Fade to Play

One of the magazines I subscribe to (free) is called Developments. It is by far my favourite magazine to read as I learn about cultural issues of personal interest in developing countries. (I wonder how many of these people feel included in Time’s Person of the Year accolates).

Developments magainze and website are produced by DRID to raise awareness of development issues.

Of note for my interest in culture, ethnography, and mobile technologies is Issue 11 Only Connect from 2005.

In Zambia a street market vendor is paying for his order of Coca-Cola by text message. In Tanzania a candidate in the Presidential elections has been awarded his degree after completing it online through distance learning. In Nairobi, a daughter is sending money to her father in rural Kenya with prepaid ‘pay as you go’ airtime. And in Namibia schoolchildren are surfing the net, sending emails and writing essays thanks to FLOSS, open source software written by enthusiastic programmers who don’t want any payment.

New technology is changing the face of international development in ways that no one predicted. And in this issue of developments we ask how technology can fight poverty – from the fisherman using his mobile to check which market wants his catch to the Ethiopians taking to blogging to change global perceptions of their country. The net, of course, has long been touted as a revolutionary tool for international development, but the global explosion in mobile phone use means it has rapidly caught up. And mobile phones are easier to share, requiring much less time to use, are more portable and you don’t have to read or write to use them.

Relevance: There is alot of really cool stuff going on in developing countries. I just wish it was more reflected in news reports, conferences, and journal publications.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has begun using an automated voice to announce each transit stop according to this Toronto Star article.

How does it work? At all the stations, tiny metal transponders have been placed between the tracks.When a train rolls over the transponder, a “location tag” signal is sent to a receiver in the driver’s car, which contains information on a database of station names. The announcement is then made over the public address system.

Automation doesn’t stop at the subway. By 2008, all streetcar and bus routes will also have recorded voices announcing stops. The total cost of the project is about $5 million, Cornacchia estimates.

More clarity, fewer mistakes.

But what do we lose? The personality of the drivers.

“That’s the price of automation,” Cornacchia concedes. He says this has been the only lament he’s heard from passengers so far.

Most TTC riders have experienced a colourful driver who went the extra mile to brighten their riders’ day. Some drivers have done impersonations on the mic; others have given riders neighbourhood history lessons.

Passengers filled a page on the website of urban magazine Spacing with their personal favourites. “A streetcar driver who would announce the locations of every LCBO and Beer Store,” one person wrote.

Photo by Kevin Steele, 2002

Relevance: Location-based ubicomp technology is used for automated voice system and I am wondering what the human impact is of this. I like hearing the bus driver’s voice announcing stops when I take the bus and wouldn’t want this in Vancouver.

My mother was an early adopter. She was one of the first people to have a cell phone in Ontario. It was a bag phone that she kept in a Toronto Maple Leafs tote bag. Whenever she left the house, she would take it with her in case of emergency. Back in those days the cell phone was not thought of a communication tool, but more so as a emergency device for contacting 911 or CAA, if necessary. It was far too big to fit in a purse and it cost too much for casual calls. Thankfully, she didn’t have to use it for any emergency, but it was always good for her to have, just in case.

During the windstorm last week in Vancouver, alot of trees fell down in Stanley Park and a disconnected mobile phone was used to find a homeless man trapped for 6 days according to this Globe and Mail report.

Six days after a massive windstorm toppled thousands of trees in Stanley Park, a homeless man phoned police to say he was trapped and penned in by branches, limbs and tree trunks.

Four brief 911 calls were received Wednesday afternoon, but officers couldn’t believe what they were hearing, said Constable Howard Chow of the Vancouver Police Department.

In brief spurts, the caller gave his location near Pipeline Road before his cellphone battery ran out.

“He says, ‘I’m stranded’ and calls back later when he gets enough juice each time, and this happened four times,” Constable Chow said. Using tidbits of information based on landmarks the trapped man could see, the mounted squad searched the area and found him.

Relevance: No smart phone necessary. He didn’t use SMS. They didn’t triangulate with GPS, just simple location-based technology (verbal information about nearby landmarks) let to the man being found.

Very incredible.
Image by John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail

The Winter 2006 issue of ACM Student Journal Crossroads is on Entertainment Technology. The articles are all written by students and provide articles about digital games as noted by Paula Bach in her Introduction.

