Author Archives: admin

Mar 2009 NCOA Panel Las Vegas

[ See Details ] Along with colleagues from around the world we are having a panel on Technologies for Successful Aging at the Aging in America Conference in Las Vegas on March 17th. While my family and friends are enjoying St. Patrick’s day in Ireland, I’ll be busy at work at this conference and panel! I will also be busy with a series of one on one meetings on the 16th and morning of the 17th with researchers and others interested in our roadmap and CAPSILs of knowledge. I’m seeing at least one St. Patrick’s festival event in Dublin before I leave.

This panel represents an opportunity for you to learn more about “Technologies for Successful Aging” from leading experts from the USA, Japan and Europe (EU). Members of the CAPSIL consortium along with representatives of the European Commission will present state of the art overviews on technology for the EU, US, and Asia. CAPSIL is an EU “support action” which is developing a series of “CAPSILs” see [ Wiki ] of knowledge along with a technology detailed roadmap for future research to achieve effective and sustainable solutions to independent living. This panel session will also provide you an opportunity to hear more about this roadmap along with posing questions to the panel on current and future directions.

Panel Members:
Dr. Terry Dishongh, Intel – Digital Health Group, USA
Prof. Shuji Hashimoto, Waseda University, Tokyo Japan
Prof. Holly Jimison, Oregon Health and Science University, USA
Dr. Benjamin Knapp, Queen’s University, Belfast UK
Prof. Misha Pavel, Oregon Health and Science University, USA
Dr. Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland
Peter Wintlev-Jensen, European Commission, eInclusion directorate, Brussels, Belgium

Agenda:
Welcome and CAPSIL overview
State of the art technology review – USA
State of the art technology review – Japan
State of the art technology review – Europe
CAPSIL roadmap for future research
Question and Answer Session

This panel session is an action of CAPSIL and International Support of a Common Awareness and Knowledge Platform for Studying and Enabling Independent Living.

Mar 2009 Session Chair Pervasive 2009

I’ve been asked to be a session chair on Navigation during Pervasive 2009. This is the Seventh International Conference on Pervasive Computing which will be held May 11-14, 2009 in Nara, Japan. This session includes papers I’m looking forward to hearing more about including, “Realistic Driving Trips for Location Privacy” by John Krumm, “Enhancing Navigation Information with Tactile Output Embedded into the Steering Wheel” by Dagmar Kern, Eva Hornecker, Paul Marshall, Albrecht Schmidt, Yvonne Rogers, “Landmark-Based Pedestrian Navigation with Enhanced Spatial Reasoning” by Harlan Hile, Radek Grzeszczuk, Alan Liu, Ramakrishna Vedantham, Jana Kosecka, Gaetano Borriello.

This annual conference is the premier forum for researchers to present their latest results in all areas related to architecture, design, implementation, application and evaluation of pervasive computing. My colleague Albrecht will chair the session our paper is in on the final morning of the conference.

Read more about the program or register for the conference.

Mar 2009 Keynote talk ruSMART 2009 St.Petersburg, Russia

I’ve been invited to present a keynote talk at the 2nd Conference on Smart Spaces ruSMART 2009 to be held from the September 15-16, 2009 in St.Petersburg, Russia. This event is co-located with The 9th International Conference on Next Generation Wired/Wireless Advanced Networking NEW2AN 2009. The topic of my talk is Ubiquitous computing User Interfaces, next generation effects and challenges.

Keynote “Ubiquitous computing User Interfaces (UUI)”, Dr. Aaron J. Quigley (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Abstract

The user interface represents the point of contact between a computer system and a human, both in terms of input to the system and output from the system. Ubiquitous Computing or UbiComp consists of hardware, software, systems and services which act as the computational edifice around which we need to build our user interfaces to afford natural or “invisible” interaction styles. This is driven by the evolution from the notion of a computer as a single device, to the notion of a computing space comprising personal and peripheral computing elements and services all connected and communicating as required. This presentation discusses research and developments in the realisation of User Interfaces for UbiComp and in particular Smart Spaces. Examples are drawn from research and development groups around the world who are exploring mobile and embedded devices in almost every type of physical artefact including cars, toys, tools, homes, appliances, clothing and work surfaces.

March 2009 Higher Diploma in Computer Science UCD

My two years as Director of the Higher Diploma in Computer Science in Computer Science and Informatics in UCD are now at an end and my colleague Dr. Eleni Mangina is now taking over this role. She, along with colleagues in CSI are re-launching the HDip in Computer Science with some new and innovative aspects for the 2009 programme. If you have any questions on this new program please contact: csi.secretary@ucd.ie.

