French Mac OS X Diamond touch libs?

Looks like it must check this out at some point.

I must also check out  the update to DiamondTouchLib - looks like people have been 

working on it. 

Slight change of Tack

After talking to Yvonne ( and her I've just been a CHI reviewer knowledge). 

There was a change in focus on the ambient visualisations. 

1. No indication about fitness no 'message' just data. 

2. The display becomes 'hybrid' one visualisation down stairs and one physical one up stairs. Would go down well at CHI. 

3. Do this in March

4. Get Richcie to help build. He will be coming over in March. 

One visualisation would be using an inflating balloon. 

The other pre-study goes in Jan as planned - aim for pervasive. 

Ambient displays

Paul finally saw some of the analytical tools applied to the Jenny Lee Building.  I think he was quite impressed. 

Definitely thinks there is a short ( one week ) study to do with 4 displays each positioned in a different place which possesses a different spatial property. 

Intreasting page about tables

Got this from Yvonne - intreasting to think about the kinds of things people are doing with tables.

Presentation and media wall

Did the presentation about how the multi touch worked this morning. Jeff to ill to finish text system in time to do experiment.poo.

Interface ideas of the day

Standing in front of the media wall

 

1. using face tracking to turn a 3d in accordance to the position of the user to the space.

            Visualisation of the  department as a tree.

2. using face tracking to drive a Amazon like interface – moving closer gives up more detail and moving back zooms out. Moving left/right changes position of zoom. Implies a more liniear interface as you only have one pan dimeion not too.            

            Perhaps something to do with a time line… calendar of papers or outputs or activites.

3. Group of eyes tracking you as you go by ( provide and face. If you look at the display you get friendly smile and possibly a comment from the interface.

 

I told Catrina and Theo that I should really do an introduction to space syntax theory for non architects. They agree it would be good to have a single introduction especially one that bridged the vocabulary gap with areas like transport planning 

Busy

So busy time. I've got a talk tomorrow. Jeff has been Ill and is leaving to the US on Thursday. Maria is leaving a week on wednsday this doesn't leave much time to generate data and get M to process it - poo.

We might use M to do some observations on the footfall project. Had a chat with Paul. We are going to answer two questions 

1. Does the visualisation cause any changes 

2. Does the properties of the isovist give rise to any interesting observations. Simple area will not say much. Spikyness would be non  obvious So need to identify two location with same area but different spikeness values.

Crowd computing interaction I'm going to CHI.

Horray!

Congratulations! We are happy to accept your submission for the CHI

2009 workshop on Crowd Computer Interaction.  We hope you are as excited about

this workshop as we are.  Included in this email is some feedback on

your submission. Please use the comments you receive to make changes

to your submission as you see fit. If you choose to do any revisions,

final submissions are due Monday, December 15.

Map

Odd thought which I don't know quite where it should go. 

I've been thinking about the map interface in Java a fair bit recently and the thing that does shock me is there is no publicly available implementation of map backed by a database or possibly file. OK this would only be for and largely hetrogenious simple classes (Int,String,Float, and groups there of - so no complex binary trees).  But the code would look like this 

Map myPhonemap = new MySQLMap( 'DatabasesName','user','password' , append); 

myPhonemap.put("bob",555343330); 

myPhonemap.put("Alpha",40232302);

Integer bobnumber = myPhonemap.get("bob");

// print all phone numbers

for( Integer who: mymap) 

{ 

System.out.println(Integer);  

} 

Objects put into the address book would be 'weak' that is the objects would be weakly held and if all other references disappear then they would be garbage collected. Equally when an object is returned it is created a new (but could be cached but that might be confusing).

Needs large amout of reflection could but would work. Could also create a database backed vector. 

Ghost mirror

I was wondering what you could do with the face detection system and I thought about about creating a ghost wall. 

The system identifies  or looks for faces and then occasionally it grabs a face/profile then stores it away for later use. Later when someone looks at the code it uses the non motion region to then clip and paste in one of the old faces which has been made transparent ( ghost like).  The idear is to see the world as it was/is so people can leave tracks in the building. Perhaps the older the image is the more it gets faded/bleached. 

A nice quick art project perhaps for the new wall. 

What else - 3D or 2.5 visualisation tracking the face ( makes it look 3d as you move your head)

OpenCV Yum

How lovely a version of openCV done for processing  and java. Lots of good examples. 

Documentation

I was looking at this documentation when I realised what java doc needs is hints on expected squences. 

@Example - 

Code example 

@EndExample

and 

@generally follows @thign

@generally is followed by 

@generally first

so 

for f.open

@generally first 

@generally is followed by f.write or f.read

for f.write 

@generally follows f.open

@generally is followed by f.close

f.close

@generally follows f.write or f.read.

@generally ends 

Its done.

19-Nov-2008 12:23:16  the time I moved the final sensor mat on the stairs. This should be getting some good 'gold' records from now on. I'm thinking of leaving the sensor in for another week of testing.

More glassy idears

We had a meeting today about getting another study underway.  This time thinking about horizontal vs vertical spaces.

Afterwards I passed through the old department and saw a couple of foldable tables which might be nice to make a semi-portable reatavision table. 

Got to thinking about making a multi-touch surface using a projector against a large sheet of glass with tracing paper as the projection surface. Could we track fiducials in the IR from behind the glass. The problem is that the markers would not 'sick' to the vertical surface. Useful for manipulation but not objects. 

I'm wondering what kind of interface I could build with that - perhaps something for NATS. 

Jeff said something quite profound - we should stop thinking about technologies and think about user studies. 

I also worked on the audio interface as a relax/quickie paper. I think I have enough voices for a run through. 

Final sensor installed

I took out the sunspot sensor and replaced it with an arduino using Firmata and processing to capture the data and post it to the central server. 

I was expecting things to take a while and for a moment had a problem with what I thought was a cable not working - but I think it was something else.  

Some conversation about new vidieo wall. 

Java persistence thought

I had a thought about Java there are number of persistent object systems and database links but my perception of them is that they are all rather complicated ( to define the relations between the two). 

I'm wondering if it would be better to think about making databases that look like a collection class. For example you might say

Map m  = new DatabaseMap( Address.class, // so we can make new ones. 

"mySimpleAddressDB" ,// name of table defaults to stored class name  

"username" , "pasword" // with standard defaults.

DatabaseMap.MYSQL_driver ) // database driver to use 

m.put( 34 , jonAddress ) ; // inserts  0verrides 

m.update( 34, jonAddress ) ; // update this item 

jonAddess = m.get( 34) ;  // override fetch 

for( Address a : m ) { println(a.toString(); } // look over whole table. 

for(DBMapQurey itter = m.itterator('WHERE name like 'bob') ; itter.empty(); a = itter.next())

{ 

println(a.toString(); 

} // extension to implement filter. 

