Future Living

Digital home – with no visible computers

napfl — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:25:54 +0000

To take the debate in a differnt direction, this item (together with the links in it) might be a nice inspiration for us on how the future is happening now:

“Home Of The Future at High St prices“ [1]

Low budget hi impact mix of wifi and media tools… all it needs something to add interactivity like cameras and microphones. Worrying for the School of Computing, no “computers” are needed at all – it’s all done through iPods, Wiis and the like.

The set up would give students (and us) a chance to try programming a heteregenous range of new devices and adding them to the mix, and the chance to explore the resulting interactions and the security/privacy implications too.

Digital home links referred to from the articple include:

“The digital home hub is finally happening” - The expensive yuppie/Guardian way using Apple technology
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7779114.stm - Rory Cellan-Jones discusses the wired homeplace with BBC Technology columnist Bill Thompson.

Peter

[1] The author of the blog – Simon Dickson – is a well known consultant in the field of e-participation and e-engagement and has worked with various parts of the government in creating workable web-presences, generally WordPress based. That is, his skill is finding ingenenious ways to use existing technology to meet new needs. I have no connection with him!

BERR facility, London

napfl — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:27:36 +0000

Hi David,
Have you heard of FutureFocus at BERR (previously DTi). Would be good if we had something similar to this in Scotland – perhaps at Napier.
Web link below. Site shows some of their functions and rooms etc..

http://www.berr.gov.uk/aboutus/corporate/futurefocus/index.html

regards
Sean

Dr Sean Smith

Senior Acoustic Consultant, Robin Mackenzie Partnership, Napier University, 42 Colinton Road, Edinburgh, EH10 5BT

Tel: 0131 455 2568 Fax: 0131 455 2563

www.rmp.biz

Microsoft Computer-Mediated Living Website

napfl — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:41:06 +0000

A good place to look at what can be achieved with current and future computer technology is the Microsoft Computer-Mediated Living Website. Although this could be considered technology centric, there are a couple of videos on the website which illustrate various interaction technologies which are centered more towards the user. Microsoft Research has a whole branch dedicated to future living, and they are doing very interesting research, probably beyond anything else any other commercial company. The website is:

http://research.microsoft.com/cml/

Kevin

SOA equipment of Future Living/Life/Media

napfl — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:18:10 +0000

Service Oriented Systems are becoming one of the corner stones of many ICT applications in future life, including health care, networked media, etc. However, SoC and CIR so far has no dedicated computing facilities to run service oriented systems. So, I wonder whether it is possible to use the Future Living fund to buy a server PC, 2 PDAs as mobile clients and the related software. The will facilitate the research in this area: projects and proposals.

We do not have enough permission and resources for SOA based experiments in JKCC and SoC’s specialist lab.

Maybe we can treat this facility as an extension of the smart meeting room.

A sample quota could look like the below:

IBM System x3400: £1200 – £1500. CPU: Quad-Core Intel® Xeon™ Processor E5410 2.33GHz. Memory: 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM (Chipkill). Hard Drive Storage: 1 TB.

Operating systems: Microsoft ^® Windows ^® Server 2003 R2 Standard -5CALs £845, or Red Hat Linux ^® Enterprise 3 Us ES, £310.

PDAs: £250 X 2.

Web server system: IIS, Tomcat or Apache.

TOTAL: £3100

Xiaodong – SoC

meeting 27th November

napfl — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:43:45 +0000

The second meeting on the Future Living was held on Nov. 27th. There were seven attendees including three form the School of Arts and Creative Industries and one from SEBE. After some opening remarks from David Benyon, the group discussed a number of issues associated with the theme. Sustainable homes were becoming increasingly important and ‘lifetime’ homes – homes that could change as the occupiers aged and changed their family circumstances. The Universities of Nottingham and Loughborough were pointed to as places that were assessing new technologies. Government legislation was coming in to encourage people to cut their carbon count and to work from home.
The Napier facility should be both a research environment and a place where people could live. Energy management was important, controlling lights, heating and so on with sensors. There was a length discussion on the future media part of the working title. People are now producers and consumers of media content. They have to manage their content and work across different platforms that do not fit together well. People are creating, producing and consuming. How people use technologies and the impact that they have on their lives is important, as is the effect of technology on how people see themselves.
A number of related initiatives were discussed such as the Future City project tin Glasgow and the Innovative Media for Digital Economy. The AHRC initiative ‘beyond text’ was also mentioned. The group discussed how having such as facility as the one imagined would help in getting these other grants. Through the ‘imagination centre’ the UK government were putting in £70m to explore new technologies as health, transport and the creative industries.
There was some discussion of the tension between the different disciplines in the faculty and how creativity was perhaps the central theme. Others suggested that themes such as social, technical, artistic could be introduced. The MA in Creative Writing is to start in 2009 and there is great interest in science fiction here. Perhaps a linked facility could be installed at Craighouse. There was also discussion about the ‘glass box’ as a space that could be developed at Merchiston. Otherwise there was generally good support for a smart meeting room, probably based in C78. This would require good design, sound proofing and various ‘green’ characteristics such as smart blinds/heating, etc.

Meeting on 20th Nov.

napfl — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:45:39 +0000

About 15 people attended the first meeting of this group. David Benyon introduced the background to the project and context for the Faculty’s new interdisciplinary ‘Future Living, Future Life, Future Media’ facility.

Although there are huge problems with space at Merchiston one room C78 had been identified as a possible space for 2009 (C78). Other spaces could follow in 2010 and 2011 as Merchiston is re-fitted (which I believe will be to the tune of £4m).

There was discussion about other possible spaces. B56 or B32 or B2 were all suggested. Should the facility have modular spaces that ca be linked together. What would happen to the library after the refurbishment. Would there be a suitable outside space? H floor was also suggested as was a house currently used by people in the built environment.

A network of linked spaces was a possibility.
The reality of spending £130,000 in 2008/09 meant that we had to be pragmatic and B78 was suggested as a smart meeting room. It could be covered in tiny specks, to demonstrate pervasive computing and build on relationships with Edinburgh University. There should be lots of interesting and innovative artefacts such as smart whiteboards, smart tables and other services.

Any smart meeting room should be a special room, with future lighting, great sound and furniture. It should be carbon friendly and have a state-of-the-art, but user-friendly, security systems and entry mechanism.

So there are some ideas!

Furniture

napfl — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:16:26 +0000

The real luxe is the comfort, luxury is also innovative !

take a look

http://manuelsaez.com/work-2/day-bed/

Néna

Adding a post

mival — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:44:25 +0000

If you just want to comment on a post you don’t need to login, but to add your own post you will.
I’ve created a master user which anyone can use. To do so go here…

www.futureliving.wordpress.com/admin

(NB to get the login details just email Oli Mival)

This is an editor login rather than an administrator so you can’t break anything major although you can edit each other’s posts. When you’re logged in click on “write” in the top left hand corner and it should be self explanatory, don’t forget to publish and not just save the post.

Please be sure to add a relevant tag (eg “equipment”) so that people can easily look through the posts.

Room C78

mival — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:09:29 +0000

Here’s a video of the room if you don’t know it…

and here’s the room dimensions…