Positive Technology Journal

From the IEEE Pervasive Computing Journal website 

Author guidelines: www.computer.org/pervasive/author.htm 
Submission address: http://cs-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com
WIP Deadline:  See below
Publication date: January 2007

IEEE Pervasive Computing invites articles about the use of pervasive computing technology in healthcare applications.  We welcome papers that focus on novel applications of embedded sensor and actuators as well as user interfaces for use by caregivers and/or patients. We also encourage surveys of available technologies, and reporting on user experiences. Example topics include:

Submissions should be 4,000 to 6,000 words long and should follow the magazine's guidelines on style and presentation. All submissions will be peer-reviewed in accordance with normal practice for scientific publications. Submissions should be received by 5 September 2006 to receive full consideration.

In addition to full-length submissions, we also invite work-in-progress submissions of 250 words or less (submit to mmraz@computer.org) These will not be peer-reviewed but will be reviewed by the Department Editor, Anthony Joseph, and, if accepted, edited by the staff into a feature for the issue. The deadline for work-in-progress submissions is 1 November 2006.

From the conference's website 

CSCW 2006 is the premier venue for Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Please join us for the 20^th Anniversary of the first CSCW meeting! We have a number of special events planned as part of our Anniversary celebration.

CSCW has consistently been at the leading edge of thinking about the role of coordination and communication technologies in our lives. With your help, CSCW 2006 will play an important role in continuing this tradition. Come and help us make our 20^th Anniversary of CSCW a stimulating and exciting event.

New this year, CSCW will be running SIGCHI Best Awards programs for the Papers and Notes submission categories. These awards will recognize the most outstanding submissions in these categories.

Source: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Journal

Advances in body worn sensors, mobile computing, and ubiquitous networking have lead to a wide range of new applications in areas related to healthcare. This includes intelligent health monitoring, assisted living systems, novel, intelligent information delivery devices for medical personnel, and new assets and process management methods for hospitals. As divers as the above applications are, most of them have one thing in common: reliance on a degree of system intelligence. Such intelligence is needed to adapt the system functionality to the specific situation that the user is in, simplify the user interface, allow relevant data to be extracted from physiological sensors despite motion artifacts ant the use of simple sensors, or provide altogether new types of functionality related to the user’s environment. While the work on wearable systems mostly takes place outside the classical AI community, it strongly relies on methods from AI such as pattern recognition, Bayesian modeling and time series analysis. The aim of this special issue is to bring this new field to the attention of the medical AI community through a collection of outstanding research articles. Relevant topics will include but not be limited to:

1. Novel body worn sensors and sensor systems enabling intelligent health care applications
2. Novel signal processing methods relevant to intelligent wearable applications in healthcare
3. Activity and context recognition methods relevant to healthcare applications
4. Applications of intelligent wearable systems in health care related areas.

The focus of the issue is on high quality, not yet published research work. However outstanding overview articles will also be considered. All submissions will undergo a strict peer review process. In general the acceptance rate of AIIM is around 30%.

Submission and Relevant Dates:

Authors are invited to submit their contributions of about 20 pages (1.5 lines spacing) in pdf format to paul.lukowicz@umit.at . The relevant dates for the special issue are:
1. Oct 31st 2006: submission deadline
2. Feb 1st 2007: notification of acceptance
3. Apr 1st 2007: Final versions due

Guest Editor:
Paul Lukowicz Chair for Embedded Systems University of Passau, Germany

Via Networked Performance

While players of video games have always been waiting for the next generation of technology, less fuss is made about next-generation experiences. If such experiences are already there, what are they like? What would be the 21st-century-equivalent to the experiences of Andy Capp's Tavern's customers who rushed into the bar to play Pong until the machine got jammed with coins? Ask a script writer, a political mod artist, a middleware developer, a computer game researcher, and someone who has traded off his social contacts in real life for a high-level character in a MMOG - and you will be overwhelmed by the diversity of what makes an experience worth striving for.

Department of Media at the Faculty of Art & Design of the University of Lapland and Mediapolis Innomedia project will publish a multidisciplinary book on player experiences in early 2007. The book will be a compilation of peer-reviewed articles. Respecting the department of Media's tradition of combining research with design, the book aims to piece together contemplations from researchers, designers, and those in-between, within or outside the academia.

On one hand, the extending might mean creating games that allow new kinds of experiences or are more emotional, maybe by implementing innovations regarding for example gameplay, graphics, sound or the interface. Also the players are creative. Their use of games in a way designers did not intend alters their experiences. On the other hand, the extending takes place concept-wise. In the wake of new forms of games and playing new types of players get introduced to digital games. Thus, the concept of player experience has to assimilate very different takes on how, where, when and why games are played and experienced. No matter from which viewpoint one looks at the player's experience, it seems that it poses challenges for those trying to observe or analyse it, not to mention those who are trying to understand it in order to be able to design something new.

Topics that the authors are invited to be address from the viewpoint of the players experience include, but are not limited to the following, and case-studies with an artistic or an industrial perspective are also welcomed.

