is coming back in the technosphere):
SmartPhlow that turns a smart phone's small screen and telephone keypad into a way to interpret traffic data. The software turns a large visual space--in this case, a map of the Seattle area's roadways--into more manageable chunks of information. SmartPhlow pulls data from a Web service that delivers information about traffic jams that are likely to form and clogs that are starting to melt, then dices the large Seattle map into a 3-by-3 grid corresponding to the numbers 1 through 9 on the keypad. Hitting a key lets a user zoom in on an area. Hitting 0 triggers a "flyover"; the more complex or surprising a traffic pattern, the longer the user interface lingers over the area.
The second one is also of interest:
A second mobile application, called BayesPhone, to be described in a paper to be released at the User Modeling conference in July in Edinburgh, Scotland, pre-computes rules on a Windows computer about whether to put a cellular call through or route it to voice mail based on background analysis of a user's calendar and the cost of interruption.
Information Week conclude that:
Both illustrate what Horvitz [researcher at Microsoft] calls "streaming intelligence" to small devices. "These devices human beings carry in their pockets can provide ongoing support. It's not a wooden expert system you ask questions of or a search engine. It's a live, dynamic thing you carry with you through life."
Location awareness and its social implications in 3rd places
Jyri Engeström from Aula is going to present relevant stuff at Microsoft Social Computing Symposium:
The Social Implications of Location Awareness in 'Third Places': Learnings from Aula HelsinkiA large part of mobile messaging traffic is about coordinating face-to-face meetings, many of which take place in so-called third places between home and work. A growing number of mobile social softwares (e.g. Imahima, Dodgeball, Plazes, GeoNotes) allow people to define a physical location, announce their presence in that location, and see who else is now checked in, was there earlier, or plans to head there in the future. However, we know relatively little about how these services actually affect the usage patterns of cafés, bars, and other third places. In our research on the use of the Hunaja (Finnish for ‘honey’) system at Aula's social club in Helsinki, we found that new forms of serendipity, self-promotion, stalking and avoidance emerged when club members used their mobile phones to check who was in the Aula space. The focus of the talk will be on an ethnographic case study of these emerging social uses of the Hunaja system. The case will be related to the broader social implications of proximity and location sensors in mobile devices. The central argument is that location-awareness services can turn third places into physical buddy lists where comings and goings become ways to change one's status from 'online' to 'offline.' To the users, such services can function as symbolic instruments for acquiring and maintaining membership in a community and marking territory; practical tools for optimizing paths in the city to initiate and avoid encounters with specific others; and playful objects for expressing humour and triggering creative social mischief. However, they are also a rich source of misunderstandings and afford ways to purposefully stalk and deceive other users.
I would be delighted to read more about it. It's been 2 years I am looking forward to get more information about Hunaja's use!
Location-based annotations in Geneva
Shoutspace (one of the research project at our lab) now allows user to put location-based annotations in Geneva with mobile phones! Thanks to fab's hack!Basically, this program enables users to leave messages to other users on the map (our campus in Lausanne + Geneva). The message is then dispayed on the map at a desired location. Multiple threads are displayed graphically with connections among the messages:
Now let's spread it and study how people use this application?
LaCoMoCo: Laboratory for Context-dependent Mobile Communication
Laboratory for Context-dependent Mobile Communication:
Context-dependent Mobile Communication is a strategic research theme at the IT University of Copenhagen. It consists of research activities within a value chain ranging from social and cultural implications of mobile communication to the technological infrastructure needed to make context-dependent mobile communication a reality. A key difference to other research on mobile computing is the incorporation of "context," that is, information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between users, applications, and the surrounding environment.
They also work on gaming:
This project will do applied research on the area of location-based gaming. Starting from a survey of the current status of the area, we will identify the key theoretical concepts to be explored, as well as get involved in the development of a location-based gaming platform, where we will be able to carry out game concepts from the idea phase to gameplay implementation and testing. Our research will focus on exploring new directions in game design and game development, testing design methodology questions, investigating the special features of space as a layer upon reality (superposition of virtual space on real space), and studying how the threshold between real space and game space can be shaken and problematized. The location-based gaming platform to be developed will provide a number of services to game developers, and we will use it to implement several location-based games
PELOTE: Helping human and robot firefighters work as a team
PELOTE is an interesting EU research project "focused on how human firefighters and their robot counterparts would make use of a personal navigation and localisation system which could guide their movements, at the same time informing the external command centre of the exact location of each team member.(...) Researchers developed a backpack for the firefighter which uses inertial guidance systems, rather than GPS, to provide the location as shown on a personal display screen, as well as that of the command centre. “The idea is that team members would download a map of the interior before entering the building, and with the start point being calibrated at, say, the entrance, this personal map would enable them to know where they are – no matter how bad the visibility.”" The project website is here.
Songs of North: a mobile, location-aware multiplayer game
Songs of North (link might be broken) is a location based game described by Franz Mayra (int the Receiver) as:
a mobile, location-aware multiplayer game with a theme and game world resonating with elements of Nordic myths and shamanism. The restrictions of the mobile device as a gaming interface are here translated into design solutions that actually turn such shortcomings to advantage. For example, the mobile game deck is conceptualised as a shamanic drum that operates as a window into the 'other reality' – that of the spirit realm where normally invisible friends or foes can be perceived and communicated with. Rather than focusing the player on the small screen, which really cannot compete with the experience that contemporary PCs and big-screen televisions are offering, the game immerses players into a rich audio world where wolves howl and eagles screech. The mobile device can even stay in the pocket of a player who journeys through the streets as an urban shaman, simultaneously inhabiting not only the city of brick and stone but also a fictional overlay of a Nordic spiritual realm via the cues of a hands-free headset, which continuously whispers sound information into her ear.
This idea seems nice! It's developed by Tampere's University Game Research Lab.
Blisterent: an LBS company
Blisterent "is developing and publishing mobile location–based games and entertainment products to wireless carriers around the world." They have their own location application platform called LAP:
The LAP provides mobile content developers with an efficient and simple way to deliver their products to mobile operators. In turn, the mobile operators now have access to a location platform that can help expand their product offering to customers by increasing data traffic on their networks. The LAP provides these companies with new technology and more product distribution channels.
In terms of games, they developed the game Swordfish I already mentioned here.