M. Raento, A. Oulasvirta, R. Petit, and H. Toivonen. Contextphone – a prototyping platform for context-aware mobile applications. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 4(2):51–59, April-June 2005. [url]

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The context software is an application for SmartPhone which enable the user to share is context with a list of contacts that are usiong the same application. The application subtly combines all the information available from the user’s interaction with the phone and it connects these information in an intellegible way with the communication intent.

The authors started with the assumption that 50% of the phone calls fails because they do not happen in the best moment. From this assumption, they try to convey all possible contextual information to the contact in the attempt of making a phone call, in order to avoid such misplacement of the phone call.

The paper report the detail of the application design and inform on the different features that are currently monitored by the application.

The context project aims at defining the user’s context considering the inputs provided by the cell id, the phone usage and the communications acts (SMS and phone calls). Looks like a super nice project for context recognition and user centered design

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Currently, LBSs require a user to actively request position information, by sending an SMS, for example. Spatial Triggers, however, is a network function that automatically informs applications when users meet certain conditions. …

The Spatial Triggers function is an Ericsson proprietary solution, which works for both GSM and WCDMA users and supports CGI, CGI/TA or Cell ID positioning.

Information related to Spatial Triggers is stored in a database server. The information contained in that database consists of trigger criteria defining the location conditions that must be fulfilled in order to inform the client. The following criteria can be defined:

• mobile terminal entering an area; 

• mobile terminal leaving an area; 

• two mobile terminals within a certain distance of each other.

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There we are, another GeoNotes related service. Only this with pictures. Cool though.

Copyright notice: the present content was taken from the following URL, the copyrights is reserved by the respective author/s.

This group of researchers created an ontology description for geographical typo of data. A kind of the same attempt of Jo Walsh:

We’ve created three ontologies for geoStuff which express a base set of geographic features such as countries and cities, their spatial descriptors such as points and multipolygons, and relationships between these spatial descriptors

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Fabien finally did it! He is working on a mobile edition of ShoutSpace. This is an initial screenshot (TestMidlet on the left picture). On a side we have a group of students working on a CellID tracker. We want to combine the two and possibly using it for my thesis research project and in collaboration with Proboscis UK.

I started from an artificial way of communicating: attaching messages on a shared virtual map. My interest was on how to support this kind of communication through an ontological categorisation of the messages. The problems I face, using this approach, are:

– the lack of a specific task, which makes hard to understand what is going on in the interaction;

– the complexity of natural language, which makes it hard to decode specific idiosyncrasy of the communication;

– the lack of the peers hidden context, which makes it hard to reconstruct the meaning of the message.

Another possible approach is to concentrate on the bits of commonsense knowledge that is built by analysing transversally the messages that pile in the environment. The focus is then not on the communication process but on the spatial context reconstruction with the help of the messages left by the people. Only after this context reconstruction is then possible to offer a support to human interaction.

Waag Society is developing a ‘mobile learning game’ pilot together with IVKO, part of the Montessori comprehensive school in Amsterdam. It’s a citygame using mobile phones and GPS-technology for students in the age of 11-12 (so called HAVO+MAVO basic curriculum). It is a research pilot examining whether it’s possible to provide a technology supported educational location-based experience. In the Frequency 1550 mobile game, students will be transported to the medieval Amsterdam of 1550 via a medium that’s familiar to this agegroup: the mobile phone. The pilot will take place in 2005 from 7 to 9 February and is supported by KPN Mobile’s UMTS network. At its launching event this press release was put out, but it’s in Dutch only.

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