April 22, 2006
Nokia 6682
With Flash! Here's something from a review:
The camera has an LED flash which you can turn on, off or set to automatic. Even when the flash is turned off, it will light just a bit (perhaps to prevent you from taking surreptitious shots of people). 6x digital zoom helps you get in close; handy given Nokia phones' rather short 4.5mm focal length. To take a photo, just slide open the rear lens cover and the phone will launch the camera application.
Posted by mb2811 at 04:42 PM
April 21, 2006
Waymarker Ideas
From Jesse:
that's incredible. i feel like i could follow your life all day. what's the time interval?
can we guess which photo shows digital mike at the happiest point in his day? i want emotional association so that i can engage with your life - maybe you can just recommend a viewing soundtrack.
Posted by mb2811 at 08:20 PM
April 20, 2006
My Neglected Blog
Which needs to be moved to WordPress so I will pay attention to it. I'm churning along with the WayMarker project. It went over well in class and now I am concentrating on visualization tools (if I end up getting in). Here are some questions that my data visualization tool can answer:
What was I looking at from 2-3pm last Friday?
Show me all the photos I ever took in Central Park.
Show me photos as a stream, one after another. Play back my life.
Play those same photos backwards, the "Momento" effect.
Show me all the photos from last Wednesday as one large collage.
Dennis had the great idea of making them hot links straight to photos, but that means I need to collect more data.
I got a great reaction, from the class and from the guest panel. Very encouraging.
Posted by mb2811 at 12:11 AM
March 29, 2006
Python!
After Jurgen's presentation last week on python and the series 60, I borrowed a phone from clay and dove right in. I still don't follow python that well. It's supposed to have a very readable syntax but since i'm used to the unreadable kind reading python doesn't come easily. Either way, i've figured out enough to be dangerous. I've written an app that takes a photo every couple of seconds and uploads it to my pc @ home via FTP. This bypasses any MMS charges. It also posts cellID and tower info to a mySQL database, not sure if that's at all useful and if I can look that up anywhere. Dennis is going to lend me a gps dongle which will give me much more accurate readings.
Next step is to try to attach this to my body, well my clothes anyway. Anna is going to help me out and i'll meet with Despina next week. Good stuff. I think i'm going to apply for Conflux too if I get my idea down.
Posted by mb2811 at 09:40 PM
February 26, 2006
The New TxtSt FlowChart
Posted by mb2811 at 07:26 AM
Still Working on Tiger/Line Data
I posted this to the school list:
Subject: Test My Mobile App! (Sample: 721 broadway m : 11 west 53 st m)
I'm still working out my mobile application but one of the component
gives individuals walking and subway directions in manhattan and the
boroughs. If you need directions in the city, test my app out at the
same time!
The system will give you walking + subway directions in new york. Right
now it does _not_ ignore one ways so it may send you half a block out of
your way. It does takes into account weekend and rush hour subway
schedules. It will not know if the L train is on fire :)
Here's how it works:
1) send a text to subway@txtst.com (txtst is 8-9-87-8, easy to type)
2) format your message like this:
[origin] [first letter of borough] : [destination] [first letter of borough]
(every borough is the first letter of the borough name except the bronx
which is bx)
For example, to get from school to the moma you would do:
721 broadway m : 11 west 53 st m
To get from my old apartment in brooklyn to school:
260 12th st b : 721 broadway m
Easy. You will get anywhere between one and three text messages back
depending on the length of the directions. I try to keep everything
down to one text but if I exceed the 140 character limit I split up the
messages.
Send me an email if you get the wrong directions and i'll fix whatever
is wrong.
Thanks!
Posted by mb2811 at 05:40 AM
February 14, 2006
Urban Directions and Personal Trajectories
(Hostname not up, haven't decided yet)
What it will do
This project will give users subway and walking directions through the city of New York. As individuals follow the given the directions, they will have the option of downloading and sharing (uploading) stories about the places they pass. An accompanying website will let users edit and share their stories as well as see a history of their paths through the city.
Where the data will come from
Writing my own stuff to find paths through the city. I have geocoded subway stops, the rest of the addresses will be translated with the yahoo geocoder.
Grammar
help@ [no args] -> user is send back a help page
subway@ [from : to] -> user is sent back subway directions from -> to if both can be geocoded. directions relative to time of day and day of week request sent. otherwise error i sent back. user is also sent back website login directions. See image below for borough codes.
walking@ [ from : to] -> see subway@
story@ [optional address] -> if address is sent, find a story close to that address. Otherwise send a story on the last requested parh.
tell@ [optional address] -> same as story@ except in the opposite direction. Rich content can be sent. User is sent back their login to the website.
Diagram
This diagram covers all the bases, not exhaustive for all paths. If the image is cut off, you can find it here.
Posted by mb2811 at 05:49 AM
January 21, 2006
FoundCity
I've been emailing back and forth with John Geraci who runs FoundCity. Last night I ran my idea of 'path sharing' by Matt and we brain stormed about how this thing could work and how it would be implemented. In creating a session over SMS a number of concerns need to be balanced including user overhead. If a user has to declare when a session starts and ends they may be discouraged from using the application. As we worked through what this thing does, we slowly realized that we could play fast and loose with the idea of a session. A session is just any new path and sessions never expire. You can always add to them and then use a web interface to clean them up later. For example, if you are backpacking across europe, it may take you months to finish your path. At the same time, you may want to create daily paths for the individual cities you visit.
