Positive Technology Journal

In this interesting paper Burke and coll. describe how the massive proliferation of mobile devices and sensors may give raise to interactive, participatory sensor networks that enable users to gather, analyze and share local knowledge.

The authors also explain how the vision of Participatory Sensing can inspire new applications in different domains, such as healthcare or urban planning.

Last Monday I attended Frontiers of Interaction V, where I gave a talk on Participative Ecology. The conference took place in Rome, at the wonderful Acquario Romano, Casa dell'Architettura.

I was really excited to be there, because I consider Frontiers the most interesting interaction design event in Italy.

Frontiers is organized and produced by Leandro Agrò and Matteo Penzo, who are also the founders of the Idearium community, the largest e-community on Interaction Design in Italy.

The format of the conference is very informal and fresh. You can meet people of all sorts, from academic researchers to superstars of interaction design, from anthropologists to futurists and young entrepreneurs, a mix of creativity and talent.

At the end of the meeting I felt physically exhausted but full of positive energy.

Here are some videos

(and, last but not least: Frontiers is completely free of charge, only registration is required. This is great since this makes the event accessible to young students)

W Frontiers!

General Electric has a great mini-site up showcasing their newest energy services and smarter power management tools.

But the most intriguing part of the site is the augmented reality applications that you can play with using your computer’s webcam.

What you do is you print out a piece of paper that the webcam “sees” and GE’s augmented reality program builds a virtual hologram.

Check out the demo video and then try the AR apps here

InfoAesthetics has collected some interesting examples of what I call Participatory Ecology - the use of social media to foster collective awareness of environmental challenges and promote sustainable development.

- The Energy Detective project merged the actual energy output of an everyday family with a Google Visualization API Timeline visualization, which itself is based on a Twitter-based feed from the smart metering device. Remarkable events or peaks are regularly annotated, and one can easily make out when typical household activities have taken place.

- The flashy Radisson Hotel Building Dashboard seems to offer near real-time statistics about water, electricity and natural gas usage, and the weather. As a hotel, it should really try to consider offering some real data behind those ambivalent "Please use our towels multiple times, for the sake of nature" signs.

Other recent websites focus on using group pressure and social encouragement by publishing one's efforts in more sustainable living within the framework of an online social network.

- Make Me Sustainable allows users to calculate and reduce their carbon footprint, which is then represented as a simple history bar graph or translated in the metaphor of "trees saved" or "cars taken off the road".

- Carbon Rally focuses on reducing one's carbon footprint impact by proposing group challenges, and aggregating the efforts of all its members on a large CO2 Impact Map.

- Finally, the Carbon Monitoring for Action portal is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide, visualized on a world map. By providing complete information for both "clean" and "dirty" power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions from consumers to policy makers.