Locative Media

Playware: playground for tangible interactions

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Playware is a cool project about tangible interactions for kids. It's carried out by Henrik Hautop Lund and Carsten Jessen (Maersk Institute, University of Southern Denmark and The Danish University of Education). The point of their project is to engage kids in physical activities instead of letting them in front of a (tv) screen through the embodiment of interaction in tangible material. Go check this technical report for more details. They designed an augmented play ground which rocks! the playground is actually meant to support various games:

We implemented different games on the tangible tiles and analysed children’s physical play on the tiles in continuous use for 2 months at a school in Denmark (Tingager Skolen, Denmark). In one of the games, colour race, children compete against each other (more children can play in groups) by first choosing a colour (either blue or red) and then in a hurry jump on the tiles so they turn into their colour. Another example is a tangible version of the computer game Pong where a red arrow moves around randomly and when it gets to one side of the tiles configuration, a child has to step on the tile quickly, to return the arrow to the opponent. The arrow can move to one of the connected neighbours. The wicked witch game is an extension, which uses PDAs and WiFi localization to provide story lines and guidance for the children’s play.

Our goal with the prototype was to investigate whether children would accept the tiles as play equipment and whether these very simple tangible games actually would initiate physical and social play. We observed children playing indoor and outdoor on the tangible tiles and on ordinary playgrounds to investigate play and games activities. Children’s interaction with the tangible tiles was continuously video recorded and analyzed over the 2 months period in the Danish school.

Why do I blog this? I am looking forward to know more about the results/description of what happened in terms of how children used this playground, accepted it and had fun.

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Crime mapping + place-based annotations?

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When police changes its way of using geographical data to do crime mapping: Effective crime mapping by Mark Patrick (ESRI, UK)

Intranet access to force-wide mapping and analysis is one way to provide information for the range of decision making processes that exist is modern policing.Providing mapping from scales covering the whole police force area right down to data at building footprint level using OS MasterMap allows analysts to publish both performance statistics for the management team and daily tactical analysis for neighbourhood policing teams.Linking this to a partnership approach where police share data with the local partners such as the local authority,probation office,and local education authority,provides an excellent framework for delivering key strategies such as neighbourhood policing.Such an approach can enable a situation where an officer logs in at the start of a shift and is able to review all the police recorded incidents in their neighbourhood since their last shift,they can then pull up the latest information from local partners such as mapping local school truancy reports. (...) The future of geographic information is likely to include more use of mobile technology.West Midlands police have worked with ESRI (UK) to deliver handheld mobile systems for more accurate crime reporting, particularly around so called "signal crimes "such as graffiti, fly-tipping, and abandoned vehicles. These are of particular interest due to their effect on the fear of crime in a neighbourhood. Mobile reporting allows these crimes to be dealt with more quickly reducing their impact as a factor in the perceived level of crime in an area. This project also delivers cost benefits,for example by reducing the need to clear burnt-out vehicles as abandoned vehicles are removed before they are vandalised.As well as reporting crime via mobile technology,the ability to access live information whilst in the field can deliver better decision making on the beat.

Hotspots of so-called 'anti-social behavior': Why do I blog this? I don't know whether it's a good news or a bad news. Tough, I'm a bit scared by concept like crime reporting: is it a new field for place-based annotation tools?

TV-GPS: Using television signals to plug holes in GPS

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(via telecom-cities), an interesting way to remove some of the drawbacks of GPS signals (or the lack of GPS signals): Television Signals Plug the Holes in GPS by Jason Daley

Today’s Global Positioning System is great for tracking tanks in the desert, but turn on your Garmin in New York City or inside virtually any building, and you’ll be staring at satellite static—GPS doesn’t perform well indoors or in urban canyons. Now a new technology is poised to pick up where GPS satellite signals cut out.

