Fade to Play

I am really enjoying my subscription to Technology Review. They continue to have outstanding articles about social software and the Web 2.0. Wade Roush wrote the cover story called Social Machines for the August issue.

He discusses how our society is changing as mobile technology and social software are being adopted by the masses. He also talks about how we are able to do things today that we couldn’t imagine doing a few years ago such as being able to view your house from a aerial viewpoint or tag your photographs online.

As our campus is WiFi enabled, I feel a part of the always-on/always-connected information stream as I can access the Internet anywhere using my laptop, carry a mobile phone, and use plazes so that friends know where I am if they need to reach me “in the flesh”.

Found via Zengestrom

Relevance: An example of the power of the many as Wade posted earlier drafts online in order to get feedback from readers. This is similar to what David Weinberger did while composing Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

[update]: corrected trackback link

With Africa in the news this week, I thought this article from the Economist was timely in discussing how mobile phones must be designed and marketed differently in developing countries. I would love to see studies of pervasive or location-based mobile games in Africa. I still looking for research from Africa at CHI or Ubicomp conferences as some many of the projects and collaborative papers are European or North American based.

Mobile phones have become indispensable in the rich world. But they are even more useful in the developing world, where the availability of other forms of communication—roads, postal systems or fixed-line phones—is often limited. Phones let fishermen and farmers check prices in different markets before selling produce, make it easier for people to find work, allow quick and easy transfers of funds and boost entrepreneurship. Phones can be shared by a village. Pre-paid calling plans reduce the need for a bank account or credit check. A recent study by London Business School found that, in a typical developing country, a rise of ten mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points. Mobile phones are, in short, a classic example of technology that helps people help themselves.

Relevance: Shows how mobile companies are looking at ways to help Africa and work towards bridging the digital divide.

This Yahoo/Reuters News article discusses how mobile phone users are becoming the new wave of citizen journalism. The photo that has been used by many news sources comes from moblog.co.uk and was taken by Adam Stacey.

Social software such as flickr and del.icio.us are coming of age. If you read the accompanying threads on moblog, it is amazing how quickly the news organizations distributed the photograph through the world and how people became aware of the unfolding events via their computer. Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the day’s events.

Caterina Fake, who co-founded the popular online photo community http://www.Flickr.com, was not surprised to see her site’s traffic more than double within hours of the news breaking.

“We’ve seen an amazing eruption of citizen journalism stories since we launched Flickr,” she said. “It’s a confluence of trends: The distribution of camera phones to regular people and the means to immediately e-mail their photos from their phones is a big development. Also, many people are on broadband, so they’re able to experience the news more fluidly than ever before.”

Fake said the Flickr office had its own moment of convergence in the early hours. Staff members were upgrading their storage capabilities when two people simultaneously were made aware of the London explosions — one saw a professional news agency’s online report, while the other saw photos being posted by a Flickr user.

“It’s all about experiencing things live online, as they’re happening, along with the people who are there,” Fake said. “The immediacy of the experience is part of the magic.”

Relevance: This ties into ideas about the web being transformed into a sharing space as mobile and social technologies are used to connect people and provide a sense of presence. The collective power of ordinary people is discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

[update]: The BBC has provided a place where citizen personally involved in the day’s events can share their experiences and photos.

the new receiver issue has launched:

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Looking east
East Asia is the most “unwired” region in the world. Half of all SMS transferred are sent by Chinese users, Japan has the most advanced mobile internet services, and Seoul is the most intensely digitally mediated urban space you can find. This receiver issue approaches digital mobilization the East Asian way.

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Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito on:
Personal, portable, pedestrian images

Daisuke Okabe, a cognitive psychologist, Lecturer at Keio’s Keitai Lab and at Yokohama University, has conducted extensive fieldwork on mobile phone and Wi-Fi use. Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist interested in how digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities.

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Anthony Townsend on:
Seoul searching – cybernomads and the ubiquitous city

Anthony Townsend is Research Director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. In “Seoul searching”, Townsend takes a close look at Korea’s digitally mediated urban space which, in Seoul’s case, achieved a unique intensity.

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Weigui Fang on:
China’s culture of the thumb

Weigui Fang’s academic career led him from Shanghai to Trier in Germany where he is currently analyzing the internet in China in an interdisciplinary project bringing together sinology and media research.

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Atau Tanaka on:
Malleable contents and future musical forms

Active in the experimental music movement since the mid-80s, Atau Tanaka conducts research, creates installations, and gives performances with musical man-machine interfaces. In receiver, Tanaka gives an account of his concept of networked, mobilized music.

