A new blog to check: location-based services in NZ by Clara Leung. It's mostly about here thesis entitled "'The Perceived Value of Location-Based Services in New Zealand Tourism'".
little bit more about myself - I'm a postgraduate student completing the second year of my Master of Commerce degree in Marketing at the University of Auckland. 2005 will be split between working hard on my thesis, 'The Perceived Value of Location-Based Services in New Zealand Tourism',
(via) In a strategic move to battle against Google, Yahoo! started a mobile game studio and -of course- bought some game studio (Stadeon).
"Yahoo wants to be part of the party," said Janco Partners analyst Martin Pyykkonen. Yahoo's strategy is to use games as well as e-mail and other services to keep users on its Web site. Gaming will not likely soon become a large revenue producer, as Yahoo gets most of its sales from online advertising, Pyykkonen said. He also said Yahoo was likely to target places like China and other parts of Asia, targeted by Yahoo and other Web companies future growth. "My view is that it's more of an Asia opportunity," Pyykkonen said.
Bruce Sterling's column about how he digitized his belongings while moving from Austin to Pasadena.
When I was formerly a Texan author-journalist type rather than a Californian "visionary," I naturally lived like a pack rat. Then I drove my hybrid electric across I-10 to the gloriously unfurnished Pasadena pad over here, and I suddenly realized that I can thrive with something like 8% of my former possessions. Not that I've lost them. Basically – and this is the point for SXSW-I attendees – they've all been digitized. They got eaten by my laptop. There's an Apple Store a block away, where Mr. Jobs is selling iPods like Amy sells waffle-cones when it hits 105 degrees. So, where're all my records and CDs? They're inside the laptop. DVD player? Laptop. Newspapers? I read Google News in the morning. Where're my magazines? I read Metropolis Online, I write stories for SciFi.com. Where's my TV? I got no TV: Compared to Web surfing on broadband wireless, watching a TV show is like watching ice melt. I tried real hard to sit down and watch a television dramatic episode recently – it felt like watching Vaudeville, with a trained dog act and a guy juggling plates. TV is dying right in front of us. It's become a medium for the brainwashed, the poor, and the semiliterate. Where's my fax machine? Laptop. Mailbox? Laptop. Filing cabinet? Laptop. Working desk? Laptop. Bank? Laptop. Place of business? Laptop. Most people I deal with have no idea I'm here in California. They'd never think to ask me. Why should they? They send e-mail, they get what they want, game over.My laptop is even a library now; I've taken to reading books as e-text. For instance, a freeware, public domain version of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Silverado Squatters.
After Future Now, IFTF came up with a new blog on the future of marketing: IFTF's future of marketing
Why are we creating a new blog on the future of marketing?No, I'm not trying to become the Nick Denton of futures blogging. Okay, maybe I am, just a little bit. But there are bigger reasons for launching this new blog.
First, there are few professions or industries that are likely to be transformed as much by the trends the Institute has been following-- the growth of mobile communications; the rise of the geoweb; the coming of pervasive computing; and the merger of the digital and physical worlds, among others-- as marketing. Traditional marketing could be destroyed or radically reduced in scope, much as online travel sites have cut into the travel service industry. It might rearrange the balance of power between professionals and swarms of amateurs, as has happened with blogging and journalism. It could create a new, mirror-image world of advertising geniuses outside the traditional companies (think of the open source software movement). Or it might do something else entirely.
The purpose of The Future of Marketing is to chart what futures are possible for marketing, and to capture interesting experiments happening today that could point to important future practices. Spinning off our scan of marketing as a separate blog will also allow Future Now to concentrate more on emerging technologies and their social implications. Doubtless there will be some cross-posting between the two. One can only hope so.
From what I've read it's promising.
A very neat masters thesis project via Hannes: "Open Source Community Building." by Matthias Stuermer (University of Bern).
Building an active and helpful community around an open source project is a complex task for its leaders. Therefore investigations in this work are intended to define the optimum starting position of an open source project and to identify recommendable promoting actions by project leaders to enlarge community size in a healthy way. For this paper eight interviews with committed representatives of successful open source projects have led to over 12 hours of conversation about community building. Analysing the statements of these experienced community members exposed helpful activities that led to the presently prospering communities of their projects. Summarizing the conclusions of this qualitative research a table with conditions for successful open source project initialisation and a subject-level promotion matrix of community building could be created. They include suggestions on how to start a new open source project and how to improve and increase the community of an already advanced open source project.
Hannes points on the do's and don't:
- Do it for yourself.
- Don't loose yourself in perfectionism.
- Do accept others ideas and work, too.
- Do communicate openly.
