Satellite-based radionavigation systems provide accurate and reliable positioning and navigation whenever the satellite-to-receiver path is free from obstacles. In personal navigation this condition cannot always be guaranteed. Many applications require accurate position solutions in downtown areas and indoor. Due to the very low transmission power and signal delays caused by the obstacles, the performance of satellite navigation systems decreases in these environments. Conversely, self-contained sensors can provide navigation information in any environment. In the doctoral thesis of M.Sc. Jussi Collin, the aim was to construct a framework for algorithms that can take advantage of the sensor information, but are much less sensitive to large measurement errors than the traditional inertial navigation algorithms.

Special attention of the thesis was brought to algorithms that provide sensor navigation information independently of the unit orientation. A technique that classifies the user motion using only sensor information independent of orientation was developed. This method is developed from the navigation algorithm point of view, where successful detection of a walking user and a stationary user enables usage of specific navigation algorithms that are less sensitive to sensor errors. The same algorithm is useful in other applications requiring situational awareness of the user’s mode of transportation.

During the research, it was found that accurate satellite signal measurements, combined with the sensor data can be used to obtain the first position fix with less than four visible satellites. The cases shown in this thesis are a 3-satellite solution without external altitude information, and a 2-satellite solution with external altitude information. The accuracy of these solutions is highly sensitive to measurement errors, but the methods can be used to obtain a rough position estimate in situations where stand-alone systems could not provide position information at all.

http://www.tut.fi/public/index.cfm?MainSel=1&siteid=32&act=news&NewsID=40948&ID=40948

15-17 February 2007: 2nd Call for Papers for Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2007, Baton Rouge, Louisiana in conjunction with 14th Annual Mardi Gras Conference, and in cooperation with ACM SigCHI.

• Full submissions will be due October 20, 2006.
• Submission is open from now.
• Notification of Acceptance on December 1st.
• The conference will take place 15-17 February 2007 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, followed with a half-day trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Accepted papers will be published in the printed conference proceedings, and will also through cooperation with ACM be available electronically in full-text in ACM’s Digital Library.

TEI’07 is the first international conference dedicated to research in tangible and embedded interaction, and held in cooperation with ACM SigCHI. Work addressing HCI issues, design, use context, tools and technologies, as well as interactive art works are all welcome, including especially interdisciplinary submissions across these themes.

The proceedings will be available in printed form at the conference and be published electronically through the ACM Digital Library.

The conference will be held this year as the 14th Annual Mardi Gras conference at Louisiana State University, to be followed with an optional day trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

The conference attempts to bring together the new field of tangible and embedded interaction, providing a meeting ground for the diverse communities of research and practice involved with tangibles — from computing, hardware, and sensor technology, to HCI, interaction design, and CSCW, to product and industrial design and interactive arts. We invite submissions from all of these perspectives, be they theoretical, conceptual, technical, applied, or artistic. The conference is designed to provide appropriate presentation forms for different types of contributions including talks, interactive exhibits, demos or performances, and posters. We invite submissions in these different areas integrated within a single-track conference. Interdisciplinary submissions are particularly welcome.

http://www.tei-conf.org

7-9 December 2006: NODEM 06 CALL FOR PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
CALL FOR PROJECT PRESENTATIONS on use of digital media in
museums

We welcome museums, exhibition designers, curators, interaction designers, product developers etc to present your projects and experiences with use of digital media at our conference NODEM 06 Digital Interpretation in Cultural Heritage, Art and Science Museums.

Submission deadline: October 15th.

Project presentation abstracts may be sent to: nodem06-submission@media.uio.no

For questions regarding project presentations, please contact:
Dagny Stuedahl dagny.stuedahl@media.uio.no Tlf: + 47 22 85 04 06
Mobilephone +47 99 72 81 56

We are also looking for exhibitors. The deadline for exhibition proposals is October 15th. Exhibition space will be free of charge. NODEM Award Best Design of Digital Experiences in Museums will be voted for by conference participants.

