txtkit is an Open Source visual text mining tool for exploring large amounts of multilingual texts. It’s a multiuser-application which mainly focuses on the process of reading and reasoning as a series of decisions and events. To expand this single perspective activity txtkit collects all of the users mining data and uses them to create content recommendations through collaborative filtering.

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One of the most interesting (for me) projects that we saw yesterday in Ivrea, was the project of Dario Buzzini, the Not-so-white Walls. The idea is very simple but it can lead to thousand of different applications: putting a heating resistor matrix under a layer of thermal paper. I would love to have one of these prototype myself to play with. Supa cool

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Today meeting with my supervisor, we sketched a couple of ideas for the development of my PhD work. First of all I have to keep the focus on the messages and the content. I have to forget the group structure in the first place. First of all because it is technically complicated to implement. Additionally because it over complicate the interaction in the interface, and finally because it is not the focus of the research.

The focus is going to be on the content of the messages in relation to the physical space. The underlying app might be a pre-emptive spatial search or a space sensitive dictionary (spotlight style) where the users are facilitated by connections on search results that goes beyond the simple keywords matching. This pre-emptitiveness of the system can be based on different aspect:

– a bayesian algorithm that define the probability of associations;

– a system model that analyse and find similarities based on the  occurrence index;

– a statistical method on the spatial clustering of the messages.

This guy wrote a brilliant python script that takes the bluetooth position form the bluetooth GPS and send it to Google Maps to retrieve the corresponding piece of map. Respect

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The GeoNotes web site is back online. I found interesting stuff in it. One for all is the design of their interface. This may be of use when compared to the interface of the STAMPS application we are working on. Two main differences from our approach:

1. Messages are not displayed with an map metaphor;

2. Messages can be posted only at the location.

The OFCOM pointed me on this nice web app that shows the position of the GSM and UMTS antennas in Switzerland. Of course, for commercial reasons, they keep protected the name of the antenna and the operator using it. Still it is a nice start.  It is funny to see that the density of these points is always more than expected.

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It was amazing today to see two projects popping up in the radar that use bluetooth as networking carrier with familiar strangers. The first is Hitcher and was nicely reviewed by Nicolas; the second is sensor and is a project carried out at Nokia. Well, the fun part is that it follows nicely my early idea of the ThinkPill application for distributing content between strangers using bluetooth. A suivre …

CanonSketch is a UML-Based tool for the creation, design and editing of Canonical Abstract Prototypes and, more generally for Model-Based User Interface Design (MB-UID). The tool is being developed by Pedro F. Campos and Nuno J. Nunes at the University of Madeira.

TaskSketch is a UML-Based tool that focuses on linking and tracing use cases to the conceptual architecture of a system. The tool is being developed by Pedro F. Campos and Nuno J. Nunes at the University of Madeira.

The paper I wrote for CONTEXT-05 was accepted for an oral presentation. Here is the abstract:

This paper argues that for the study and facilitation of collaborative learning, existing theories of grounding such as that of Clark and Shaefer [5] cannot be applied without adjustments. When comparing collaborative learning and conversation, four dimensions can be identified where grounding at a knowledge level differs from the grounding at an utterance level. Firstly, the in- direct access and the existence of a range of manifest meanings, poses the need for a notion of ‘groundedness’. Secondly, we propose providing evidence in ‘co-referenced actions’ to be an important process as well as an additional marker to assess grounding. Thirdly, instead of simply repairing misunderstand- ings after they arise, ‘perspective taking’ becomes a more prominent mecha- nism. Fourthly, effort into grounding is turned from needing to be minimised, into needing to be ‘optimised’.

M. Cherubini and J. van der Pol. Grounding is not shared understanding: Distinguishing grounding at an utterance and knowledge level. In CONTEXT’05, the Fifth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, Paris, France, July 5-8 2005. [PDF]