Meeting with Jacques Lèvy: exploring spatialised messages

Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with Jacques Lévy and André Ourednik (of the Choros laboratory, EPFL) on the methodology to explore a dataset of “spatialised messages”. We drafted a couple of points and ideas that I am trying to summarise in this post.

1. Geometry and Geography are not synonyms. This is the main point that Jacques raised as often these two dimensions are conceived as the same thing. Geometry might be a good approximation of geography under exceptional circumstances. For instance, if a part of the city has a linear structure and the density of buildings is constant and the transport systems are available in a uniform way on the territory, and etc. So in this case we can use this approximation. However current approach to spatial cognition tend to move from the assumption that geography is Euclidean. If people have distorted perception of this “reality” then they are wrong and these false perception should be treated as “mistakes”. Of course Jacques and I agreed that we can consider different starting assumptions lie the fact that the geography of a place is given by these distortions which are not mistakes.

2. On the pragmatical approach on the analysis of the messages, Jacques proposed to measure the messages’ geometrical average distance against the threads’ average connection distance. This measure might give us a view on the proportion of conversations that extend beyond the local clusters to represent similar features of the city on different neighborhoods.

3. A second idea emerged in the meeting is that of comparing the messages clusters (or the messages distribution) with other census information on the same area of the city. For instance: does the highest density of the points correspond with the highest density of shops in the area? Does it matches with the area that the users uses the most for various reasons (i.e., work, leisure, residence)? An operational exploration that we agreed to perform on the data is to confront the messages distribution with different layers that we can obtain from statistical bureau or census data.

4. Finally André Proposed to work on a possible anamorphosis map considering different attributes of the messages, as for instance the semantic distance between each pair of points. Other dimensions can be explored as the time evolution of the conversations, the threading between the messages or the social network that developed between the users of the system. The basic principle of the anamorphosis is that the map is divided in cells. For each morph a feature is chosen and measured in each cell. Then the area of the cell is set proportional on the feature assigned so that the ultimate map will equalise the chosen feature across all the map.

During our last meeting with Pierre, we sketched briefly a couple of other possible explorations to perform on the dataset. Pierre was proposing to build different maps giving more importance in turn to the geographical, the semantic or the social dimension of the data. Then for each map we could measure a couple of parameters to confront like the dispersion (are the messages more dense or sparse); the structure of the connections (what is the form of  the links of the Minimal Walking Tree built on the map); number of links per node (again with the MWT); etc.

We ended the meeting with the proposition of exploring some of the directions highlighted.

Pnr54Choros3

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Palantir: Raising Awareness among Configuration Management Workspaces

A. Sarma, Z. Norozi, and A. van der Hoek. Palantir: Raising awareness among configuration management workspaces. In Proceedings of, pages 444–454, Portland, Oregon, USA, May 2003. IEEE. [pdf]

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This paper presents Palantir a system to enhance users’ awareness in a configuration managment workspace. The starting assumption is that current configuration management workspaces isolate developers. This isolation is said to have positive and negative effects like overlapping changes and low shared understanding of each other’s code. Palantir is said to overcome this bas isolation by inverting information flow from push to pull. Awareness, it the understanding of the activities of the others, which provide a context for your own activity.

Previous coordination systems are limited in the sense that they inform the users (developers) only of direct conflicts concerning individual artefacts. What is missing is an overall vieo of the workspace. Palantir builds on top of existing configuration management facilities and concentrates on the collection, distribution, organization and presentation of relevant workspace information.

Palantir has two visualization one is a ticker tape, the other is a fully graphical visualization which maintain an overview of workspace activities. The artefacts can be filtered by different criteria like severity. Palantir exhibits three key properties: (1) its coordination mechanisms is based on workspace rather than repository information; (2) it informs continuosly developers of other ongoing efforts; (3) it provides an overall view of other workspaces that support the detection of both direct and indirect conflicts.

Palantir

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PhD Annual Report

M. Cherubini. Phd annual report. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Ecoublens, Station 1, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, 2006. [pdf]

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This work targets Collaborative Annotations of a Map in a mobile setting. This is a form of communication that makes explicit usage of the geographical/physical context as referent to the message content. The goal of this study is to develop a computational support for such communication, defining a model that enable to integrate spatial information with the textual information produced through computer-mediated communication. As first step, I will analyse datasets of these particular messages with the aim of understanding their peculiarities in comparison with comparable canonical forms. After, I will use this information to build a specific information retrieval engine that will support the users exploration of the information space.

