The digital parrot: Combining context-awareness and semantics to augment memory

People of all ages and backgrounds are prone to forgetting information, even about their personal experiences. Existing systems to support people in remembering such information either continuously record a person’s experiences or provide means to store and retrieve clearly defined, isolated pieces of data. We propose a new approach: combining context-awareness with semantic information. We believe this approach to be superior to the existing systems in certain types of situations. This position paper introduces this approach and our own ongoing project, the Digital Parrot

Challenges in interface and interaction design for context-aware augmented memory systems

The human long-term memory is astonishingly powerful but fallible at the same time. This makes it very easy to forget information one is sure one actually knows. We propose context-aware augmented memory systems as a solution to this problem. In this paper, we analyse the user interface and interaction design challenges that need to be overcome to build such a system. We hope for fruitful interdisciplinary discussions on how best to address these challenges

Robotic milking technologies and renegotiating situated ethical relationships on UK dairy farms

Robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) are novel technologies that take over the labor of dairy farming and reduce the need for human-animal interactions. Because robotic milking involves the replacement of 'conventional' twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, some claim robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. This paper examines how established ethical relations on dairy farms are unsettled by the intervention of a radically different technology such as AMS. The renegotiation of ethical relationships is thus an important dimension of how the actors involved are re-assembled around a new technology. The paper draws on in-depth research on UK dairy farms comparing those using conventional milking technologies with those using AMS. We explore the situated ethical relations that are negotiated in practice, focusing on the contingent and complex nature of human-animal-technology interactions. We show that ethical relations are situated and emergent, and that as the identities, roles, and subjectivities of humans and animals are unsettled through the intervention of a new technology, the ethical relations also shift. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Understanding personal data as a space - learning from dataspaces to create linked personal data

In this paper we argue that the space of personal data is a dataspace as defined by Franklin et al. We define a personal dataspace, as the space of all personal data belonging to a user, and we describe the logical components of the dataspace. We describe a Personal Dataspace Support Platform (PDSP) as a set of services to provide a unified view over the user’s data, and to enable new and more complex workflows over it. We show the differences from a DSSP to a PDSP, and how the latter can be realized using Web protocols and Linked APIs.<br/

DATASPACE: A NEW METHOD FOR MANAGING INFOR-MATION

Taking a look at some huge or little associations or investments, overseeing the collection of information at different levels has turned into a difficult assignment for local area administration. The advancement of social information base administration frameworks served to center the information management local area for quite a long time, with awesome outcomes. As of late, in any case, the quickly extending requests of "information all over the place" have prompted a field that included intriguing and useful endeavors, however without a focal concentration or composed plan. The most in-tense data management challenges today come from organizations such as government offices, libraries, private companies among others depending on an enormous number of various, interrelated information sources, however having no real way to oversee their dataspaces in an advantageous, incorporated, or cogent style.Also, in an association, information might change from completely organized to totally unstructured. The current information management framework which is known as database neglect to oversee such information in a proficient way. Hence, this research article proposes dataspaces and their emotionally supportive networks as another plan for information management. This plan includes a lot of the work going on in information management today while representing extra exploration goals. This new method of information management; dataspace, is an innovation that resolves the issue of heterogeneity present in information and tackling different weaknesses of the current frameworks (database). This article justifies a review on dataspace and examines issues identified with the dataspace framework design, information display, questioning as well as response methods, including ordering

A Controlled Experiment to Evaluate the Effects of Mindfulness in Software Engineering

Context. Many reports support the fact that some psycho--social aspects of software engineers are key factors for the quality of the software development process and its resulting products. Based on the experience of some of the authors after more than a year of practising mindfulness---a meditation technique aimed to increase clearness of mind and awareness---we guessed that it could be interesting to empirically evaluate whether mindfulness affects positively not only the behaviour but also the professional performance of software engineers. Goal. In this paper, we present a quasi--experiment carried out at the University of Seville to evaluate whether Software Engineering & Information Systems students enhance their conceptual modelling skills after the continued daily practice of mindfulness during four weeks. Method. Students were divided into two groups: one group practised mindfulness, and the other---the control group---were trained in public speaking. In order to study the possible cause--and--effect relationship, effectiveness (the rate of model elements correctly identified) and efficiency (the number of model elements correctly identified per unit of time) of the students developing conceptual modelling exercises were measured before and after taking the mindfulness and public speaking sessions. Results. The experiment results have revealed that the students who practised mindfulness have become more efficient in developing conceptual models than those who attended the public speaking sessions. With respect to effectiveness, some enhancement have been observed, although not as significant as in the case of efficiency. Conclusions. This rising trend in effectiveness suggests that the number of sessions could have been insufficient and that a longer period of sessions could have also enhanced effectiveness significantly.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-32273Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1867Junta de Andalucía TIC-590

A context-aware mobile bus application

Accessing route information should be easy. Today, most collective transport companies distribute timeta- bles online as electronic documents and in paper format. These solutions are outdated and cumbersome to use. However, systems have been built to make the task of finding route information easy, and to replace these formats. Most of these systems, still, have limitations. They rely on users knowing the name of the bus stops, and the destination is left out when finding information. In this thesis we present a system that is able to find travel alternatives based on two parameters, the user’s current location and the destination. Successful tests and experiments have proved that our system can be useful for people that does not know the following; the name of the bus stops, where the bus stops are located, what route to use, and where to get of the bus. We also suggest an architecture where our system is integrated as part of a personal cloud

DBFIRE: recuperação de documentos relacionados a consultas a banco de dados.

Bancos de dados e documentos são comumente mantidos em separado nas organizações, controlados por Sistemas Gerenciadores de Bancos de Dados (SGBDs) e Sistemas de Recuperação de Informação (SRIs), respectivamente. Essa separação tem ligação com a natureza dos dados manipulados: estruturados, no primeiro caso; não estruturados, no segundo. Enquanto os SGBDs processam consultas exatas a bancos de dados, os SRIs recuperam documentos com base em buscas por palavras-chave, que são inerentemente imprecisas. Apesar disso, a integração desses sistemas pode resultar em grandes ganhos ao usuário, uma vez que, numa mesma organização, bancos de dados e documentos frequentemente se referem a entidades comuns. Uma das possibilidades de integração é a recuperação de documentos associados a uma dada consulta a banco de dados. Por exemplo, considerando a consulta "Quais os clientes com contratos acima de X reais?", como recuperar documentos que possam estar associados a esta consulta, como os próprios contratos desses clientes, propostas de novas vendas em aberto, entre outros documentos? A solução proposta nesta tese baseia-se numa abordagem especial de expansão de busca para a recuperação de documentos: um conjunto inicial de palavras-chave é expandido com termos potencialmente úteis contidos no resultado de uma consulta a banco de dados; o conjunto de palavras-chave resultante é então enviado a um SRI para a recuperação dos documentos de interesse para a consulta. Propõe-se ainda uma nova forma de ordenação dos termos para expansão: partindo do pressuposto de que uma consulta a banco de dados representa com exatidão a necessidade de informação do usuário, a seleção dos termos é medida por sua difusão ao longo do resultado da consulta. Essa medida é usada não apenas para selecionar os melhores termos, mas também para estabelecer seus pesos relativos na expansão. Para validar o método proposto, foram realizados experimentos em dois domínios distintos, com resultados evidenciando melhorias significativas em termos da recuperação de documentos relacionados às consultas na comparação com outros modelos destacados na literatura