Games

- Game genres and gameplay concepts, abstract games, story-based games
- Game design "trends", e.g. movie-like games with no HUDs
- Graphics and sound; audiovisual styles, cel-shading, photorealism, sound-based games
- Different player setups; one or many, local or online, one-vs-one, team-vs-team, etc.
- Avatars and other player representations
- Innovations; new gameplay concepts, platforms, input devices, interfaces, AI
- Different types of games; online multiplaying (both hc & casual), mobile and portable games, pervasive and VR games
- Content; games not only for entertaining, i.e. "seriousness" of games, in-game advertising

Players

- Different player groups and motivations; e.g. newbie, casual, hc, professional, senior, grrl, and mom gamers
- The role of "fun" in players' experiences
- Player identities
- Games as media for human relations
- Players' goals, emotions, motivations, expectations
- Consequences of playing
- Borderline activities; guild/clan webfora, mods, machinima, real-money trade of in-game assets

Methodological challenges for research and design

- Games as form of art, propaganda or education
- Design research from all viewpoints
- Philosophy of the experience
- Game-related experiences vs. other experiences
- Player's experience compared to user's/reader's/viewer's experience
- The applications of cognitive psychology, affective computing, HCI, Media Studies, etc. on understanding the players' experiences

IMPORTANT DATES

All papers will be reviewed by an independent review committee, which will provide written feedback on each paper. NB: Due to popular demand, the abstract submission deadline has been extended from the original.

June, 19. 2006 Abstract submission (was: June 5th)
June, 26. 2006 Notification of acceptance (was: June 12th)
Sept, 5. 2006 Submission of full papers
Jan, 10. 2006 Submission of final papers

3rd Annual Colloquium on Online Simulations, Role-Playing, and Virtual Worlds

October 30 - November 3, 2006, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina USA

From the conference website

About the League of Worlds

The League of Worlds (LoW) annual colloquium brings together people engaged in the creation of virtual worlds and real- time simulations for educational  and training purposes. Our mission is (1) to stimulate and disseminate research and analysis regarding the theoretical, technical, and curricular developments in; and (2) to contribute towards the development of coherent frameworks for the advancement, application and assessment of educational and social uses of role-playing, simulations, and virtual worlds.

Our primary areas of interest include:

  a. theoretical analysis
  b. the development of practical applications
  c. the documentation of framework projects and case studies

1. About the Colloquium

The League of Worlds colloquium is not an ordinary conference. This  year's theme is: "Exploring Issues in and Asking Questions about Virtual Environments." Participants are expected to challenge one another to take a fresh look at the questions that arise when people meet in virtual territories to play, to learn, and to share. Participation is purposely limited and there will be no concurrent sessions.
Instead, participants will participate in an ongoing dialogue about virtual environments, integrating their own perspectives and expertise into the conversation. The outcome of the colloquium will be a published text comprised of a scholarly narrative of the dialogue around the themes and research discussed throughout the colloquium. All LoW participants will be cited as contributors to this published work.

PROPOSAL CATEGORIES

The League of Worlds colloquium is designed to support sharing and meaningful reflection. Participants should allow one another the opportunity to share experiences, to demonstrate technologies, and to think critically. To facilitate these activities, the colloquium review committee is interested in submissions on the following topics:

• Technologies used to create and manage virtual environments (tools, hardware, software)
• Vision for what virtual environments could be (architecture,
  metaphors)
• Teaching and Learning in virtual environments
• Role playing and simulations
• Social constructivism
• Communication and collaboration
• Serendipitous interactions and learning
• Community formation in virtual environments (interaction, presentation of self, presence)
• Culture (development of, artifacts)
• Administrative/Technical support issues in virtual environments
• Change (Advocacy for, dissemination and sharing of research, how teaching and learning takes place)
• Resources (to create and/or support any of above themes)
• Research (on virtual environments in general or in support of any of above themes)

CFP available at: http://www.leagueofworlds.com/news.php

PsychNology Journal will host three special issues on the following themes:

International Workshop
Naples , 17-18 October, 2006

As part of CogSci 2006, 26-29 July 2006, Montreal, Canada

From the website

Craig Lindley: Cognitive Science of Games and Gameplay (full day)

Cognitive science has always had a strong relationship with games and game play. Simple cognition tests frequently having the form of games, and games like chess have provided traditional models of intense cognitive challenges. Ongoing advances in computer game technology have supported the creation of commercial games presenting a wide variety of cognitive challenges embedded within rich, engaging audiovisual worlds. The growth of computer games as an entertainment technology and medium is having a major cultural and social impact, with game players frequently spending large portions of their discretional time deeply immersed in game play.

Despite the emergence of computer games as a major cultural and economic force, the scientific study of complex games is in its very early stages. Methodologies and theoretical paradigms are still being established, and the world waits for substantial results before game systems can be more fully deployed across broad application areas. Games are fundamentally learning systems and this is of particular interest, both from the perspective of the cognitive changes in players arising from entertainment gameplay (and their attendant social implications) and from the perspective of how games might function in more specific pedagogical and therapeutic contexts.

