So it looks like the face-detection engine has a really short memory. That is, if we turn our heads for a short while (like turn and talk to a team member), the face is removed and the attention level is reset. So I need to re-do my milestone deadlines and try to figure out how to make the program more tolerant of movement…
[edit] Just had to increase FACE_MAX_LIFE
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/20/infrared-leds-make-y.html
A method of defeating CCTV cameras using LEDs.
When I skimmed this I was very scared, as I thought someone had already wrote about Prospero, but then I realized it was just a simple interaction framework. And by simple, I mean pretty trivially simple :-). Still an interesting read.
http://www.magic.ubc.ca/wiki/pmwiki.php/Projects/MAGICBroker
Users can increase their awareness about the privacy implications of a technical system:
Authors have identified five common pitfalls to avoid while designing information system. The pitfalls have been gleaned from the authors’ experience in designing a privacy preferences module for a ubiquitous computing environment called Faces. The five pitfalls have been grouped into two categories as listed below:
Understanding
1. Obscuring personal information flow. Internet Explorer’s privacy control settings of low, medium, high is ambigious. Users can understand what exactly is being conveyed.
2. Obscuring actual information flow. Eg. Browsers hide information collected in cookies. Users are not aware of what is being stored in cookie.
Action
3. Emphasizing configuration. Software like P2P provide plenty of options to control privacy. Users don’t want to waste time configuring their privacy
4. Lacking coarse grained control. Users should have accesible controls for top level privacy decisions like a large button to turn off broadcasting of any personal information
5. Inhibiting established social/technical practice.
Faces, the privacy preference system built by the authors allowed users to specify who can see what information about the user when. It also logged all the disclosures made by the system, so users can review what personal information was revealed. In spite of correctly applying the design methodologies, Faces was not a success. When the authors analyzed the reasons for failure, they identified these five pitfalls.
Other interesting points I identified in the paper are:
Norman said that the designer’s goal is to design a system such that the mental model of the system envisaged by the user matches the designer’s mental model of the system. Extending this paradigm to ubiquitous systems - where there is a observer, user and designer. So now the mental model of all three (observer, user and designer) should match.
Designers can’t provide the option to control a privacy variable to the user and leave it to user to find the right value for the variable. The amount of information users are willing to share depends on the identity of the inquirer. But it is difficult for the user to give a privacy setting to all their contacts.
This is more of a jot for myself. I am not going to provide too much detail. But let’s imagine we can keep a ‘history’ on public displays. Either a history of who’s been near it, a history of what’s been put on it, etc..
How does this element of ‘time’ change the functionality of public displays from ephemeral billboard, to electronic memory — the memory of a shared social space.
This is an interesting project that also had a lot of bluetooth co-occurance. If we choose to do something with the co-occurance data, this could be an interesting place to start.
Jason Hong has a nice PDF full of design patterns for ubicomp. Although this reference is not complete it’s a nice place to start, to understand the types of applications that have been built, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/projects/ubicomp-design-patterns/Ubicomp%20Pattern%20Bus%20Maps.ppt
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/projects/ubicomp-design-patterns/ubicomp_patterns.pdf
capturing video to make narratives in real time.
http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/spinner/spinner_livevideo.mpg
A project in 2006, to link people using bluetooth signal co-occurance. I think this was just the start, but imagine if we did the sme thing with our bluetooth scanning technology. We could very easily build co-occurance networks using the data we can gather with our scanner rigs.
Hung says that he can’t connect to our server on port 3000. The fix is to use the VPN. You can learn more about Michigan’s VPN at: http://www.itcom.itd.umich.edu/vpn/
