One of the major themes at this years CHI was mobile technologies, from mobile phones through to some more advanced concepts and devices. There were a number of sessions, with the mobile spatial interaction workshop providing a nice start to the conference. The workshop covered a whole range of topics such as: pointing and gesturing interfaces, geospatial modelling, context-aware systems, pervasive games and mobile augmented reality systems – which in turn brought people together from a range of fields including engineering, design, usability and GIS. For a copy of the workshop proceedings visit: msi.ftw.at

Rod McCall, Fraunhofer FIT

Antti Juustila (working with the IPCity at the University of Oulu Finland) participated the Imaging the City workshop, a part of the CHI 2007 conference. The one day workshop focused on the city as a special place for human-computer interation research and practice. The workshop explored the practices and technologies of imaging the urban environment, bringing together designers, HCI experts, urban planners and technologists.

The issues handled at the workshop ranged from how do we represent the city in HCI, what kind of technological devices, services and platforms support imaging the city now and in the future, and how these representations can be used for social and political ends. Also new methods for developing the technologies were discussed, along with the issues of what ca we learn from urban experience to design stronger representations and interfaces within HCI research and practice.

The workshop papers are listed in this website: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/cdisalvo/chi2007workshop/papers.html, including our paper on the experiment using surveillance cameras to enhance the experience of the architectural design site in the design studio, conducted as part of the Studio’n’Site and IPCity research projects at our department. The papers addressed the workshop topic in a very wide scale, ranging from mobile tools which “seeks to articulate the performative relations between places and identities”, evaluating the popularity of an area by statistical analysis of online map usage to “method for mapping the inter-relationship of space, social and informational networks that increasingly co-exist in our cities”.

The actual workshop did not include presentations of the papes, but instead group work and common sessions, drawing together the topics handled in the group assignments and discussing the outcomes of the group work.

At the end of the workshop we discussed interesting future research topics on the imaging the city. We identified the following topics for research:

• time, scales of time, representing temporality, also using sound, not only visual media
• using comics in imaging time
• film was not discussed in the workshop (only pictures), which was a bit of a surprise, considering that film is an important media for (at least some) architects
• The importance of situatedness: light/day; sun/rain/fog,…
• private spaces and interiors in imaging the city?
• soundscapes, including sound in representation
• construction of interpretations of the site; how would the space address us; talk to us with signs, symbols, audio,…
• cycles of renewal, evolution of cities, degeneration of cities
• many times a missing element in current research: people and conflict (not necessary violent) — how to design, not hide/ignore conflicts & conflicting views and debate (e.g. park renewal and homeless people)
• embeddedness of research: go in and engage, not just shortly but long term engagement

In summary, the workshop was very interesting also from the viewpoint of the IPCity, us focusing on some of the issues mentioned above.

On May 30, a Workshop of the Presence research projects currently funded by the EU 6th framework programme was held at Scuola Superiore St.Anna in Pisa, Italy. The 1-day symposium featured presentations by all four Integrated Projects: Pasion, Immersense, Presenccia and IPCity, and covered a wide area of research topics all the way from neuroscience to architecture and psychology. The participants were able to network and discover common research interests.

IPCity internal news

A new version of the Hypermedia database has been released to be used in the IPCity development. The Hypermedia database was originally developed in the Atelier IST project by the University of Oulu team working now with the IPCity. The new version includes support for Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) and hierarchical keywords as metadata to digital media files and other data types. Additionally, performance has been improved as the code has been refactored during the last months.

Hypermedia database also includes a Java API for application programmers. It enables application developers to store and retrieve media annotated with metadata. Media files can also be hyperlinked.

For more information, contact the Oulu team.

APP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)

Home, Migration and The City: Spatial Forms & Everyday Practices in a Globalizing World

Guest Editor: Dr Ayona Datta, Cities Programme, London School of Economics,UK

Email: a.datta2 at lse.ac.uk

The study of globalisation as the increasing interconnectedness between all aspects of social, cultural, economic, and political space has seen an unprecedented interest across social and political sciences, humanities, and urban studies. Seen as the direct result of globalisation, migration is now at the forefront of this investigation of cross-border connections, but this interest has predominately focussed on poor migrants’ experiences in their host countries. Studies of globalisation have been silent on the connections between migration and built environments. On the one hand, it is argued that the unprecedented movement of people in a globalising world will put particular emphasis on cities (in ways that they seek to attract particular types of people); and on the other hand it is argued that such movement has led to a death of ‘home’ as a fixed place. Can cities be understood as dense agglomerations of built forms, which are also ‘home’ to those who live there? If so, what does the death of ‘home’ in a globalising world mean for the future of place, of built forms, and of cities?