This the map would look like a map to a programmer but operate exclusively on disk base storage. The Map uses methods of the class to get the values for address and gets/sets them. 

This would be a zero configuration approach to databases but limit people to simple objects. Worst case use annotations ( @db_field_name('INDEX' )  or @db_IS_PRIMAY_INDEX to help line up information between the class and the database.

Shurly someone must have done this -but what is it called?

Visible light filter or Guppy camera

http://www.maxmax.com/aXNiteTreeFilterComparison.htm

Nexus sensor integrated.

I managed to integrate the Nexus sensor into the system - this meant simply re-loading code. The problem with this was that people kept stopping and asking me what I was doing ( I did have the floor up). 

I spent ages trying to get the think working and kept getting connection not accepted. Eventually I discovered the code had the wrong port. 

Finally I found I didn't reboot sleepless so the laptop fell asleep. 

Tommorow I'm going to replace the sunspot with a clone of the ardiuno sensor + move the second pad. 

Need to get a good process running for the update visualisation. 

News on the arduinio ethernet stuff.

Looks like the very nice ethernet shield from Nuelectronics won't run the standard Arduino ethernet libraries from Ardunio central. It does have it's own library which is a little tricky. 

The alternative is to buy the 'offical' ardunio sheild from Smart Projects in Italy. ( 31 Euro - so about 25 pounds plus postage against about 13 plus for a simpler programming experiance. 

I wish they would make the whole thing a bit more explicit. 

I'm thinking of replacing the sunspot with the remote processing/Firmata and running the code hot to the server ( which I got working with sensor 3 today). 

There is also anouther board based on Xport - pricy, and you can't buy it ready made and you have to buy the bits seperatly BUT it does have DHCP working out of the box ( + own mac address). 

I found the make controller  which is a UBS/Ethernet with more memory and DHCP. The interface to the outside world is via OSC (yum) and you cam programming it. Looks to be based on the ARM chip. About £68 + shipping from the US.  So not so bad. Looks very simple to interface to as well. Quite close to my ideal machine in many ways.  Has in built eithernet but no simple digital in(s) only analogue.

idea of afternoon

Put iR sensr in display and count how many people walk infront of display. Strong evidence that the effect is proportional to the numbers of people passing in front.

Ambient displays

This artwork by Susanna Hertrich works well on two levels.

Firstly I like the idea of something embedded into a mirror,  especially in a domestic situation.  A mirror is definitely something you look at or rather glance at something you  might want to consider as you move in and out of the building - this is something the art work side aludes to.

As I think Kay said I think that you need something you don't touch directly. So I like the interface at the bottom of the screen and clearly making a one action interface makes it very approachable.

Secondly as  a very personal interface - you see things about you ( again the art work does well on this). Quite easy to think of a number of less exciting interfaces here - (calendar, appointments). it might be a good time to remind you about you permit the user to do things in a persuasive computing sense. It would also work well as a dwelling interface - you could see a graph of energy use but have that compared to other people you know or are families like yours.

I also liked the animated interface - reminds you how poorly structured most user interfaces are for animation/movement.

Both we and IET have a number of half silvered mirrors - so one could prototype some kind of interface quite simply. As for a shareable I like the notion of a mirror that 'captures' previous glances. You might see pictures of people entering and leaving recently or pictures of your self a year ago.I guess its obvious and it must have been done. Perhaps some combination with that skin colour tracking you could make an nice interface. I have some good face tracking code that might work well for something.

I think i like the more physical waste of time interface.

http://www.susannahertrich.com

/html/chrono_shredder.html

Conversation with jeff - use pinch as a 'selection' mechanism. 

Conversation with Kay  - she tried arm waving (not working) but holding hand near and still until it 'warms' up (visual indicator changed) did work.

Third and Final sensor installed

This morning I stopped off at Maplins to get more cable( yellow just for a change) so I could install the third floor sensor. The sensor is outside the lifts on the second floor.

I'm getting a signal from the sensor but I am getting odd strange new messages now and again - not sure why.

I now have a full array of floor sensors and a good back log of data. 

Sensor 1 will have to be moved, and I think sensor 3 is a bit odd. 

 

Interesting talk.

Managed to get 

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/CallsForProposals/DesignInTheDigitalWorld.htm

in the system. 

Yvonne and the rest OKed the visualisation with a couple of changes ( display fades to much ). The room I need to install in is not being used and I need to get the adunio on the stairs to start talking to the central server. 

more ethernet sensors

PIC MAXI-WEB Server (60 proper dhcp)

Arduino shieild

Floor stickies and more

I think I have a mild cold or flu. Had bad head ache this mornining so didn't stop off to get the wire for the third footfall sensor. Did spend most of the morning doing a review of a nice paper for Chi. 

Did discover I could use aurdio as ethernet device. Down side is it needs a static IP address - which can be organised but is a pain not to have DHCP.

Lent Tsous spair Aurdio for a week or two to experiment with, but might use it to replace the mac-mini in the floor. 

Afternoon was spent bringing Tasous and supervisors Cat/Theo up to date with developments of the projector. Tasous has got to grips with my image processing code. We had a lot of nice ideas of possible interfaces. Everyone seems happy with Putham deadline followed by children and learning paper deadline in Jan. 

Netiom sensor

Well I managed to find the 7805 Voltage regulator and today (despite terrible headache) managed to get the electronics for the third sensor working. 

For some strange reason I'm getting strange signals popping out from the sensor (not timed not triggered not sure why.

 

With the PC from home and more wire I should get the server working in the meeting room on the far side of the building. With this I can begin upgrading the network to start talking directly to the main machine and so get the visualisations working

More useful links on building tables

More useful links on Silicon building for zero force tables. 

Projection screen

Intresting offer of non-de-polarising projection screen material from UCL.  Used to make a stereoscopic screen - temping. 3*3 meters... highly reflective could be good. 

Tables and chairs

Very excellent talk from Gonzalo Garcia-Perate yesterday. He of ArtifcalTrousisum and Making Sense of Space He had some nice chairs he was working on plus some lovely building based stuff not to mention advice on how to get ZigBee working with Aduino. 

I should email him to get info about the Arups group innovation somethign and foresight they sounded quite cool. 

Demoed the table to Yvonne looks quite cool now. I'm definitely leaning towards using Reactorvision as the primary engine. 

Looks like the Putnam visit will be a big deal. Some curiosity in the visualisations and floor stickys. 

The Audon sensor turned up looks good but needs a PC to operate.

Tabletops...

Got reacTIVision and Touche working with the new table. 

Ordered ethernet based sensor from Audon

I quite like to use OSC to drive the iPOd touch to do something with the ecology of devices.

Machines under the floor

I've switched to adunios and despite having problems getting the aduino to talk to Processing via Firmata on the old iBook I think I have something collecting enough data. Do I have enough for the making off paper for processing. I'm not sure. 

