Ubiquitous Computing and rapid prototyping

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The last issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing is presenting the recent advances in applying rapid prototyping to ubiquitous systems development. The special issue is based on the assumption that

because ubicomp scenarios often consist of different undeveloped components, a complete implementation might be impractical, and a partial implementation can’t show the full potential. This presents a dilemma, particularly in research and early development, because researchers and developers must concentrate on their specific area to advance technology rather than expend effort on broad system-implementation issues. This dilemma can be partially overcome by rapidly prototyping the whole system while focusing most of the engineering, design, and evaluation effort on the specific area of interest working, letting us clearly assess a new development.

Why do i blog this? The special issue describes different approaches ranging from Wizard of Oz to sophisticated cognitive modeling approaches/fidelity prototyping approaches. Overall, it's a nice recap of some of the bleeding edge projects lately developed.

More about some of those papers later on.

A house out of a 747

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The WSJ has an intriguing story (by Alex Frangos) about an architect who designed a house out of an cut-apart and junked 747 airplane.

Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch. (...) "We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz. (...) The wings of the old 747 will rest on thick concrete walls, forming the roof of a multilevel main house. Other pieces will be used to assemble an art studio, a loft and a barn to house rare domestic animals.

The picture below is taken from the architect website:

Is it a cradle-to-cradle oriented design?! I like it anyway

Art + Science in Collaboratory

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Last week, there was a very pertinent article in the NYT: Researchers Look to Create a Synthesis of Art and Science for the 21st Century by John Malkoff. The article's take is the fact that artists will be central to the future of computing technology. It exemplifies this thesis through different examples liek Calit2 or MIT. Some excerpts I found relevant:

"Part of the artist's insight is to be able to interpret the future earlier than anybody,", "We regard the artist as fully equal with any scientist at Calit2." (says Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, or Calit2, a $400 million research consortium.

That idea, which is anathema to some in the engineering-driven world of science and technology, influenced the thinking of the building's designers in the San Francisco office of NBBJ, the international architectural and design firm.

"We put the clean room and the media artists as close as possible so we could see the artists talking to the physicists and telling them what to do," [physical proximity rules! -nicolas]

Why do I blog this? First because as Regine I agree that artist can pave the way of technological innovation by bringing out different viewpoint, ideas, content and connections (whereas scientists may zero in pertinent ideas). Besides, I really like the concept of artist in residence in a R&D structure, especially if some collaborations occur! An interesting issue would be how to make both researchers and scientists benefiting from this?

Connected pasta see this article I blogged about + what Regine thinks about it.

WiFi surveillance tool: WiFi Watchdog

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WiFi Watchdog is a server-based software that detects, monitors and secures 802.11-based wireless networks (WLANs). According to the website, it's meant to "enforce "No Wi-Fi" policies as well as integrate with any existing Wi-Fi equipment to stop the increasing number of security threats not addressed by authentication, encryption or VPNs.". Here are some the features:

WiFi Watchdog creates a virtual location-based firewall around facilities and prevents unauthorized access from attackers attempting to break into a 802.11 WLAN using high-gain antennas, spoofed MAC addresses, broken encryption keys, stolen credentials, and stolen devices.

distinguishing true rogue devices in your building from nearby devices that are outside your facilities, eliminating volumes of false-positives signaled by other wireless IDS tools. WiFi Watchdog immediately identifiies the precise physical location of any unauthorized access points, ad-hoc networks, or soft access points within your facilities

WiFi Watchdog's flexible alerting architecture provides extensive intrusion detection capabilities. WiFi Watchdog identifies and locates an array of wireless attacks including MAC Spoof, MAC Storm, Man-In-The-Middle and Denial of Service attacks. Alerts identify the physical location of the source of the attack.

Here is the interface to manage this WiFi surveillance:

Their point is that "WiFi Watchdog Restores the Walls ":

Why do I blog this? even though I don't like this wifi boundaries thing, the tool seems to be interesting in terms of the data you can extract to understand how WLAN networks are used in physical places; relevant visualization might be computed from that. From what I saw it seems to be possible to have some histograms and pie charts that depicts information like channel usage or devices locations.

