Skype robot

At home Ruth is away a fair amount and I've found it nice for the kids to talk to Ruth via skype.

Its a bit of a faf to set up but the kids feel more connected to her when she can read to them and they can see her.

So my specks for the SkypeRobot



It would be a mobile camera/screen which could be controlled remotely by the remote user ( I got lots of great comments about 'can you bring mummy in here').
The remote user should be able to move the camera/screen too.
I guess the whole thing should be fairly robust and without keyboards but just a 'call' button for the kids....
As plug and play as possible - all you need is wifi and a power point.

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=233
http://www.lynxmotion.com/images/html/build16a.htm
http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=46&products_id=234

Ginger

I know this is a bit off topic - its not about ubicomp in the traditional sense. But it is about word crunching the life of most academics and indeed many office workers in the country.

I'm both pleased and disappointed with Ginger this quite funky grammar checking software. As  dyslexic I'm quite pleased when the software finds and corrects and error. Quite wonderful.

On the other hand they decided that for some reason they would only make it on a PC and for some very strange reason this is not a separate application but also an application which is a set of macros for word. I've never been happy about the long term viability or usability of an application embedded in another. I Use a mac and got an upgrade to a new mac AND a copy of VM ware just to make it work with Ginger.

My first problem is that Ginger needs an internet connection to work. Which is pain - I can only use it at a desk in my lab the University is funny about what can and cannot connect to the internet. Naturally I do most of my real writing on a laptop - no one can seriously crunch words in the open plan office we are required to work in at the OU. I have a mac - most of the computing people appear to - so I run the PC emulator to get the PC version of word so I can run the PC version of Ginger . This means I have to hang off checking documents until I'm in work and can connect up to one of the few free ports.

One of my problems with Ginger is that if you do something like resize a window then you loose this odd tab. You need the odd tab to start Ginger - it claims you can use F2 which occasionally works but more often starts up the very slow Microsoft help function.

When it works it works but many times Ginger I think gets caught out by the anti-scripting virus checking software  any my only solution is to restart.

Speaking of restarting the PC has restarted now (the PC simulator was restarting in the background) so its back to work.

New super cool touch table.

Is this just me or is this a huge iPhone ? Looks like an engorged iPhone4? I wonder how many people would watch a large TV at the distance from their sofa of a coffee table (i.e touching their feet). Perhaps it would work in the boardroom. 
No word yet on how many multi touches it can have. 

DiamondSpin - are back.

Diamond Spin is back - this time is appears to be using TUIO.
Claims " single user may use two interaction devices at the same time (right and left hand driven)" 
Nice. 
On my list of getting around to stuff

Pervasive Health

This looks like an inteasting place to talk about the future research ( when its done ).

New method by Ming-Zher Poh -useful for affective computing.

Ming-Zher Poh at MIT  has managed to measure someones pulse rate just by looking at them. Useful - you could tell if someone was lying to you on skype.

More useful if you wanted to measure a users emotional state ( angry sad, happy ) - but I guess you would have to do a long term user evaluation for that ( to assess what is normal).

More cool ways to do Iphone development.

UIkits video from UIkits on Vimeo.


Makes me want to link them to a code generator for some reason.