In this call for papers, we would like to invite a range of interdisciplinary explorations from academics and practitioners alike, who can offer new perspectives and new insights, explore alternative theoretical models, and offer proposals that construct new meanings of ‘home’, migration, and the city in a globalising world. For this special issue, we lay particular emphasis on globalising cities of the South that are undergoing rapid social, cultural, and economic changes and can no longer be seen simply as the ‘lands of origin’ of migrants but increasingly as destinations. Similarly, there are those elite transnationals in the global South, whose mobilities challenge migration as a linear movement, and whose presence is increasingly felt in cities through the rise in luxury housing. On the other hand, the recent expansion of the European Union has meant the increased presence of post-socialist subjects in the global North, which has led to changes in the geographies and identities of public space in Northern cities. We want to ask how the everyday lives and subjectivities of such migrant subjects are represented in the cities through built forms. How are places and built forms re-appropriated, re-negotiated, and transgressed through such diverse forms of mobility? How does mobility produce spatialised struggles for migrant identities in cities? What are the various ways that built forms and spatial
practices become new markers of a globalising world?

We are interested in fostering dialogue between academics and practitioners and in spatialising the notion of home and migration in both the North and the South. Our goal is to contribute to a new articulation of theory, practice, and ethics that help us better understand and deal with the conditions of globalisation and mobility through an examination of place, built forms, and spatial practice in cities across the world.

The Special Issue guest editor is Dr Ayona Datta, Lecturer, London School of Economics, UK. Please submit a 1000 word abstract and a 150 word author bio by 31st July 2007 by email to a.datta2 at lse.ac.uk.

2-3 September 2007: Call for Papers: 2nd International Workshop on Physicality Workshop co-located with the British HCI 2007 conference, Lancaster University, UK

We live in an increasingly digital world yet our bodies and minds are naturally designed to interact with the physical. The products of the 21st century are and will be a synthesis of digital and physical elements and for the user, these will become indistinguishable. As we design hybrid physical/digital products we have to understand what we lose or confuse by the added digitality – and so need to understand physicality more clearly than before.

We invite contributions that address physicality including:

– design at the physical-digital frontier
– the philosophy of physicality
– artefact-focussed social interaction
– physically-inspired interaction in virtual worlds
– creativity and materiality
– interactive art and performance
– digital emulation of the physical

The two-day workshop will seek to construct a fundamental understanding of the nature of physicality: how humans experience, manipulate, react and reason about ‘real’ physical things and how this may inform the future design of innovative products.

This workshop will bring together researchers from industry and academia. We welcome product designers, interaction designers, researchers in ubiquitous computing, tangible interface and cognitive, social and philosophical fields, and indeed all excited by this new challenge of the third millennia.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline – 1 July 2007
Acceptance Notification – 27 July 2007
Camera-ready Deadline – TBC
Workshop – 2-3 September 2007

We invite submissions in the form of a 4-6 page position paper in ACM Format (see web site for more details). If you would like to produce a contribution in some other form (demonstration, artwork, performance, etc.) please contact us. Submissions and enquiries should be sent to .

The workshop will include invited talks, short individual presentations, and group activities. The contributions will be published in the workshop proceedings. Building from this and the previous workshop, we are planning a journal special issue and would hope that some of the workshop contributions will be expanded for submission to this.

This workshop is sponsored by the DEPtH Project, which is part of the Designing for the 21st century Initiative.

http://www.physicality.org

IPCity internal news

Stephan Kollmer has moved to work with other challenges. His colleague Ms Sidonie Holborn will take over Stephan’s tasks and he is very happy to be able to present such a competent successor.

Welcome Sidonie!