- Don't speak of ideas but contribute solutions.
- Do behave nicely.
- Do serious marketing.
I am concerned with innovating communities and since I am looking for evidences of non-institutional R&D project (a potential paper I definitely do not know where to publish). I like that kind of work! Enquiries about innovation management is of tremendous interest. Understanding such kind of processes in countercultural organisations (squats, independent music label...) might also sound god
I ran across this utopic map of Lyon, France, 1925. It's crazy how utopian urban planners at that time envisionned the city. It is currently not to squared now...
Another reference that might help me to analyse the map drawn by CatchBob! participants:Heiser, J., Tversky, B. and Silverman, M. (2004). Sketches for and from collaboration. In J. S. Gero, B. Tversky, and T. Knight (Editors). Visual and spatial reasoning in design III. Pp. 69-78. Sydney: Key Centre for Design Research.
Pairs of collaborators worked side-by-side using a campus map to design and produce an optimal emergency rescue route. Copresent collaborators shared a map; remote partners were separated by a barrier and used separate maps. In the co-present condition, gestures on the maps, notably pointing and tracing, served to focus attention and to communicate solutions. A shared diagram increased the efficiency of the collaboration, the product of the collaboration, and the enjoyability of the collaboration.
Why do I blog this? We are trying to show (with CatchBob!) that the map annotation feature is very relevant and could support collaboration efficiently (better than just providing a location-awareness tool since it promotes strategy discussion on the map).
A study of people''s sketching habits in GIS by Andreas Glaser.
Abstract: Sketching is traditionally associated withdoodling simple strokes on a piece of paper.Only few professionals outside of design andthe fine arts have recognized the expressivepower of this intuitive modality. However,sketching seems particularly well suited tocapture objects and situations in a spatialenvironment, such as geographic space. To learnmore about the techniques and strategies peopleuse when sketching, a survey of sketching wasconducted. The study showed that paper andpencil sketches contain mostly simple andabstract objects that are composed of only fewstrokes. The spatial configuration of a sceneis primarily expressed through the topologicalordering of objects relative to each other.Metric relationships are used to refine spatialconfigurations. These and other findingssuggest that sketching is an appropriatemodality to interact with a computer where onewants to describe and capture objectconfigurations in a spatial environment, suchas a geographic information system (GIS).Keywords: freehand sketching - human computer interaction - human subject testing - multi-modal user interfaces - spatial querying - spatial information retrieval in GIS
Why do I blog this? Since I am working on the coding scheme to analyse the map annotations in the CatchBob experiments, this kind of paper is useful.
AfterLife is a project by Auger and Loizeau that aims at "exploring faith and bereavement for griveing atheists through an electrical intrepretation of life after death". The project basically aims at using cadavers as a resource to produce some energy. More information in the pdf report. their motto is "“Remember, old electrons never die, they just move on.” ".
There are crazy scenarios:
The applications of the battery are numerous; it can be translated as music in Sony Walkmans or MP3 players, or thinking devices such as calculators or Power-books. Light and enlightenment have often been associated with religious meaning and those who have had near-death experiences often talk of a brilliant light, often blue, which renders the torch as an ideal receptor and conveyance for the afterlife battery. The user of the torch may feel a level of security and comfort through enlightenment, this is an attribute normal with any provider of light this is however, more poignant when the light is provided by a loved one.
Scenarios:
- Mass acts of collective adoration by Christians to illuminate giant Madonna.
- Ghoulish behaviour as collection of celebrity batteries becomes popular. Douglas Adams body goes missing.
- Madhur Jaffreys publishes first compiled book of recipes for the last supper, stating that the recipes are not only for the dying, and can be enjoyed by any lovers of spicy Indian cuisine.
- New range of Tamagotchi in production powered by biological batteries made from cows.
Electro therapy used to induce laughter for bereaved wife.
Why do I blog this Designing stuff based on weird ideas is appealing ;) I like the usage scenarios. What about an UML use of "Mass acts of collective adoration by Christians to illuminate giant Madonna".
Microsoft's Hong-Jiang Zhang: The Process of Product Innovation in ACM's weekly newsfeed <a href="http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/Ubiquity".
UBIQUITY: And what are your biggest challenges?ZHANG: I think number one is simply that it's never been easy to transfer research innovation into product, so that's really been a challenge. Researchers tend not to think about actual products, and when their solutions are 90 percent accurate and complete, they tend to think that's good enough, and they consider that the problem's essentially solved. But if you're working on actual products you can't say that 90 percent is good enough and just move to something else. (...)
UBIQUITY: What are the backgrounds of those people?