Thanks to all the lecturing staff for their help and students who have undertaken the Higher Diploma over the past two years. As always, many of these students have gone onto great things with several now undertaking postdoctoral study in UCD.

March 2009 CAPSIL events in the USA

From March 16th – 20th the CAPSIL consortium comes together in the USA for several leading events we have organised to reach out to the independent living research and development community and the US based policy and funding bodies. We are doing this by having events from panel sessions with members of the European Commission to small meetings between the European Commission, CAPSIL and US funding agencies. I fly to Las Vegas on the 15th and then to Washington DC on the evening of the 17th, I fly back to Dublin on the evening of the 20th, so it’s a packed week of events.

NCOA logo
On the March 17 at 1-2pm in Bally’s – Las Vegas 4 (South Tower – Third Floor) CAPSIL with host a panel session on Technologies for Successful Aging. This panel is part of the Aging in America conference, the 2009 Annual Conference of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging. This panel includes an Overview of CAPSIL, State of the Art of Technology in Aging in the EU, US and Asia along with our Roadmap – Recommendations for the Future.

From the 18th to the 20th of March the CAPSIL consortium comes together in Washington DC for our 4th General Assembly, 4th working session along with a very large program of events with US based funding and decision makers. Our 3 days of events are being hosted at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville Maryland.

The CAPSIL consortium will be holding our 4th general assembly during this time along with further time devoted to roadmap development. Over the course of three days CAPSIL will host bilateral meetings between representatives from the EU with representatives from the US. Those from the EU include, members of CAPSIL, representatives of the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington DC, representatives of the European Commission, Information Society & Media D-G and representatives of the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme. Those from the US for example include, representatives of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Further meetings with the NSF and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering will happen during this three day period.

The goal for these bilateral meetings is to further understand the activities underway in each area focussed on independent living supported by technology and to strengthen the opportunities for EU and US researchers to collaborate. There are many funded and unfunded research and development programs in the EU, US and Japan and if the agencies can aid, rely and build on each others efforts then the collective efforts of not just one region but all can be brought to bear on the challenges in independent living.

Mar 2009 Pervasive Advertising. “A sin by any name”?

Myself and my co-chairs Jörg Müller, Albrecht Schmidt and Bo Begole are currently busy reviewing the submissions to our Workshop on Pervasive Advertising in conjunction with Pervasive 2009 to be held on May 11, 2009 in Nara, Japan.

I’ve been amused by one of the negative reactions the idea for this workshop has already generated. The aim of this workshop is to allow people to come together to “build a community to forecast and create the upcoming era of advertising in pervasive information environments.”

This community will allow for the full and frank discussion of all aspects of advertising both positive and negative which will be possible as further advancements in pervasive information environments come to pass. As people knew Spam would come with email, banner/blinking/adwords with the web we can clearly predict advertising, in some form will come hand in hand with the wide-spread deployment of devices, displays, services which form the edifice of future pervasive computing environments. Ignoring this fact won’t make it go away, discussing it to ensure appropriate measures to allow us to opt-in or out, government regulation, self-directed policy etc. is the responsibility of our research community.

The trend toward such infrastructure is already taking place. This article drew my interest as it states that “The market for Digital Signage is set to grow rapidly over the next few years. A recent report by MultiMedia Intelligence predicts that the digital signage market will more than double in size by 2012 to consume 2.3 million displays, having grown by 34% from 2007 to 2008 to 1.1 million displays.” [1] “Digital Signage” is a clear example of the ubiquitous infrastructure required to realise many of the pervasive computing scenarios we envisage for the future. However, without a discussion aorund their use, first and foremost in advertising we cannot hope to understand how they might be used in alternate contexts.

If this topic is of interest to you I encourage you to submit by May 1, 2009 one-page submission to allow you to join the workshop as a participant.

  1. IBC points the way in digital signage

Mar 2009 Dviz hiring two more staff

The Dviz project is a collaborative digital technology research project between Twelve Horses, IADT and UCD, and is funded by the NDRC [ more blog posts ]. This project brings together a diverse skill set from both its commercial partner and institutional research teams to realise an innovative visualisation platform with strong commercial potential. [ Vacancies PDF ]

Applications are invited for appointment to the following two year fixed term contract posts:

  • Web Developer (n-tier) Ref: 5/09
  • Front–end Web Application Developer Ref: 6/09

Inclusive salary scale: €47,675 to €54,642 (5 points)

Further details on the above posts are available on our website www.iadt.ie or by contacting: The Human Resource Office, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. Telephone: (01) 239 4601, Fax: (01) 239 4700, Email: recruitment@iadt.ie

Applications by way of letter of application highlighting your key competencies, skills, knowledge and experience to date which you believe match those required to successfully deliver on the responsibilities of the post holder should be submitted not later than: 12 Noon, Friday 20th March 2009. A copy of your current Curriculum Vitae should also be submitted with your letter of application. Late Applications will not be accepted IADT is an equal opportunities employer.