Developed by Rosum Corporation in Redwood City, California, TV-GPS, as the system is known, triangulates positions using television signals that are 2,000 times as strong as GPS satellite transmissions. With nearly 2,800 TV antennas concentrated mainly in U.S. metropolitan areas, where GPS coverage is weakest, TV-GPS has a ready-made infrastructure.

dencity: virtual networks of real places

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(Via infosthetics): dencity is very interesting:

denCity.net is an experiment concerning the territorialisation of the virtual and the deterritorialisation of the physical, en route to an augmented perception of urban reality and density. it's about "density", "city", about "den" (which in japanese means "electronic"), and about "nets"...

denCity.net creates virtual networks of real places. qr-codes (2d barcodes) are used to tag buildings and urban sites. your mobile camera phone can read these tags. simply shoot them and log in to denCity.net.

denCity.net provides information to the specific place. from there, you can browse through the web of tags. the tag is the key. once shot, you can always return to the places, virtually. it's the city in your pocket. anyone can tag places and thus create a new denCity-site. just log in to denCity.net - create a spot on the map and print the tag to attach it to the real-world location. [until now, the system only supports tag creation in the city of aachen, germany]

The goal of the project is compelling (especially for some folks here)

denCity.net examines the enrichment of real urban sites by a virtual dimension of information and networking, beeing accomplished by localisation of the virtual. it is about moderating between "virtual reality"-networks and the city as physical existence.

There are several ways to visualize the messages (bubbles): Why do i blog this? the project seems to be innovative in terms of the visualization, I'd be happy to see how it's employed by potential users, and whether they have formal/less-formal scenarios of use that are really deployed (I am always curious/dubious to know how this kind of system are used).

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History of technology-based navigation by Michelin

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A nice piece in the IHT about navigation systems made by Michelin. It offers an interesting historical perspective:

Although many of us have not kept up with this part of the digital age, one old-world company that has is Michelin, the French tire maker. Through a subsidiary called ViaMichelin, it has kept its ties to the motoring public with both Internet map services and computerized personal navigation systems. Â Oddly, it was an experience in the 1930s that laid the groundwork for its Internet offerings today, said Vincent Pilloy, vice president at ViaMichelin. "We had a service where people would write us a letter months ahead, and we would mail them a detailed route for their trip for free," Pilloy said. "It was a time when a 500-kilometer car trip was an adventure. It got to be so successful and so costly that the company had to stop it." Â When the Minitel, a commercial videotext network supported by the French government, came on the scene in the 1990s, Michelin gravitated its service to it. Even without graphical maps, people would pay for text descriptions of their routes, which they would then have to copy down by hand. The Minitel service still exists today. (...) ViaMichelin came into being in 2001 to amalgamate the various digital experiments and to take advantage of what the Web had to offer. Its Internet map service is free because it is supported by advertising. Â Michelin's European road maps can be found on the Internet at www.viamichelin.com. Unlike services from Internet start-ups like Mappy and Mapquest, which are great for pinpointing an address or a business, Michelin concentrates on car trips - how to get from here to there, and what services are along the way. Â In fact, by registering on the ViaMichelin site, you can tie maps to information from Michelin's Red Guide on hotels and restaurants, and Green Guides with tourist information.

Why do I blog this? I really like this service from 1930 (what I put in bold in the excerpts above).

LBS-MoSoSo

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A new interesting blog about mobile social software and location-based services is around: LBS-MoSoSo (I like the name ;) The author is Alex Kummerman.

In this Blog you will find important information and comments on the new comming wave of mobile social softwares. This blog focuses on Location based mobile software. Services that allow users to find and retrive information about their social network directly on their mobile phone.

Why do I blog this? a relevant player in the LBS/social software field is always a good news, I hope it's going to bring another perspective.

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Location-Based Mobile Media Course at USC

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A new course taught by Julian Bleecker about Location-Based Mobile Media: Maps, Games and Stories at the University of Southern California Interactive Media Division:

Through readings, discussion and presentations of prior art related to the topic, students will design and develop a project that addresses the opportunities presented by locative, mobile and pervasive media concepts.
This course has no set prerequisites, although experience doing concept prototyping for or development of technology applications sufficiently to demonstrate or realize a concept will be necessary to complete the required project.

The syllabus is here (.pdf) and its HIGHLY relevant for locative folks. A must-read in those course are those 2 articles: The Geospatial Web: A Call to Action
What We Still Need to Build for an Insanely Cool Open Geospatial Web by Mike Liebhold and A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web by Julian Bleecker.

