Co-organizing the Hucubis Workshop (co-located to Mobiquitous) (Ph.D. studies)
Last Friday, the Hucubis workshop was held at the Trinity College in Dublin. The technical program committee selected five submissions to be presented during the workshop. Unfortunately, one of the presenters could not enter Ireland due to visa problems. So, four research papers were presented during the course of the workshop. It was quite interesting to see what other research groups are doing and what their results are. However, the best thing from my point of the view was the long and thorough discussion after the paper presentations. The discussion between the fourteen attendees was focusing on "user control in ubiquitous systems". During the discussion, we all realized that the term "user control in ubiquitous systems" is not well defined so far. We have to fix this to make sure that we all have in mind the same thing when we talk about user control in ubiquitous systems. Another interested fact was that user control in ubiquitous systems can be perceived from different point of views which has different implications on future research. One result I take home from this workshop is that this research area is quite interesting and shows big potential for future research. I believe we still stand at the beginning of research in this area. Let's see what happens in the next couple of month. ;-)

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 16:27 2008-08-02 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

Smart-phone upgrade: Nokia E71 (General)
Two weeks ago I replaced my Nokia E70 with the recently released Nokia E71. On the paper, the differences between the E70 and the E71 look minor but in the daily life they have a huge impact on the usability. The E71 is by far smaller and thinner than the E70. This is a great relieve because the E70 was so bulky that it bulged my pockets each time I put it their. A great plus for the E71 is that it contains a built-in GPS receiver which means I do not have to carry an additional GPS mouse around anymore. On the software side the E71 comes with the latest version of Symbian OS which is a bit more polished compare to the E70. The coolest new feature is that it automatically connects to my SIP provider each time it detects that it is in communication range of a predefined access point. This is very nice because it safes me the annoying task of manually connecting to my SIP provider each time I want to make a Voice-over-IP call. The improved connection stability is also a great plus which makes Voice-over-IP an even more great experience. The last thing I want to mention is the improved battery run-time. While it was necessary to re-charge the E70's battery after a 3 hour Voice-over-IP call, it is now only a drop in the capacity of two bars. The summarize my experience with my new phone: Just great! Well-done Nokia! Let me finish this blog entry with a side-notice on all the IPhone hype: The Nokia E71 is the better IPhone! ;-)

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 15:30 2008-08-02 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)