I need to talk to Paul about experimental procedure.  

Under floor devices.

I'm building the new circit and have found out why the PC version didn't work. The USB on the PC is very very dicy and unreliable. 

Meanwhile booting old mac up for sunspot but sun claims you need 10.4 (upgrade time) but you also need 10.4 with all the updates... ( slow down load over internet time).

Tabletop thoughts

With the table nearly ready I'm interested in what kinds of experiments we could do. 

1. Large scale interaction - something when we have lots of people engaged.

Possibly something with the ecology of devices in this context

2. 

Should hear more next week.

Google table idea

Thinking about things with google earth I realised that with apple script I could send move messages to GEarth from gestures which I have recognised from the table. 

So could do the whole Jeff Han zooming in but with the table. 

No hint of multi touch what would more than one person get from it. Nothing but good for demos.

Floor system.

Another couple of small set backs for the floor sensors. 

1. Paul went off with his old laptop - hard to set up the other sensors with out it.

2. I lost my key's today so I couldn't get into the lab - not a really bad day did other work but tomorrow is a big staff meeting followed by possible PHD meeting. This slows everything down.

3. I'm short of money other wise I would order the web based sensor stuff.

On the good news front I've put in 2 abstracts for the Space Syntax conference. 

New Table delivered.

Big panic when I got back from Spatial Cognition. I ended up demoing the old fish table to the vice chancellor. 

Chris from Technology pulled out all the stops to get the table delivered. There was a projector problem ( my faulty calculations not his) so I wasn't confident in demoing the new table. While we waited for the evening event I checked out the images on my laptop and the 450 IR system was very bright. Bright enough to track  worked nicely with the new Reactorvision software.

So I'm very excited with the new table - I can think of lots of things to do with it. 

Y likes the idea of new  demos which I'm itching to write. 

Odd whole body experiment.

I was wondering what would happen if you let children loose on a floor based calculator. If you got them to play with the calculator - adding multiplying, subtracting etc but using buttons as big as they were would this be any different or memorable than using a normal calculator? 

Share it 2 - Orbit table

Another idea I had was a table to 'make your own solar system'. 

Simple gravity simulation -might do this on the new table.

ShareIT workshop

We had a workshop generating shareable interfaces. The group 

I was with were thinking about new astronomy exhibits. 

The one I came up with was a simulation of a particle accelerator . You wave your arm through two 'magnets' this throws particles into the system. Different stations have different colours. Fast arm waves make faster particals.

 This sends particles around the system (running round the round room). 

Occasionally these particals collide in a huge explosion of components. 

Lab meeting and large projector

Had some intreasting activity today - We had a lab meeing for most of the morning. Y not to pleased with the huge video projector. She is not sure we can run an experiment in the atrium space - I wasn’t sure we would know if the projector was bright enough until we had projected on the floor its self. Jeff doesn’t think it will be that bright, but projectors don’t get much bigger than this. 

Had a long time running up and down stairs trying to get the mac mini to run with the sunspot. I’ve got Wednesday to get it finished. I also need to get a presentation done for next week. 

Over lunch Y said I should think about doing a trials and tribulations paper about installing the system. Sunspots vs Aduino’s vs Wired board. Should aim for pervasive not pursasive. 

Podcasting experiments

I was reading a student essay on podcasting and while I was had a number of thoughts for experiments. 

1. Use of enhanced sound in podcasting. 

How much do students remember in a podcast? does the kind of information they retain change in a podcast vs written word. It is asserted (Shlosser & Burmeiser/Warbutern) that audio leads to greader understanding and clarification of concepts but with a reduction in 'facts' retention compared written text.  

Pod casts it is said can carry over some of the 'feel' and atmosphere that pure text cannot. 

Experiment: Create two identical podcasts (content wise) first one is a straight audio content ( speeach) the second one includes more 'atmosphere' (sound effects, use of imagery?) . Compare retention.

2. Blended education (Porter 2006) this asserts students need to pull information together and that modern learning methods imply the student is doing more than passive listening. 

Experiment: To identical podcasts but one keeps asking the student to do something ( look up in wiki or follow the podcast and type in what is said). She which has best retention.

3. Isolation ( Lee/Chan 07). The use of voice is suggestive that students form a stronger link to teacher and so less isolated and less likly to drop out. 

Experiment: Two pod casts again Use both enthusiastic and dull voice to see which students are more likely to stop listening too and when.  

Choices

The old PC is behaving weirdly ( strange things happen when screen closes). I'm thinking I would like to get some form of Linux working on it. But then do I use an audio to do the data collection?

I want to get something working quickly so I can work on another method to get the floor sensor working. I'm  tempted to get the MacMini started then think about getting another box (Eze-PC I've borrowed) going.

Command lines

I was chatting to Paul about Ubiquity ( and the new google app). I said that ubiquity was just the new way of doing a command line. We talked about the benefits of command lines (large numbers of things you can do). I like the idea of reinventing the command line so verbs are shared (does Ubiquity do this?). 

For example LOOK at file calls 'more' and LOOK at folder calls 'ls' in unix speak. Paul suggested doing a command line version of Simon's direct combination. I quite like the idea. I think what makes Ubiquity work is that you are in a web browser and you have some kind of context which can help the program help figure out what to do. 

Wiki thoughts

I'm sitting in a meeting about Wikis (Wikies?). 

The thing that strikes me is that there are two features that would be useful which are not currently available. 

1. A view when you can see the text coloured by 

 a) who has edited this (last) 

         b) How old is the text being edited. 

2. We need a wiki based on CVS (or subversion). This way may people can edit simultaneously, with out locking. 

The other thought I find interesting is a web based editor to collaboratively edit code. 

Arduino playground - Xandros

Arduino playground - Xandros

I just checked the floor box and it's not working. I think the PC went to sleep ( I did tell it not to) and lost contact with the board. Looks like I'm not collecting info while I'm away. 

Mean while - did borrow a linix laptop which I think I can use and it looks like the Arduino stuff will work. 

http://www.sunspotworld.com/GettingStarted/

Looks like sunspots will work with Linux too 

Old PC now working.

We have the old PC working!!! 

Success

I finally got the Spot and PC configured and in the floor.  PC was so slow to install but its configured and now running a recording program. More importantly it is suppling the Spot with power (most expensive power supply ever). I'm going to leave this recording while I work on getting the visualisation working.

I'm hoping PC will continue to work with lid shut (I've configured it this way but its a PC who knows). 

I was trying to explain what I was doing to Jeff when I realised my big mistake. If I am trying to persuade people to do something I should be trying to get people to not walk down the corridor chatting on the ground floor and use the other route instead. Eva pointed out this would make a much better paper (doing diffrent  2 experiments not just one).  The technology would have to count people going via the atrium vs those talking while walking through the work space to the meeting room. I think I could measure people with IR monitor and microphone then look for people + noise. This looks moderately simple.  Will think about this when I get back. 

