Category: del.icio.us

Nokia's plan for Symbian emerges: "Symbian, the operating system on nearly half the world's smartphones, is to become involved in the development of mobile applications, or apps. Symbian will be a one-stop location for app developers, standardising and testing software and then making it available to existing app storefronts."

"Patent systems are often justified by an assumption that innovation will be spurred by the prospect of patent protection, leading to the accrual of greater societal benefits than would be possible under non-patent systems. However, little empirical evidence exists to support this assumption. One way to test the hypothesis that a patent system promotes innovation is experimentally to simulate the behavior of inventors and competitors under conditions approximating patent and non-patent systems. Initial data generated using The Patent Game suggest that a system combining patent and open source protection for inventions (that is, similar to modern patent systems) generates significantly lower rates of innovation, productivity, and societal utility than does a commons system. These data also indicate that there is no statistical difference in innovation, productivity, or societal utility between a pure patent system and a system combining patent and open source protection."

Commentary and speculation about location based services, with some stats (most of the services mentioned were actually available in '08).

RWR blog about a "new Twitter app in development called TwittARound, an augmented reality Twitter viewer for the iPhone 3GS. With the app, you can see live tweets around your location and you can even see how far away they are"… one might ask why you'd want to know any of these things.

RWR blog that a "Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe is developing an AU concept called Augmented ID that "sees" people and tells you who they are." This AR-type application is more a prototype than anything but signals a desire to create these types of application. This kind of application would ask fairly serious questions about privacy, personal security and the notion of 'identity'.

MIT researchers feed data from physical places into Second Life locations as 'sensor portals' (not too sure how they're 'ubiquitous'). This links with research they have entitled as 'cross-reality' yet another 'reality' prefix to explore technical 'augmentation' or mediation of 'life'.

BBC launches new programme called Digital Revolution: "We will take stock of two decades of profound change since the invention of the World Wide Web.
Right now we’re embarking on an experiment to see how you can help us shape both the TV and online projects. We want you to get involved.
Why? Because we want to make a series that is true to its subject – and welcomes the collaborative power of the Web."

BBC's Click speculates about natural language processing in search engines and the semantic web: "Search engines have never really understood the precise meaning or true intent of questions or phrases – semantic search is a process trying to improve this. A new generation of web services is in development to offer results for words and picture searches, and attempt to understand users' questions. Kosmix is one of a new batch of search engines trying to incorporate human understanding into its complex mathematical computations."

"In order to monitor how the pieces of rubbish move around the cities and beyond, the MIT team has developed a small mobile sensor that can be attached to individual pieces of waste. "It's like a miniature cell phone with limited functionality," said Carlo Ratti, a member of the project. … Ultimately, the team hopes that the technology can be miniaturised and made cheap enough that the tags could one day be attached to everything. "Think about a future where thanks to smart tags we will not have waste anymore," said Mr Ratti. "Everything will be traceable."

Arthur speculates about the impact of AR-type 'camera phone as a lens' technologies such as the recent 'nearest tube station' application. An interesting comparison is drawn to the use of information graphics such as 'hawk eye' in the cricket and tennis and Arthur speculates about how such graphics could be available in near-realtime to spectators (and presumably players and umpires?!). A key point – accuracy and reliablity of the data upon which these services (might) operate.

"The excitement about how portable and ubiquitous technologies might change traditional teaching methods should have centred around the widening opportunities to inspire and capture learning as it occurs rather than looking at it as an opportunity to deliver a vague notion of ‘personalised learning’ through 1:1 access whilst maintaining the traditional ‘front of class’ Blue Peter approach to teaching."

"invention is now a lot more like collage than like discovery… Almost all of this is mash-up tinkering. It's like the Burroughs cut-up method applied to objects. These guys are assembling hardware in the same crowd-pleasing spaghetti at the wall approach that Web 2.0 web designers use in assembling features and applications. …Plausible premise invention is everywhere."

"The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards… In principle, the Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is being used with a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it."

"My research suggests that, at least in terms of the mobile phone, these early adopters say that having the most advanced mobile phone technology makes them feel like they are living at the edge of tomorrow. The technology gives them a sense of the possible and the unprecedented. Thus in a very real sense, they not only have a feeling that they are living in the future, but – by having new powers and experiences that only recently became technologically feasible – in many senses they already are… The barrier between communication technology and body, once quite distinct, is becoming less so. The trend will continue: many future users will want their communication machines to be one with their physical bodies and social selves. "

"Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers. Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service."

"The re-establishment of a parliamentary Science and Technology Committee was approved on Thursday. The committee will be made up of the same members as the existing Innovation, Universities, Skills, and Science Committee (IUSS)."

"Under the arrangement, the companies said they will work together on chip design and open-source software. Intel recently has entered that field with its Linux-based operating system called Moblin, designed to function on portable devices, and Nokia has a Linux-based operating system, dubbed Maemo. In addition, Intel will license some modem technology from Nokia."

BBC 'Click' makes some claims about what MIT is 'inventing': "MIT – is a breeding ground for boffins – the next generation of gadget creators. Ten thousand students, five schools and one college including the famed Media Lab make up MIT – which has an annual research budget of well over $500m (£302m). Every year hundreds of new inventions and patents are created at MIT and millions of dollars are earned in royalties from previous projects that have become public. So what's next?"

