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The Guardian reviews a book that argues that our privacy is under threat by increased digital surveillance.
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| Posts in category 'Ubiquitous computing' |
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9 May 2008
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7 May 2008
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The French magazine Chronic’Art recently interviewed Adam Greenfield (Nokia’s new head of design direction) about his recent book Everyware and ubiquitous computing in general.
An English version of the interview can be found on Greenfield’s blog. |
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3 May 2008
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Here is my selection on mobile banking related papers presented at CHI 2008.
(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.) From meiwaku to tokushita!: lessons for digital money design from Japan [abstract] Human-Currency Interaction: learning from virtual currency use in China [abstract] UbiPay: conducting everyday payments with Minimum User Involvement [abstract] |
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3 May 2008
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Here is my selection on security related papers presented at CHI 2008.
(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.) Love and authentication [abstract] Human-in-the-loop: rethinking security in mobile and pervasive systems [abstract] |
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30 April 2008
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Nokia press release (dated 29 April 2008):
- Photos of the concepts |
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13 April 2008
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| All videos of the conferences at the Bruce Sterling curated Share Festival that recently took place in Turin, Italy, are now online.
Aside from Bruce Sterling, exhilarating discussants were Massimo Banzi, Julian Bleecker, Donald Norman and Marcos Novak, to name just a few. Manufacturing: From Digital to Digifab Manufacturing Cultural Projects Manufacturing the Streets Dramatic Manufacturing Manufacturing Intelligence Manufacturing Robots Manufacturing FIAT 500 A Manifesto for Networked Objects Manufacturing Digital Art Manufacturing Future Designs Manufacturing Consent From Land Art to Bioart Is Life Manufacturable? Two Architectures: Atoms and Bits Share Prize Ceremony |
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12 April 2008
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Julian Bleecker has decided to join Nokia’s Design Strategic Projects Studio.
Julian and (LIFT conference’s) Nicolas Nova are the co-founders of the Near Future Laboratory where client work focuses on developing emerging and conceptual design-technology for new interactive experiences. Jan Chipchase and Duncan Burns are his colleagues in the studio. In a long post on his blog, he explains why he made this decision:
Julian was recently in Turin, Italy, as a guest of the Bruce Sterling curated Share Festival, and I met him at a small party organised by the Turin-based participatory planning firm Avventura Urbana. In his post, Julian also gives some background on the Studio:
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11 April 2008
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The Economist asked Nokia’s “user anthropologist” Jan Chipchase to self-document his nomadic life in Tokyo and Seattle, taking pictures and leaving phone messages.
The video is part of The Economist special report on mobility and “digital nomads”. |
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11 April 2008
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On Apr. 9, France Telecom’s Orange mobile, Internet, and TV unit unveiled a service [”Orange Cinéma Séries“], set to be introduced in the fourth quarter of this year, that will let subscribers get premium movies from Warner Brothers and HBO and swap them among their PCs, TVs, and all manner of portable devices, including mobile phones.
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10 April 2008
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The Economist newspaper has published a special report on mobility, wondering what the social effects will be.
Sources are some of the top people in the field (many of whom are frequently written about on this blog). Our nomadic future [leader article] Nomads at last Labour movement The new oases Family ties Location, location, location A world of witnesses Homo mobilis |
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2 April 2008
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“By 2020 the terms ‘interface’ and ‘user’ will be obsolete as computers merge ever closer with humans,” is the first sentence of a short article on the BBC News site.
According to the BBC, “it is one of the predictions in a Microsoft-backed report drawn from the discussions of 45 academics from the fields of computing, science, sociology and psychology.”
Read full story The report the BBC refers to are the proceedings of HCI 2020, a forum organised by Microsoft Research, that brought together leading lights in computing, design, philosophy of science, sociology, anthropology and psychology to debate, contribute to, and help formulate the agenda for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in the next decade and beyond. It can be downloaded here (pdf, 3 mb, 100 pages).
Speakers at this invitation-only event that took place in Seville, Spain, were Barry Brown (Glasgow University), Matthew Chalmers (University of Glasgow), Thomas Erickson (IBM, T.J Watson Research Centre), David Frohlich (Digital World Research Centre), Bill Gaver (Goldsmiths College), Adam Greenfield (New York University, Interactive Telecommunication Program), Lars Erik Holmquist (Swedish Institute of Computer Science), Kristina Höök (Stockholm University), Steve Howard (Melbourne University), Scott Jenson (Google), Matt Jones (Swansea University), Sergi Jorda (University of Barcelona), Rui José (University of Minho), Joseph Kaye (Cornell University), Wendy Kellogg (IBM, T.J Watson Research Centre), Boriana Koleva (University of Nottingham), Steven Kyffin (Philips), Paul Luff (Kings College), Gary Marsden (University of Cape Town), Tom Moher (University of Illinois), Kenton O’Hara (HP Labs), Jun Rekimoto (Sony, Interaction Lab), Tom Rodden (University of Nottingham), Yvonne Rogers (Open University), Mark Rouncefield (Lancaster University), Wes Sharrock (University of Manchester), John Thomas (IBM, T.J Watson Research Centre), Michael Twidale (University of Illinois), Alessandro Valli (iO), Geoff Walsham (Judge Business School, University of Cambridge), Steve Whittaker (Sheffield University), Adrian Woolard (BBC Future Media & Technology), Peter Wright (Sheffield Hallam University), and Oren Zuckerman (MIT), as well as Christopher Bishop, A.J. Brush, Jonathan Grudin, Richard Harper, Andrew Herbert, Shahram Izadi, Abigail Sellen, Alex Taylor, Jian Wang, and Ken Wood of Microsoft Research. On the website of Microsoft Research Cambridge you can read a really good interview with Richard Harper, the conference organiser. Here are a few quotes:
(also via Adam Greenfield) |
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21 March 2008
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Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, will be moving to Helsinki in August and begin his new role as “Head of Design Direction with Nokia’s design staff, with a remit for the service and user interface domain.”