Conversations

Spoke this morning to Nadia - she had brought in a large old laptop to use as part of the experiment (hurray). Nadia's phd is turning out to have a partial spatial bend. I promised to send reference to Ruth's Museum paper to her. She promised to send me some other augmented spaces.

Jeff has moved on to working on getting a version of my idea tree/concept mapping table - but this time done without the physics and in smalltalk (the way it should be:-)).  I mentioned how I wanted to make the items bigger if they were more integrated. We discussed how to get some research out of this. I suggested doing a comparison of physics version against more traditional interface. Debate still goes on. Lets see how this leads. 

Mean while spoke to Paul, he has an intrest in doing a research proposal based on space, ubicomp in schools ( new school building budget is big he tells me) to be honest I'm on for it. I like the idea of building a class room in the new big lab. Thought of the research Erica is doing, fortunately now over lap as yet, but I would like to invite her up to give a talk.

Did some research on persuasive technologies. 

More successes

Went to see the new table in preparation - pretty assume! Promised to drop the screw-thread over for Dave to work on. 

Paul put a conical diffuser on the reactor table this  and it works pretty well. New RV1.4 is very cool (does finger detection). We might use the left over 50 LEDs to form a disuse illuminator. 

Had a good discussion with Simon over/After lunch on grant writing and direction combination. 

Finally managed to get the floor pads in the floor (hard-work) but N didn't come in with PC as hoped. Can't start logging until tomorrow (but will run a test upstairs). 

Also found a link to some multi-touch software people. 

A methodology begins

Had one of those excellent chats with Ruth 

Ruth thinks that doing the persuasive technology front could form a good basis for a grant application to either ESRC (Economic/Social Science Research council) or the MRC (Medical research council). Medical research is interesting, they have lots of money but they have lots of very top notch people applying for it too. Still the point was I got quite excited. 

Then I had an inspired chat with Paul. 

Clearly I want to play to my syntactical strengths so the most natural response here is where to put the display to have most effect. Paul suggested that I pick four locations  (A,B,C,D) with 2 equal or identical isovist properties ( A,C) and (B,D). Run the experiment and check to see if the response ( what people do ) goes up and down in pairs.  (up A,C, down B,D). Clearly there will be some learning effect ( but how much), but the return to previous state should be obvious if people are responding to the technology. 

This would both establish the utility of a syntactical analysis while also doing some persuasive info. Also leaves some legitimacy for doing a grant application (making this the pilot) later on. Thinking about two weeks per state ( 8 weeks in total + 2 weeks for without action comparison). Paul suggested doing  8 + different locations and trying to correlate results against syntactical factors. 

Table progress

Yvonne just left on her hols. I went down to Ikea to buy 15 pound mirror and delivered it + Dell projector to the wonderful people

building the table over in technology.  The only bit they are missing is a vidieo cam - might get cheap webcam while

waiting for good camera to turn up.

NATS-table.

I agreed with Yvonne to make a small NATS demo on the new table. 

The PC second drive is still not working. I told Y I would handle it.

Spoke to our PC fix it guy - he claims it's to do with the computers 'memory', coming over later to fix it. 

Problems Problems Problems (sun spot)

I had a quick chat with Yvonne On the way back I wanted to check if I could send something from the other side of the other door ( answer no). 

 With a stick I probed under the floor and found that there was something softish ( feels like wool insulation to me) under the door to the bridge.  This would make putting a USB cable to the spot nearly impossible. Did I mention that the guy in charge of the building is away for 3 weeks? 

Looking at the problem again I had another thought. I could run VERY VERY long cables under the carpet ( which I can lift up ) and run the along the side of the bridge all the way to the floor box were I could put a MacMini/Adui/connected sunspot.  

I'm going to try making a longer cable and seeing if the current will pass detectable. 

Problems problems problems (sun-spot)

I've been up on the bridge trying to get a radio signal under the floor from the nearest cable box ( next to meeting room on the other side of the bridge to the space next to the staircase.

 Basically no luck there. I can't get a radio signal under the floor (but can get over the floor) This would mean having to expose the sun boxes ( which I'm not to happy doing).  I spoke to the builder - he said there was no block under the floor ( under the door ) which you might have thought being a fire door. Perhaps he might have been wrong - I guess I must check. 

So what are the options now. 

1. Start recording rather than transmitting the data and try to retrieve the info later ( might be a good starting point but negates the interactive side of things). 

2. If there is a space under the door then run a very long USB cable from the sun-spot to a MacMini under the floor. This would solve two problems. First it would mean that the spot or aduino would get power as well as a way of sending info back. I ran the sun-spot last night and discovered that the sun-spot can basically last some of the night - I guess the radio is a power drain. I just checked and you can get 5m USB cables. This assumes you can run something under the door. Now where can I get a long stick?

sunspot problems.

I was testing the radio range today. The spots can't reach up to the second floor (clear line of site). The biggest problem is getting a signal out of  the floor to some were I can get a line to. 

I'm starting to wonder if I might have been better of with an ethernet cable... 

Still no sign of the Xbees. 

Tourist info table.

I thought I would put this picture I made up. I need to pop over to engineering and make sure they have the mirror and LED specs. I know Jeff is having some fun making a reactorvision tourist table thing.

The picture isn't quite right (to low rez?) I wonder why... 

Floor sensor

got the Sunspot working as a floor sensor. Then before I could put the thing in the floor it ran out of power. I'm going to leave recharging over weekend - but don't know how long it will last.

I'm not sure if this big box will fit through the holes in the floor either... 

Sunspots

I've finally mastered getting the sunspots to talk, but the electical side went off the wall

Final and working configuration. 

1. Stick wires directly in the board. 

2. Need gnd, +3volt and D1 ( we are making a divider ) 

Need to check out Maplins - what would they suggest for putting in the board to keep stuck in.

Grant Application progress

Had a meeting with M over the mini grant application I'm putting in. Looks like the original application budget is missing - but I'm moving so slowly likely to be out of date. 

Darrell didn't sign on the dotted line over the application looks like he wants to talk about that. When I went to check the time it looks like I didn't get into his diary so I'm in again. 

I've still got a lot of stages to go through before I can get the application into the grant body! 

Sun spots

The sunspot people came and gave a talk today. I managed to get a loan of 2 +base station. Very nice they have ZigBee + battery so all the communication is sorted out for you (neat). I'm going to build one to do the floor sensing job. I had a meeting with Yvonne about visualising both choice of route (walking/lift) AND had the measurement of building buzz.

Paul is going to sit and draw some tracks through the ground space. 

Odd thought of the morning.

Listerning to the radio news about political approach to handeling the kinds of database problems by junior members of staff. What would happen if you built a tangible interface to a database - columns represented by cards. Place the cards down to make queries. 

