Monthly Archive for March, 2007

ExtremeChat

Published on 3/29/2007 in Diary. Closed

In my current experiment we are investigating the effects of what we called the Task-context and the Conversation-context, on distance problem solving. The conversation-context, is the set of previous utterances which peers rely on to interpret the current utterance, and the task-context is the set of objects and the environment that the peers are talking about. Of course, the context of collaborative work also includes many other aspects such as shared backgrounds or institutional settings but we focus on these two sources of referencing. One could object that the task and conversation contexts are deeply intertwined from a cognitive point of view and form a single context. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of the interface, the task space and the conversation space often occur on the screen as two different areas.

To complete our experimental plan, we were in the need of a chat application that would not offer any support for both the conversation context (e.g., having an history of the conversation) and the task context (e.g., supporting references to the shared workspace). As I could not find an example of existing application with such features, then I decided to build my own, that I called ExtremeChat, named after the fact that using this communication application is an extreme experience.

Extremechat

ExtremeChat is very basic. The bottom pane is the composition area, where the message can be typed. Then it has a send button to post the message to the other client. The gray pane is the box showing our partner’s last message. Of course, sending a new message to our partner will erase the current message.

One technical note, ExtremeChat was implemented using PythonCard and it is largely based on the chat example.

I will release the code shortly.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Co-text Loss in Textual Chat Tools

Published on 3/19/2007 in Diary. Closed

Pimentel, M. G., Fuks, H., and de Lucena, C. J. P. Co-text loss in textual chat tools. In 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT2003) (Stanford, CA, USA, June 2003), vol. LNAI 2680, pp. 483–490. [url]

————–

This paper present some basic statistics on the co-text loss, the phenomenon that occurs in a chat session when a participant does not establish a conversation thread.  According to the authors, co-text loss occurs each time the reader is unable to identify which of the previous messages provides the elements that are necessary to understand the message that is being read.

One of the identified cause of the co-text loss is the lack of linearity of a chat text. The authors propose two different tools that could be used to overcome this phenomenon: HyperDialog allows the users to structure their conversation in threads; and MediatedChat, where the user cn chose a specific turn-taking mechanism (e.g., free contributions, where each participant can send a message at any time; or circular contributions, where the participants are organized in a circular queque).

The author report that co-text loss is more likely to occur during free contributions. Precisely, during the branching-out phase of the free conversation other topics started to be discussed that made co-text more likely to occur.

Mediated Chat Pimentel

Tags: , , ,

Brain-Computer Interface

Published on 3/11/2007 in General. 1 Comment

Emotiv announced the first brain computer interface technology that can detect and process both human conscious thoughts and non-conscious emotions. The technology, which comprises a headset and a suite of applications, allows computers to differentiate between particular thoughts such as lifting an object or rotating it; detect and mimic a user’s expressions, such as a smile or wink; and respond to emotions such as excitement or calmness.

Emotivimg 3485

Tags: ,

(1)

Going virtual in proportion to being actual

Published on 3/10/2007 in General. Closed

This is the title of the talk that Sister Judith Zoebelein gave at LIFT07. After some weeks from the conference, the echoes of the ideas she presented still resounds in my brain. New technologies push the limits of what is human-to-human communication, co-presence, ’sharedness’, etc. The trend is clear: what used to be a actual experience is now a mediated event. If somehow this has clear advantages like the ability for communication to cross time and space, the same possibilities expose also to a wide range of threats. News are full of stories that shows the limits of the system: identity theft, identity loss, etc.

The talk of Sister Judith insisted on two points: the importance of symbols and the importance of an actual human encounter. The internet is full of symbols: replacements for the actual world. Sometimes this substitution is transparent and consensual for the user, sometimes is not. Sometimes this relief is necessary, sometimes is imposed to us by the technology, the society or the corporations that drives particular platforms.

This might led to confusion. Confusion on who I really am. Who am I? Am I, Mauro, the blogger? Am I the researcher? Am I the Second Life player? Maybe none of them. The point is that being virtual does not help me to understand who I really am. We understand our life in the interaction that we have with others in actual encounters. My virtual life put me in the center of the world: social = me first! Everything is about me, my contacts, my facebook, my flickr, my del.icio.us, my blog, … Everything becomes the projection of my self: an egoistic, egocentric projection.

I quote here some passages that I found extremely interesting:

The idea of a local parish which centers a people in a geographical area through worship, social outreach, and common lived experiences, is much less functional in many parts of North America and Europe.  There are many reasons, not in the least of which are the mobility of persons today, the changing social structure of towns and cities, the increase in all kinds of media for communications that keep people more “connected” in one way, and more isolated in other ways.  Today people find each other on the net, witness only all the “match.coms” that exist, and try to sell relationship from virtual contact.  How do these communities end up in some kind of actual encounter? Can the Internet foster a real life, person-to-person exchange, without an actual eye-to-eye and face-to-face contact?

…

Today’s young often get their “persona experiences” through the games and pseudo-communities available virtually. But then how do they leave this make-believe world and integrate that which they realized about themselves through gaming? Can their life really be changed for the better when they are away from the gamestick? Often what can happen instead is a unconscious confusion about which person I really am, the virtual or the actual, particularly if I don’t like my life very much.  Any community should give a greater sense of personhood, not less a sense of who the person is.  How much more this is true when it is virtual community and nothing real that tests the truth of my conclusions.

© Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist 2007

I share, with Sister Judith, a vision for new virtual communities that will lead to actual human encounters: “The anonymity of the Internet must at some point lead to the desire and opportunity for an actual human encounter. This, of course, is a basic tenet of the Church, that there must be a sacramentality to our lives.  We need to live in a concrete, shared dimension of human community. ”

(0)

A comparison of Map Search results and Annotation

Published on 3/4/2007 in Diary. Closed

Yesterday I was looking for a Pizzeria nearby. As I remembered the address I just wanted to see the map to orientate myself to reach it. As I had a couple of spare minutes I tried to look it up on three different map services to compare the different features offered. I chose Google Maps, Microsoft Live Local, and Yahoo Maps. The three services have comparable features … on the surface. Below the surface their philosophy is completely different.

Google Maps is an extreme open Geographical Information System. Their gazetteer is really good in parsing the query string and looking up the right place. However the site poorly support Annotations: it is possible to save the location but is not possible to define groups of annotations or to share them. The web site clearly says: please mash me up with something else!

Google Map-Search

Yahoo Maps is USA-centered. It could not find the address I  was looking for in Switzerland. Their interface is ADS oriented but the support to save different location is right visible from the home page. I am not sure that is possible to create groups of annotations.

Yahoo Map-Search

The most comprehensive and user-oriented service is Microsoft Local Search. The interface offer really interesting features like integration of 2D and 3D browsing of the maps (while Google has two separate platform for that), annotations and collections. A collection is a group of pushpin that can be shared or tagged for different purposes. Their web interface allows also to create polygons areas on the map, draw lines, etc.

Microsoft Map-Search

In sum the winner, IMHO, is Microsoft Live Local, which offer the most comprehensive set of features. The interaction is certainly more rich and offer customization and sharing possibilities that the other services does not offer. One of the missing features though is a strong connection with portable devices. It would be great if I could somehow bring these annotations with me, ready to be used while on the road. Also, the social networking side is clearly underdeveloped. We are seeing just the beginning of annotation sharing.

Tags: , , , , ,