This issue of Crossroads is dedicated to computer entertainment. Our feature article, “Interesting Complexity: Sid Meier and the Secrets of Game Design,” unleashes secrets of the great game designer, Sid Meier. Meier stresses fun and a keen sense of how games work. Knowing how to put together a “series of interesting choices” for the user is key to good game design. In addition to one of gaming’s greats, we offer three interviews with other big names in the gaming industry: Russel Kay, Colt McAnlis, and Pierre Pontevia. Kay, the creator of Lemmings, speaks frankly about his background and the gaming industry, while McAnlis offers practical advice for students wishing to pursue a job in the gaming industry. Pontevia, based in Paris, France, shares insights into the three elements needed for a startup, his company, Kynogon, and the company’s AI middleware called Kynapse. Kynapse is important for gaming for three reasons: path finding, team behaviors, and spatial reasoning.

Four other articles in this issue represent the vastness of the computer entertainment industry. Nick Datzov gives us a brief but intriguing overview of the installation of a computer in an automobile to play games, watch movies, or browse the Internet. Damien Marshall, Tomas Ward, and Séamus McLoone explore the past, current, and next generation of gaming interaction devices and methods, looking at the latest research. Caio Camargo writes about a trend in gaming called “modding.” Modding is gamer terminology for modifying a game, and Camargo explores this phenomenon and also talks with a successful modder. Chris Dondanville gives an overview of the Sims 2 expansion called Open for Business and presents some practical tips for succeeding with a virtual business in the Sims 2 life simulator.

Relevance: As an ethnographer in pervasive games, I am always interested in what I learned from digital games that I could extrapole.

According to this Toronto Star article, a McMaster University study states that the elderly can keep sharp and maintain sufficient levels of cognitive capacity by playing video games.

Psychology research at Hamilton’s McMaster University shows gamers who spend more than four hours a week playing action video games such as Medal of Honour and Half Life 2 have a surprising array of skills ranging from quick reaction times and good spatial reasoning to a strong awareness of their surroundings and better short-term memory.

With as little as 10 hours of training, non-gamers start to show the same mental strengths, says psychology researcher Jim Karle, a graduate student in the department of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour.

Calling video games “beneficial for the brain,” Karle suggested they could be used to help reduce cognitive decline in the elderly.

“Individuals who play action video games on a regular basis – more then four hours a week -appear to be very good at an astonishing variety of skills,” said Karle.

“Just as an elderly adult may do 15 minutes of weight training to fight osteoporosis,” he said, “so could he or she play video games to keep the mind sharp.”

Image via Half Life 2

Relevance: I wonder we would get similar finding in a study of the elderly and games that involves physical movement with mobile technologies (mobile phones, tabletPCs) rather than the stationary behaviour of digital games. I don’t believe there has been any studies done regarding the elderly and cognition involving ubicomp and pervasive games.

The latest issue of Vodafone’s receiver is out and its on GAMES!!!!!

This receiver issue is a truly playful one. While the urge to play is a human universal, gaming cultures differ widely across different societies – that goes fo the games people enjoy as well as how they enjoy them. You can play with interactive media alone or to socialise, to compete or to relax, at home or in the street. What is play and what’s in a game? Here are nine answers.

Don’t miss the podcast “Lucky Wanderboy”.

Relevance: Of interest to me because I am doing research on games and mobile devices.

This article by Lara Srivastava in the Globe and Mail technology section, focuses on RFID technology. Lara Srivastava is a Telecom Policy Analyst with the Strategy and Policy Unit of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva (Switzerland).

Already RFID is constantly feeding individuals and things with information. Never before has information been so available and so accessible. And soon there won’t be anywhere that you won’t be connected (and not just you — but your watch, your pen, or even your evening meal). Stroll around a supermarket with a RFID-reading phone and receive information about any product, link to an internet-full of information and find out if what you’re buying is right for you. And as you’re doing it you’ll be providing the store with information about how you move around the aisles, what you purchase and what offers attract you.

I have written a number of posts both here and on the mobile muse blog about ethnographic studies of how African societies are being influenced by the emergence of mobile technologies and how their use _may_ differ from developed countries. I do regret not actually doing any research there but perhaps I will have the opportunity in the future.