[ IADT Website ] [ Vacancies PDF ]

Advert to appear in print on Friday (click to see larger version):

March 2009 Cloud Computing

As part of our applied research project Dviz I’ve been building up an understanding and appreciation of the incredibly over-hyped area of cloud computing. However, for Dviz it is important as it allows us to develop a scaleable approach to the delivery of the infrastructure. Dviz is a collaborative digital technology research project between Twelve Horses, IADT and UCD, and is funded by the NDRC. This project brings together a diverse skill set from both its commercial partner and university research teams to realise an innovative visualisation platform with strong commercial potential.

Cloud computing refers to a style of computing in which resources are provided as a service over the Internet to users who need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure. The canonical example is Google Docs, a functional word processing office app delivered entirely via one’s web browser [1]. The level of interest in Cloud Computing as an accessible service for the realisation of new web based applications has been growing over the past year with both academic research [6] and is also leaking into mainstream discussion [5]. Discussion on how the cloud will impact high performance computing [4] and other areas such as its use in Green IT are also ongoing.

Quote: “Cloud Computing, the long-held dream of computing as a utility, has the potential to transform a large part of the IT industry, making software even more attractive as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased. Developers with innovative ideas for new Internet services no longer require the large capital outlays in hardware to deploy their service or the human expense to operate it. They need not be concerned about overprovisioning for a service whose popularity does not meet their predictions, thus wasting costly resources, or underprovisioning for one that becomes wildly popular, thus missing potential customers and revenue. Moreover, companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get results as quickly as their programs can scale, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours. This elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, is unprecedented in the history of IT.” [4]

Some of the different application areas where cloud computing might make an impact include [2]:

  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service
  • Storage-as-a-Service
  • Data-as-a-Service
  • Platform-as-a-Service
  • Software-as-a-Service

UCSB & IBM T.J. Watson Research five-layer grouping.

Discussions on cloud ontologies have come to light that provide a great starting point for taxonomy discussions [3].

References:

  1. Cloud computing: Threat or Menace?
  2. A crack in the madness of clouds
  3. A better way to understand cloud computing
  4. Berkeley Releases Cloud Computing Study Detailed Report [ PDF ]
  5. Cloud computing ascends the mainstream
  6. Tech Titans Building Boom
  7. Cloud Computing Journal

Feb 2009 – LoCA program chair meeting and decisions


Myself and Tanzeem Choudhury from Dartmouth College are the program chairs for the Fourth International Symposium on Location- and Context-Awareness to be held in Tokyo Japan from the 7-8 May 2009. LoCA 2009 is colocated with Pervasive 2009 the Seventh International Conference on Pervasive Computing, which will be held May 11-14, 2009 in Nara, Japan.

A total of 77 abstracts and 54 papers were submitted to LoCA 2009 and after careful peer review by the program committee and discussion by the chairs, 18 papers were selected to form what we feel is a high-quality program. Best paper and presentation awards will be presented during the symposium. And all accepted papers will be contained in the symposium proceedings which will be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series by Springer.

While we had more good papers than we could accept, those in the program will form an exciting and engaging research program for everyone who attends LoCA 2009. Some of the terms and expressions (adapted a little to preserve anonymity) used in the reviews of these accepted papers include:

  • “New Concept”, “Novel Concept”, “An interesting novel idea”
  • “…the research jumps head-on into a large open problem”
  • “…strong rigorous evaluations which are well written and well argued”
  • “…the authors offer insightful descriptions”
  • “… well written, well explained, and thoroughly evaluated research contribution that is quite relevant for …”
  • “… an interesting paper, well-presented and -evaluated and addressing an important problem.”
  • “..the paper makes good use of state-of-the art techniques to solve the problem of …”
  • “..I think this is a real problem of interest to the community”

Peer review can be a both upliftting and shocking process but the tireless efforts of all those on the LoCA PC are to be very much commended as hundreds of reviews had to be written to help select just 18 papers.

Dr.Shonozaki of Koozyt (PlaceEngine) will be a Keynote Speaker for LoCA 2009 and the early bird registration for LoCA 2009 is March 5.

I would like to thank all the members of the PC, our reviewers, general and local chairs and in particular my program co-chair Dr. Tanzeem Choudhury for a very smooth, professional and high quality peer-review process for LoCA 2009.

東京でお会い