Possible to handle privacy issues automatically? 

More hard ware

I've been talking to paul about which hardware to get for the floorstickies project (digit-stickies). Looks like we will get one very powerful projector for the floor and two more for tables (including on LED one). 

Also the Arduino's are turning up with the Xbee transmitters by the end of the month. 

I've left the mac mini running in the floor collecting sound but I have problems remotely connecting to it. Need to sort out a longer cable for the vibration sensor. 

Results from the first Pilot study

1. flat power supply so can close box. 
   
2. longer vibration sensor cabel.
3. add temp./light sensor ( fans come on when its hot) 
4. wireless mouse/keyboard good. 
5. enable ethernet point and run everything remotely. 

Generally went quite well but I'm not sure about the vibration  (stair case) data. Need to enegage this fully on Monday.  

We now have about 2 hours worth of data. 

some progress

I've managed to get the sensor stuff working on the mac mini - the sound + vibration recording. 

Friday morning I'm going to take the stuff upstairs and try recording for a while. The big problem is how to share the data - How to get stuff from the wireless ouguest net to the intra net where I would store my database... 

frustration + joy.

I've been trying a number of ways to get the ambient buzz visualisation system working. I've been beset by set backs - I asked to get hold of an dead lap top as an active sensor but was told to ask for a lone pool machine. The down side is you can't loan them out for a month only a few days. The machine I did loan (PC) as fairly useless - it took hours to get going and then I have prfound problems trying to log on then the internet seemed not to work at all. 

I switched to the mac -mini. Not the best solution as I will have to get the machine out from under the stairs when we have a visit planned next week. I've been having huge problems with the mini- ages to log on( I think its using wireless) and the keyboard stopped working ( batteries died and not more in the lab). Next the mouse (PC mouse) started to behave funny. So I've stolen Paul's he is not into day. But after rebooting and trying to atach ethernet I'm not getting very far. 

I'm currently aiming to put the mac mini + monitor in under the floor ( with security cable) to monitor noise  + vibration on the stairs and while that is in I'm going to get the pressure sensor working with the Arduino which I want to calibrate (along with the other sensors). Ideally I want to contact the mini over the network to check on how it is going (note enable remote access). 

ON the good news front - we have got the money to build the floor stickies stuff. 

State of the building

Down stairs is empty literally no one around. Feels strange. 

Table process

The table sounds like it is going well. The frame is up and the glass ready and the LEDs have arrived. The wood for the top is delayed but the guy doing the building is off for a couple of weeks on Holiday. I'm going to have a quick meeting on Wednesday to check on progress. 

Mean while lots of work on M801. 

Arduino Diecimila one for the shopping list.

Ok so I have done the workshop and very fun it was to.

OK so the  Arduino Diecimila is small computer with sensing inptus/outputs and you can stick the  ArduinoXbee Series2 on. The  ArduinoXbee is a wireless networking forming a mesh - true hard core ubicomp territory. All for 57-61 Euros but you need at least 2 to begin with ( the more the better ).

They also do a bluetooth one.

Very simple to do the observing the building 'buzz' project.

I'm going to keep thinking about these - If i could think of something shareable I'lll talk about it.

Observation of the day

I'm working with headphones on have been scared 3 times when people want to talk to me. 

Uist-fully.

Weirdly once the rebuttal process is over the reviews disappear.  

More on building

Another quite day it looks like. 

I went up stairs Wednesday and couldn't find a secretary (they are in a pool) let alone a academic. I understand the academics working from home but the admin staff? Well this is just likely to be another poor sample. Popped back a couple of times and gone one later.     

IET have installed their informational system + a couple have moved in.  they have nice desks.

 More signs going up on the doors trying to stop people walking thruogh the area. 

Simon says I'm at my desk more.  

Chi papers

Had a nice meeting with Yvonne and the others yesterday. General conversion about papers for Chi. Having spoken again with Paul we think that could be a good paper about the location of the new table. 

New table is to be simple but playful guide to location of people in the new building. Theory is we test it out and see how syntactical view of location applies - good sheep paper. 

Also Y. wants something quick measuring/visualising activity in building. I like notion of doing say slow trails of people + measuring network traffic+noise as an indication of how much people are present. Again I can rework this syntactically plus look at C.Raty stuff. 

More on building

I've decided to make some notes on the new building here. I've been accused of being the only one who likes the new building. I do like the labs should have a lot of fun there and I love showing them off. 

I'm working at my desk at the moment - I think the first thing I find is the quite. Most people are out of the work space so I'm almost alone ( 2 other people) in the ground floor. The space does feel too quite but I guess it is not absolutely quieter than being in a office.

I know intellectually that the building will cause people to work from home more and so should be quite silent.  As people look for adaption processes to cope with the absence of privacy they will naturally spend more time in the only place where privacy remains ( home). 

I'm guessing but I expect some coping policy will evolve - like going in on days when your sure everyone else will be in order to socialise.  

This morning did demo of the ecology of devices to Paul. He like the demo.

I had a quick meeting with P+E about the form of the new table. After meeting with Y it looks like the table should be body hight. Something you could approach and use standing up. Looks like we should go for something that can double up as both an FTIR table and a tangible one.  

I'm going to measure up the current projector for the table rather than wait for a new one. I want to make sure the vidieo cams can be used for tangible reactivsion stuff too. 

Interesting thing about the meeting was that rather than becoming more specific things became more vague. Notice the flow of events, I'm trying to build something on a new table. I wanted to do something more tangible but we are not sure what could go on in the nexus that could be used in a tangible way. So now we have a dual use. The important aspects of the interaction are Y. She wants a circular or elliptical screen so no principle location. 

In truth we have 12 weeks to built a table,write test software, create an experiment and write it up for chi. P talks about doing something more longitudinal, but no one is sure what. At this moment my purpose is to create a boundary object. Something we can all talk about, focus the design process around.   

Y was more specific about doing a planning or tourist information thing. Something for the whole family to play with - planning a visit to MK or something. We also need something in the Nexus but what?

I still wonder if floorstickies might be more productive.  

The process is interesting - there are no clients with a problem. Very little we could apply to the standard process of human computer interaction to. Perhaps as a process this is something new. Technology creates new possibilities but how do turn those possibilities into new products. This is somewhere between the technology push and market pull. How do we identify a problem? Can we see problems when we don't have a solution?I'm not sure we can. Some perhaps, did we know we needed the internet before we had the intenet? I think we have to create solutions to see problems. 

Perhaps generally we can't - global warming is something where we see the problem with no apparent solution to guide our perception. For other things we use the affordances of the machine to guide our perceptions for what is a living difficencey.  

Could this be the start of a new strange processes.

self observation of the day

Just getting the new coffee table experiment working. 

While I was I noticed that if I  scroll using the apple touch pad then the text appears on the baby monitor. 

