AlwaysOnGPS, an Industrial Mix Approach to Positioning

To reach ubiquitous availability of location information, there is a need to provide a mix approach to positioning. AlwaysOnGPS is an industrial solution that provides WiFi positioning when the GPS unit loses its line of sight. They do not mention where they get the data of the WiFi beacons positions. From their own wardriving? It is compatible with major PocketPCs map applications and GPS devices. Their proof of concept map of ” This is what happened when we let one of our engineers escape for lunch!” is similar to the one I did one year ago at CRAFT.

A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web

In continuation to Mike Liebhold’s essay on location-based service, Julian Bleecker offers a brief description of an approach to designed location-based experiences that drives many of his project. His approach has three aspects: location awareness, location user interfaces, and collaborative mapping:

A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web

Spam Warns to Stop!

A spam warns me I will stop being spammed!

We have aimed to make contact with you on many periods and this will be our last contact!

Cartogrammme pour les Votes du 5 juin

Appliqués pour la première fois au scrutin en Suisse, les cartogrammes tenant compte de la densité de la poputlation montrent la prépondérance des facteurs urbains et sociaux dans les résultats de vote. Source: Les villes ont massivement dit oui

Couverture du Flash Informatique

Petite fierté personelle de retrouver sa pomme en couverture du Flash Informatique de juin pour l’article de Patrick décrivant la plate-forme Moodle que nous mettons en place à l’EPFL.

Location Disculosure

Location disclosure to social relations:Â why, when, & what people want to share by the Place Lab people, explores whether and what users are willing to disclose about their location to social relations. The goal wat to understand the decision process and other factors that go into their decision that could inspire the design of better location-enhances applications and services. Their most notable result is that:

Participants want to disclose what they think would be useful to the requester or deny the request. We saw no evidence of participants intentionally blurring their location, i.e., disclosing something vague, to protect their privacy

Other very interesting findings are:

• Participants typically disclosed the most useful detail about their location (which is not necessarily the most detailed) or did not disclose their location at all. They often chose to disclose less specific information because they thought something less specific would be more useful to the requester and not because they were uncomfortable giving the requester more detailed information
• Participants chose to not disclose their location rather than merely blurring, which suggests that they were using the response to reinforce or communicate social boundaries.
• Who the requester was had the strongest influence on participants’ willigness to discolse.
• What participants were doing when they received a request appeared to have some effect on whether they would discolse something about their location

Self-Reported Positions are Credible

The Error of our Ways: The experience of Self- Reported Position in a Location-Based Game reports the experience and lesson learned from a location-based gamed in which players manually reveal their positions.

It appears that remote participants are largely untroubled by the relatively high positional error associated with self reports. The authors suggest that this may because mobile players declare themselves on their current trajectory (stating their intent) or behind themselves (confirming previously visited locations). Therefor, self-reported positioning my be useful fallback when automated systems are unavailable or too unreliable.

They state:

Analysing of the communication between and movements of street and online players revealed that the performance of GPS has a major impact on the game.

This goes a bit against the direction of CatchBob! in which we question the accuracy as being a factor that increase the performance. But maybe here “performance” is meant as a mix of accuracy, availability and latency.

The goals of the authors were to deepen their understanding of the human issues involved in using positioning systems. Secondly in the technique of self-reported positioning in its own right.

The first and rather obvious observation is that self-reported positioning provided excellent coverage and availability. Players quickly learning to use it.

Players appear to be anticipating time delay (human and technological latency). Declaring a few seconds ahead of themselves provides time for the system to respond with new information and maybe even for them to digest it before they reach the next decision point – a strategy that will avoid them waiting around.

There were also players declaring and looking behind their current position. Panning behind would often occur when a player did not manipulate the map for a while and so physically moved ahead of their last reported position. One reason for deaclaring behind was to retrigger clues or for the benefit of online players what had missed it.

Rather than reporting themselves to be a different place, the players are in fact reporting themselves to be at a different time

The authors suggests that explicitly self-reported positions (declarations) should be interpreted as deliberate acts of communication. The user intent is not captured by automated positioning systems.

Two potential limitations of self-reported positioning are that the mobile player has to know where they are and/or where they are heading, and that they may cheat. It also demands the constant engagement of the user in order to maintain an up to date position. It is therefor fair to ask to what extent technologies that are ubiquitous should also fade into the background and become invisible.

Digital Hotspotter

The Digital HotSpotter is my ultimate tool for my urban discovery. It has the same function as the special hazel sticks used by waterfinders. It allows to find sources… of wireless Internet access. Essential in worst case scenarios especially during trips and discovering urban areas when the coverage is unknown, protected or rare.

Ein Sonntag in der Innerschweiz

Financial Times' Cities of Dreams

Financial Time’s Tyler Brule came up with a list of The 10 top contenders for the title ‘City of dreams’.

Airports have been inspected, apartments assessed and neighbourhoods scrutinised – Fast Lane serves up its top 10 list of the world’s most liveable, loveable cities. The criteria demand that a city deliver quality of life across as many categories as possible.

The top 10 list is:
10. Montreal
9. Zurich
8. Palma de Mallorca
7. Munich
6. London
5. Stockholm
4. Sydney
3. Barcelona
2. Tokyo
1. Copenhagen

It is highly subjective of course but it matches very much the creative class’ criterias. I would add Geneva and San Francisco to the list, elect 2 cities and live in both of them by practicing frequent flying/train commuting.