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Shin Dong Kim on:
Mobile media mobilize generations

Shin Dong Kim is Associate Professor of Communication at Hallym University, Korea. One of the social issues that interest him most is the digital, mobile divide among generations in South Korea’s fast ageing society – his topic in “Mobile media mobilize generations”.

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Kenji Kohiyama on:
Mobile communication and place

Kenji Kohiyama is currently Professor at Keio’s Graduate School of Media and Governance as well as head of its Docomo House research center. In his article, Kohiyama speaks of the cell phone as an omnipresent gateway to the virtual world.

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Yat Siu on:
Eight visions from mobile Asia

Yat Siu is the founder and CEO of Outblaze, a messaging service provider that has been at the forefront of the Internet evolution in Asia. In his receiver contribution, Siu draws on his intercontinental experiences to compare mobile usage in Asia, the US, and Europe.

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Relevance: I like the extra auditory and visual effects when viewing the magazine. In addition, Mizito Ito co-authored a book that is coming out end of Summer called Personal, Portable, and Pedestrian that discusses mobile communication in Japan . I am very interested in research that combines anthropology and computer technology.

I loved playing monopoly growing up. Now there is a GPS enabled online version of Monopoly in London launched by Hasbro. After 24 hours, you are sent an email/SMS about your balance and the place on the leaderboard. Sounds like fun.

We have turned London into a real-life playing board, and real taxi cabs into real-life playing pieces. All you have to do is make as much money from rent as possible, from five other cabs who are your opponents in the game.

We’ve kitted out 18 cabbies with GPS (Global Positioning System), meaning we can pinpoint their exact whereabouts in London. They will be going about their normal day, picking up and dropping off customers all over town.

All that you’ve got to do is spend the £15m we give you on properties from around the Monopoly Here & Now board, distribute your apartments and hotels and choose your cabbie. You are placed into a game with your cabbie and 5 other taxi drivers, all travelling around London. Every time one of the other cabs stops outside one of your properties, you get paid rent. Any time your cabbie lands on a property you don’t own, you pay up. Simple!

This is the world’s biggest game of Monopoly. The locations are real, the cabbies are real and the other players are very real. It’s your job to beat them and bag the prizes…

Sent via Email by Tony and found on cybersoc

Relevance: This is a really cool concept that places a spin on a classic board game. Although I have seen a computer version of monopoly, I didn’t feel a connection to it, however knowing that the players are real cabbies and that they are just going about their day collecting and dropping off passengers gives me a sense of attachment to the game. I wonder if there is a way to make other board games come to life?

The Third Annual International Conference on Games Design and Technology

http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/GDTW/GDTW2005/default.htm
A two-day event of lectures, tutorials and exhibitions on Computer Games Research and Development
8 - 9 November 2005, Liverpool, UK

Researchers in game design and technology will have the opportunity to present their work in these sessions.
The subjects and areas of interest cover, but are not limited to:

1. Game Artificial Intelligence (pathfinding, learning, agents, …)
2. Real Time Physics and Animation
3. 3D Modelling Graphics/Animation Techniques
4. Game Character Emotion and Social Interaction
5. Tools development for Game Engineering and middleware
6. Mobile Gaming.
7. Advanced/Innovative Interaction Design
8. Ambient Intelligence for Entertainment
9. Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
10. Art, Design and Media
11. Cultural and Media Studies on Computer Games
12. Education, Training, and Edutainment Technologies
13. Human Factors of Games
14. Interaction design
15. Interactive Digital Storytelling
16. Media Theory
17. Networking (technical and social) in computer Entertainment
Applications
18. New Genres, New Standards
19. Security (technical and social)
20. Social Computing and Presence
21. Sound and Music

The aims of the workshop is to:

1. To provide a forum to discuss state of the art games design and current and future games technology with the specialists.

2. To facilitate relationships and collaboration between academics promoting Computer Games Technology courses, the UK games industry and supporting organisations.

3. To allow students studying Computer Games Technology to make early contact with key players in the industry, enabling them to learn first hand about games development, and the challenges of working with and for a fast moving technology.

4. To provide games companies and related industries the opportunity to present their companies, products, job opportunities, and to discuss and discover alternative technology for game development.

5. To enable the researchers in computer game technology and computer entertainment to present their work during the research sessions, and to seek opportunities for collaboration with the industry and for academic research partners.