Alternate Reality Games in Gamasutra

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It's very refreshing to see that Gamasutra is now giving more room to alternate reality game in this review by Adrian Hon (the article is dated from May 9, 2005). The author beings by stating that the first ARG was the marketing material for the movie A.I. (2001), with a credit for a "Sentient Machine Therapist" called "Jeanine Salla". People who googled this name found that she worked at a university. Bangalore World University in 2142... and all of this lead into a curious puzzle. The article also presents example such as "I love Bees" and "The Beast".

Alternate reality games shouldn't be seen as a panacea for developers. Like any other story or game, it's easy to create a bad ARG but difficult to create a great one. By treating ARGs simply as promotional bolt-ons to a game, to be developed by an entirely separate team, is a surefire route to disappointment. Though it may seem risky to invest such trust in something that seemingly has little to do with your main product other than perhaps being a special kind of advert, ARGs have the potential to become a fundamental part of a game's experience, growing the story and universe, and attracting and engaging players long before - and after - the game's release. This potential will only be realized if game developers take the leap of integrating ARGs fully into the development process and the game itself, and most importantly, use their imagination.

Why do I blog this? I like the fact that ARG is an interesting way to design games by using existing and simple situations (technosocial or not) to create a compelling game exeprience. However, I am not sure (video)game companies understood the potential of this (some says it's too 'far' from their core business).

Objects that blog!

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Tonight I had an interesting debate with Julian about the notion of 'objects that blog' (he calls them blogject), that is to say artifacts that would upload their story up to web. Thy would report the history of interactions the object had with people. It's something very intriguing and close to Bruce Sterling's idea of spime. Julian wrote an insightful post about it. This is part of a project he's carrying out for his seminar on Location-Based Mobile Media. The only example I found is not really a blog but it's a lamp which can show a history of persons who have entered a specific room; this history can be queried from the lamp’s web page.. It's called the Aula lamp and the description can be found in this document about the whole Aula Cooltown project.

Talking about it with Alex Pang from the IFTF, he advised me to check the work of Phoebe Sengers from Cornell Unversity. For instance this project is somehow close to the idea of an 'object that thinks' in the sense that it's a ubiquitous computing system that monitors a home's emotional climate and provides open-ended feedback about it to users:

The Home Health system, a collaboration with Bill Gaver and Michael Golembewski at the Royal College of Art, London, will be a ubiquitous computing system that monitors a home's emotional climate and provides open-ended feedback about it to users. Everyday household objects are wired with sensors. The resulting sensor data is used to develop a model of the current emotional climate of the people living in the home. Once a day, the user receives a list of suggestions from the system of emotional issues that s/he might wish to consider. (...) being open to interpretation and also reflecting accurately the current emotional state of the home as represented by the sensors.

Why do I blog this? to keep trace of these thoughts, since I find this blogject tremendously exciting!

Spam a selection of search engines with fake web searches

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Ghostwriter is an interesting application developed by Sebastian Campion:

Ghostwriter is a browser-application that can be used to spam a selection of search engines with fake web searches. The search engines are being monitored by keyword marketing companies that collect data about search trends for commercial exploitation - such as dotcom businesses incorporating popular keywords into phony web pages as a way of hijacking hits.

Ghostwriter is a reaction against the commodification and misuse of web searches. It can be used to infiltrate the marketing-surveillance data by running repetitive fake web searches that fools the surveillance software into believing that a sudden trend is taken place.

People are encouraged to anonymously write a poetic, political or simply obscure sentence, submit it as a search and then run the application for a while. After a few weeks - regardless of how absurd a fake search is - it may begin to show up in websearch popularity lists and similar keyword based web pages, thus effectively exposing the spies.

Locate and destroy RFID

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What an interesting device! RFID washer: "RFIDwasher finds RFID tags and “electronically washes” it, thus protecting your privacy. (...) It disables the tag using patented prioprietary technology (...) it is designed to destroy all tags that you will find on everyday objects – these are known as passive tags. It is not designed to destroy active tags which are used in industrial applicatio"

An impressive mecha

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This mecha is very impressive, it's taken from the last issue of IEEE Spectrum in which there is an article about the rise of exo-skeletons:

The colossal, 5.5-meter-high, 1360-kilogram Mecha exoskeleton sits in Carlos Owens's backyard in Wasilla, Alaska, its legs locked into position to prevent the hydraulic fluid that helps move the monster's limbs from losing all pressure. Powered by an 18-horsepower (13.4-kilowatt) Briggs & Stratton engine, Mecha cost Owens US $25 000 and took about a year and a half to build. This past May, Owens climbed into the pilot seat and took Mecha for its first walk: half a dozen steps, each measuring about 20 centimeters.

