ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: July 2010

Call: International Conference on Distance Learning and Education (ICDLE 2010)

2010 International Conference on Distance Learning and Education – ICDLE 2010

ICDLE 2010 will be held during Oct 3-5, 2010 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA.

Conference web site: http://www.icdle.org/

Deadline for Paper Submission (Full Paper):  July 30, 2010

The 2010 International Conference on Distance Learning and Education (ICDLE 2010) is the premier forum for the presentation of new advances and research results in the fields of Distance Learning and Education. The conference will bring together leading researchers, engineers and scientists in the domain of interest from around the world. … read more. “Call: International Conference on Distance Learning and Education (ICDLE 2010)”

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Eye contact via Head-mounted Mobile Video Communication System

[From DigInfo TV; a 1:35 minute video is available here]

Head-mounted Mobile Video Communication System

28 July 2010

At Wireless Japan 2010, the Nakajima Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications exhibited a mobile videophone that enables truly effective communication, using a head-mounted display and various sensors.

“We think that a weakness of ordinary videophones is, they don’t let people make eye contact. That’s a big defect in terms of effective communication. We’ve created something that overcomes that defect.”

This system has acceleration and position sensors built into a head-mounted display. A microcomputer detects the vertical and horizontal motion of the user’s head, and controls the camera using a servomotor.

“The video captured by this camera is shown on a see-through head-mounted display. So when you put on the display and move your head around, you can see video linked to the movement of your head.”… read more. “Eye contact via Head-mounted Mobile Video Communication System”

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Job: Innovation Futures Research Associate at Sheffield Hallam University

Innovation Futures Research Associate (Digital)

Cultural, Communications and Computing Research Institute (C3RI)
Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences
Sheffield Hallam University

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Cultural, Communications and Computing Research Institute (C3RI), which is seeking to appoint a Research Associate to join the progressive Knowledge Transfer team. Our industry partners choose Sheffield Hallam because of our flexible, business led approach and our high quality research, facilities and students. Our partners include Sony, BP, NHS, Network Rail, Cisco, SAP and Microsoft.

This position is client-facing and is an important role in helping to develop digital research and knowledge transfer. You will set-up and deliver Innovation Futures research and consultancy projects primarily for Yorkshire and Humber companies. You will contribute towards establishing and developing relationships with new and existing commercial partners providing advice and advanced technical support for the development of a wide range of new or existing products and systems.… read more. “Job: Innovation Futures Research Associate at Sheffield Hallam University”

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Meta Cookie uses augmented reality to control cookie flavor

[From TechNewsDaily; more information is available here]

 

Real Cookies Butt Heads With Virtual Ones

By Stuart Fox, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer
28 July 2010

LOS ANGELES — Between the crunch, the buttery feel in your mouth and the rich taste, cookies seem pretty perfect already. But they’re not quite perfect enough for Takuji Narumi of Tokyo University. Here at the SIGGRAPH computer animation and interactive technology conference, Takuji and his team unveiled their Meta Cookie system, which uses virtual reality to try to control the flavor of a cookie.

The Meta Cookie system takes advantage of a principle that any good chef knows: We taste with our eyes and nose before any food enters our mouth. By replicating the image of a cookie of a particular flavor through a virtual reality headset, and then reproducing the scent of that cookie using special perfume tubes aimed at the nose, the Meta Cookie can trick the user’s brain into thinking that a flavorless sugar cookie is actually a chocolate or almond cookie.… read more. “Meta Cookie uses augmented reality to control cookie flavor”

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Call: The Information Society: Death, Afterlife and Immortality of Bodies and Data

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue of The Information Society

TITLE: The Death, Afterlife and Immortality of Bodies and Data

LINK TO FULL CALL:
http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/CFP_DeathAfterlifeImmortality.pdf

GUEST EDITORS: Connor Graham, Martin Gibbs, Dave Kirk, John Phillips

SYNOPSIS
As emergent information technologies increasingly pervade people’s lives, they are also increasingly a part of their dying and their deaths. Digital fragments such as text messages, Web pages, social networking sites, blog comments and so on populate an identity that promises to linger through these shards of ourselves as never before. However, as bodies decay and decompose after death, so do the digital fragments of the deceased slowly ossify and become fixed yet fragmentary traces of the life that once was. These “digital life documents” (Plummer, 1983) are then not only dependent on the producer and their immediate connections. They are also supportive of connections that remain after the producer is no longer alive as a part of larger ecologies of interests and exchanges where rules and customs are still evolving.… read more. “Call: The Information Society: Death, Afterlife and Immortality of Bodies and Data”

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Chou Chou electric butterfly in a jar

[From Coolest Gadgets; more information and a 0:38 minute video are available at Helium and Japan Trend Shop]

ChouChou Electric Butterfly

by Mark R
[July 28, 2010]

I saw this the other day, and I’m not certain why I didn’t report on it then. Normally, I’m all over the cool robot gadgets.