I also figured out why FoundCity has distinct email addresses for different cities. I think it's because translating an address to a geocode (lat/long) is a real pain because people enter their city/state combos differently. If you just accept an email address and the email address distinguishes the city, things are much easier. I think that may be too limiting for what I am trying to accomplish.
I had a great time with Matt, i'm really into this idea. We also need to come up with some sort of name for the site.
Here is also something I posted to the ubicommobile wiki:
I played around with FoundCity, an ITP thesis project which leverages geocoding and tagging.
FoundCity allows users to tag 'finds', things they deem of value, in their city and then share these finds with other users. A photo of the find is displayed on a map along with del.icio.us style end user tags of the find.
My interest in FoundCity is as a spring board for a geopsychology project. Mobile use is running parallel to the early days of the web. We started with individual transactions, "give me this web page" and slowly moved into the concept of sessions and batches of transactions that relate to each other over time and by order. For example, "you must login to post a message" involves multiple transactions that need to occur in a certain order.
I want to consider what would it mean to create sessions on a mobile phone using a lowest common denominator platform such as SMS. Foundcity shows me discreet finds related to an individual user and their tags but I am more interested in the path that was created between the finds. Paths must have a start, an order and an end. I'm thinking of building a SMS grammar which will allow users to record and potentially share their paths.
Posted by mb2811 at 11:00 PM
January 18, 2006
SMS Session State
An email message I didn't send Dennis because I answered my own question. I think Dodgeball does what I am describing.
---
Hi Dennis--
This is Mike from your ubicomp class. I wanted to bounce an idea off of you, let me know what you think. I want to see what I can do to create a 'session' using SMS. This problem existed with the web. Initially the web was stateless and then people started asking, how do we authenticate people? How can we tell how long they were logged in? From this we got cookies and authentication schemes.
The same problem exists with SMS. Sending an SMS message is a one time transaction. Maybe it's possible to create some semblance of a session with SMS, to create an intuitive, easy to use language that would allow a user to have a session, a start and end point that is longer than one transaction.
Here's an example. Google maps is a one time transaction. You type in an address and it's pinpointed on a map. There are other things you can do once you have zoomed in but that's the main idea.
The Gmaps Pedometer (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/) is an interactive mapping application. You give it a starting point and click every point along the way. When you're done you have the total milage of your route. The application has a discrete start and end point as indicated by the 'start' and 'end' record buttons.
As a completely hypothetical scenario, what if I wanted to build this application using SMS? You'd walk around the city and check in at different points. You'd have to have some kind of usable, coherent language for the start and end of the session. Start a new session, record a new point, backtrack my session, etc.
What do you think? Do you have an examples of anyone who has successfully pulled of a complicated command grammar using SMS? How complicated is dodgeball? Of all the commands you have, out of the hardcore users, do most people just use a couple of commands?
Posted by mb2811 at 08:41 PM
Introductory Class
A good first ubiquitous class. It's run by Dennis Crowley, the guy from dodgeball but like most everything else at ITP, it's a collaboration. With the technology in question, this class seems more like a collective, keeping up with all of the new developers. If I get into this, it'd be neat to see if there are any local SIG type organizations involved in cell phone applications. The one in Boston I went to was too geeky and not enough forward thinking.
The class is about using available cell phone technologies to build mobile application. The tools and implementation will depend on the audience, the more people one wants to reach the more one has to build things for the lowest common denominator. This limits possibilities and requires a developer to think creatively within a small tool-space. As in building for the web, the most important thing is to know your audience. Building for a corporate intranet with a standard mobile platform gives us a much more extensive tool base than building a viral application where the mobile platform isn't predictable.
As an aside, when building a viral application, wider adoption is more likely when both ends of the spectrum are considered. On one hand, an easy to use application will be more likely to spread but if it has "tech friendly tools" (i.e. downloadable local java thick client on the phone) it is more likely to be evangelized by the tech community.
The other thing to think of is which technology is being used relative to the type of interaction. Single player games (tetris) versus a multi user application (dodgeball or a massive multi player game that uses bluetooth, see mogi).
Quotes / Things
"Build stuff that people can use. Build stuff your friends can use." -Dennis
"Iterative Design. Build early, build often." --Dennis
Providers lock down the location APIs because they want to control the content. It can be done with integrated gps, triangulation or tower signal strength.
"I am interested in connecting people who have with people who need." --Gilad
Acronyms
MVNO - Mobile Virtual Network Operator. Boost is one example. You buy space on a network, possibly Sprint is the only one who sells space. Many small carriers for people with poor credit etc. are MVNOs.
BREW - Proprietary, expensive platform that only verizon uses. The basis for 'get it now'.
Links
ProxyDate - Bluetooth aware dating. Can't find link
All other links are consolidated under a delicious tag.
Ideas
I love the sub alerts project but at the same time cell phones don't work underground. sub alerts has a social component, people can mail everyone else if there was a problem with the train. first responders can fan out data. there might be an accountability issue with this. I would love to work with trains, feet or bikes.
I like the idea of google maps having a bullseye. All the stuff near where you are. What's interesting in the bullseye rings? What content is valuable.
Think of the google pedometer. How can you do an interactive back and forth within a single session as you gradually send more and more data back to the server? The idea of a session. The idea of an audio tour except (as in localprojects) users make their own audio tours. Currently, with these projects, the data is the atomic level and then a 'session' is created with the back and forth with the users. The users are throwing data back and forth creating a session.
Also think about what you have learned in pcomp. Sense/react except think in terms of context. Who, What, When and Where. Contextual Triggers (!!)
Posted by mb2811 at 03:17 AM