There is also a website about this project with some video footage.

Good paper about the rise of exo-skeletons

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A very good review of the existing exo-skeletons in the IEEE Spectrum: The Rise of the Body Bots by: Erico Guizzo and Harry Goldstein:

Today, in Japan and the United States, engineers are finally putting some practical exoskeletons through their paces outside of laboratories (...) At long last, exoskeletons, the stuff of science fiction, are on the verge of proving themselves in military and civilian applications. Strap-on robotic controls for the arms and hands—used to remotely operate manipulators that handle nuclear material, for example—have been around for quite a while. But the new anthropomorphic, untethered, and self-powered exoskeletons now strutting out of labs aren't just a bunch of wearable joysticks. They marry humans' decision-making capabilities with machines' dexterity and brute force. They've got the brains to control the brawn.

What's relevant is that they mention the limits:

These efforts ran into fundamental technological limitations. Computers weren't fast enough to process the control functions necessary to make the suits respond smoothly and effectively to the wearer's movements. Energy supplies weren't compact and light enough to be easily portable. And actuators, which are the electromechanical muscles of an exoskeleton, were too sluggish, heavy, and bulky. (...)

You're not likely to see exoskeletons battling extraterrestrial monsters anytime soon. But before long, it might not even occur to you to gawk at the sight of a person strapped to an exoskeleton bringing home the groceries or going for a stroll in the park.

Check this impressive example developed in Japan by KANAGAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY:

>Why do I blog this? This is an interesting trend in HCI and the article is a great summary of people like me who just wanted to know more about this. I like the fact that the introduction starts with mentioning Robert Heinlein's Starship Troop because it's for me the first reference I ran across about exo-skeletons.

Simon effect: location and decisions

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The Simon Effect is one of those interesting cognitive phenomenon. Here's the definition by CogLab:

The Simon effect refers to the finding that people are faster and more accurate responding to stimuli that occur in the same relative location as the response, even though the location information is irrelevant to the actual task (Simon, 1969). Studying the Simon effect gives us insight into a stage of decision making called "response selection." According to information processing theory, there are three stages of decision making: Stimulus identification, response selection and response execution or the motor stage.

More about it: Simon, J.R. (1969). Reactions toward the source of stimulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 174-176.

Agent Modeling in Marketing

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A curious article in Forbes about using a SimCity-like simulation as an inspiration for the next Coca-Cola or Unilever marketing campaign:

William Bean, a research director at Pepsi-Cola North America, is fascinated by vending machine use in a mythical suburban office. There 35 sales, technology and administrative employees work, gossip and quaff lots of soda.

These thirsty workers are characters in a simulated test market on Bean's desktop computer in Purchase, N.Y., and they are supposed to give Bean, a former biologist, insight into soda consumption. The employees, or "agents," as they are called among computer-simulation experts, are programmed to act like office staffers and consumers. They are directed to move and interact in response to simple rules (drink when thirsty, for example) but with an element of chance injected. It's a toss-up whether an agent, confronted with a vending machine in an office lobby, will buy a soda.

SimCity for marketing managers. Thus does Pepsi aim to study how customers react and adapt when it changes the number and locations of vending machines in the office. It hopes to take some of the guesswork out of placing the machines.

Ok why not but what is suprising is this, isn't it too emphatic????

It is like a real test market, only faster and cheaper. (...) The analytical technique, which is like a videogame without controlling players, helps companies forecast consumers' individual and collective response to new product offerings, price changes, media buys or marketing pitches. It also tracks how the agents influence one another, a big selling point as marketers seek to understand and sway targeted groups of consumers by using specialized appeals, such as word-of-mouth campaigns.

Melted Barbies by David Kime

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I recently discovered the work of David Kime through the great blog strange new products. I like this DIY vision:

His sculptures, made of chicken wire, yarn, melted crayons, shredded plastic buckets and aluminum cans, doll heads and other found objects, represent a kind of exorcism of the demons which have plagued his subconscious mind.