I then watched the video […]. Not to be a spoiler, but it features a butterfly in a jar. If you’ve ever put a butterfly in a jar, then you know how it moves when you strike the top. That is what you will see in this video, except the butterfly is not real.… read more. “Chou Chou electric butterfly in a jar”

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Call: Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ)

Call For Papers: Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ)

The Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) is the first peer-reviewed publication devoted to artists’ film and video, and its contexts. It is published twice a year in print by Intellect Books in collaboration with the University of the Arts London. MIRAJ offers a widely distributed international forum for debates surrounding all forms of artists’ moving image and media artworks.

The editors invite contributions from art historians and critics, film and media scholars, curators, and, not least, practitioners. We seek pieces that offer theories of the present moment but also writings that propose historical re-readings. We welcome essays that:

  • re-view canonical works and texts, or identify ruptures in the standard histories of artists’ film and video;
  • discuss the development of media arts, including the history of imaging technologies, as a strand within the history of art;
  • address issues of the ontology and medium-specificity of film, video and new media, or the entanglement of the moving image in a ‘post-medium condition’;
  • attempt to account for the rise of projected and screen-based images in contemporary art, and the social, technological, or political-economic effects of this proliferation;
  • investigate interconnections between moving images and still images; the role of sound;
  • the televisual; and the interaction of the moving image with other elements including technology, human presence and the installation environment;
  • analyse para-cinematic or extra-cinematic works to discover what these tell us about cinematic properties such as temporal progression or spectatorial immersion or mimetic representation;
  • explore issues of subjectivity and spectatorship;
  • investigate the spread of moving images beyond the classical spaces of the cinema and galleries, across multiple institutions, sites and delivery platforms;
  • consider the diverse uses of the moving image in art: from political activism to pure sensory and aesthetic pleasure, from reportage to documentary testimony, from performativity to social networking;
  • suggest new methods of theorizing and writing the moving image.
read more. “Call: Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ)”
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Second Life avatars give disabled new experiences

[From The Philadelphia Inquirer]

Posted on Tue, Jul. 27, 2010

Second Life avatars give disabled at Inglis House new experiences

By Carolyn Davis
Inquirer Staff Writer

In the blockbuster movie Avatar, lead character Jake Sully, a paralyzed military veteran, wakes up in a virtual body to find that he can stand and run and dig his toes into the earth, which he does with animated abandon.

“This is great,” Sully says as he disconnects himself from medical equipment and stumbles out of a laboratory.

It is great – and not just for Jake.

The ability to create a cyber version of yourself has been embraced by people with disabilities stemming from arthritis, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, mental illness, and other debilitating conditions. They log on to virtual worlds, Second Life chief among them, to do things they cannot, or are afraid to, do in real life.… read more. “Second Life avatars give disabled new experiences”

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Call: Chapters for User Interface Design for Virtual Environments: Challenges and Advances

User Interface Design for Virtual Environments: Challenges and Advances

Editors:
Dr. Badrul H Khan, McWeadon Education, USA

Call for Chapters:
Full Chapters Due: August 30, 2010

Introduction
In the Information society, the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has created a digital society and broadened the scope sharing innovations globally. In this globally digital society, people use electronic devices in almost anything they do in their lives: from brushing teeth to driving a car. In the fast moving digital society, people are encountering newer features associated with emerging technologies including (but not limited to): computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites. Advances in emerging technologies coupled with fast moving lifestyles, people are increasingly overwhelmed with various electronic devices and services. What do users of these various digital devices and services really need? They need useable and easy to adapt interfaces to operate in these virtual environments.… read more. “Call: Chapters for User Interface Design for Virtual Environments: Challenges and Advances”

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Human Presence Learning Environment brings human element to distance education

[From Inside HigherEd]

The Human Element

March 29, 2010

Douglas E. Hersh’s close crop of auburn hair and neatly trimmed goatee are clearly visible in an expandable window on my desktop. So are his light tweed blazer and matching tie. On a table behind his desk sits a purple orchid, lending color to his office — 2,600 miles away from mine.

The technology that allows me to see Hersh’s face as he speaks to me is not new. But Hersh, dean of educational programs and technology at Santa Barbara City College, believes it may hold the key to solving an old problem that has plagued distance education since its beginnings: the retention gap.

A growing body of research has all but obliterated the notion that distance education is inherently less effective than classroom education. But even the most ardent distance-ed evangelists cannot deny persistent evidence suggesting that students are more likely to drop out of online programs than traditional ones.… read more. “Human Presence Learning Environment brings human element to distance education”

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