For further information: http://www.tii.se/v4m/nodem

NODEM (Nordic Digital Excellence in Museums) 06 is a nordic ambulating conference and an exhibition that focuses on digital media in museums. This year Department of Media and Communications, University of Oslo is hosting the conference. Responsible for NODEM is Visions for Museums Interactive
Institute, Stockholm

INCLUDE 2007: designing with people
REVISED DEADLINE: 31 OCTOBER 2006
Strategies, stories and systems for user participation in design

International conference on inclusive design Royal College of Art, London, UK 2-4 April 2007 with a welcome reception on Sunday 1 April.

Include 2007 is the fourth Include conference and promises to be an exciting forum that builds on previous conferences in two ways – by making user participation in all its diversity central to the design discourse and by broadening the constituency for inclusive design among those professions and groups normally outside consideration.

The theme of this year is designing with people – strategies, stories and systems for user participation in design. The conference aims to engage those involved in all aspects of user-centred design practice, research and advocacy – from consumers, user groups, designers, design managers and clients to voluntary sector organisations, researchers and policy makers.

The revised deadline for submissions is midnight on 31 October 2006 (GMT).

http://www.hhrc.rca.ac.uk/programmes/include/2007/

Snippets from Doors of Perception report Oct 2006

SUSTAINABLE CITY LECTURES
The Leeds, UK, Schumacher Lectures 2006 feature Susan Roaf on Solar
Cities, Herbert Girardet on Cities of the Future, Ezio Manzini on The
Sustainable Everyday, Peter Harper on Building Sustainable Communities.
http://www.schumacher.org.uk/lsl06.htm

CANUTE AGAINST CREATIVE CLUSTERS (1)
King Canute is best remembered because he commanded the waves to go
back. When one sycophant gushed that the king could even command
the obedience of the sea, Canute proved him wrong by practical
demonstration. At the Creative Clusters conference, in November, John Thackara will
propose, Canute-like, that bottom-up social innovation is a better way
to revive cities than setting up ghettos filled with PR consultants.
5-8 November, Newcastle-Gateshead, North-East England.
http://www.creativeclusters.com/modules/eventsystem/?fct=viewprogsummary&eventsid=8

CANUTE AGAINST CREATIVE CLUSTERS (2)
Two steps forward, one step back. In 2003 John Thackara gave a lecture called “The
post-spectacular city” at a conference in Amsterdam. He argued that
today’s “creative class”, having optimised the society of the spectacle,
will be remembered for leaving behind narcissistic but meaningless
cities. The talk was published in a book (Creativity and the City)
published by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). Did his
devastating critique change the course of urban design and development?
Not exactly. A new show called “The Spectacular City” has opened
at….theNAi.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2003/09/the_postspectac_1.php
http://www.nai.nl/e/calendar/activities/spect_city_e.html

Public Pervasive Computing: Making the Invisible Visible
Computer (09/06) Vol. 39, No. 9, P. 60; Kjeldskov, Jesper; Paay, Jeni

Human computer interaction (HCI) researchers, sociologists, and city architects, planners, and designers are investigating the employment of pervasive computing technologies in urban environments; one area of exploration is the Just-for-Us project, a multidisciplinary effort to develop a publicly available mobile Web service that can enable new kinds of interaction by adapting content to the physical and social context of the user. Designing public-use computer systems requires system developers and HCI designers to gain a basic understanding of a physical space and its effects on the social interactions that occur there. Just-for-Us uses a pervasive sensor network to produce a digital layer of information about people, sites, and activities to facilitate physical- and social-context adaptability. Content is dynamically delivered to the user via database queries. The Just-for-Us system architecture includes context-dependent HTML pages, maps and graphics presented on a mobile Web browser, PHP scripts and server-side applications, and MySQL database, while Bluetooth beacons and other Bluetooth-enabled devices feed into the client application. The Just-for-Us interface features a home screen that displays a panorama of a public site as well as annotations about landmarks within the user’s current physical whereabouts and a meter indicating the current level of social activity. The user can raise a Now screen that shows the level and nature of social activity transpiring within the user’s proximity. The Just-for-Us researchers are attempting to update their design concept to accommodate more user content contributions, facilitate socializing between users based on “virtual proximity,” and broaden the system’s area of coverage, among other things.

