Evaluating the Effects of Displaying Uncertainty in Context-Aware Applications

In Evaluating the Effects of Displaying Uncertainty in Context-Aware Applications the authors claim that perfect and reliable context information is hard if not impossible to obtain in context aware systems. They propose and evaluate a feedback mechanism for context aware systems. The idea is to explicitly display the uncertainty inherent in the context information and to leverage from the human ability to deal well with uncertain information. By changing the quality, respectively the uncertainty of context recognition, the experiments show that human performance in a memory task is increased by explicitly displaying uncertainty information. A few quotes

” it is important to take into account that context information might be faulty and uncertain because of missing information, unpredictable behavior, ambiguous situations, and differing interpretations”

“Obviously, systems exist which explicitly model and use uncertainty during inference and decision making. Maybe the most advanced systems like the Lumiere [8] project, the Lookout project [9] or the Activity Compass [10] are based on techniques such as Bayesian modelling and inference, utility, and decision theory. In the context of ubiquitous computing it has been suggested, however, that modelling uncertainties and advanced inference mechanisms might not be enough”

“Chalmers [11] even argues for “seamful rather than seamless designâ€? to reveal the physical nature of the Ubicomp systems in, for example, the uncertainty in sensing and ambiguity in representations.”

“What is common to all of them is to propose the use of different feedback mechanisms and to involve the user in various degrees and forms.”

“The proposal is based on the fact that users are actually used to and highly successful in dealing with uncertain information throughout their daily lives.”

” we propose to display this uncertainty explicitly and leverage from the user’s ability to choose the appropriate action. ”

“Experiment 1 clearly showed that displaying the degree of uncertainty affected performance. Showing uncertainty information had a clear effect on hit rates. They increased substantially when uncertainty information was displayed, especially when tips of high quality were shown and when the task was difficult.”

“Experiment 2 provides converging evidence for the view that displaying uncertainty information increases performance in terms of hit rates, whereas falsealarm rates are much less – if at all – affected”

“One issue to be considered in future work is the tradeoff between the cognitive load, which displaying uncertainty information causes, and the added value that it provides.”

Wireless Campus LBS

Wireless Campus LBS, Building campus-wide Location Based Services based on WiFi technology describes a project that mixes wireless LAN positioning techniques, context awarness of ubiquitous data management systems, and data dissemination for LBS and mobile applications. It has some similarities to my Building a mobile, locative, and collaborative application in presenting the WiFi positioning techniques and the AP mapping. There was an interesting figure (from Satyanarayanan, M (2001) Pervasive computing: Visions and challenges. IEEE Personal Communications, 8:10-7,2001) on the evolution from distributed to ubiquitous computing. I never thought about making a path from distributed systems to ubicom.

There was also a mention to (un)certainty management:

Another factor of context for any system is the (un)certainty of the information it provides, and providing the user with relevant information about that uncertainty will also be part of the CaompusLBS services.

Limitations of the Medium

In Introduction to Mobile Game Development, Nokia defines 6 limitations to developping mobile applications:

• Small screen size: developpers must still optimize their applications for different phones
• Limited color and sound support
• Limited application size
• High latency. Latency is the aount of tie it takes between the moment a machine makes a request and the moment it receives a response. While the carriers are working to expand the amount of bandwidth available to mobile phones, they have not made latency a priority.
• Interruptibility is crucial. the application must be able to pause and recover without crashing, causing play problems
• Evolving technologies. Need to support hanset specific APIs

Pervasive Games: Bringing Computer Entertainment Back to the Real World

Pervasive Games: Bringing Computer Entertainment Back to the Real World gives an introduction to the world of pervasive games. The scope is larger than my Pervasive Game Development Today in which I focused more on location-aware games. On the other hand, it is less technical. The authors categorized the types of pervasive games and give examples for each genre. Categories are Smart Toys, Affective Gaming, Augmented Tabletop Games, Location-Aware Games, and Agumented Reality Games

Telecommuting Era Still Facing Social Barries

“Work is where you hang your coat Sun leads way in telework — working not just from home but anywhere” talks about “telecommuting”, the next generation of “telework” because nowadays we are not not just working from home but working from anywhere. In a few words, the technological barries for telecommuting now in the verge of being broken, telecommuting is still facing social barries. Managers worry that unsupervised employees might goof off. Workers worry that losing face time might hurt their chances for advancement. However, telecommuting cuts the costs for the employer and improves the productivity of some types of employees. “All of us who participated can attest to the fact that you end up working more because of sitting there without day-to-day interruptions”. Telecommuting is still based on very informal rules, as a lot of telecommuting arrangements are initially done under the table and many companies have no program to manage their guerrilla distributed workers.

Cell Phone Tower Search

Happy americans that can get access to good map resolutions and the FCC registration information on cell towers. The mix of the two gives Cell Phone Tower Search. A searchable, interactive map to visualize cell towers (116,864 antennas last updated on July 29, 2005) in the US using Google Maps.

HotorNot + Google Maps

Find people to meet on HotOrNot.com by browsing on a Google Map. Valuable mashup of Hot or Not profiles and Google maps for stalkers.

Stamps Taking Shape

Stamps is taking shape. GSM tracking, post/reply to messages, place/view landmarks, view other users and self positioning are implemented. Maps are getting more precise and less memory hungry. Full featured prototype is due by the end of this months.

Flate Rate GPRS

Sunrise Switzerland annonced a flate rate GRPS offer (9 CHF, for 4 months with monthly data transfer limit of 100MB/month). It pushed me to finally setup my PowerBook to get Internet access via Bluetooth using my Nokia and GPRS. Ross Barkman’s GPRS Info Page provides all the infos with a link to his Apple GPRS scripts. Good feeling of cheap ubiquity…

Système de Gestion de Flotte

LogiFleet, une entreprise de la région de Lausanne met à disposition un systèmes de gestion de flotte (C-Track). Le géo-positionnement se fait par GPS et la transmission de données par SMS et GPRS. Ils annoncent que 4500 entreprises exploitent C-Track pour gérer 100’000 véhicules. Une applications est, par exemple, “suivi de la température de véhicules frigorifiques”.

Suivi d’un véhicule à Genève