alleshannes.

Why use mobile phones as technology platform?

Smartphones are the first real pervasive platform. They are always with you and have the processing power and network connectivity of a 1995 PC. A service or application that works on a Smartphone has the unique capability of being available throughout your everyday life.

This is the statement that can be found on the homepage of the Context Project, the documentation of a large research done on the communicative (and consequentially social) behaviour of people by the
Department of Computer Science,
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Basic, and
Advanced Research Unit

They developed a very sophisticated software application to keep track of all the people you meet and conversate with during the day, called the ContextPhone. Unfortunately it is designed for SymbianOS and therefore restricted to Series60 Nokia mobile phones.

Moreover, they mention the potential of the communication logs as private diary, several privacy issues and the possible influence on our behaviour (rituals), because we could start manipulating our context in order to make use of the collected/transmitted information as a message on its own (ideas which came to my mind as well).

I found another reason via Wade Roush on Technology Review

The smart phone is “an ideal system for pervasive, supportive social computing,” writes Russell Beale, director of the Advanced Interaction Group in the computer science department at the University of Birmingham, England. It’s “a two-way device, creating and consuming information, is highly personal, and is almost always available… .”

Another Group of Microsoft Research shows some interesting developments and is still active: Socio-Digital Systems …

While digging into the field of Social Computing I found some very interesting projects from the Microsoft Research Social Computing Group.
It seems to be abandonned, with the last update from 2003. …

After some days of intense writing mostly done by Larissa, our first paper in our lives ever has been submitted! Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Abstract
We are exploring the use of small displays as an instrument to enhance social communication. Our focus is on encouraging communication between strangers by revealing the existence of common friends. In the following we present the concept of the SocialButton, a wearable mobile device which displays aspects of friend-of-a-friend networks. A group study has provided us with an initial understanding regarding the potential of the SocialButton to influence our social environment.

More backgrounds on the paper can be found in the archive and on Larissa’s blog, of course.

For the further development of our Social Display prototype we were in need for a transceiver, a display and some computing power. All of this can be found nicly bundled into a state-of-the-art mobile phone. I had heard of a mobile version of processing and after a quick view (when I found a cool example-code for some bluetooth-tricks by Francis Li), we decided to give it a try.
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[edit 080223] There is a new and English abstract![/edit]
[edit 071129]With my thesis I want to explore what role machines can play in our interaction with extended social networks.[/edit]

here comes the latest version of my proposal that will be the basis for my master thesis at FH Potsdam.

Please do comment as much as you can and like, everything is appreciated!

Get proposal pdf 230 kb, text in German only

Abstract …

Italy is the origin of my beloved arduino-board. So it seemed natural to me to place it into an agile sports car when I had to make up a project for the metal workshop course. It is designed as a cabrio alluding to the relaxed Italian attitude.
The goal of the class led by Martin Ziegler was to learn the basic handling of all necessary tools and gain some experience in working with metal. …

Just for the record: This code will drive our arduino boards (two of them and yes! they are connected AND talking!).

It took Larissa and me quite some time and a lot more nerves. And Tomek, too! He spent hours with us on ICQ altruisticly, even got his two Arduinos out of the box and gave us the right hints finally – by remote!
So we learnt a lot. Most important: With two communicating Boards, never forget to connect the grounds. Always remember.

The code for the geeks: …

Some days ago I had the pleasure to celebrate my friend Remmelt’s birthday with him. I met some interesting people there and I also got to know the Sputnik that Sascha brought from this(last) year’s 23C3:

It’s an RFID transponder, i.e. it will work both as a sender and receiver, has a touch sensor already implemented and a tiny but programmable microcontroler onboard. So it looks like the perfect solution – unfortunately programming it is not within my range, at least for this moment (RS232 serial protocol and unfamiliar MicroChip PIC16F684 microcontroller) . Let’s see what ideas we will develop to build our prototypes…

[update]

Larissa found a very nice site that explains everything about the PIC and about RF communication as well. It’s the web page of Tom Igoe (surprise, surprise)

There are a couple of new video prototypes available that show various devices and applications. All of them are looking for friends that you share with people around you.

Larissa has three new videos about concepts of social mobile devices, three more can be found directly here!

Waiting for the bus is quite a boring task, especially in winter. Some entertainment is usually highly apreciated, even more when there seems to be a personal link with common friends. The person next to me will no longer be a stranger but a friend of a friend.

mov: 3.7 mb

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