Theories and methods from cognitive science appear to be among the most promising for studying the structure, dynamics, affects and effects of games and game play. Moreover, computer games provide rich, multi-modal, but still controllable environments for conducting cognitive experiments having potentially higher ecological validity than the rarefied experiments of traditional cognitive psychology.

This workshop aims to bring together cognitive scientists interested in game phenomena, cognitive scientists interested in using games as a research tool, game researchers interested in cognitive approaches to the study of games, and game researchers interested in games for the study of cognition. The aim is to consolidate and focus these interests in a new field of the Cognitive Science of Games and Game Play. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

The workshop will be held from 0830 to 1700 on Wednesday July 26 2006.

Submission

Those interested in attending the workshop should submit a 500 – 1000 word abstract by 19 May 2006. Submissions should be sent in electronic form to: craig.lindley@hgo.se Authors of accepted abstracts should submit full papers by Friday 30 June 2006. Full papers may be up to 10 A4 pages in length.

Forthcoming special issues of Pragmatics & Cognition

1. Mechanicism and Autonomy: What can Robotics Teach us About Human Cognition and Action? (call for papers)

Editors: Pim Haselager, Maria Eunice Qumlice Gonzales, and Itiel Dror

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2006

Publication: Summer 2007

2. Ageing, Impairment, and Technology (call for papers)

Editors: Romola Bucks, Jonathan Cole, and Itiel Dror

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2007

Publication: Summer 2008

5. Cognitive Research in Light of Technological Developments: Advances, Challenges, and Potential Pitfalls (call for papers)

Editors: Boris Velichkovsky and Itiel Dror

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2008

Publication: Summer 2009

6. Cognitive Development and Education in the Mirror of Technology (call for papers)

Editors: TBA and Itiel Dror

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2009

Publication: Summer 2010

Via Usability News

Deadline: 8 May 2006

Advances in interactive computing technology have blurred the line between art, social studies and science. The age of digital reproduction is making radical changes in how art is created, distributed and perceived. Recent work from the humanities and arts has constructively critiqued traditional Interaction Design theory and practice. Studies of experience with technology can provide new insights into the potential of interactivity in contemporary arts and performance, as well as new tools for creativity.

This special issue will provide a forum for radically interdisciplinary analysis of digital technology. It will focus on the role of technology in enhancing culture and creativity. It will seek critical and reflective approaches to the design and analysis of interactive technology. Contributions will be welcomed from the Arts and Humanities as well as the Sciences. Contributions can take the form of academic papers but also less traditional creative presentation formats such as multimedia, digital artwork and sound.

Call for Papers
PervasiveHealth Conference 2006
Inssbruck, Austria, November 29th - December 1st 2006.
www.pervasivehealth.org

Sponsored by:
-IEEE EMB Society,
-ACM Association for Computing Machinery
-CREATE-NET Center for REsearch And Telecommunication Experimentation for NETworked communities,
-ICST International Communication Sciences and Technology Association

CALL FOR PAPERS
MOBILEHCI 2006

The 8th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

Date: 12-15 September 2006
Location: Espoo, Finland
Website: www.mobilehci.org

Deadlines: *Papers, Workshops and Tutorials: 1 March 2006 *Short Papers, Posters, Demos, Panels, Industry Cases, Doctoral Consortium: 7 May 2006

Purpose

The 8th conference in the MOBILEHCI series provides a forum for academics and practitioners to discuss the challenges, potential solutions and innovations towards effective interaction with mobile systems and services. It covers the analysis, design, evaluation and application of human-computer interaction techniques and approaches for all mobile computing devices, software and services. Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

*Audio and speech interaction
*Context-dependent systems
*Designing Web sites for mobile devices
*Ethographical and field studies with mobile technology
*Evaluation of mobile devices and services
*Group interaction and mobility
*Intelligent environments
*Location-aware interaction
*Methods to evaluate mobile usability
*Model-based design of interactive mobile systems
*Mobile phenomena
*Mobility and work environments
*Multimodal interaction
*Novel user interfaces and interaction techniques
*Perception and modelling of the environment
*Safety issues (e.g., in-car user interfaces, payments)
*Specific classes of handheld devices (PDA, Pocket PC, WAP phone,...)
*3D graphics on mobile devices
*3G/4G devices and services
*Usability of mobile devices and services
*Visualization techniques for the mobile context
*Interdisciplinary perspectives towards mobile interaction (e.g. Social aspects)
*User centered design tools and methods for mobile systems

October 10-13, 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland

The conference aims to connect leading health information and communication technology experts from Europe and beyond in educational sessions, vendor exhibitions, interoperability demonstrations, exchange of experiences and networking sessions, and other professional development opportunities.

The focus of the conference is on the role and impact Health IT has on the health sector in Europe and other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa. The educational sessions will address experiences from deployed services, and focus on proven benefits in quality and efficiency.

Visit the conference website for further information about the event and related call for papers