China begins to ban 'gold farming': "Cash earned in games in China can no longer be spent on real world goods. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce policy aims to limit the impact of game currencies on real-world markets. In the future, any cash earned by Chinese gamers can only be spent to acquire items or equipment in that particular game."

Urban Atmospheres/ CommonSense (a la Intel Berkeley) -style public sensing project, led by Imperial College: "Cyclists, buses, cars and even pedestrians will become mobile pollution detectors in an initiative launched on Tuesday. Led by Imperial College London, the project will trial three types of mobile, wireless pollution sensor. These will measure traffic pollutants throughout the UK, and transmit their data via the mobile phone network."

Telecommuting gets 'mobilised' (again) for the noughties, the beeb reports: "Today work is somewhere you travel to – in the future work will come to you. So says a report attempting to work out what the offices and workplaces of 2030 will be like. It predicts that as workforces get more mobile, technology will ensure that everything an employee needs is available no matter where they are."

"The Zoombak Universal A-GPS locator helps you stay connected to the things that matter the most by allowing you to actively locate what you are tracking in real-time and on-demand. It is a simple and ingenious way to keep track of items that need keeping track of – including children, bicycles, pets, backpacks and more!" Is there an equivalence between the list of those things?!

"An intelligent, mobile-phone-based social network is being tested by researchers at Hewlett Packard. Friendlee analyses calls and messages to build up a picture of a person's closest correspondents." Bernardo Huberman is at it again, a quantitative algorithmic analysis is s'posed to give a reflection of your social life. An interesting experiment, possibly a disaster in personal privacy.

Neat and simple visualisation of wirelessly communicable objects.

Testing M$ 'natal', good review (with video) if a little gushing: "I haven't been quite this blown away by a tech demo in a long time. It looked neat onstage at Microsoft's keynote. Seeing it, feeling it in person, makes me want to believe that this what the future of gaming looks like–no buttons, no joysticks, no wands. The only thing left to get rid of is the screen, and even that'll happen soon enough."

More ubicomp near-futurism: "One coming change in the cityscape that I’m expecting will be subtle, but pervasive: technology folks call it “ubiquitous computing.” The city will be alive with information, even more so than it is now. Every object–street signs, food carts, trains and busses, and especially people–will be digitally connected into an “internet of things.” It sounds Buck Rogers but in many ways it’s here already: Metrocards are connected to bank accounts, cell phones know where you are (and what’s nearby), signs on some subway platforms know when the next train is due to arrive."

Scientific spectac-ulation "To generate this list of contributors, I approached some of today's leading scientists and asked them to name some of the rising stars in their respective disciplines: those who, in their research, are tackling some of science's toughest questions and raising new ones. The list that resulted amounts to a representative who's who of the coming generation of scientists." Scientists have all the 'answers'…

"Changing the model of pedagogy for this generation is crucial for the survival of the university. If students turn away from a traditional university education, this will erode the value of the credentials universities award, their position as centers of learning and research, and as campuses where young people get a change to "grow up.""

Hmm. "”The technology will provide the location of the individual wearing the shoes within 30 feet, anywhere on the planet,” said Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University who served as an advisor on the project."

Fun and jolly empire building with a smile: "You're invited to take the Day in the Cloud Challenge, the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground. We've teamed up with Virgin America to sponsor this challenge on June 24, 2009, the "Day in the Cloud." At Google, we've gathered a small group of gamers extraordinaire to come up with unique puzzles, trivia, and brain teasers, many of which use Google Apps"

Mapumental is launched as "a realtime version of our lovely transport journey time maps … As well as being realtime generated, they include house price and 'scenicness' data, generated by the web game ScenicOrNot." The aim is to "take the nation’s bus, train, tram, tube and boat timetables and turn them into a service that does vastly more than imagined by traditional journey planners."

"Housecoats and electronics are set to meet in a research project led by Northern Ireland academics. University of Ulster researchers are examining how hi-tech clothing could improve the lives of older people. The three-year project could see electronic devices built in to clothing that could provide information ranging from heart rate to bus timetables."

Radio 1's very light-touch 'news' programme engages in some frothy envisioning at a 'house of the future' show: "When it comes to technology in the home if you've got the cash there's plenty of stuff out there – flat-screen, high def TVs, surround sound with MP3 docking stations, video game consoles galore – the list is endless. For a look at the very latest hi-tech gadgets Newsbeat went to see a "future house" at the Grand Designs Live exhibition in London's Excel Centre."

BBC "Click Online" engages in some envisioning of near-future 'advances' in modes of interaction with a variety of devices. Lots of: "In the future you will…"

"Quickly emerging from the fast-paced growth of mobile communications and wireless technologies, pervasive games provide a worldwide network of potential play spaces. Now games can be designed to be played in public spaces like streets, conferences, museums and other non-traditional game venues – and game designers need to understand the world as a medium–both its challenges and its advantages.
This book shows how to change the face of play–who plays, when and where they play and what that play means to all involved. The authors explore aspects of pervasive games that concern game designers: what makes these games compelling, what makes them possible today, how they are made and by whom. For theorists, it provides a solidtheoretical, philosophical and aesthetic grounding of their designs."

"Each month, we'll propose a scenario, and present some initial ideas and concepts. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, and upload your ideas (below). We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page, giving kudos to contributors. We'll add our favorite submission to this story."