Domino: exploring mobile collaborative software adaptation

Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) are a promising new area for ubicomp software that exploits the everyday changes in the proximity of mobile users. While a number of applications facilitate simple file sharing between co–present users, this paper explores opportunities for recommending and sharing software between users. We describe an architecture that allows the recommendation of new system components from systems with similar histories of use. Software components and usage histories are exchanged between mobile users who are in proximity with each other. We apply this architecture in a mobile strategy game in which players adapt and upgrade their game using components from other players, progressing through the game through sharing tools and history. More broadly, we discuss the general application of this technique as well as the security and privacy challenges to such an approach

Governing by internet architecture

In the past thirty years, the exponential rise in the number of Internet users around the word and the intensive use of the digital networks have brought to light crucial political issues. Internet is now the object of regulations. Namely, it is a policy domain. Yet, its own architecture represents a new regulative structure, one deeply affecting politics and everyday life. This article considers some of the main transformations of the Internet induced by privatization and militarization processes, as well as their consequences on societies and human beings.En los últimos treinta años ha crecido de manera exponencial el número de usuarios de Internet alrededor del mundo y el uso intensivo de conexiones digitales ha traído a la luz cuestiones políticas cruciales. Internet es ahora objeto de regulaciones. Es decir, es un ámbito de la política. Aún su propia arquitectura representa una nueva estructura reguladora, que afecta profundamente la política y la vida cotidiana. Este artículo considera algunas de las principales transformaciones de Internet inducida por procesos de privatización y militarización, como también sus consecuencias en las sociedades y en los seres humanos

Historical awareness support and its evaluation in collaborative software engineering

The types of awareness relevant to collaborative soft- ware engineering are identified and an additional type, "historical awareness" is proposed. This new type of awareness is the knowledge of how software artefacts re- sulting from collaboration have evolved in the course of their development. The types of awareness that different software engineer- ing environment architectures can support are discussed. A way to add awareness support to our existing OSCAR sys- tem, a component of the GENESIS software engineering platform, is proposed. Finally ways of instrumenting and evaluating the awareness support offered by the modified system are outlined

Virtual studio: a digital repository in architectural education

The “virtual studio” is a project exploring the potential of virtual learning environments to augment conventional studio culture in the Lincoln School of Architecture. Staff saw an opportunity to bridge the long-acknowledged divide in learning between theory, technology and studio practice by linking a wide range of digital material and media from across the curriculum within a single virtual space, both formal learning objects created by staff and work produced by students. Early in its development the project was expanded to link with Lincoln’s JISC-funded Institutional Repository which aims to establish a digital repository of teaching and learning objects and peer-reviewed research across the University. The School of Architecture was to be an initial test bed for the creation of a more generic, university-wide repository. However, architecture is an atypical discipline; its emphasis is more visual than literary, more practice than research-based and its approach to teaching and learning is more fluid and varied than either the sciences or the humanities (Stevens, 1998). If we accept that it is social interests that underlie the development of technology rather than any inevitable or rational progress (Bijker, 1997), the question arises as to what extent an institutional repository can reconcile architectural interests with the interests of other disciplines. Architecture and the design disciplines are marginal actors in the debate surrounding digital archive development, this paper argues, and they bring problems to the table that are not easily resolved given available software and that lie outside the interests of most other actors in academia

Scale-free law: network science and copyright

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An online authoring and publishing platform for field guides and identification tools

Various implementation approaches are available for digital field guides and identification tools that are created for the web and mobile devices. The architecture of the “biowikifarm” publishing platform and some technical and social advantages of a document- and author-centric approach based on the MediaWiki open source software over custom-developed, database driven software are presented