[Space and Place] Combining military software with imagery beamed from satellites

A paper in the NYT, 3-D Maps From Commercial Satellites Guide G.I.’s in Iraq’s Deadliest Urban Mazes: the Army has been using a new weapon that combines software with imagery beamed from satellites to make missions somewhat less unpredictable.

Taking soldiers into any urban environment is hazardous. But the Army has been using a new tool before going into Iraq’s restive cities, like Mosul and Falluja, that helps officers answer critical questions and make their missions somewhat less unpredictable. The new weapon is called the Urban Tactical Planner, which combines advanced computer software tools with high-resolution imagery that is beamed down to earth from a new generation of commercial satellites.

[Tech] Blog-Meme analyzer

I have always thought a meme analyzer (that would trace the spreak of info-virus-meme) would be great. This Blog Epidemic Analyzer is a step toward it. (via)

This is a demonstration website for our recent research (here and here) on information dynamics in blogspace. You may type in a partial substring of a URL you would like to track. For example compare slow, long running memes like “giantmicrobes” (i.e. www.giantmicrobes.com) or “spambayes” (i.e. spambayes.sourceforge.net) to short punctuated ones like “cnn.com” articles. Check out this page for some popular memes/URLs from that period.

[Space and Place] Architecture for space station

Softroom is an architecture agency that worked on space station design (as well as previous aircraft interior design).

Softroom believes there is a clear overlap between the disciplines of space station architecture and aircraft interior design. “Both share similar restrictions in terms of form and materiality as well as the ever-present demand for lightweight, efficient solutions.” says managing director Oliver Salway.

[Research] Location telling in mobile phone

The topic of location telling in mobile phone conversation is always compelling and relevant for my research. I just found this paper called “Location: a socially dynamic property — a study of location telling in mobile phone calls” by Ilkka Arminen. It is basically a study of how people formulate their whereabouts and why. THe authors also intends to complement Eric Laurier’s paper “why people say where they are during mobile phone calls“.

The location of co-conversationalist is commonly relevant during mobile phone conversation. However, the location is not discussed and does not appear to be relevant in geographical terms. The location is done relevant by the activies parties are involved. Joint activities make relevant spatio-temporal location, such as distance in minutes from the meeting point via the vehicle used.

The precursor for any mutual communication is interactional availability, and the proximal location may have become relevant as a constraint, such as being on a dinner table or toilet. Extended discussions of location concern mainly its socio-emotional sense, such as biographical meaning, place where marriage proposal was done, etc. To put it other way round, the strict geographical location is relevant for mobile conversationalists only on few instances, such as instructing somebody on how to find place x (and even that may require further explanations). The design of location sensitive devices and applications should take into account that pure geographical location is rarely of users’ interest.

[LifeHack] The effects of multitasking in the classroom

The Laptop and the Lecture: The Effects of Multitasking in Learning Environments
(.pdf) by Hembrooke and Gay from Cornell’s Human Computer Interaction Lab.

The effects of multitasking in the classroom were investigated in students in an upper level Communications course. Two groups of students heard the same exact lecture and tested immediately following the lecture. One group of students was allowed to use their laptops to engage in browsing, search, and/or social computing behaviors during the lecture. Students in the second condition were asked to keep their laptops closed for the duration of the lecture. Students in the open laptop condition suffered decrements on traditional measures of memory for lecture content. A second experiment replicated the results of the first. Data were further analyzed by “browsing style.” Results are discussed from Lang’s Limited Process Capacity model in an attempt to better understand the mechanisms involved in the decrement. (Keywords: multitasking, divided attention, technology, education, limited capacity model)

[Space and Place] sticker somewhere

[Weird] Mystifying Image Of Virgin Mary On Grilled Cheese Sandwich Sold on eBay

(via)

– GoldenPalace.com Wins eBay Auction For One-of-a-Kind Religious Icon

In a perfect example of Americana pop culture phenomenon, a grilled cheese sandwich that bears the image of the Virgin Mary has been sold on eBay to Internet casino GoldenPalace.com for an eye-opening US$28,000. Seller Diana Duyser made the sandwich ten years ago, and after taking one bite out of it, noticed the Virgin Mary´s face staring back at her. She put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand. Duyser, 52, believes the sandwich has brought her luck over the years and is truly convinced of its divinity.

[Tech] Visualizing live text streams with TextPool

TextPool allows you to watch a dynamic, interactive visual summary of the latest topics of discussion in live text streams (discussion taking place on hundreds of cable channels, newswires, blogs, chatrooms and email). For instance, here is a summary of six hours of content from several news feeds on April 5, 2004, focused on stories related to the terms “president” and “iraq”.

[Tech] Visualizing Network Structure to Support Navigation of Aggregated Content

NusEye: Visualizing Network Structure to Support Navigation of Aggregated Content (.pdf) by Brian M. Dennis, Azzari C. Jarrett

The application of social network analysis techniques, along with graph visualization and interaction, for navigating syndicated web content, a.k.a webfeeds, is presented. Within a webfeed aggregator, a judicious choice of networks and network information can highlight relationships between individual content items and content sources. A key contribution is to apply network analysis to content item and content source relationships in addition to analysis of traditional human networks. Presenting these relationships can improve scannability and prevent source stagnation in content aggregators. This aids in reducing information overload and improving information quality. Three social networks are exploited to generate interactive graphs in particularly useful visual styles. The results of a small initial user study are also presented indicating initial promise for our approach.

[Research] Locative Media testing

At last! A study that aims at investigating how users names places using a location-based service (namely geonotes:
Petra Fagerberg, Fredrik Espinoza, and Per Persson.What is a place? Allowing users to name and define places. In Proceedings of CHI 2003, April 2003.

From working with location-based information systems we know that positioning is problematic. A different approach was tested, where users themselves were allowed to name and define the places they wanted to use. The question was if they would do so, and if they would understand the notion of “place”. In a user study, 78 users created 84 place labels. The user study also gave us some unexpected input to the users’ perception of place: not only physical, but also virtual places were created.