Jargon Watch at PLAN

The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) cross-disciplinary workshop on pervasive and locative media provided me with a bunch of new angles and words to watch in the world of locative media.

• We need to create more engaging technology
• Seamful games, the need to go around and play with the weaknesses of the technology
• White shadows are shadows of ray (areas not accessible by the rays, GPS signals), In the Wi-Fi worlds white shadows can be called Wi-Fi “cold spots”
• Some of the technical talks were around tolerance and reliability, about dealing with unconnectivity (be without a network), useful GPS errors, maps are approximations and not the truth
• Use of p2p epidemic algorithm for “slow” mobile games
• Design can highlight, comment the existing situation, not bringing new content
• Situated != located (I did not really get this one…)
• The audience is part of the environment of a mobile game. The is a need to bring passive audience as part of the game
• Doing psychogeography with an antic map of Strassbourg
• Relation of place to meaning, real and fictional, physical and virtual
• Public space versus commons (still don’t get the difference)
• Public values versus commons
• Presence beyond proximity (asynchronous inhabitation of places)
• Some artists do not want to be responsible and question the responsibility of the others. This made me think that some artist are failed researchers
• I was surprised that some artists/researchers only satisfy themselves with paper protyping
• Supermaket is the most interesting media!
• Location-based service live the feeling of trust and non-trust. We would like to trust the technology (to enhence a situation) and in the same time we hope that technology cannot be trusted (privacy issues, surveillance, tracking)
• Physical Markup Language
• Artists and corporate researchers are not so different. Corporate researchers having a tendency to have even more deontology

3 Days in Freeky Britons' Country

Ekahau

Ekahau launched Wi-Fi tags called T101 that can compete with other real-time indoor location solutions (RFID and bluetooth). They mention the possible uses in people tracking (patients and caregivers in hospitals and lon, field Engineers in factories and production plants, warehouse staff, security people in enterprises, visitors and contractors on corporate campuses, elderly care) and asset/equipment tracking (Hospital mobile equipment, yard containers, warehouse pallets, warehouse lift trucks, mobile data terminals).

The Ekahau T101 Wi-Fi tag enables real-time people and asset tracking in any standard Wi-Fi network. The T101 tag can be attached to any mobile object or asset, and can be carried by people as well. The Ekahau Positioning Engine software reports the continuous location and movements of the tag within Wi-Fi coverage area both indoors and outdoors.