Display-centred applications in ubiquitous computing

Public displays can play an important enabling role in ubiquitous computing environments. This paper describes an on-going work for a multipurpose, multi-display infrastructure, designed to address the requirements of display-centred applications in ubiquitous computing environments. The system provides an infrastructure in which situated displays can act as portals to the physical space, allowing ubicomp applications to support their association with the physical world by providing them with display services and situationspecific user input and context information

Emerging policy problems related to ubiquitous computing

Peer-reviewed journal articleThis paper provides an overview of the human-centered vision of Ubiquitous Computing and draws on research examining slowly emerging problems over a long-term time frame in the emerging Ubiquitous Computing environment. A six-phase process employing scenario planning, electronic focus groups, and problem assessment surveys harnessed the insight of 165 individuals from diverse backgrounds and regions throughout the State of Hawaii. Distinct differences were found between the problem identification of specialists (policymakers and systems designers) and non-specialists (everyday citizens), and there were significant differences found in the problem assessment between groups. The greatest differences in both phases emerged from social and psychological issues related to the emerging Ubiquitous Computing environment. It is argued that in addition to enormous technical changes, Ubiquitous Computing will serve to blur sociotechnical boundaries throughout the environment, challenging existing distinctions between humans and machine intelligences. As the potential for extending human capabilities via computing and communications technology is actualized in coming decades, what it means to be human will be a major source of public policy conflicts, and the early identification of problems related to these changes is essential in order to mitigate their impacts and socially negotiate a more desirable future

Activity-centered ubiquitous computing support to localized activities

This paper presents ActivitySpot, a ubiquitous computing framework for supporting localized activities, i.e., activities strongly associated to a specific physical environment, performed by occasional visitors. The ActivitySpot framework implements an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing, by defining a conceptual model inspired by Activity Theory and implementing a software infrastructure derived from this conceptual model. ActivitySpot has been evaluated by experiments run at different public spaces and results demonstrate the framework’s suitability to the targeted type of environment.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BD/13299/2003. Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) - POS_Conhecimento

Pioneers, subcultures and cooperatives: The grassroots augmentation of urban places

About the book: There have been numerous possible scenarios depicted on the impact of the internet on urban spaces. Considering ubiquitous/pervasive computing, mobile, wireless connectivity and the acceptance of the Internet as a non extraordinary part of our everyday lives mean that physical urban space is augmented, and digital in itself. This poses new problems as well as opportunities to those who have to deal with it. This book explores the intersection and articulation of physical and digital environments and the ways they can extend and reshape a spirit of place. It considers this from three main perspectives: the implications for the public sphere and urban public or semi-public spaces; the implications for community regeneration and empowerment; and the dilemmas and challenges which the augmentation of space implies for urbanists. Grounded with international real -life case studies, this is an up-to-date, interdisciplinary and holistic overview of the relationships between cities, communities and high technologies

Distributed Interactive Audio Devices: Creative strategies and audience responses to novel musical interaction scenarios

With the rise of ubiquitous computing, comes new possibilities for experiencing audio, visual and tactile media in distributed and situated forms, disrupting modes of media experience that have been relatively stable for decades. We present the Distributed Interactive Audio Devices (DIADs) project, a set of experimental interventions to explore future ubiquitous computing design spaces in which electronic sound is presented as distributed, interactive and portable. The DIAD system is intended for creative sound and music performance and interaction, yet it does not conform to traditional concepts of musical performance, suggesting instead a fusion of music performance and other forms of collaborative digital interaction. We describe the thinking behind the project, the state of the DIAD system’s technical development, and our experiences working with userinteraction in lab-based and public performance scenarios

Legal and Ethical Implications of Mobile Live-Streaming Video Apps

The introduction of mobile apps such as Meerkat, Periscope, and Facebook Live has sparked enthusiasm for live-streaming video. This study explores the legal and ethical implications of mobile live-streaming video apps through a review of public-policy considerations and the computing literature as well as analyses of a mix of quantitative and qualitative user data. We identify lines of research inquiry for five policy challenges and two areas of the literature in which the impact of these apps is so far unaddressed. The detailed data gathered from these inquiries will significantly contribute to the design and development of tools, signals or affordances to address the concerns that our study identifies. We hope our work will help shape the fields of ubiquitous computing and collaborative and social computing, jurisprudence, public policy and applied ethics in the future

Human-Centric Ontology-Based Context Modelling In Tourism

A lot of work has been done up to now in the so called context-aware research field on the one hand and on the ontology research field on the other. Research has been conducted both considering context-awareness and ontology as clearly distinct research disciplines and also utilizing ontologies as a tool for context management. However, context-based applications have only been possible at a laboratory environment so far and they have always worked under very certain, pre-established pre-requisites in a not very stable nor efficient manner, which actually does not fulfil the nature of Ubiquitous Computing vision. Representation and use of context plays a crucial role in many modern IT applications. The ability to process contextual information and perform context-based reasoning is essential not only for mobile and ubiquitous computing systems, but also for a wide range of tourism applications. This paper presents a novel semantic-based human-centric approach to the notion of context that represents an attempt to make Contextual Computing services available to the general public

An Autonomic Cross-Platform Operating Environment for On-Demand Internet Computing

The Internet has evolved into a global and ubiquitous communication medium interconnecting powerful application servers, diverse desktop computers and mobile notebooks. Along with recent developments in computer technology, such as the convergence of computing and communication devices, the way how people use computers and the Internet has changed people´s working habits and has led to new application scenarios. On the one hand, pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing and nomadic computing become more and more important since different computing devices like PDAs and notebooks may be used concurrently and alternately, e.g. while the user is on the move. On the other hand, the ubiquitous availability and pervasive interconnection of computing systems have fostered various trends towards the dynamic utilization and spontaneous collaboration of available remote computing resources, which are addressed by approaches like utility computing, grid computing, cloud computing and public computing. From a general point of view, the common objective of this development is the use of Internet applications on demand, i.e. applications that are not installed in advance by a platform administrator but are dynamically deployed and run as they are requested by the application user. The heterogeneous and unmanaged nature of the Internet represents a major challenge for the on demand use of custom Internet applications across heterogeneous hardware platforms, operating systems and network environments. Promising remedies are autonomic computing systems that are supposed to maintain themselves without particular user or application intervention. In this thesis, an Autonomic Cross-Platform Operating Environment (ACOE) is presented that supports On Demand Internet Computing (ODIC), such as dynamic application composition and ad hoc execution migration. The approach is based on an integration middleware called crossware that does not replace existing middleware but operates as a self-managing mediator between diverse application requirements and heterogeneous platform configurations. A Java implementation of the Crossware Development Kit (XDK) is presented, followed by the description of the On Demand Internet Computing System (ODIX). The feasibility of the approach is shown by the implementation of an Internet Application Workbench, an Internet Application Factory and an Internet Peer Federation. They illustrate the use of ODIX to support local, remote and distributed ODIC, respectively. Finally, the suitability of the approach is discussed with respect to the support of ODIC