From my understanding of German: the goal of Capture the Map is to place flags on the map using searches on Google engine: the player send a certain query string to google. The results are then parsed and geo-localized through the database Netgeo. The goal of the game is to make a strategic placement of the flags.
(via)
Tags: google, search engine
When I was doing my summer readings at Microsoft I came across a nice reference:
“Human actors routinely solve both the frame problem and the due process problem. They do so in a variety of ways, as noted both in the social science literature and in the frame problem literature, and in variably democratic ways.
…
We analyzed issues that arose in the context of artificial intelligence research by looking at how human communities resolved them. These included issues such as due process [Gerson 1987], …, resolution of local uncertainty into global certainty [Star 1983], …”
The quote was taken from S. L. Star. Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2. Chapter The structure of ill-structured solutions: Bounday objects and heterogeneous distributed problem solving. Morgan Kaufman Publishers, pag. 37-54, 1989.
The quote refers to S. L. Star, Simplification of Scientific Work: An Example from Neuroscience Research. Social Studies of Science, Vol. 13, pp. 205-228, 1983.
In these days I am looking for a method to log the interactions of users of ubiquitous systems, namely the exchange of SMS and the influence of location on those exchanges. The current methodology adapted from Grinter and Eldridge is very basic but effective. Somehow I am trying to enhance this with an easier location logging techniques.
I had in mind this idea of providing a separate map to the observed participants but how do people should carry around the logging sheet and the map? It seems a bit inappropriate to ask them to have all this material floating around in their pocket or backpack. The big risk is that they will loose it with the contained information.
So I had an idea combining an intuition of Nicolas and a solution found in a book of 1906! First of all, as Nicolas noted, the log material should be pocket size in the form factor of a sketch book. A single page can be assigned to a single SMS, leaving the annotation much more compact than on a letter-page.
The second intuition, suggested by the book [1], is that a foldable map should be attached to this small log-book, in such a way that could be unfolded when annotating an folded back when moving around. The participant will use the small log-book to register incoming and outgoing SMS, annotating extra information like time, motivation to the communication, content, length, etc. Additionally, using the foldable map it will be possible to indicate his/her position at the moment of reception and the inferred position of the recipient/sender of the message.
Below are the pictures of the book which inspired this solution. In the extended part of this post, I will report some more research I did on how to fold a map.
[1] Karl Baedeker. Italy: Handbook for Travellers, First Part, Northern Italy. Karl Baedeker Publisher, Liepsic, 1906.
Tags: data mining, research, research methodology, smart mobs, ubiquitous computing
M. Ito and D. Okabe. Personal, Portable Intimarte: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, chapter Technological Situations: Emergent Structurings of Mobile Email Use, pages 1–15. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2005. [pdf]
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The authors analyse the use of mobile phone in Japanese youths. Instead of considering the aspect of the mobiles that are often critiques as disrupting currnet social practices, the author propose a view of phones that create new kind of boundled places that merge the infrastructures of geography and technology, and technological practices that merge technical standards and social norms. They call these “technological situations”, a way of incorporating the insight of theories of practice and social interaction into a framework that takes into account mediated social orders.
They present three different technological situations that are built on mobile email: mobile chat, an analoguous of text-chat used to fill dead time; ambient virtual co-presence, a way of mainitaining background awareness of others; and the augmented flesh meet, a way to augment the experience of physically co-located encounters.
I like this excerpt of an SMS exchange, which shows some linguistic markers of location cues (in Italics). Also landmarks are explicitly stated (in bold):
[Bus stop] 15:00 (Send) I’ll be about thirty minutes late.
[Bus stop] 15:01 (Receive) Okay.
[Shibuya station] 16:32 (Send) I’ve arrived at Shibuya.
[Shibuya station] 16:33 (Receive) Where in Shibuya are you?
[Shibuya station] 16:34 (Send) Hachiko Square.
[Shibuya station] 16:35 (Receive) Wait there. I’ll be right over.
[Shibuya station] 16:36 (Send) Okay. Will wait.
