Positive Technology Journal

From 3Dpoint /Via Metaversed/

Second Life resident Wrestling Hulka has a limited version of the virtual world running on the Nokia n800.

 
another mobile client for Second Life was developed by Comverse earlier in the year

boingboing

An Apple phone from 1983. Link via fudder.de

Global mobile phone use to hit record 3.25 billion ( i.e. half world population )

From Mobile Games Blog

Via Networked performance

• Everyday uses: sharing our lives via the mobile (text, voice, video)
• Civic engagement, activism and mobile technologies
• Wireless services and emergency communication
• Privacy, surveillance and mobile phones
• Community Wireless Networks
• Policy: CRTC regulations and spectrum policy
• Mobility, Labour: new conditions of work
• Shifting notions of space, place and time in a mobile world
• Rhetoric and discourses on mobility and wireless worlds
• Art, design and mobile technologies
• Mobile genres and cellular convergence
• Global and international perspectives on mobile technologies

Full-length papers (@ 7000-9000 words) should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website.

The special issue of Psychnology Journal on "Mobile Media and Communication: Reconfiguring Human Experience and Social Practices?" is online 

Contents (click on the links to download the full paper) 

Editorial Preface
Ilkka Arminen

Is It Fun to Go to Sydney? Common-Sense Knowledge of Social Structures and WAP
Ilpo Koskinen

Texters and Talkers: Phone Call Aversion among Mobile Phone Users
Ruth Rettie

Discourses on Mobility and Technological Mediation: The Texture of Ubiquitous Interaction
Giuseppina Pellegrino

Mobile Fantasies on Film: Gathering Metaphoric Evidence of Mobile Symbiosis and the Mobile Imaginary
Kathleen M. Cumiskey

From Pink Tentacle 

NTT-Neomeit, an NTT subisidiary, has unveiled plans for a convenient and inexpensive service that allows users to remotely control home devices from their cellphones. 

Read full post on Pink Tentacle 

Enterprises have turned to explicit - and even conceptualising on tacit - knowledge management to elaborate a systematic approach to develop and sustain the intellectual capital needed to succeed, the knowledge normally attributed to knowledge workers. This is complemented by structural capital, i.e. the structures, technologies, practices put in place by an organisation as an attempt to manage their specialist knowledge. Mobile learning would equally come under such an umbrella, enticing knowledge workers and managers within organisations to conduct work in a mobile manner.

One of the challenges for future mobile organisations will deal with how they can enhance communication channels and collaborate within and between their employees, customers and stakeholders. According to Liebowitz (Liebowitz, 2006), one technique that can help address this issue is social network analysis. Mobile organisations also need to develop new knowledge and learning strategies possibly under the umbrella of a knowledge exchange or sharing system, and especially as related to recognition and reward systems. Uden (Uden, 2006) suggests that activity theory, as a social and cultural psychological theory, can be used to design a mobile learning environment.

Existing theoretical work has paid limited attention to the role of intellectual proximity in facilitating knowledge exchange within clusters of organisations that operate within the same domain of knowledge.

A consensus suggests that users build a mental model from their interactions with artificial systems. Design of mobile devices needs tp to take into consideration the existence of a gap between the user’s viewpoint [interaction-oriented] and the designer’s viewpoint [development-oriented]. Enhancing mobile learning effectiveness requires narrowing this gap between execution and conception. Implementing new solutions for improving the effective use of mobile systems needs new methodological tools and a better understanding of the complexity of user’s mental construction, in line with their containment of the domain knowledge.

The purpose of this special issue is to expose writers and the eventual readership to topics aiming at the facilitation of mobile learning for knowledge workers, from differing and multidisciplinary perspectives.