Says Greenfield: ” I’ll be working on some terribly exciting and important problems, with people for whom I have a tremendous amount of admiration (and in many cases personal fondness of long standing), in a context where our efforts together might actually make a difference.” Congratulations, Adam! (via IntoMobile) |
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20 March 2008
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A new Logitech study concludes that a quarter of European homes only have one person who can work everything.
(via UsabilityNews) |
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14 March 2008
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When Users “Do” the Ubicomp is the great sounding title of an article by Finnish researcher Antti Oulasvirta in the March-April issue of Interactions Magazine.
The article builds on the work done by Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish, and in particular their article Yesterday’s Tomorrows. Like them, Oulasvirta argues that there are two ubicomps: the idealised one presented at conferences and the “real ubicomp”, described as “a massive noncentralized agglomeration of the devices, connectivity and electricity means, applications, services, and interfaces, as well as material objects such as cables and meeting rooms and support surfaces that have emerged almost anarchistically, without a recognized set of guiding principles.”. This infrastructure is therefore “not homogenous or seamless, but fragmented into several techniques that the user has to study and use.” He then takes his analysis a step further and actually shows “the many ways in which it is the users who have to ‘do’ ubicomp; that is, actively create the resources for using an application in a heterogeneous, multicomputer environment.” Oulasvirta concludes with “a laundry list of approaches to improving ubicomp infrastructures:”
To read the entire article, you need an ACM Digital Library subscription. |
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7 March 2008
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Today Torino World Design Capital published an interview I recently did with Bruce Sterling. This time not about spimes, ubiquitous computing or digital fabrication, but about his experience with the city where he lived for the last six months.
Bruce likes Torino and in this interview he gives quite a few reasons why. He goes into much detail about why “Turin is really a 21st Century” and how “it has somehow managed to deal with problems that many, many other cities, regions, cultures and nations have not yet faced up to.” “Turin,” he says, “is one of those places that appeal to my temperament. If I were an Italian person, I would likely have been a Turinese.” He also shares with us a content of a new story he has been writing:
Bruce is now in the last days of preparation of the Share Festival that he has been curating. Come and see it if you can. The interview is suffering a bit from poor layout and it is not so easy to see what my questions are, for instance. All the links have also magically disappeared. I hope they will fix it soon. |
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5 March 2008
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| Darren Waters of BBC News recently visited Nokia’s scientists and researchers at their lab in Palo Alto to talk about the future of mobile phones in three, five and eight years, and also beyond that.
The first thing he highlighted is the fact no-one at Nokia calls the devices phones anymore; they are multimedia computers. He was shown three projects being developed at Nokia’s labs around the world, two of them in Palo Alto. |
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27 February 2008
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Donald Norman is probably one of the most prominent guests at the upcoming Piemonte Share Festival, curated by Bruce Sterling.
Norman will be part of a panel on Saturday afternoon 15 March entitled “Manufacturing Future Designs”. The many conferences of the festival are delving into all kinds of variations of the overall “manufacturing” theme: Manufacturing Cultural Projects; Manufacturing the Streets; Dramatic Manufacturing; Manufacturing Intelligence; Manufacturing Robots; A Manifesto for Networked Objects; Manufacturing Digital Art; Manufacturing Future Designs; Manufacturing Consent; and Is Life Manufacturable? Speakers and guests are many, including Montse Arbelo, Andrea Balzola, Massimo Banzi, Luis Bec, Gino Bistagnino, Julian Bleecker, Chiara Boeri, Stefano Boeri, PierLuigi Capucci, Stefano Carabelli, Antonio Caronia, Paolo Cirio, Gianni Corino, Lutz Dammbeck, Luca De Biase, Kees de Groot, Hugo Derijke, Giovanni Ferrero, Fabio Franchino, Joseba Franco, Piero Gilardi, Owen Holland, Janez Jansa, Nicole C. Karafyllis, Maurizo Lorenzati, Mauro Lupone, Giampiero Masera, Motor, Ivana Mulatero, Daniele Nale, Anne Nigten, Donald Norman, Marcos Novak, Gordana Novakovic, Giorgio Olivero, Claudio Paletto, Luigi Pagliarini, Katina Sostmann, Stelarc, Bruce Sterling, Pietro Terna, Franco Torriani, and Viola van Alphen. |
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27 February 2008
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25 February 2008
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A new book was published (and is available free online) on what might be happening to our out privacy and ultimately reputation in an age of ubiquitous personal information.
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
(via Demos) |
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24 February 2008
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