Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing

One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology. Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to

Big Data Privacy Context: Literature Effects On Secure Informational Assets

This article's objective is the identification of research opportunities in the current big data privacy domain, evaluating literature effects on secure informational assets. Until now, no study has analyzed such relation. Its results can foster science, technologies and businesses. To achieve these objectives, a big data privacy Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is performed on the main scientific peer reviewed journals in Scopus database. Bibliometrics and text mining analysis complement the SLR. This study provides support to big data privacy researchers on: most and least researched themes, research novelty, most cited works and authors, themes evolution through time and many others. In addition, TOPSIS and VIKOR ranks were developed to evaluate literature effects versus informational assets indicators. Secure Internet Servers (SIS) was chosen as decision criteria. Results show that big data privacy literature is strongly focused on computational aspects. However, individuals, societies, organizations and governments face a technological change that has just started to be investigated, with growing concerns on law and regulation aspects. TOPSIS and VIKOR Ranks differed in several positions and the only consistent country between literature and SIS adoption is the United States. Countries in the lowest ranking positions represent future research opportunities.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Ambient Gestures

We present Ambient Gestures, a novel gesture-based system designed to support ubiquitous ‘in the environment’ interactions with everyday computing technology. Hand gestures and audio feedback allow users to control computer applications without reliance on a graphical user interface, and without having to switch from the context of a non-computer task to the context of the computer. The Ambient Gestures system is composed of a vision recognition software application, a set of gestures to be processed by a scripting application and a navigation and selection application that is controlled by the gestures. This system allows us to explore gestures as the primary means of interaction within a multimodal, multimedia environment. In this paper we describe the Ambient Gestures system, define the gestures and the interactions that can be achieved in this environment and present a formative study of the system. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and future applications of Ambient Gestures in ubiquitous computing

Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment

In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design

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

Multi-Sensor Context-Awareness in Mobile Devices and Smart Artefacts

The use of context in mobile devices is receiving increasing attention in mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this article we consider how to augment mobile devices with awareness of their environment and situation as context. Most work to date has been based on integration of generic context sensors, in particular for location and visual context. We propose a different approach based on integration of multiple diverse sensors for awareness of situational context that can not be inferred from location, and targeted at mobile device platforms that typically do not permit processing of visual context. We have investigated multi-sensor context-awareness in a series of projects, and report experience from development of a number of device prototypes. These include development of an awareness module for augmentation of a mobile phone, of the Mediacup exemplifying context-enabled everyday artifacts, and of the Smart-Its platform for aware mobile devices. The prototypes have been explored in various applications to validate the multi-sensor approach to awareness, and to develop new perspectives of how embedded context-awareness can be applied in mobile and ubiquitous computing