• Knowledge management and mobile learning
• Knowledge flow and mobile learning
• Dissemination of practice and mobile learning
• Currently implemented applications for mobile learning
• Technologies that directly support mobile learning systems (devices, networks, tools etc.)
• Studies of mobile learning in practice
• Reviews of the application of mobile learning in multiple contexts
• Uses of mobile learning in professional learning environments, e.g., mobile health, mobile commerce
• Constraints in the delivery of mobile learning, e.g., human-computer interaction issues in mobile learning environments
• Mobile games for learning
• The role of Wikis, blogs, podcasts, messaging, other on-line tools and Web 2.0 components in mobile learning systems and as mechanisms to exchange/distribute knowledge
• Support for learner interaction and mobile collaborative learning
• Privacy and security issues in mobile learning
• Knowledge expropriation or hoarding issues in mobile learning
• The role of location based services in learning and sharing knowledge
• Organisational structures and mobile learning
• Management issues from mobile learning
• Design of user-friendly mobile devices
• Mental models emerging from interactions with mobile systems
• User's characteristics (age, gender, culture, expertise, etc.) and mobile learning
• Graphic user interface (GUI) design and mobile learning
• Mobile learning interactions and cognitive modeling
•  

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

From Urban Tapestries 

__________________________________________________

Venue: Cargo, 83 Rivington St, Kingsland Viaduct, London, EC2A 3AY
The performance will start at Cargo and the route will include Hoxton
Square and Hoxton Market
Dates/Times: Tuesday 10 April, Performance 10am, Conference 1.30-5pm.
Tube: Old St, Liverpool St
Admission: Free
Access: Limited, please call in advance for details
Information: +44 (0)20 7729 9616, www.iniva.org, institute@iniva.org
Supported by Arts Council England & Esmée Fairbairn

Download the eFlyer
__________________________________________________

With increasing concerns about climate change, individuals and communities are looking for new ways to take action and make a real and lasting impact.

In the Snout 'carnival' performance and public forum, artists, producers, performers and computer programmers demonstrate how to create wearable technologies from scavenged media, in order to map the invisible gases that affect our everyday environment. The project by inIVA, Proboscis and researchers from Birkbeck College also explores how communities can use this visual evidence to participate in or initiate local action.

The performance will show in action two prototype Snout sensor 'wearables' based on traditional carnival costumes. Carnival is a time of suspension of the normal activities of everyday life - a time when the fool becomes king for a day, when social hierarchies are inverted, a time when everyone is equal. Snout proposes 'participatory sensing' as a lively addition to the popular artform of carnival costume design, engaging the community in an investigation of its own environment, something usually done by local authorities and state agencies.

A public forum on 'participatory sensing and media scavenging' will be held after the performance. This will demonstrate the Snout wearables, discuss evidence collecting for environmental action and how communities can reflect on the personal impact of pollution and the environment. The forum, led by Giles Lane (Proboscis) and Dr George Roussos (Birkbeck) will look at 'participatory sensing' as a form of social engagement. The forum will share tactics on how to 'scavenge' free online services and resources, as well as exploring the relationship between information, aesthetics and design and how to make these ideas and issues accessible to more people.

Snout is a new collaboration between inIVA, Proboscis and researchers from Birkbeck College exploring relationships between the body, community and the environment. It builds on a previous collaboration Feral Robots (with Natalie Jeremijenko) to investigate how data can be collected from environmental sensors as part of popular social and cultural activities.

have a look at this PhD thesis by Jeff Axup - lot of interesting stuff about mobile research methods...

Download the entire thesis here:

Methods of Understanding and Designing For Mobile Communities

From Technology Review

Nokia wants to superimpose digital information on the real world using a smart cell phone.

A prototype uses a GPS sensor, a compass, and accelerometers. Using data from these sensors, the phone can calculate the location of just about any object its camera is aimed at:

Read Original Article

check out ths cool wearable display developed by Philips researchers. They are integrating LEDs into fabrics to obtain light-emitting clothes

Video

From Textually.org

[via Mad4MobilePhones] "It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile search query traffic grows substantially. Our current model is to use targeted text ads and we have evidence that the monetization of those ads is higher than in non-mobile uses. So it looks like the advertising revenue on a per-search query is likely to be significantly higher on mobile than on non-mobile.

