ShoutSpace is an application for collaborative annotations of a map in a nomadic setting (Stamps being the mobile version), I developed with Mauro Cherubini at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies Lausanne (EPFL). This week, we modified the system for Mauro to run experiments in fixed settings with a very specific task and 3 experiments conditions. The first where participants can communicate using a standard chat utility. The second where participants enrich the conversation with spatial information and finally a mixed condition where they are free to use a standard utility or the spatialized one.

The three experimental conditions

Relation to my thesis: Mauro’s work over the years has given me lost of insights on spatial annotations and how to run experiments in mobile settings.

My former EPFL colleague Mauro Cherubini is looking for participants for the field trial of STAMPS in Switzerland. STAMPS is a little application that allows you to leave notes on a map using your mobile phone. Email to shoutspace[at]gmail.com when interested.

STAMPS: Share your experience of the city

What is it?
This is an academic research project of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. STAMPS is a little application that allows you to leave notes on a map using your mobile phone. You can see a map of the place where you are, visualised on the screen of your mobile. There, you can write a kind of SMS and attach it to the map so that other friends can see your message appearing on their map. You can write for instance: “this is my favorite pizzeria!”, to offer advice to your buddies. All the messages left in the system say something about the city where you live: what are the sport locations, the place to eat, the meeting spots. After a while, we want to use all these information to help the users to ‘navigate’ the city. You can ask the system, for instance: “where is a pizzeria nearby?”, and the system will search for other people’s messages which refer to the term pizzeria to give you an advice.

What are we looking for?
We are looking for a group of ‘activists’, friends, who like to walk the city and annotate the spots they like the most, the places they hate. If you want to participate in this trial you need to be passionate about your city, informed on the activities running in the surroundings and ready to share this information with your friends. We expect from you to participate intensively for the next few months leaving notes of your activities in the urban area.

What is it for you?
If you will be selected for the first trial all the connection costs that you will have to use the system will be reimbursed. If your telephone is not compatible with our software, we will give you a new one for the period of the trial. The most creative and active participants will be awarded with a monetary prize.

How can I apply for participating?
Please send an email to shoutspace[at]gmail.com with your coordinates, your telephone model and your operator. If you apply with your friends you will have more chances to be selected. Please add the coordinates of your friends to the message.

Stamps is taking shape. GSM tracking, post/reply to messages, place/view landmarks, view other users and self positioning are implemented. Maps are getting more precise and less memory hungry. Full featured prototype is due by the end of this months.

I used the Python for Series 60 and this little script that plays with the location module to show basic GSM location info. The location module offers an API to retrieves GSM location information: Mobile Country Code, Mobile Network Code, Location Area Code, and Cell Id. Very handy to do quick prototyping of GSM based positionning applications.

I quickly hacked my J2ME code of ShoutSpace to make it work in Geneva. Features: post, view and reply to “shouts”.

I am still on the j2ME wagon and enjoying it. It took me little time reuse my J2SE code and write a J2ME client for ShoutSpace (below running on PocketPC, Nokia 3650 (MIDP1) and 6630 (MIDP2) and . It only visualizes the messages, but it looks rather trivial to move forward, the fun being to do GSM positioning soon.

I finished implementing the basic features of the ShoutSpace notebook edition. Navigating, self-positioning of the posts and replies, filtering and zooming. It runs perfectly well on Win, Linux and MacOS with Java 1.4 and above.

More on Map-based Visualization of NNTP Newsgroups:

Monthes after Patrick Jermann cool map-based visualization of an EPFL NNTP newsgroup, he moved forward and created a high-level schema of several types of textual data (newsgroups, blogs, library, …).

Based on this schema, it took me no time for me to reuse the code of ShoutSpace and build an interactive map-based visualitzation of the NNTP newsgroups (here the epfl.comp.mac newsgroup). The visualisation rely on the translation from an IP in the newsgroup message header towards a room identificator. From there, we use geographical data about the rooms coordinates to draw the maps.

This work is part of our projects on semantic and social visualization of textual data.

I implemented a signed applet version of ShoutSpace. Features include a zoom in and out, a move mode, and a write mode. It is still very much of a prototype for us to discuss where we want to go in terms of scenarios, interaction design, …

I had to sign the applet, because the Axis log cannot be disable (rather annoying) and eventually I will need to open sockets to various servers.