Besides providing many rural areas that used to be excluded from any form of communication with access, the mobile phone has improved people’s lives in many ways. In Uganda, for example, farmers can use their mobile phone to find out about the latest crop prices. Instant and direct access to market prices increases their revenues, provides them with valuable information to negotiate and protects them from being cheated by middlemen. In South Africa, the Compliance Service uses SMS to remind tuberculosis (TB) patients to take their medication. TB patients must follow a difficult drug regime over an extended period but often fail to do so simply because they forget. Non-compliance with the drug treatment has exacerbated TB cases and been a burden on the local health care service by wasting precious medicines. The project, which started in Cape Town in 2002, has substantially decreased the number of treatment failures.

Relevance: My research explores day to day ubicomp issues involving mobile technologies (e.g. mobile phones and laptops) in addition to the social interaction with occurs in pervasive games. I am really ecstatic to come across this article as we have similar interests especially cultural ones regarding how mobile technology is used in Africa. She also is Canadian which is always cool.

Yesterday I was in the video store and I realised that I am looking at alot of movies that I don’t know anything about nor do I have the opportunity to know if they are “good” movies. I wish I could just wave my phone across a movie and see the reviews from rotten tomatoes or be able to scan the movie on a wall-mounted display like I do when I want to find out a price at Walmart. I am also aware that although I can easily adapt to ubicomp technology my parents cannot.

Usability is also important as well as giving people a choice between the “old” way and the “new” way of interacting with their environment on a daily basis.

Image via Akihabara News

Mike’s Proposal

Originally uploaded by tyfn.

Congrats Mike on a successful presentation.

Well done.

Remember the scenes in Minority Report which involved large screen interactive advertising that provided personalised messages specifically tailored to people within their proximity. Well, the world envisioned in 2054 may be a little closer than we thought.

According to this BBC article, Norwegian broadcaster NRK will be conducted a 2 month trial in which banner advertisements will be sent to a customer’s mobile phone while being specifically tailored to them. Rather than actually receiving live TV, NRK customers are provided with streaming video.

“Advertisers see value in people being interested in certain products in a given context,” said Gunnar Garfors, director of development at NRK.

Although not incorporated into this “proof of concept”, it is anticipated that Location-based services will be involved in future applications.

Mr Garfors said: “We know lots about the viewers; we have their phone numbers, their name, sex and where they live.

“We can also determine their presumed interests when we see what they watch or listen to and what times they do it.

And we know where they are geographically because of positioning technology.

“When we put this all together we have a fair amount of relevant information which can give them more relevant advertising material.”

While the trial is a “proof of concept”, Mr Garfors said future developments could see adverts sent to phones dependent on the precise location of the viewer.

Relevance: The participants involved within this trial had to actively register and download software to their mobile phones. To what extent do privacy issues become a concern when the advertisements become more intrusive. Do I want to know about the special at the local fitness centre when I am feeling subconscious about my weight? If they are tailoring this product to the 15-24 year old demographic, they may just accept the advantages of the technology without consideration to the ‘Big Brother’ possibilities.
Technorati Tags: mobile phone, mobile tv, ubicomp, marketing

So since I am not going home for the holidays (need to stay to get my research house in order) I highly recommend attending this event if you’re in Toronto by newmindspace.

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For every subway car you have partied on, for every flag you have captured, for every bubble you have blown and for every pillow you have fought with, Newmindspace invites you to celebrate the year 2006 with a massive party in Union Station’s Great Hall.

Info + comments @ http://www.newmindspace.com/listenup.php

JINGLE BELL ROCK! HOLIDAY BALL
FRIDAY DECEMBER 15th 2006
UNION STATION (UPSTAIRS, VIA Rail)
PRESS PLAY AT 9:09pm

Please bring a personal music player loaded with your favourite tunes, a costume and a gift to exchange

We will also be collecting new, unwrapped presents for Sick Kids.

*

If you want to help with the event, the best thing you can do is bring Christmas lights + deco. Lots of them

There are whispers of an after-party in the works

*

<3 Newmindspace
Lori * Kevin

Relevance: I really wish I was living in Toronto. This is just another example of how cool the culture is in Toronto. I know this will be fun.

Technorati Tags: ubicomp, newmindspace, ipod, toronto