Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Multiple multimodal mobile devices: Lessons learned from engineering lifelog solutions

For lifelogging, or the recording of one’s life history through digital means, to be successful, a range of separate multimodal mobile devices must be employed. These include smartphones such as the N95, the Microsoft SenseCam – a wearable passive photo capture device, or wearable biometric devices. Each collects a facet of the bigger picture, through, for example, personal digital photos, mobile messages and documents access history, but unfortunately, they operate independently and unaware of each other. This creates significant challenges for the practical application of these devices, the use and integration of their data and their operation by a user. In this chapter we discuss the software engineering challenges and their implications for individuals working on integration of data from multiple ubiquitous mobile devices drawing on our experiences working with such technology over the past several years for the development of integrated personal lifelogs. The chapter serves as an engineering guide to those considering working in the domain of lifelogging and more generally to those working with multiple multimodal devices and integration of their data

The Economics of “Wireless Net Neutrality”

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TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2006

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Healthcare PANs: Personal Area Networks for trauma care and home care

The first hour following the trauma is of crucial importance in trauma care. The sooner treatment begins, the better the ultimate outcome for the patient. Generally the initial treatment is handled by paramedical personnel arriving at the site of the accident with an ambulance. There is evidence to show that if the expertise of the on-site paramedic team can be supported by immediate and continuous access to and communication with the expert medical team at the hospital, patient outcomes can be improved. After care also influences the ultimate recovery of the patient. After-treatment follow up often occurs in-hospital in spite of the fact that care at home can offer more advantages and can accelerate recovery. Based on emerging and future wireless communication technologies, in a previous paper [1] we presented an initial vision of two future healthcare settings, supported by applications which we call Virtual Trauma Team and Virtual Homecare Team. The Virtual Trauma Team application involves high quality wireless multimedia communications between ambulance paramedics and the hospital facilitated by paramedic Body Area Networks (BANs) [2] and an ambulance-based Vehicle Area Network (VAN). The VAN supports bi-directional streaming audio and video communication between the ambulance and the hospital even when moving at speed. The clinical motivation for Virtual Trauma Team is to increase survival rates in trauma care. The Virtual Homecare Team application enables homecare coordinated by home nursing services and supported by the patient's PAN which consists of a patient BAN in combination with an ambient intelligent home environment. The homecare PAN provides intelligent monitoring and support functions and the possibility to ad hoc network to the visiting health professionals’ own BANs as well as high quality multimedia communication links to remote members of the virtual team. The motivation for Virtual Homecare Team is to improve quality of life and independence for patients by supporting care at home; the economic motivation is to replace expensive hospital-based care with homecare by virtual teams using wireless technology to support the patient and the carers. In this paper we develop the vision further and focus in particular on the concepts of personal and body area networks

Can small be beautiful? assessing image resolution requirements for mobile TV

Mobile TV services are now being offered in several countries, but for cost reasons, most of these services offer material directly recoded for mobile consumption (i.e. without additional editing). The experiment reported in this paper, aims to assess the image resolution and bitrate requirements for displaying this type of material on mobile devices. The study, with 128 participants, examined responses to four different image resolutions, seven video encoding bitrates, two audio bitrates and four content types. The results show that acceptability is significantly lower for images smaller than 168×126, regardless of content type. The effect is more pronounced when bandwidth is abundant, and is due to important detail being lost in the smaller screens. In contrast to previous studies, participants are more likely to rate image quality as unacceptable when the audio quality is high

A review on mobile operating systems and application development platforms

The previous existing mobile technologies were only limited to voice and short messages, organized between several network operators and service providers. However, recent advancements in technologies, introduction, and development of the smartphones added many features such: high-speed processors, huge memory, multitasking, screens with large-resolution, utile communication hardware, and so on. Mobile devices were evolving into general-purpose computers, which resulted in the development of various technological platforms, operating systems, and platforms for the development of the applications. All these results in the occurrence of various competitive offers on the market. The above-mentioned features, processing speed and applications available on mobile devices are affected by underlying operating systems. In this paper, there will be discussed the mobile operating systems and application development platforms.&nbsp