Day of the figurine, pervasive game

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I just discovered this Day of the Figurine thing, which is a new pervasive game project carried out by lots of relevant actors (Blast Theory, Frauhnofer Institute, the Mixed Reality Lab, Sony Net Service). It seems to be a part of the european iPerg project. Here is how it's describe in the IPerG News Letter, August 2005

To participate in Day of the Figurines, the player must first visit a physical place. Here, they find a large scale model of an imaginary town at table height. The model is 1:100 and extends for several metres in all directions. The image is a mix of computer graphics and photographic collage.

The town has identifiable buildings such as the YMCA, the Big Chef, Video Zone, the XXX Cinema and the Battle of Trafalgar Square. There are other features such as a Cemetery, a Gasometer, a canal, a Level Crossing and an Underpass.

To play the game the visitor selects from a display of one hundred plastic figurines. They give the figurine a name, answer a few questions about him or her and then watch as she or he is placed at a random location into the model town. As they leave the space the player is given a small map of the town and a set of rules for the game.

An hour or so later the player will receive their first text message from the game, asking where their figurine would like to go. By replying to the message with the name of a place in the town the player's figurine is set on the path towards that destination. Each hour a turn is executed and the invigilator moves each figure a small distance towards their destination. There are 10 turns a day for 24 days.

Intermittently each player receives text messages to alert them to nearby figurines in the model city, to their figurine's arrival at a destination or to other events in the town. Each destination has a short description. For example, if you arrive at the The One Club you receive the SMS: "Home of the 2 Fs. The lock ins are legendary, the fire escape stairs have seen it all." The goal of the game is "to help others". Texting messages to other players may provide opportunities to do this.

I like the low-tech aspects of the thing:

The project is deliberately targeting low-end phones: it is playable on any phone that is able to receive SMS. Instead the technological focus is on orchestration and management tools. During the long-term test period, 8 players have been given phones that log Cell ID and upload this information to a server. We aim to use this data to assess when players are engaged, when they are most likely to play and how the game fits into their daily activity pattern. We will also carry out phone interviews with selected players at key moments, to study the interaction between game play and daily life.

Node explorer

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Bill from the great website technovelgy pointed me on node explore. Accordinf to this newspapere:

This tiny electronic prototype, called an Explorer, detects exactly where I'm standing within the 850-acre parkland surrounding Ashton Court, because it's equipped with an internal Global Positioning System (GPS) based on satellite signals, accurate to within about three yards.

On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I'm standing and what I'm looking at.

I walk to the bottom of the lawn. Ping! With the sweeping façade of Ashton Court spread like a film set, the screen shows me how the building has changed over the centuries, images building upon images as a voiceover explains why the place looks as it does now.

The tone of the script is light, brief but serious - a cross between Radios 2 and 4. (Later, I discover that the material has been written by an ex-BBC producer and narrated by a local radio presenter.)

I move 50 feet towards some flowerbeds and... ping! I'm urged to look up at the fourth window from the left where the 19th-century stunner Emily Smythe - "the most beautiful woman in the West of England!" - once gazed from her bedroom at the rural landscape stretching to the city. The screen shows me her picture. It tells me that men used to swoon at the sight of her. It shows me her bedroom. I walk to the front of the building. Ping! I learn that the writer CS Lewis was a patient here during the First World War, when this became a military hospital.

Why do I blog this? yet another location-based system that can be useful for tourism applications. Might be interesting for clara, dunno whether she knows this already.

French location-based games: Navia

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I just discovered that there is a french company that develops location-based games. It's called Recreator. The games are called navia and it seems that it's rather about using GPS and maps to play various games (tic-tac-toe, treasure hunt, conquest of virtual properties, tracking people or finding a specific place with cues). They have relevant partners like IGN (the state-owned geographical company that takes care of all the maps and cartographical stuff).

Why do I blog this? I like this sort of "alternate reality games", it's very interesting to see what you can do to entertain people with just a map and a GPS.