As part of that, we are investing in new categories of using mobile devices. For example, YouTube content is being used and can be viewed on mobile devices in various partnerships that we're doing. Those are as much opportunistic for us, and they're not really driving revenue yet; although in theory, you could imagine a combination of video, video advertising on a mobile phone that would have the best entertainment value but also very, very high monetization rates. We're unlikely to split it out. It's not material today in a financial sense, and more importantly, it's still emerging.

We are making a significant investment in technology around mobile because of the growth rate of mobile and the ultimate scale of that business. You won't really see its financial impact until `08."

Re-blogged from Textually.org

BuddyCheckService helps seniors that live alone keep their independence.  It uses ASR speech technology to enable overtaxed family caregivers to monitor loved ones on a regular basis, and are alerted by text message or call on their mobile phone if there is an emergency.

Via Medgadget 

Researchers at Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the Loughborough University in the UK are planning to introduce a portable telemedicine technology to the market. The system enables a doctor to observe remotely up to four different medical signals from a freely moving patient. Signals that can be transmitted include the ECG, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and blood glucose level.

Now Professor Woodward has been awarded a grant by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), enabling him to join forces with experts in India on the project. Working with the Indian Insitute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi), the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University and London's Kingston University, he is hoping to miniaturise the system, designing 'smart' sensors and mini-processors that are small enough to be carried by patients and able to acquire biomedical data from them. The network of sensors will be linked via a modem to mobile networks and the internet, and to a hospital computer. The device would then be used by doctors to remotely monitor patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, which affect millions of people across the world.

"Such a 'Mobile Disease Management System' is long overdue," says Professor Woodward. "Especially in view of the proliferation of applications in mobile data communications. It is also achievable in a three-year time frame and should provide a step-change in improving the quality of life of patients needing expert diagnoses, and for those with pre-diagnosed conditions or undergoing post-operative care.

"In the UK, the project will allow a more patient-driven health service, as promoted by the Government to improve the efficiency of health care delivery. In India, the project will link clinics and regional hospitals in remote areas to centres of excellence. As in the UK, the Indian Government is encouraging the integration of new and existing networks, much needed because of a large population spread over a vast area.

 

Link at Loughborough University...

From Textually.org

 

GTX GPS Xplorer Smart Sneakers keep track of your kids and if they wander beyond a delimited area, a GPS signal activates a text message alert to the parents phone.

From Textually.org

Vodafone is planning to launch itself as a mobile operator in the game Second Life alongside its Vodafone Island area within the popular virtual world, reports TechDigest

"Second Life users will be able to use branded handsets to call each other within the world, as well as send text messages."

Second Life Cell Phones can SMS real world Phones

From Textually.org

The Cell Freak reports on a cell phone experiment by 27 year-old Luke Johnson from Arizona, solliciting calls to his cellphone through a video published on YouTube.

 

"The idea is to find out how many people will call me if I post my cell phone on the Internet for the whole world to see. Call my cell phone. I don't care why you call or what you say. .. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep track of how many calls I receive to find out how many strangers will call someone they've never met before in their entire life."

So far 11,914 people have taken Luke Johnson up on his offer, some from as far away as Japan, Thailand, and South Africa and and his social project has been picked up by CNN.

Re-blogged from Textually.org (via Yanko Design)

A wearable mobile device for enhanced chatting, by Designer Sunman Kwo.

"A new wearable device that anyone can communicate with that is easier and lighter in mobile circumstances corresponding to the 3.5G, 4G communication standard. Human hand is the most basic communication method.

For easier and simpler controls, it uses the instinctive input method "finger joint". Excluding the thumb, each finger joint makes up twelve buttons, with "the knuckle button", using the cell phone's 3X4 keypad, likely being the most popular input method."

breathtaking :-@

Engadget Gizmodo