Intel's Useless LBS Scenarios

Intel is “examining” the world of indoor WiFi positioning. The scenarios of usage of such a technology are laughable and cannot be seen as a serious entry into LBS.

The technology could be used, for example, to alert you if your dog leaves the yard, to decide which printer on a network is most efficient for a pending print job, or to determine the shortest route to an emergency exit in a building.

The punsh lines “It can make medical research easier” and “It’s making computing more intelligent and user-friendly ” are no less than plain scary. Surprising for a company founding the Place Lab project that has some studies of user experiences and LBS.

Related are the DoCoMo scenarios for their ubicomp technologies (Interconnected World).

If Car Companies Employed People from Telecoms

Since I am in the middle of the lousy mobile development jungle (that I often compare to the car industry), I cannot help myself mentioning this “what would happen if a car company only employed people from the telecoms background” quotes from MobHappy. All of them are very relevant. The best “sooo true…” statements are:

• You’ll notice quirky little changes in the car controls depending on the manufacturer. Some cars put the gas pedal on the left, some favour the traditional right – with hilarious results!
• New cars would come with wheels that you need to change before you can drive it on A roads and you’ll need to reconfigure the brakes before they work.
• Ads for every car will promise speeds up to 450 miles per hour.
• Access to gears 4, 5 and 6 will be hidden.
• Changing lanes sometimes makes the car stall.
• When you buy a car, you have to promise to keep it for two years, during which you can only use one brand of fuel – although some shady garages will “unlock” your car. You can also refuel over the air, as well as garages but over the air costs twice as much as it’s so convenient and cool.

Real-Time Awareness Maps of Cell Phone Usage [Updated]

Updated map of the Mobile Landscapes project creating electronic maps of cellphone use in the metropolitan area of Graz, Austria.

Symbian Hacks for Context-Aware Programming

Very resourceful set of Symbian programming hacks done by Mika Raento for his Context research projects. Relevant pieces of codes include how to autostart, retrieve GSM data and manage SMSs.

Vivirama, Maps of Barcelona Housing Market

Probably inspired by the Neighborhood Project and others, Xavi Caballé, developed Vivirama, a LoQUo + Google Maps mashup for Barcelona to provide maps of the Barcelona (lousy) housing market.

What is a PhD thesis?

King of all nerds, James Gosling, on trying to come up with his PhD thesis topic:

I was falling into a common grad student trap of feeling that I needed to do something grandiose and solve all of the worlds problems. He was into “keep it simple”. So I did, and I came up with a pretty straightforward thesis proposal. The odd thing was that when I finally finished my thesis, I realized that I had only delt with one sentence out of the simplified proposal.

Hello UPF!