Evaluating the Deployment of a Location-Enhanced Messaging Service

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An article that is going to be presented at Ubicomp that sounds interesting:Control, Deception, and Communication: Evaluating the Deployment of a Location-Enhanced Messaging Service by G. Iachello, I. Smith, S. Consolvo, G. D. Abowd, J. Hughes, J. Howard, F. Potter, J. Scott, T. Sohn, J. Hightower, A. LaMarca.

We report on a two-week deployment of a peer-to-peer, mobile, location-enhanced messaging service. This study is specifically aimed at investigating the need for and effectiveness of automatic location disclosure mechanisms, the emerging strategies to achieve plausible deniability, and at understanding how place and activity are used to communicate plans, intentions and provide awareness. We outline the research that motivated this study, briefly describe the application we designed, and provide details of the evaluation process. The results show a lack of value of automatic messaging functions, confirm the need for supporting plausible deniability in communications, and highlight the prominent use of activity instead of place to indicate one’s location. Finally, we offer suggestions for the development of social mobile applications.

Why do i blog this? the analysis is pretty good and I like this finding:

In the pilot study we had observed that location was often used as a proxy for conveying other messages, such as status, estimated time of arrival (ETA), or reminders. In response to these findings, we introduced the option of responding to a location request with an activity instead of with a place.

Beside, this other recommendation is consistent with what I found:

Don’t Make Automated Functions a Design Priority: Automated features designed to streamline and facilitate communication should not be a design priority. Although the pilot study uggested promising applications for Waypoints, the participants in this study unanimously preferred to maintain control over the messages their phones transmitted. Few participants used Waypoints even for very routine activities (such as leaving work or arriving home). Most participants felt that the time spent sending the message was well worth the gain in precision and purposefulness. This contradicts the mainstream view in the ubicomp community that increasing information overload demands “intelligent” technology to take up the role of an “electronic assistant” for the user. Quite the contrary, the main value participants saw in Reno was the lightweight interaction it afforded, which made it easy to use during interstitial activity (i.e., those times, such as waiting for a bus, between sanctioned activities).

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Location awareness information representation

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LAIR: Location awareness information representation by Kottahachchi, Laddaga and Look, WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, Volume 2, Issue 8, August 2005, Pages 1144-1149 .

Current location representations model only the geographical aspects of a place. While this is a necessary feature to capture, it is far from sufficient. As a result, many location-aware applications reason about space at the level of coordinates and containment relationships, but have no means to express the semantics that define how a particular space is used. The latter is particularly important in modeling location in the pervasive computing domain. We present LAIR, an ontology that addresses this problem by modeling both the geographical and topological relationships between spaces, as well as the functional purpose of a given space.

Also more information in this paper: A location representation for generating descriptive walking directions

lair (Location Awareness Information Representation), a model of space that can be used to create location-based services. lair can be used to represent not only where a person is, but also what a person is near and what he can do at those nearby places. lair incorporates concepts that people commonly use when thinking about space. Current representations model either the physical relationships between different spaces or the functional purpose of a given space. lair models both of these aspects. (...) lair is an ontology inspired by Ben Kuipers’ TOUR model of a person’s cognitive maps of large-scale spaces

Why do I blog this? the representation of space/place provided in this LAIR model seems interesting, at least in terms of existing ontology of space.

Marauder's map in Harry Potter = location awareness tool

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Harry Potter's marauder's map seem to be a good example of location-awareness device and a quite good metaphor of what I study (awareness of others' locations in space). Here is how it described by answers.com:

The Marauder's Map was created by Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter as an aid in mischief-making. (...) At first glance, the map is simply a piece of blank parchment; but when the user says, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," ink lines stretch across it, revealing a map of Hogwarts (including secret passageways) and the location of everyone within the grounds. The map also gives information on how to open secret passageways. The words "Mischief managed!" return the map to its original blank state (to prevent someone who does not know the secret of the map from using it).