Internet of Things 2008

International Conference for Industry and Academia
March 26-28, 2008, Zurich (Switzerland)
Organized by ETH Zurich, University St.Gallen, and MIT

www.internet-of-things-2008.org

The term “Internet of Things” has come to describe a number of technologies and research disciplines that enable the Internet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. Technologies like RFID, short-range wireless communications, real-time localization, and sensor networks are now becoming increasingly common, bringing the Internet of Things into commercial use. They foreshadow an exciting future that closely interlinks the physical world and cyberspace — a development that is highly relevant to researchers, corporations, and individuals.

This conference will be the first that brings leading researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry together to facilitate sharing of applications, research results, and knowledge. The three-day event will feature keynotes from industrial and academic visionaries, technical presentations of cutting-edge research, reports on the user-experience from seasoned practitioners, panel discussions on hot topics, poster sessions summarizing late-breaking results, and hands-on demos of current technology.

Be sure to mark your calendars if you want to know more about:

* Novel services and applications in an Internet of Things (IOT)
* Emerging IOT business models and process changes
* Communication systems and network architectures for the IOT
* Technologies and concepts for embedding sensing, actuation,
communication, and computation into networked things
* Experience reports from the introduction and operation of net-
worked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics & transport
* Security & privacy aspects of IOT infrastructures & applications

Scientific contributions are expected to be published in the Springer LNCS series. We are particularly interested in work addressing real-world implementation and deployment issues. For submission instructions and further information, see the full call at: www.internet-of-things-2008.org/cfp/

Important Dates:

– Sep. 15, 2007 Technical papers submissions deadline
– Oct. 20, 2007 Workshop/tutorials/demo proposals due
– Nov. 15, 2007 Technical papers acceptance notifications
– Nov. 30, 2007 Workshop/tutorials/demo acceptance notification
– Dec. 10, 2007 Technical papers camera-ready version due

A paper by Antti Juustila and Toni Räisänen titled “Atelier Infrastructure for Ubiquitous Computing” has been accepted to the 30th IRIS conference. Antti and Toni are working for IPCity at the University of Oulu, mainly related to work packages 4, 5, 6 and 7. IRIS (Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia) is organized this year in Tampere, Finland (www.iris30.fi).

IRIS represents probably the oldest yearly IS Conference in the world. The IRIS began in 1978 as an annual working seminar for Scandinavian researchers and PhD students. Over the years, there has been an increasing number of participants from outside Scandinavia.

Abstract of the paper:

Ubiquitous computing systems, running on distributed heterogeneous hardware and operating system platfoms, benefit from an overlaying software infrastructure hiding the complexity of the underlying technology form the applications. A software infrastructure for ubiquitous computing should enable ubicomp software components and applications consisting of these components to communicate with eachother over different types of networks, using different types of protocols. We describe an infrastructure called Atelier Infrastructure for ubiquitous computing systems, aiming at supporting the application developers in building distributed ubiquitous applications in heterogeneous hardware, operating system and programming environments. The Atelier Infrastructure addresses the abstraction, programming language independence, extendability and configurability requirements for an ubicomputing infrastructure by a messaging based communication and a distributed micro kernel software architectural pattern.

From Technology Review (05/17/07) Greene, Kate:

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard’s lab in Bristol, U.K., are developing software that will let people use their portable devices as platforms for GPS-enabled games and tours. HP Labs recently launched a site that provides location-based games and city walking tours. The site also offers the opportunity to modify some of the existing games and tours, or even create a new application from scratch. The HP project uses a concept known as augmented reality, or combining physical data with virtual information. As location and guidance technology improves and PDAs become more powerful, numerous augmented reality programs are being developed. Nokia is working on a project that will help people navigate new areas. The user simply has to take a picture of a landmark, and the program uses GPS coordinates to create a hyperlink with the image. Research manager for HP’s project Phil Stenton says this type of technology will be useful for such things as entertaining out-of-town guests during work hours. University of Bristol computer science professor Cliff Randal says HP is making an important contribution to this type of research. However, not everyone is completely impressed with HP’s initial offering. Georgia Institute of Technology computing professor Blair McIntyre, who has developed similar software for local tours, says HP is not creating a truly immersive augmented-reality experience. Stenton admits that the program has some limitations, but notes that future versions could include software for working with Bluetooth wireless devices, infrared sensor data, in-phone accelerometers, and possibly even heart-rate monitors. Stenton believes that future generations of this technology will allow people to create programs such as exercise routines that can be shared with friends.

Click here to view full article: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18746/