I wonder how long before  I noticed this going on. Interesting that I was able to associate between two completely separate and unrelated things.  Was it a sound/ action thing. Could I notice the same between vision and action more quickly? 

Ruby on rails

This isn't about Ubi-comp. I just needed somewhere to make notes about the rub  on rails course. 

the central concept is to see how fast and light we can make the production of a new course. IN this case we are producing 5 points post grade ( assume you can program ) course about ruby on rails. 

just had a short meeting about it. What did we conclude

1. Treat the book chapters as the basic units 

questions how quickly can we get students to go through the chapter. 

        What can we add ( additional material) 

2. Interests in deployment  -

 something not done in the book

       need something like Drupal to make mutiple sub domains with seperate version of apache.  

Agreed to talk in 2 weeks time after looking at book again.  

      

Some success

Tried a number of alternatives out and found that having tracing paper UNDER the acrylic top with nothing above does a good job when using portvideo of Open computer vision. 

This does track your finger but needs code to reject large blobs. 

Also had some improvement with the background subtraction for the floor/wall stickies project. 

screen thoughts

We got the Rectivision stuff working on the table with a flood light + diffuser over it + the using tracing paper over the acrylic. 

Getting close to making the table work well in FDIR mode. I think i need to have some baffles to stop the edges leaking light down. I've managed to make the dot go away by tilting the screen so finally I can try upping the threshold to make the work work. 

Also got the basics of floor stickies working and gave demo. 

Heard rumours of large 4M media wall in new building..  

Visit from City University

Just finished a demo to Dr Sara Jones and Professor Neil Maiden. They have a new Diamond touch table and where looking for people who had used them. 

I came in late ( working libary and lost time but Simon phoned me to remind me), but had a nice discussion about using tables/tangibles in the context of user interface elicitation. 

So this was the last in a row of three demos of the fishtable. 

Over lunch Neil mentioned having some contacts with web usability people and I mentioned my intreast in  finding click stream data AND eye tracking in games (apparently not done yet).

Mean while the wrong kind of silicon sheet was delivered - to thick and not squashy! Makes me wonder if working on the vision tracking is better approach. 

Next week are moving buildings! 

some more applications

I have been thinking that two applications I would like to build are a TableTop IDE for paired development (I'm told this is a bad idea so now I want to do it even more). 

The other one was a video observation table used by a group to label the observed actions. 

iphone sdk available

I've been working on the UIST paper and getting side tracked looking at new iPhone developer stuff. All objective C and very swish too, I could get something working quick but I think lots of other developers would have a steeper learning curve. 

Makes me wonder what I might write if I had the inclination to make an application for cash. Something weby mashupy comes to mind but does this use the multi touchness? Some ideas are leaking into my mind but nothing definite. 

In recovery

I have been down with Flu for last 4 days totally unable to move. Now feeling raw but in recovery. UIST is getting too close.

I was wondering about spam. Why hasn't anyone just invented a more secure email protocol one that checks that sender is the sender when sending mail and delivers it by a separate mechanism?

OK you need a new email browser for a while but I guess most people would be happy to do this if it got rid of needless junk email. I'm not asking much, we already need a password to check email why no to send it as well? 

Slow mac slow mail problem

I was wondering why typing was so slow in new Mail program on Lepoard on OS X- turns out that TimeMachine was turned on. I'm surprised this speeded typeing up. 

Cool on line logo website

Very nice  all done in javascript + canvas I'm told (could be wrong). 

Made me realise that this was an form of embodied programming... 

on the good idears front

Paul had a fantastic one which is too exciting to blog about - I must go and check the physics people out to see what they can advise/loan. 

Jeff had a good one to we where discussing the source of noise on the the DTouch table. He said it was electrical noise over the power I said it was background radiation. I pulled the laptop powercable out to prove it and when I did so the noise disappeared from the DTouch signal. Looks like if we could suppress the noise on the power-supply we could get much better recognition without getting into clever signal processing. 

Jeff reminded me it is less than a month be for UIST so I better get a move on with the floor stickies too.

day of good ideas (AKA squeak rant)

The PC died in transit to the show. Jeff wants to use this as an excuse to get USB connection working to table. The down side is that he wants to make it work in smalltalk (in fact more specifically in squeak). I'm quite the cosmopolitan when it comes to computer languages but I'm not sure I want to stick to a ghetto language with out any specific reason to do so apart from Jeff's reluctance to learn anything else. I can hardly blame him, I've seen people resolutely stick to the first language they learnt over a 30 year carrier in computing. 

I love changing languages but have recently come to the conclusion that the reason I change languages is to get access to some new cool library (compiler writers please take note) that lets me code something neat up quick. That said I'm about to go back to C++ to use the open computer vision library but open computer vision is in desperate need of a significantly well written user guide. 

So my research in the next few weeks will lie either with signal processing signals from the diamond touch table or doing real time video processing for gesture recognition and we should do this all in squeak because it is good at using the multimedia processing features (oddly no), you can deliver double click-able applications that conform to the operating system  interface standard that the non programmers on the team can use(no), that lots of people can reuse our library (no), that we can make the program open source by integrating it on to source forge. Basically there is no clear reason to my mind to program this in smalltalk any more than there is a reason to program this in visual basic. 

I'm open to the case to use smalltalk but I need something distinctive that smalltalk has that I can't find anywhere else (translation give me a USP). Don't get me wrong small talk is a good tinkers language, if you out put are papers to conferences rather than code that other people can use( which is the life of an academic so I don't think Jeff is badly trained)  then small talk is the way to go. But I'm not sure this is my or the projects context. 

hobby research page ranking == degree

Hi - Here is one I came up with to night. I know I've always been quite dismissive of that paper on page ranking ( the kind google does to figure out how to rate things) in the GIS journal as a cheap way to do a naff syntax rip-off with out referencing the social logic of space. I basically assumed that the page ranking algorithm would produce the same kinds of output as integration or at possibly choice (sounds choicy when you here the algorithm). 

I was reading a new book on collective intelligence which explained the google page ranking algorithm and was curious enough to put it into webmap at home.  Doing this I was disappointed to find that page rank correlates well with (0.95) with connectivity / control and very badly integration(0.35)choice(0.77)/movement. 

This might not be true for small world graphs ( which axial maps are not). 

Thought I would include map of Barnsbury for your amusement. 

ill but good news

the table arrived but we have to supply our own acrylic and we have to sand the edges down. Looks like a bit of scientific equipment not a table (good and bad) looking forward to making it work should be able to get stuff working for Science fest. 

Tried projecting on to the sample of carpet of the new building and found can project white text on to black carpet. We had a quick session looks like we can combine wall projection (for images?) with floor projection. 

So I am back at work but feeling weak, Dr says it take it easy. 

