entretags/blog

Johannes and I just presented the SocialButton at the NGMAST07 Conference (Next Generation of Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies), in Cardiff, Wales.

Paper published by IEEE: Mobile Technology Enhancing Social Interaction

Finally we got time to go to the beach!

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In the context of our research we developed some video prototypes exploring variations of two different device concepts. The first saves location information and the second saves the user’s friend networks and is attached the user#s clothes. Here are three of them, the others can be seen in Johannes’ blog
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The blog of 6th sense project brings some interesting information about proximity-based mobile social networking products. Here I quote some excerpts (italic) and added further ones.
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The article Urbanhermes: Social Signaling with Electronic Fashion (Lui and Donath, 2006) brings sthe theme of fashion signs used to indicate access to information and to identify themselves within a social group

“If one has access to information — going to the right places, communicating with the right people, keeping up with the ongoing cultural dialogue — one may disclose this “fashionable” quality in variably recognizable ways. Examples include wearing a designer’s new collection, eating at a particularly trendy restaurant, or listening to underground music” (…) “trendsetters must develop a new form of the fashion signal to distinguish themselves from the mass population. Fashion cycles are prompted by the continual renewal of the signal form”.

Although the article doesn’t deal with the theme directly, I came again with the “being trackable” subject. The point is that one reason why people would like to show where they have been is also the same reason why they die the hair with unusual colors or wear second hand clothes: that is to show others they are trendy, or to show they belong to a specific group. After that I made this animation to illustrate a location based record that would interfere in social contacts.

Flash animation >>

Links
http://trail.motionbased.com
http://www.navizon.com/
http://www.dodgeball.com/

Thinking about the diary system my main question was if people would like to be permanently tracked, having their steps recorded and made public for others. My personal answer was “no, they wouldn’t”. Since all technique is used to control something, I thought it would be a kind of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” approach, as I have told last Monday.

By researching location based community systems I realized I might be wrong.

In the paper Usage patterns of FriendZone: mobile location-based community services (Burak and Sharon) issued in 2004, the use a Mobile Location-based Community Service, the FriendZone, was analyzed through a 21 month usage survey of more than 47,000 users. The results showed, for example, that:

1) privacy management tools were hardly used
2) the usage of such tools (as blocking unknown people) decreases over the time
3) an Anonymous Instant Messaging was the most popular and used service of this system

“The majority simply did not see a reason to block their location information, saying, ‘I don’t feel any need to hide myself’, ‘I am not ashamed in my whereabouts’ or ‘Hiding? On the contrary – find me, communicate with me; meet me!’”

After long time thinking how I could bridge this project with my master thesis, I finally came up with the theme DIARY. The idea is to make possible the register of everyday facts and the sharing of this information on-the-go.

Here is a list of some points raised in the meeting yesterday:
How do we use to keep our memories? (blogs, to-do-lists, pictures, emails, bookmarks)
If we shared our registers with others, would we like to make everything public?
Would we like to remember everything we have done?

How could we use other senses to gather information?

Feelspace

The Feelspace belt has vibrators attached, which are governed by heading information from an electronic compass: the one vibrator pointing north is active. Thereby, the belt user is constantly provided with tactile heading information relative to the earth’s magnetic field. If, for instance, the user is directed to west, the vibrator on his right hip vibrates.

König et al. | University of Osnabrück | 2005
http://feelspace.cogsci.uos.de/en/index.html