This "Pre-hysteric # 26" made up of "Doll Parts, melted crayons, and mixed media" is awesome:

The use of video to study children's interaction with tangible devices

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Studying children’s interactions with tangible devices: How will the video help? by Emanuela Mazzone, Rebecca Kelly and Diana Xu, Paper for an Interact 2005 workshop "Child Computer Interaction: Methodological Research":

Abstract: In this paper we describe a pilot test on how to gather requirements for children’s technologies. An activity was planned to explore the potential of tangible devices in children’s learning. The main aim of the pilot test was to understand, by observing and analysing children’s interaction with the objects, if the activity planned was effective for requirements gathering. The activity was observed by the researchers and video recorded. The analysis of the video was conducted by looking at verbal records, gestures and body language and the general interaction of the children with the objects, the researchers and each other. Outputs of what can be elicited before and after the video analysis were compared in order to see what more could be drawn out from a video analysis. It was concluded that the use of multiple analytical methods was essential to provide useful output to inform the design process.

Conclusion: We conclude that observation in the field is necessary to have the overall perception of the activity in the context but needs other methods to support it, especially in a situated activity where lots of elements are involved at the same time.

The analysis of the video adds a lot of useful information that is not possible to get in other ways otherwise but it can also give an incomplete picture of the research. The physical environment and all its elements may not be captured effectively, the possibility of technical faults makes it risky to rely solely on video, and the use of video may affect the behaviour of the participants and therefore bias any results.

Why do I blog this? conclusions are interesting but I don't understand this assertion:

"With no existing structured methodology for video analysis, the researchers agreed upon which aspects of the video to focus upon. This was based on the aim of the analysis: which was to examine what added value could be gained from video compared to what had already emerged from the observation and data analysis. "

Of course it's useful to examine what would be the added value of using video (we do that on some projects involving kids testing tangible devices) but it's wrong that there is no structured methodology for video analysis (see what psychology or ethnography do with video. Both fields offer plenty of methodologies to meet this end).

Taking users' needs into account and not giving them sth useless

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Lars Erik Holmquist's column in ACM's interactions is always very refreshing. This month he's tackling an interesting issue in designing applications for a certain niche: policemen and he is wondering about people who found it useful and effective to give them computers in their cars.

It seems the people who made the police-car system were fixated on the idea of a computer, whereas the policemen just have a job that needs to be done. And it is not at all clear to me that any new computer interface would actually make that job easier. Perhaps the policemen do not need a computer at all; they just need some way of taking notes and passing information along to each other. If so, a small piece of whiteboard could be the best—and certainly cheapest—solution. (...) any policemen have installed their own piece of information technology: a small cut-out piece of whiteboard-like material that goes on the dashboard, in the same place where the computer screen would have been. They use this to scribble important information when they are sent on an assignment, to take notes when talking to a colleague on the radio, to write down orders for pizza, and to pass information along to the next team that is going to have the car. When the information has been used, it is easily wiped off. None of this functionality is available in the in-car computer.

The author advocates for a user-centered approach to design proper applications that would fit policemen's needs. I really like the comparison between the two systems (on the left: a commercial police-car computer—expensive and rarely used and on the right: The policemen's own IT solution—a small piece of plastic for taking temporary notes.)

More about the tech conference we organize

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As already mentioned here last monday, Laurent, myself and others are working on a Lift (Lift06). There will be plenty of interesting persons like Cory Doctorow (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Robert Scoble (Microsoft), Euan Semple (BBC), Xavier Comtesse (Avenir Suisse), Régine Debatty (WMMNA), Jeffrey Huang (Harvard), Matt Jones (Nokia), Pierre Carde (Lyon Game), Chris Lawer (OMC Group), Stefana Broadbent (Swisscom Innovation), Michel Jaccard, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal (23), Stefano Mastrogiacomo, Emmanuelle Richard, David Galipeau (UNAIDS), Aymeric Sallin (Nano Dimension), Paul Oberson (DIP/CICR), Jean-Luc Raymond (Microsoft), Pierre Dillenbourg (EPFL). And even though Regine did not mention it, she will give us a talk ;)

The point of this event is that there is a need in Switzerland/Europe for events that addresses technology usage from different points of view: business, research, geeky. We wants this to be a forum in which people could meet each other to be aware of what's going on in the field of emergent technologies used in various domains (humanitarian/NGO, interactive art, e-learning, web, security...).

Today we had different meetings about it with a swiss think tank + local online news website + a local newspaper that we want to be a partner for the events. The communication is starting smoothly