The Everywhere Displays Project

The Everywhere Displays Project

I met this guy and loved to work - although before they had the camera attached.

I did like the way it made it possible to use a small projector over a large area.

The new building has a long entrance space that would be good to use a number of

movable mirror projectors might be good.

Looking at it I am inspired to think about a highly configurable space. Imagine a room

where the surfaces of projection can be reconfigured. So one large display splits into

two to become separate visualisations  or divides into 4 one for each participant.

Does provide a route for small amounts of high brightness light to be projected onto dark floor.

just came back from Xray - I wonder if you could improve the rates over breast cancer by

having a group of people looking at the image ala-xray of baggaged (the D-touch result).

bad news

two bits of bad news

the really bad news is that the floor of the new building will be near black - very hard to project text on to it. 

the second bad bit of news is that I have pneumonia and will be likely to be off work for a while. 

Eduserv Research Grants 2007-08

Eduserv Research Grants 2007-08

two ideas come up on this. 

1. the online identity - using key strokes to identify you. get money to help test. 

2. Open social graph - possibly some ubicomp table interaction with graph but need some educational angle.

 

3. Something about getting students to build software on line (webIDE) and getting them to build something but recording how 

they do this ( keep storing revisions). Use this to make sure they are the people doing.

4. Using ambient device to notice on line conversations use this to indicate actions.

web2 meets games

So much for my web2.0 meets games idea for mike 

Modelling4All

Computer modelling is playing an increasingly important role in fields as varied as sociology, epidemiology, zoology, economics, archaeology, ecology, climate, and engineering. This project, led by Ken Kahn and involving Howard Noble (both at the OUCS, University of Oxford), will attempt to make such modelling more widely accessible by developing easy to use Web 2.0 services for building, exploring and analysing models, encouraging the development of an on-line community where models and model components are shared, tagged, discussed, organised, and linked to other resources.  Furthermore, the project will explore the possibilities of providing an immersive first-hand experience of the execution of models within Second Life.

Slow interaction

I a meeting yesterday Yvonne final outlined some more of what she meant by slow interaction ( not slow computing ). I am intrigued by the concept, partly we need to understand the notion of time and interaction. For example somethings need to be done quickly (My latoptop swapped last night as I used two large packages this didn't help my concentration ).  Other things need time for reflection. 

The first application I've come up with is the timed tash bin. This would be a simple application that works like the trashcan mac Icon. Except that when you drag a document on to it you give the document at time to live (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 1 quarter, end of finance year , 1 year , 2 years , 5 years ).  So then the document has a count down to that point and at that point it deletes completely. 

The reason for this is that people tend to either flush on putting something in or are like me and leave everything in until I need the disk space. The normal mac trash forces you to either make delete to delete or if you have lost stuff and so you don't flush so automatically.  By giving time for recall, consideration and reflection this might be an example of slow computing. 

In fact perhaps this is more about letting your subconscious work on its time scale. 

Naturally this might be more about slow interfaces letting your subconscious work. 

Odd idea about open plan offices

I was chatting with Nadia and mentioned I'm the kind of person who can sit in the lab space with head phones and work (first academic still I ever gained). 

I mentioned I do have to work to vocalless music when writing. I think its hard for me to process speach and make it at the same time (how to translators work?). 

The Naida and a woman in the room she shares both said music was not good but quite speach was good ( not whispering perhaps more like a party conversation ). I suggested this could go on a very long loop. 

Nadia suggested white noise and I thought about the sea shore sounds. 

Makes you wonder if you could do some quick research on effects of different head phone sounds when concentrating on a task ( something like writing).  I suspect diffrent people would be capable to zone out with diffrent sounds. 

web 2 and games.

Had a conversation yesterday with Mike R about looking into web2.0 and games he was intreasted in some ideas. 

Naturally I keep thinking of web2.0 as the seperate slightly secret ultra high speed academic only network that was being used to experiment with new protocols and applications ( like the Laniea merged meeting rooms). Web2.0 in common parlance is the facilitation of online creation rather than distrbution, but it makes you wonder why these on line webpage generators are not included (or is this web3.0 given that the web2.0 is nothing new technologically).

If we are looking at wikis and social-networking as the basis for web2.0 than I would think that user created content would be the basis for web2.0/game research. So what might this be? Well on line tools for the creation of online games. SecondLife has this to an extent and it has generate a huge economy of people making/buying/clothes bodies/stuff. But is this many to many publishing. So what is the research here?

Usable on line game tools simple for 2d and naturally muds/moos have had user creation for a long time. I thought that possibly it would be good to have some mechanism to let people collectivly get rid of/filer the rubbish ( like youtube). With my inclinations the concept of web/java based 3d editor for a game would be good. 

 

Slow computing

Odd conversation on the bus. We where talking about the days in computing when your compiler would take a few mins to compile and you had to pause and reflect. Or the times when a computation would take a day or two to run. There was something about the sense of liberation that begin forced NOT to use your computer but still feeling like you where working gave you. This required big computation and a non multitasking computer. At my university they had a period when all the computers where switched off on Friday the 13th to stop a particular virus. Again it was quite nice to have a day without machine, no email and no guilt. 

I used to get my students to send in essays in text format so I would get my Mac to read them out - while I listened I would tidy my office and desk and wish I had more regular essay deadlines so I could organise stuff more than twice a year.  

Generally you hate waiting though. Apple have announced a new Mac with a 64 Gb Flash drive. Lower power plus I'm told very fast on the boot up, Someone mentioned a Linux lap top that boots in 2-3 seconds and how this changes the way you think/use the machine.   

People take time to boot up as well. I often wondered what would happen if the operating system took a picture of the desktop just before you switched off and then used the image as the start up screen image. Giving you a chance to pull your thoughts together put your mind back in the state it was in - with the image possibly greyed until it was ready for interaction. Moments later the real (same desktop would return). We do need more automatic open window in open application mechanisms ( Safari 3.0 has restore all last windows which I like alot). 

So sometimes we need speed and hate interruptions - games, while working to a deadline and when having the machine disappear completely and getting a desktop back would be good. 

Like most people I think I was taken by MW's ubicomp paper where he mentioned peripheral or ambient computing a necessity when 1000s of devices are vying for attention  but this appears to be something which hasn't emerged. Doursh had a paper saying this was effectively an economic impossibility - how can you sell a new device that you buy and forget for example mobile phone/ipod. Computing as pumping, heating or electricity, but look at the number of services that have fallen by the wayside - pneumatic air, the failure of widespread garbage disposal in the UK (we recycle/compost). 

Yvonne has mentioned thinking about slow computing - taking things like slow food campaign ( the opposite of fast foot ) which has been applied to slow cities and thinking about what slow computing might mean. 

well thats my 10 mins of reflection over time to get back to doing a paper. 

post demo conversation

The day after the demo day before. 