ZHANG: Mostly computer science related. (...)
UBIQUITY: No marketing people in the group?
ZHANG: No, we're not doing marketing, but we do have a couple of people doing market research just to try to predict technology and market trends, but we don't do marketing as such because we're not doing end-product release. Our work goes into Windows, Office, and other products, such as MSN and Media Center, all those things. The whole range of Microsoft software. We do have a few projects focused on local users here in Asia, but mainly we are focused on global users,
Vow nobody coming from market research or social sciences there? They had not been caught in the "end-user focus" momentum. Of course they say that they don't do end-product release but they claim that they want to transfer research innovation into product. I am lost/confused.
(via)
3M recently completed an amazing poster-stunt in Vancouver, Canada. They prepped a bus shelter ad with a 3M product called Scotchshield, a see-through film that you can apply to glass which makes it near bulletproof, and filled the postersite with lots of play money, and 500 real Canadian dollars for good measure. As passers by did their best to put the Scotchshield to the test, kicking the glass, taking sledgehammers to the glass and going all sorts of crazy over it, the glass withstood the pressures and did not budge. It did not break, it could not be broken
I still have to find ideas and methods to include some computational aspects in my PhD (I'm in a computer science faculty geeeeeeez). That's why I am looking at some paper about modeling collaborative situations. I stumbled across this one after meeting the author: Analyse et modélisationdes activités coopératives situées: évolutions d'un questionnement et apports à la conception which is in french. It deals with some epistemological concerns abouzt why using such model and how it could be fruitful for CSCW.
This paper summarizes the different steps of a research program which focused on the analysis, modelling and equipement of cooperative activities. We attempt to make explicit the various succesive theorical underpinnings and to show how they have influenced modelling and design issues.
My EPFL co-worker Fabien wrote a postmortem report (.pdf) about our CatchBob! project in which he describes the whole development process. He presents how we designed CatchBob on two platforms (namely iPAQ and TabletPC) and how he implemented it. The report goes throught the whole thing, dealing with the game architecture, the user interface, the positioning feature as well as the communication tool (that allows to annotate the map). Here are the key points for people in a rush:
The end of the report aims at enlarging the scope, discussing interesting issues such as the design of engaging technology (for the user's point of view), the relevance of 3D positioning and the huge potential of map annotation.
This document might be seen a good summary of how Fabien achieved the mobile game development. Besides, it's absolutely human-readables. Non-tech-savvy people should not be afraid to have a glance if they are interested in how to develop a mobile game.
(via)
Echolocation is a method of sensory perception by which certain animals orient themselves to their surroundings, detect obstacles, communicate with others, and find food. In echolocation a series of short, high-pitched sounds are emitted by an animal. These sounds travel out away from the animal and then bounce off objects and surfaces in the animal's path creating an echo. The echo returns to the animal, giving it a sense about what is in its path. A bat can determine an object's size, shape, direction, distance, and motion. This echolocation system is so accurate that bats can detect insects the size of gnats and objects as fine as a human hair. Scientists would like to know more about how bats use echolocation so they can help blind people detect objects with sound.
Why do I blog this? As I have an undergraduate degree in biology, I often think back to some relevant concepts in this field that might be useful for today's technology. Echolocation is one of those we should play with ;)
This seems to be an appealing project: +33 (0) 63 27 22 06 5. If your dial +33(0) 63 27 22 06 5, the energy produced by your phone is going to be recycled! It's carried out by David Strebel. A banner is attached to a building. "Recyclez votre Appel +33 (0) 63 27 22 06 5" (Recycle your call) is printed on the banner. Several antennas are installed inside a room in the building. The antennas are able to register microwaves released by mobile phones.
On location several antennas had been installed to perceive interferences from telephone calls. A device had been constructed recycling the occuring interferences.Therefore a optoelectronic relais, a mobil phone and a ventilator is placed under a cardbord box. The relais is connected by optical fibres to the LEDs of the antennas installed on the wall. A half cutted plastic bottle is sticked upside down into the cardboard box. In the bottleneck a feather had been placed to indicate the recycling of calls.
(via), Outward Insights, LLC conducted a a survey about the effectiveness and use of competitive intelligence across a number of industries. The results are interesting:
A majority of U.S.-based companies that claim to use competitive intelligence (CI) to guide their decision-making processes either don't use intelligence enough or use it the wrong way. This excludes nearly 30% of companies that don't even have, or don't feel the need for, a CI system, despite today's ultra-competitive environment. (...) Among other key findings:
- Wide industry differences were discovered among respondents.
- Twenty-nine percent of respondents admit that they do not have "an organized and systematic way to deliver competitive intelligence," including 14% of the respondents with more than $1 billion in revenues.
