home | hauntedcastle.org | sao bento music | mobile | about
www.flickr.com
|
Recent Posts -> so much goin... -> mobisodes in... -> mobile album... -> NIME 2005... -> game music... ->
« city of news | Main | GPS in cars »
June 07, 2003
kiosk solution @03:41 PM
Proposals for Mobile Projects.
William Carter | wc@hauntedcastle.org
Division of Interactive Media | USC CNTV
a. Conquering Trojan Vision
The current application of the Video kiosk near the Tommy Trojan Statue is painfully uninteresting, yet full of possibilities. I plan on wresting control of this kiosk and developing one of the following two wireless, community based applications:
i. USC is an egregiously poorly designed campus. There is no real center, and therefore the space feels somehow lacking, devoid of a central meeting area- the one place that defines the campus, the spot where university-shaping events transpire. Therefore, the kiosk near that one trademark symbol of USC - the unfortunately lackluster statue of Tommy Trojan- offers an ideal location for a project where we can attempt to overcome these spatial problems and demonstrate university connectedness.
ii. Solution no. 1 – Leveraging the growing mobile community while still inviting the wired folks. By using short-range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth to send out SMS messages to wireless users walking within a set radius of the kiosk, students, staff, and faculty would be invited to register themselves, thereby adding a set of information to a database. The registration process could be accomplished at the physical location of the kiosk, or remotely, via a wireless device or a World Wide Web page. The first trespass within the kiosk’s virtual jurisdiction—the Bluetooth radius—would therefore yield an invitation. Once registered, subsequent entrances would prompt the system to scan the database to find new ‘connections,’ new registered users that, based on a registration questionnaire, have one or more links with the user, and then either send out an SMS message or an email containing this information. Wired, non-mobile users could similarly access the system by requesting during the registration process that emails be sent out automatically when new ‘connections’ were formed. The Kiosk – Serves 3 major functions. 1) Aware of mobile users within its radius, which it sends messages to. 2) Provides access to a registration page. 3) Displays, and allows string searching of, the current database of Registered Users to exhibit current ‘connections.’ Registration – allows users to enter themselves into the database, and asks them to fill out a questionnaire that enables the system to compare the responses with those of other users to forge ‘connections.’
iii. Solution no. 2 – Building collaborative structures that are rendered at the physical location of the kiosk. As mobile users walk within a set radius of the kiosk, they are invited to contribute to a collaborative project. Non-mobile users can access these processes via the web, or on-site at the kiosk. Specific projects run their course of 2 or 3 weeks until they are in a relative state of completion. One example project would be a system where users create virtual creatures or characters and place them in a virtual environment. These structures are tagged with the users name, and can be updated to contain images and sounds, or other bits of text. Once built and added, these creations wander the USC landscape according to the GPS position of the user, and the kiosk user is free to navigate around the space, locating other creatures and clicking or mousing over to gain information about others in this community. The mobile user, alternatively, can track information about others in their proximity.
These ideas can, and need to be, further developed. Right now they are just ideas, and require more comprehensive planning and tweaking in order to have a feasibly constructible project. I would also expect that this project would be collaborative in nature, and would be a good opportunity to get some people from engineering involved, perhaps.
posted by will | comments (0) | 
permalink
| all rights william carter |
| view cc license |