[Shibuya station] 16:40 (Voice call) “Where are you? Oh, there, okay, I see you.”
Tags: ethnography, research, research methodology, Short Message Service
An interesting research project from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture:
The ongoing process of European integration and in particular the planned enlargement of the European Union present new challenges for the evolution of democracy in Europe. The research programme >node< of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture (bm:bwk) addresses the future of democracy in Europe. With >node<, we are inviting scientists to rethink democracy, to analyse political developments and processes and the mechanisms that guide and control them, and to come up with options and alternatives for the further development of democratic politics.
Research themes and research objectives of >node<:
The fundamental principle of the research programme is the scientific analysis and discussion of the European integration process, i.e., a critical examination in which Europe is understood as a “contested space.” The following major questions form the framework for projects within >node<:
Using this link is possible to provide your own definition of what democracy is. This is my preferred definition:
… when all people have an equal input on decission making based on true and independent information. (17. 11. 2005, Jarno Gieteling, Communicating European Research – CER 2005, Brüssel)
Copyright notice: the present content was taken from the following URL, the copyrights are reserved by the respective author/s.
R. E. Grinter and M. Eldridge. Wan2tlk? : Everyday text messaging. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System (CHI 2003), pages 441–448, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, April 5-10 2003. [pdf]
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Texting—using a mobile phone to send text messages—has become a form of mass communication. Building on studies that described how British teenagers have incorporated text messaging into their lives, we examine the purposes and nature of the conversations themselves. We also present findings that suggest that teenagers do not have many simultaneous multiple conversations via text messaging; end most text messaging conversations by switching to another medium; and, that, despite popular beliefs, communicate with surprisingly few friends via their mobile phones. Finally we describe how and what words they shorten in their text messages.
This paper describe an indirect form of observation through logging. The authors used a low-tech solution to record how participants used SMS in their daily activities. The asked them to fill a paper form adding contextual information and the content of the messages.
Analysing these logs they could report some quantitative results on the usage of this form of communication.
I/O Plant is a tool for designing a content that utilize plants as an input-output interface. It enables designers to connect actuators, sensors and database servers to living plants. This means that plants become a part of an electric circuit or a network terminal.
For example: you can control a switch of a household electric appliance by touching a plant.
Tags: interaction design, plants, domotic, user experience
This summer I had the opportunity to play with disposable underwater cameras. I tried the a Fuji and a Kodak. It was fun but there were a couple of factors that made me love the Fuji more than the Kodak:
1- First of all the price: both of them are priced 10.25 USD in the States but the Fuji had an immediate discount of 1 USD (almost 10% less).
2- The cameras comes with an elastic stripe that you can use to hold the camera while swimming. However the Fuji stripe is already attached to the camera while you need to attach the stripe to the Kodak.
3- The shutter button is extremely small in the Kodak impairing its use while underwater. In the Fuji one the shutter is a big lever, its operation is extremely comfortable.
4- Some simple instructions of use are printed in the back of the camera but the instructions on the Fuji are easier to understand.
5- I have to admit that the quality of the pictures of the Kodak camera was higher but I cannot tell wether this depends on the fact that I used the Kodak after the Fuji and that I was more accustomed to taking pictures underwater with the previous experience.
Fuji
Kodak
Just before leaving the States, we could not miss this one: a trip to Hawaii to enjoy some sunshine and the sea. It is difficult to tell what is most astonishing of these islands: they are a true paradise! Words a useless in some cases and this is one of them …
Zeno, one of my colleagues at EPFL, has finally published his Podcast application called XCast. At first view, the interface is pretty clean and stylish with a clear ‘Zeno-OSX’ style. The application is very well done responsive and fast while downloading the enclosures.
What distinguishes XCast from other RSS readers is its focus on enclosures. Its focus is on Podcasts, multimedia content published in the form of XML feeds. XCast allows to better handle this content, offering support for intelligent archiving, use and removal of this sort of “attachments”.
One of the best feature is its connection with iTunes, which allows to use the downloaded attachment from the iTunes interface keeping the index on both applications in sync.
