LUCI Blog

Congratulations to research scientist Charlotte Lee and faculty member Paul Dourish, on having had a paper accepted to CHI 2008:

Troshynski, Emily, Charlotte P. Lee, and Paul Dourish. 2008. “Accountabilities of Presence: Reframing Location-Based Systems.” ACM Conference on Human Factors and Usability (CHI), Florence, Italy, April 2008.

LUCI website V1.7 is live.

This release includes a section for LUCI lab technical reports. See here.

As always feedback and bug reports are welcome. If you have any email Don (djp3@ics.uci.edu)

Congratulations to faculty member Gillian Hayes, on having had a paper accepted to CHI 2008:

"CareLog: A Selective Archiving Tool for Behavior Management in Schools" (Hayes, Gardere, Abowd, and Truong)

Crista Lopes is featured in an O.C. Register article for the way in which she is using Second Life as a simulation environment for things like ubiquitous computing environments.

"UC Irvine computer scientist Crista Lopes was happy to do all her work in the real world – until February, that is. ...

In the programming process, Lopes said, she discovered that the simplified physics of Second Life are close enough to the physics of the real world that Second Life can be used as an inexpensive simulation tool by small- to medium-sized companies. It's a low-cost alternative to the sophisticated simulation programs in use by industrial designers at big-bucks enterprises such as NASA and the military, as well as Boeing and other aerospace contractors. "

Sciencedude » 1 videoconference. 37 people. 122.7 tons of C02 saved - OCRegister.com

A little more coverage from the O.C. Register. Gillian, Nick, Mo, and Nithya were all part of this too!

"Organizing an international conference takes a lot of work. But it doesn'€™t have to burn a lot of fuel -€“ provided that organizers are willing to meet by video-teleconference. That'€™s the route that UCI informatics professor Donald Patterson and 36 others took last weekend while they were ironing out the details of Pervasive 2008, a conference to be held next May in Sydney, Australia."

We used the video-teleconference facility in the TLTC (Teaching Learning and Technology Center) on campus. Special thanks to Jeff Fisher and Eric (not Andy) Coressel for some early hours. It started at 3am!

Submission Deadline: February 1, 2008

Within the category of Late Breaking Results, PERVASIVE 2008 provides researchers the opportunity to present their results in three ways, as a poster, published paper and short “1 minute madness”. We welcome contributions on original and recent research findings, early stage research, fundamental results, basic research contributions and novel ideas in the area of pervasive computing technologies, systems, and application."

Congratulations to grad student Amanda Williams and faculty member Paul Dourish (and Ken :) ), on having had a paper accepted to DIS 2008:

Williams, A., Dourish, P., and Anderson, K. 2008. Anchored Mobilities: Mobile Technology and Transnational Migration. Proc. ACM Conf. Designing Interactive Systems DIS 2008 (Cape Town, South Africa).

Congratulations to undergrad student Sam Kaufman on being accepted as a UROP Fellow:

"It is my pleasure to inform you that the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Faculty Advisory Board has recommended your appointment as a UROP Fellow at UCI for the 2007-2008 academic year. We are awarding $[snip] in support of your proposed research project, "Nomatic*IM: A Study of Learning Algorithm Effectiveness," under the supervision of Professor Donald Patterson."

Bonnie and Don are briefly mentioned in this article in the O.C. Register:

"1. In Beijing, anthropologist and informatics Professor Bonnie Nardi sat with gamers at Internet cafés, studying how they used "World of Warcraft," the immensely popular computer game produced by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine. Nardi learned that the Chinese are far more likely than Americans to play the most challenging version of the game. She also says that, "People here play with brothers and sisters. But in China, people don't have brothers and sisters, for the most part, so friend relationships are very important." "

"5. Informatics Professor Don Patterson visited villages in South Africa and Zambia to examine how such aid groups as the Agathos Foundation use information technology to help care for children, particularly orphans whose parents died of AIDS. He also worked on a cell phone tool that makes it easy for donors who give money for aid projects to get feedback about how their money is spent."

Luci is hosting a holiday party Tuesday the 11th at noon. We hope you will all join us!

Check out https://eee.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Holiday_Get_Together_2007for the details.

Congratulations to grad student Johanna Brewer and faculty member Paul Dourish, on having had a paper accepted to DIS 2008:

Brewer, J., Mainwaring, S., and Dourish, P. 2008. Aesthetic Journeys. Proc. ACM Conf. Designing Interactive Systems DIS 2008 (Cape Town, South Africa).

Nate V. pointed me to a great article in the Washington Post on blogging culture in Japan and how it's different than the U.S.

Japan's Bloggers: Humble Giants of the Web - washingtonpost.com

"Cyberspace and real space are merging in Japan, Ito said. Young people blogging on cellphones are often "co-present" with five to 10 of their peers, as they move through cities like electronically tethered schools of fish.

Ito predicts that in the United States, as mobile phones and wireless networks improve, blogging will, in effect, become more Japanese."