An ontology of place as a basis for location-based applications

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Relevant thesis defence about location-based services by Anna Vallgårda:

An ontology of place as a basis for location-based applications

This thesis attempts to put forward a more enlightened conception of location and thus a step towards better location-based applications. On the basis of an architectural understanding, this thesis sets out to identify and conceptualize an ontology of place. Within the field of location-based computing there is a need for a better understanding of what location is comprised. The need for a more nuanced view of location is substantiated through a review of six existing location models. The review demonstrates that the existing location models focus on efficient data structures for retrieving location information rather than on the modelling of location itself. Through interviewing four architects, this thesis develop an understanding of the structures and properties of place that influence what they believe is the way human beings perceive their presence in place. On the basis of this understanding, the thesis develops an initial proposal for an ontology of place. The ontology is suggested to posses the ability to inform development of location models for location-based applications. As a proof of concept the ontology is used as a source of knowledge in a conceptual design of three different location-based applications.

Why do I blog this? Judging from the abstract, it seems to be a pertinent piece of research about location-based services. Unfortunately it's in danish, but anyway... the author is there, blog in english and may publish in english about it ;) I like this idea of interviewing 'place' specialists (like architects) to derive a model of place.

Mapping technologies evolution

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Still in the IHT, an interesting account of how map web services emerged ans how they will evolve:

In 1991, David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University, proposed using software to create a computer simulation of the physical world, making it possible to map everything from traffic flow and building layouts to sales and currency data on a computer screen. Gelernter's idea came a step closer to reality in the past few weeks when both Google and Yahoo published documentation making it significantly easier for programmers to link virtually any kind of Internet data to Web-based maps and, in Google's case, satellite imagery.

Since the Google and Yahoo tools were released, their uses have been demonstrated in dozens of ways by hobbyists and companies, including an annotated map guide to the California wineries and restaurants that appeared in the movie ''Sideways'' and instant maps showing the locations of the recent bombing attacks in London. Later in the summer, Microsoft plans to introduce a competing service, Virtual Earth, with software that will enable programmers to use it in similarly creative ways.

So far, the uses have been noncommercial. But Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are creating the services in the expectation that they will become a focal point in one of the next significant growth areas in Internet advertising: contextual advertisements tied to specific locations. Such ads would be embedded into maps generated by a search query or run alongside them. (...) ''In the past there was a grain-silo approach to controlling the technology,'' said Nathan Torkington, director of Where 2.0, a location technology and mapping conference held last month in San Francisco. ''Now we're seeing the distribution of mapping technology.''

Why do I blog this? even though I don't like the "contextual advertisements tied to specific locations" thing, it's definitely true, mapping services is a both a top-down (availability of technologies thanks to big companies) and bottom-up (map hackers developed applications) phenomenon. Which is an interesting innovation model.

IBM seminar about mobile computing

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Rashmi gives a great summary of the IBM annual seminar about user interfaces (called New Directions in User Computing conference). Since this year's focus is mobile computing, I am very interested in what has been said there. Attendants seemed to be recurent people from the field form the human-computer interaction field (like people from Intel..:). Of course I haven't been there, but judging from Rashmi's post is rellay appears that there is nothing new under the sun:

No one has figured how to get people to buy apps for the mobile phone. Ian asked audience how many people had bought apps for mobile computing. Very few had. [I fully agree with that statement, there are different reasons but it's so true -nicolas (...) an thinks social mobile apps will be first apps for the mobile phone that people will buy à la Dodgeball [hmmmm still the same story here] (...) One basic premise behind all these types of apps is "Location Assumption" or the fact that you need to know (at least approximately) what the users location is. Question is how to do that. GPS is one method. However, it does not work inside buildings. Additionally, it does not have a Z dimension. (...) --Ontological or personal naming problems are many (what does place mean to you) 46.133 North might not mean much to me, but the Chinese restaurant on El Camino might be very meaningful. [yes it's better to use PLACE instead of SPACE, see Harrison and Dourish for that matter, it now apply to mobile computing! -nicolas] (...) Albany: Recommendations through location histories (M. Chen/J Froelich) [yet another recommender system, at the end, there will be so manye different recommender tools that there won't be enough critical mass on each to get a interesting database... -nicolas]

Why do I blog this? if this sort of ideas are now common, it's REALLY time to move forward, and I am a bit disappointed that some new trends (like the power of self-declared positioning) are still not mentionned (perhaps because it's less sex from a tech engineer point of view). However I like this idea: "Phones have a call log. why not have a place log". It sounds intersting but be there could be privacy issues!