Had a conversation with Jeff, ended up with the question given we are at such a delicate  time in the evolution of table top technology we must as our selves - what might the killer app for table tops be?  

Object orrientation

I'm having a problem at the moment with trying to find a library routine ( JUST ONE) that can 'Construct a warp transform that approximatively maps the given source coordinates to the given destination coordinates.' 

My opitions are do it from scratch or try to find something in java that does it. The problem is that the only library that does it is 19Mb big with a complex linkage of classes meaning if you add one you have to add them all (practically).  The use of all these helper classes ( my point2d, mymatrix ) makes it all so tempting to try to figure out the code your self. 

Is this a problem with OOP or how we use it. 

pod casting and other things

Yesterday I managed to do my talk at UEL which means I have some people who have done half of the podcasting experiment! 

Worrying meeting with Yvonne looking at what I would say I would do and what I have done (ekk!). 

Meanwhile had interesting conversation with Paul about the flat microphone. I told him I was interested in recording a meeting and using the diagram being made ( or animation there of) as the index into the audio recording. So moving forwards and backwards in time provided the index to the audio in combination with the this is interesting button. 

I also mentioned ( again ) doing interface to the finger drawing program to display the undo que. So if you undo back to a point in time and start drawing again you get a new branch (like a fork) in the display. A new document is just undoing everything, making the root a bush. 

I'm not so sure how to measure what this is doing.... 

On the way home had an interesting idear for a mobile phone. Have a wrist watch with a ring attached ( via small cable ), then if phone rings you just lift you finger to your ear and your wrist to you mouth ( or near to). Use rotating disk on outside of phone to select addresses. Might make picture to show at some point.

Censored by BBC.

I found this news item with a request for your ideas. Most of the ideas on the discussion board were frankly either rubbish or just moaning so I deciced to post some good ones ( just off the top of my head) The BBC will only accept 500 characters and only 2 posts per hour.  So I thought I would put them all hear. 

1.  Central locking for houses (single button keyfob that beeps/lock ALL the doors and windows of your house are closed & locked)
   
2. Device that sets up hundreds of accounts so you can fill on line discussion boards with the same dull message (eg bring down this dull, badly dressed, politically biased government) again and again.
3. A device that filters out unrelated whinging and moaning from discussion boards.
4. A mixture between solar cloche and a clothes dryer so you can leave cloths outside to dry without having to make green house gases to get convenient drying.
5. A gadget that would be an interface to all other gadgets that would simplify their use.(my family cannot make the DVD player play)
6. A gadget that would interface with our programable thermostat that would make it simple to program ( another CO2 saving).
7. A gadget that would eliminate having hundreds of user ids and passwords for lots of websites ( like this one) without having the security compromise of having the same pass word for all of them.
8. A visa card with my picture on that would email/text me every-time money was spent on the card.
9. Computer controlled taxi’s on special routes to solve both global warming and congestion ( like the new system at terminal 5 Heathrow opening this year)  
10. A device that knows your where you are in a city and can summon a taxi to your position. The taxi would be routed by a central computer and statnav to share part or all of your route ( if possible) with 2-3 strangers to reduce the cost/CO2.
11. A diesel based electric hybrid as alternative power train for taxis.
12. A gadget that would identify you and only you on line together with your age. Must have for all child centric websites or any e-commerce.
13. A Drop box (in only) chained outside your house big enough to accept large parcels/objects in standard sizes which digitally signs a electronic receipt to say they have been delivered. ( I hate having to wait in for stuff to be delivered after convience of ordering on internet)
14. An invisible or semi invisible wind turbine to keep the 4x4 county toffs from objecting to every wind farm proposed within 100 miles of them.
15. Mandatory solar panels for all council sponsored swimming pools (average pool heating costs of £180,000 per year should be cut in half + CO2) ( the solar panel is the gadet)
16. A device that shows when/where and how much electricity is being used in the home and by what outlet. Interfaces with other
17. A decent electronic book ( bookpod?)
18. Earrings or head set that reminds you of peoples names.
19. A device that measures both your movement and guesses at the calorific value of your food intake that indicates what you have to do to stop from getting obese. Or just a general device that constantly monitors your body and indicates all kinds of behaviors and sympotms such as stress.
20. A way of controlling your tv/dvd/video etc by gesture ( hand up palm open for stop/quite) so you don’t have to keep hunting for remote controls.
21. Ski lift like devices for the big hills ( they have them for ‘sporty’ people to go skiing why not help the port commuter cyclist).
    
    Just say if you want another 21!
    

Yesterday’s tomorrows:Genevieve Bell Æ Paul Dourish

I'm reading an paper called '

where paul dorish says 

The first possibility is that the ubiquitous computing

vision can never come to pass. The proximate future is a

future infinitely postponed; when we are continually

about to enter a new age, when we are continually

anticipating what happens next, and when our attention

is continually directed over the horizon, then by definition

ubiquitous computing is never about the here and

now. Indeed, within this particular model of a technological

future, it is hard to imagine how we could ever, as

a community, say, ‘‘There. It is done.’’

The second possibility is that ubiquitous computing

already has come to pass. Clearly, of course, we do not

live in ‘‘Sal’s world,’’ as described in the scenario outlined

in Weiser’s paper. But perhaps ubiquitous computing

is already here, but took a form other than that

which had been envisioned. Arguably, and as we will

explore at more length below, our contemporary world,

in which mobile computation and mobile telephony are

central aspects not just of Western commercial endeavors

but also facets of everyday life in the developing

world, is already one of ubiquitous computing, albeit in

unexpected form

Which is kind of irritating. Clearly there is a third possibility that the general view of ubiquitous computing has become too vague and nebulous to permit any thing to be clearly seen as a success or failure. That is if the original paper carries through a nice feeling about what would like to see but in such a permissive way that practically any interpretation goes. At this point it becomes impossible to point to a particular technology as an exlampar of the success or failure of the technology. 

Secondly while there have been a few attempts at what might be clearly inspired by ubicomp ( the orb tech and the rabit thing) you actually need a large number of attempts to create a business to get it right. 

That is just because a business fails you cannot blame the technology ( Pan Am failed and I don't think this proves the failure of air flight, Tower records failed and this does no prove the failure or record or CD, Enron failed but this does not prove that electricity and gas is an irrelevant technology). 

Personally as an outsider I think that ubicomp as a paradigm has failed to deliver any useful technology in exactly the same way that say virtual reality failed. That is not enough people in the field where inspired enough to get the backing to form a company and make sure that the customer got something they would find value in. To get this right takes a large number of start-up people with the right connections, time, commitment, even then most will fail ( think of the number of early computers with only the Commador Pet,Sinclar spectrum and Apple II as profitable survivors. 

Surely this says more about the inability of human computer interaction people to get the design of new technology right (useful or rewarding) than the failure of the vision of ubicomp per-say.