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An updated plan of my thesis

As I am working on my PhD report I decided to include a little drawing that makes the timeline a bit more visual. Three phases will be required to achieve the thesis’ goals: (a) the observation of people communicating using the designed application; (b) the refinement of the retrieval engine that could sustain this kind of communication; (c) the validation of this model through a second experimental phase.

(a) Phase I: The observation of communication. This part of research should last 6 months: an experimental group of users will be gathered for providing experimental data to the framework. The results of this enquiry will be analysed to serve the development of the second phase. The data collected during this phase will be compared with those collected with alternative systems like Urban Tapestries (Q1 on figure).

(b) Phase II: The computational algorithm. The observation of phase I will provide some clues on the nature of this kind of spatial communication like the connection of semantic and geometry of the messages. Together with side experiments on the semantic retrieval engines (Experiment 2 on figure), this will suggest a possible mechanism to sustain this kind of communication that will be implemented in this phase.

(c) Phase III: The verification. Finally, during the last phase the retrieval system implemented during the second phase will be evaluated with two experimental group of users. The phase three might interleave during the 6 months of phase I (Experiment 1 continued on figure).

Thesis Plan 06

STAMPS Field Trial

Share your experience of the city

What is it?

This is an academic research project of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

STAMPS is a little application that allows you to leave notes on a map using your mobile phone. You can see a map of the place where you are, visualised on the screen of your mobile. There, you can write a kind of SMS and attach it to the map so that other friends can see your message appearing on their map. You can write for instance: “this is my favorite pizzeria!”, to offer advice to your buddies. All the messages left in the system say something about the city where you live: what are the sport locations, the place to eat, the meeting spots. After a while, we want to use all these information to help the users to ‘navigate’ the city. You can ask the system, for instance: “where is a pizzeria nearby?”, and the system will search for other people’s messages which refer to the term pizzeria to give you an advice.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for a group of ‘activists’, friends, who like to walk the city and annotate the spots they like the most, the places they hate. If you want to participate in this trial you need to be passionate about your city, informed on the activities running in the surroundings and ready to share this information with your friends. We expect from you to participate intensively for the next few months leaving notes of your activities in the urban area.

What is it for you?

If you will be selected for the first trial all the connection costs that you will have to use the system will be reimbursed. If your telephone is not compatible with our software, we will give you a new one for the period of the trial. The most creative and active participants will be awarded with a monetary prize.

How can I apply for participating?

Please send an email to shoutspace[at]gmail.com with your coordinates, your telephone model and your operator. If you apply with your friends you will have more chances to be selected. Please add the coordinates of your friends to the message.

Trial Flyer

Screen Captures Small

Another way to use google earth: seeing three-dimensional objects in place

Recently Google bought @Last Software, a 3D CAD company. They did it for this plug-in than allow the user of their software to place the finished building to the exact location of interest to see the final outcomes in the right geographical context.

I think the same kind of technology may reveal to be super useful for thousand of similar situations not just in the architectural domain. See for instance the track on blogjects or in general the internet of things. My point is that everybody likes maps. It is a nice framework to share ideas and communication in general. Looking at a map, communication becomes sharp and direct and grounding takes place spontaneously.

Googleplex Earth

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Localisation and Interaction for Augmented Maps

G. Reitmayr, E. Eade, and T. Drummond. Localisation and interaction for augmented maps. In Proceedings of IEEE ISMAR’05, Vienna, Austria, October 5-8 2005. [pdf]

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The paper presents a projection technique useful to augment maps and therefore the tangible interaction an user might have with the artefact itself. The basic assumption is that cartobraphic maps are complex visualizations that afford natural interaction by direct manipulation. They can be freely arranged, moved or annotated. A map also creates a common reference frame for multiple users in which gestures and verbal communication are interpreted.

The paper details the extremely sofisticated system they used to calibrate the projection from the top to the map raster. Everytime the map was moved, also the projected content was dynamically readapted.

Using extra devices or other technical solutions was possible to handle more complicated intertaction on top of the map: annotations with symbols, curves or areas; calculation of areas of occlusion or layering of different maps.

Augmenting Maps

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