GeoGeny Positioning Solution

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Yesterday, Fab and I had a meeting with CPR group who did this GeoGeny solution. It as in Montreux during the Jazz Festival

The GeoGeny interface was conceived by CPR Group (Switzerland) Inc by calling upon different telecommunications technologies (GPS, GSM, GPRS, SMS). (...) Used for the first time on a large scale during the Montreux Jazz Festival 2003, GeoGeny considerably facilitated the security forces command centre’s job for the duration of the festival.

Security professionals, all subjects who have to react as quickly as possible in the field, civil defence, the army, the police and private investigators need reliable and effective solutions to manage their teams. GeoGeny is a geo-relational system that is used by the protection service which protects people and goods. GeoGeny ensures that these demanding trade bodies have proven know-how at their disposal as well as equipment and software that is as pragmatic as it is efficient.

The Montreux Jazz Festival’s security forces’ command centre is benefiting from the advantages of GeoGeny for the second consecutive year. The positioning of police cars and firemen, ambulances, life guards and those patrolling on foot is shown on a central screen. All the above mentioned bodies are permanently linked up to the command centre, by GMS, GPRS and SMS. Knowing perfectly what’s happening in the field, the operator manages their forces and sends orders with optimum efficiency.

Some terminals, worn on a belt, are additionally equipped with an alarm button that offers maximum security to isolated workers and to those who are carrying out risky jobs. This allows them to be connected directly and discreetly to the post operator, thus further guaranteeing that they will get prompt help if there’s a problem - wherever they happen to be.

Here is the device, called Secufone, it's designed and manufactured by a joint venture between them and another swiss cell-phone company: Precisa: Why do I blog this? even though the situation they develop technology for a rather centralized (control room) than decentralized (I am more focused on spatial coordination in decentralized settings), it's interesting to see how it looks like. I would be happy to check their logfiles (even anonymized!) to see how poeople use such tools, especially self-declared positions (through SMS) versus GPS automatic positioning. There would be a lot to learn from this in terms of users' acceptance, users' reactions to the technology (how do they behave if they cannot be positionned or if they cannot communicate?). It seems that they use such information to improve their design, as one of interns told us.

Google Map Pedometer and Mobile Gmap

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Yep now you can record distances traveled during a running or walking workout using this hack of Google maps: Gmaps pedometer. If you're not confident or really in the rush you can also use the Mobile Gmaps (a free software that displays Google Maps and Keyhole satellite imagery on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones or other devices). Why do I blog this? Those cool applications are really neat, google maps really begins to spread in lots of directions.

Reports about Urban/Social Tapestries

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Proboscis has recently released the final reports on the Urban Tapestries project. You can order them here.

Urban Tapestries: Public Authoring, Place and Mobility A Proboscis White Paper by Giles Lane & Sarah Thelwall This white paper presents our vision for public authoring and our conclusions on its relationships to place and mobility. We argue for design solutions to focus on actual people in real world contexts and situations, offer insights from the public trials of our prototypes and set out Proboscis’ own future vision and research agenda. Finally we recommend a series of policy proposals for realising a public knowledge commons, structured around place.

Urban Tapestries: Project Report A Proboscis Report by Giles Lane & Sarah Thelwall This report gives a chronological account of the development of the project and provides detail of and context for the key issues that arose over its two year span. In describing the activities and outcomes of the project it also connects the completion of Urban Tapestries to the research brief for Social Tapestries, a follow on research programme. A summary of the outputs, press coverage, some statistics and project credits are listed at the end of the report.

Urban Tapestries: Observations and Analysis A Proboscis Report by Giles Lane, Alice Angus, Victoria Peckett & Nick West This document presents the observations and qualitative evaluation of participant activity and feedback from the bodystorming experiences, the public trial of December 2003 and the field trial of June/July 2004.

Reports are free for private use by individuals, academics and non-profit organisations in the arts and civil society sectors. Complimentary copies are available for affiliates, project funders and partners. Commercial organisations, government departments and government agencies are requested to purchase reports – bound copies will be posted to the billing address.