A Taxonomy of Internet Appliances

The world is evolving from one in which almost all access to the Internet comes from personal computers (PCs) to one in which so-called Internet appliances (IAs) will make up a greater share of end-user equipment. Today's PC is a general-purpose, highly configurable and extensible device ? an "intelligent end-node" of the sort the Internet's designers had in mind. As such, it allows users much freedom of choice (such as which service provider to use, which Web sites to visit, and which new software to download) in exchange for dealing with associated complexity. An IA is a device connected to the Internet, but beyond that there is little consensus on functionality and target markets. There is, however, general agreement that it reduces the level of complexity seen by the user. A variety of approaches to reducing complexity are being pursued. These fall on a spectrum from totally fixing the function of devices, to automating the configuration of more general purpose systems. In the middle are devices whose functions appear more or less fixed to the user, but which retain some limited capability for upgrade through their Internet connection

Internet Predictions

More than a dozen leading experts give their opinions on where the Internet is headed and where it will be in the next decade in terms of technology, policy, and applications. They cover topics ranging from the Internet of Things to climate change to the digital storage of the future. A summary of the articles is available in the Web extras section

A systematic review of crime facilitated by the consumer Internet of Things

The nature of crime is changing — estimates suggest that at least half of all crime is now committed online. Once everyday objects (e.g. televisions, baby monitors, door locks) that are now internet connected, collectively referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), have the potential to transform society, but this increase in connectivity may generate new crime opportunities. Here, we conducted a systematic review to inform understanding of these risks. We identify a number of high-level mechanisms through which offenders may exploit the consumer IoT including profiling, physical access control and the control of device audio/visual outputs. The types of crimes identified that could be facilitated by the IoT were wide ranging and included burglary, stalking, and sex crimes through to state level crimes including political subjugation. Our review suggests that the IoT presents substantial new opportunities for offending and intervention is needed now to prevent an IoT crime harvest

“design And New Media”: Towards An Analysis Of New Media Culture Through Design Perspective

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2007Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2007Çalışmanın genel çerçevesini, yeni medya ve ürün tasarımı alanlarının güncel tüketim kültürü yapısındaki kültürel ve işlevsel birlikteliklerinin araştırılması oluşturmaktadır. Yeni medya kavramının olası tanım ve açılımları – etkileşimli medya araçları, sanal mekânlar ve bilgisayar destekli iletişim ortamları– araştırılmaya çalışılacak; böylece, somut meta olarak ‘tasarım ürünü’ ile (burada ele alınan şekliyle) bu ürünlerin sanal uzantıları olarak görülen dijital içeriğin ilişkilendirmesi amaçlanacaktır. Teorik bağlamda öne sürülen tartışmaların sonuçlandırılması için geliştirilen bir diğer kavramsal çerçeve de, tez içerisinde detaylandırılacağı şekliyle, ‘nesne-kullanıcı-tüketim’ modeli olarak belirlenmiştir. Bu üç kavramın temel kategoriler olarak belirlenmesindeki amaç, yeni medya nesnelerinin, tüketici deneyimlerinin ve bunlar üzerinden tüketim kalıplarının incelenebilmesi için tutarlı bir teorik temel belirlenmesidir. Bu sınıflandırma üzerinden yapılacak olan yeni medya incelemelerinden sonra, çalışmanın son bölümü olarak, belirli bir örnek ürün üzerinde teoriler sınanacak ve gözlemlenecektir. Bu bağlamda seçilen ürünün temel nitelikleri arasında, fiziksel kullanıcı-ürün etkileşimine ek olarak, yeni medya tabanlı etkileşim ortamlarını içermesi aranmıştır. Sonuç olarak, bu tez bağlamında özetlenen çıkarım ve tartışmalar, okuyucuya konu hakkında kapsamlı bilgi ve görüş sağlamayı hedeflemekte; bu amaçla çalışma, öncelikle yeni medya ve ürün tasarımı hakkındaki kuramsal ilişkileri özetlemekte, devamında bu kuramsal altyapıyı sanal içeriğe sahip güncel bir örnek-ürün üzerinden kullanıcı deneyimlerini inceleyerek desteklemektedir.The general aims and theoretical framework of this study is constituted by the cultural and functional associations between new media applications and profession of industrial design in contemporary consumer culture. By investigating the possible definitions and expansions of new media with reference to interactive media appliances, virtual environments and computer-mediated-communication (CMC) mediums, this study seeks major points of relevance between designed product (as physical commodity) and its virtual extensions (as digital content). Another major framework of the theoretical part, through which the arguments will be concluded, is the ‘object-user-consumption’ model that is categorized as such to provide a discursive base for an examination of new media objects, user experiences and their exclusive consumption patterns in contemporary societies. Consequent to the contextual analysis of new media within this categorization, the final part of the study focuses on a specified case study; a product which essentially involves new media content as an interaction component, in addition to physical man-machine- interaction features. Ultimately, the intended conclusions of this thesis would provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter by outlining the significant theoretical associations between new media and product design, and by combining these arguments with the observation of practical cases and user experiences through the intersection of virtual worlds and designed products.Yüksek LisansM.Sc

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Horizon Report 2009

El informe anual Horizon investiga, identifica y clasifica las tecnologías emergentes que los expertos que lo elaboran prevén tendrán un impacto en la enseñanza aprendizaje, la investigación y la producción creativa en el contexto educativo de la enseñanza superior. También estudia las tendencias clave que permiten prever el uso que se hará de las mismas y los retos que ellos suponen para las aulas. Cada edición identifica seis tecnologías o prácticas. Dos cuyo uso se prevé emergerá en un futuro inmediato (un año o menos) dos que emergerán a medio plazo (en dos o tres años) y dos previstas a más largo plazo (5 años)

An Ontology Based Approach Towards A Universal Description Framework for Home Networks

Current home networks typically involve two or more machines sharing network resources. The vision for the home network has grown from a simple computer network, to every day appliances embedded with network capabilities. In this environment devices and services within the home can interoperate, regardless of protocol or platform. Network clients can discover required resources by performing network discovery over component descriptions. Common approaches to this discovery process involve simple matching of keywords or attribute/value pairings. Interest emerging from the Semantic Web community has led to ontology languages being applied to network domains, providing a logical and semantically rich approach to both describing and discovering network components. In much of the existing work within this domain, developers have focused on defining new description frameworks in isolation from existing protocol frameworks and vocabularies. This work proposes an ontology-based description framework which takes the ontology approach to the next step, where existing description frameworks are in- corporated into the ontology-based framework, allowing discovery mechanisms to cover multiple existing domains. In this manner, existing protocols and networking approaches can participate in semantically-rich discovery processes. This framework also includes a system architecture developed for the purpose of reconciling existing home network solutions with the ontology-based discovery process. This work also describes an implementation of the approach and is deployed within a home-network environment. This implementation involves existing home networking frameworks, protocols and components, allowing the claims of this work to be examined and evaluated from a ‘real-world’ perspective