- Of those lacking "an organized way," 28% said they don't have a need for it and 17% said they are unsure how to do it.
- Nearly 40% said they "rarely or never" incorporate likely competitor reactions into their new product plans.
- Bank of America is the top "eagle," the best corporate intelligence user, according to the respondents.
(...) Indeed, one of the most beneficial aspects of competitive intelligence - the ability to receive early warning of competitor activity or emerging industry trends - is going largely unrealized. Only half of the companies surveyed said they had a process for "delivering early warning of emerging threats and opportunities." (...) Additional problems respondents believe hampers the success of CI in their respective companies includes:
- Insufficient funding - 43%
- Internal bureaucracy - 41%
- Intelligence team lacks sufficient clout - 28%
- Executives do not recognize value of intelligence - 20%
Thanks Fabien for your help! We know have a php script that automatically generates a map of CatchBob! users' path.
This map is going to be of interest since I want to calculate the number of error an individual made while drawing his own path like this one (here it is correct).
In addition, I will also check if the partners drew this path correctly; on the following drawing, there is a mistake (in red):
The main problem here to calculate the number of error is the low accuracy of the positioning tool; I'll just compute a rough error index.
Here is the modethodology:
In the post-game questionnaire, we ask players to draw 3 maps: the path they took on the campus plus the map they thought their partner 1 and 2 did. Thanks to the client logs server, we can generate a map of each paths. It allows us to calculate different number of errors that are spatial modelling indexes:
- comparison the path player A drawn about where he went to his/her real path. It represents the quality of A’s representation of the physical environment.
- comparison between the path player A drawn about B or C to B or C’s paths. It represents the quality of A’s representation of B and C’s behavior in space. For example, on figure 3, we can compare the way A drew his path (in green on figure 2 aboce) to how B drew it (in red on figure 3 above).
Calculating the number of errors is made through the use of layers on printed material. An error is both a place where the player have not been or a place where he went but he forgot to draw it. Three criteria were defined to describe what is an error: distance (if the line is longer than the maximum size of our campus corridor), presence of an obstacle (door/wall/glass), walking back is not perceived as an error.
According to MSNBC, we are reaching a momentum in easy-to-use product (like say ipod the PalmPilot or the Google Web site). They points on several reasons for this:
partly due to a growing consumer backlash against complexity (...) The move toward ease-of-use is being driven by economics, according to IBM Fellow Curt Cotner. The cost of hardware and software has been decreasing, and companies are now focusing on how to lower costs in terms of people, since fewer people are needed to maintain simpler systems. This strategy is key to IBM's goal of becoming the vendor of choice for small- and medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford expansive IT workforces. Cast Iron Systems CEO Fred Meyer comments that software has been made so complex that it cannot support 90 percent of its desired applications, and he thinks software designers and computer manufacturers are simplifying their products because of user demand. A major challenge to maintaining simplicity is muzzling engineers' urge to bundle snazzy features into the newest gadgets: "The desire not to over-engineer a phone is just as difficult as it is to add new features," says Kyocera's John Chier.
Why do I blog this? Finally user-centered design goes mainstream, it's very good for consumers/end-users. We all finally take advantage of the 'HCI' added value. Question to be answered:
Well it's just few issues that popped up into my mind, there should be plenty of others?
I enjoyed reading "Public displays of connection (.pdf from BT Technology Journal) by Judith Donath and Danah Boyd. It's basically about the social implications of social network's public display. I like the typology of social software users:
- energetic collectors of links were often referred to as ‘Friendster whores’
- For some, the sites function as an awareness tool, a way to be reminded of friends and acquaintances.
- For others, the sites — as promised — provide opportunities to find information, dates, and jobs. These are the people who are using these sites as exploratory vehicles for navigating an extended social network.
The article describes interesting issues like the cost of linking or the reason of such public display. Why do I blog this? I am interested in such tool, especially for network navigation and serendipituous discovering of information. However, I don't like the fact that it's based on not-so-relevant technology. I would prefer something based on FOAF (even though it's more difficult to have to have the 'mutual linking' feature: putting someone in your foaf would require the other to accecpt it). I find boring and clearly not convenient to fill those social software forms instead of having all these information in the same place: a foaf generated from your address book with contacts' acknolwedgement to be in/displayed.
People curious with what Accenture does might have a look at the webpage of the different lab they have:
Why do I blog this? Information about world lab is important. An private lab does not always present so many information about their projects. One of my favorite is the Reality Mining Tool that employs new visualization tools designed to help process information, browse reality and make decisions in the future.