Computer Magazine homepage: http://www.computer.org/computer

The Digital Lifestyles Centre is a new interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Essex. The centre was created to optimize the design and development of pervasive computing technologies in inhabited environments, by combining the technical expertise of the Intelligent Inhabited Environments Group (IIEG) with the socio-technical prowess of Chimera.

http://digital-lifestyles.essex.ac.uk/

17-21 April 2007: Association of American Geographers Annual
Meeting, San Francisco, California

Geographies of practice and the urban outdoors

This session will explore the diverse transactional relationships that inhabitants, workers and visitors have with the urban outdoors. Through a particular interest in the mundane practices of different social groups, we are also interested to consider how such a perspective might enrich or challenge current efforts to increase overall wellbeing through outdoor spaces.

Large amounts of resources are spent in cities across the world in endeavouring to provide a positive outdoor environment; policy makers are often keen to encourage city people outdoors where they are understood to derive benefits in terms of improved physical and mental health and a strengthened sense of community. Yet provided spaces, where they exist, may be under-used, or used in ways not intended, whilst other, incidental places can prove more popular. Many may lack the means to get to allocated sites, even locally, whilst others derive similar benefits in more removed locations. Conflicts can also arise when the practices of some may exclude or preclude those of others. Furthermore, professional and policy practices are also crucial as they configure the outdoors in ways that possibly seek to manage and control different social practices. If we move beyond notions of discrete spaces, there are issues of lifestyle as changing work practices, for example, can keep individuals indoors where they may actually be happier. Individuals and groups also manage their own outdoor experience in ways that minimise the negative by avoiding unpleasant places and controlling their sensory experience through clothing and other technologies.

An examination of practice and the urban outdoors has the potential to enrich our understanding of a number of important issues including environmental justice, social inclusion, city sustainability and urban design. More conceptually, it could extend theories of nature experience, everyday materiality, and physical embodiment and also provide an important geographical perspective by considering how outdoor practices can vary between cities.

Possible themes:

• Social cohorts: the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the infirm.
• Different lifestyles: those always indoors, those always outside.
• Communities of practice: cyclists, businessmen, dog walkers, drivers.
• The experience of environmental processes: weather, sunshine, snow, wind.
• City climates: tropical, temperate, seasonal, stable.
• Professional practices that configure and control.
• Exclusionary practices and excluded practices.

http://www.aag.org

SIGGRAPH 2007 Face Tomorrow: Call for Papers & Volunteers
VFX World (10/03/06)

ACM is inviting contributors or volunteers for SIGGRAPH 2007, the 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer graphics and Interactive Techniques, which will be held August 5-9, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. Conference Chair Joe Marks says the conference will “explore the products, systems, techniques, ideas and inspiration that are creating the next generation of computer graphics and interactive techniques.” Artists, researchers, engineers, animators, and technology professional are encouraged to help make a difference in the future by taking part in the conference. Presentations and contributors will include: art gallery, awards, computer animation festival, courses, educator program, emerging technologies, guerilla studio, panels, papers, research posters, sketches, special sessions, and new for 2007, IP marketplace. For more information on SIGGRAPH 2007, visit http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/

Memory from Transdisciplinary Perspectives: Agency, Practices, and Mediations
Tartu, Estonia, January 11-14, 2007
University of Tartu, Research Centre of Culture and Communication

Call for Papers

Since the 1990s we have witnessed expanding memory research in various disciplines where concepts like social and cultural memory, collective and communicative memory, embodied and material memory, narrative and performed memory etc. have become common. This conference aims to survey the present situation in memory studies, focusing on the critical re-examination of the theoretical and methodological premises.

The conference will take place in Tartu, Estonia, a country that has witnessed social and cultural transitions not only recently but several times in history. This experience of controversial memory cultures makes it an appropriate place for memory discussions.

Main topics of the conference:

• Communication and Memory
• Ideologies of Memory
• Theorising Memory
• Social Practices of Memorye
• Objects of Memory
• Agents/Subjects of Memory
• Spaces of Memory

Deadline for abstracts (up to 300 words): October 1, 2006. The abstract should include 1) full name and address, 2) e-mail and 3) description of the position and affiliation. Please respond to e-mail: memory2007@jrnl.ut.ee

Notification of acceptance: October 10, 2006.
A planned publication is open to all successful presenters
Conference homepage http://www.ut.ee/memory2007