New blog spot

My blog, info, website etc has migrated to: www.paddynixon.org.

TTFN.

Universities are being overloaded with disparate tasks

'An academic has warned that universities are being overloaded with disparate tasks by policymakers who view education as a “cure-all” for problems in almost every realm.'

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407912&c=1

Situvis

One of mine and Simon's students (well Simons really!), Adrian Clear, has put up a site about Situvis, the tool he's implemented for his PhD work. It helps with the design and analysis of pervasive systems by letting designers explore the relationships between imprecise sensor data and the identification of situations.

You can read about it in our percom paper here. "Situvis: a visual tool for modeling a user's behaviour patterns in a pervasive environment" by Adrian K. Clear, Ross Shannon, Thomas Holland, Simon Dobson, Aaron Quigley and Paddy Nixon. Seventh International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2009).

TiddlyWiki

Simon (my new professorially endowed friend) put me onto this a while back. TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki - including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it's a single file, it's very portable - you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.

Its cool and I have been using it for days. I have a GtD tool and personal research notebook up and running in an afternoon. I plan to play with this over the next few weeks and focus on using to actually manage my GtD workspace. I'll write up how that works soon.

New publications

My PhD students Lang Jai and Wei Zhou have had two papers accepted. Lang has had a paper accetped to UBICOMM 2009 on "Evaluating Trust-based Access Control for Social Interaction" and Wei has had his paper "A Strategy-proof Trust Mechanism for Pervasive Computing Environments" accepted to IEEE TSP09.

This is great work as we have been trying to build up our trust research base for some time. Along with Michael Colins recent best paper awards for his sensor network security and Donal's work on the provenance architecture we are well on our way to building a new trust based systems for construct.

Gerontechnology

Just completed an application for the establishment of a chair in Gerontechnology. To quote wikipedia: "Gerontechnology is an interdisciplinary academic and professional field combining gerontology and technology. Sustainability of an ageing society depends upon our effectiveness in creating technological environments, including assistive technology and inclusive design, for innovative and independent living and social participation of older adults in good health, comfort and safety. In short, gerontechnology concerns matching technological environments to health, housing, mobility, communication, leisure and work of older people. Research outcomes form the basis for designers, builders, engineers, manufacturers, and those in the health professions (nursing, medicine, gerontology, geriatrics, environmental psychology, developmental psychology, etc.), to provide an optimum living environment for the widest range of ages."

Its a facinating area that puts into sharp relief the potential of all this pervasive sensor technology I work on. Will read up more and write a little blurb on it in due course. Watch this space!

Summer student project

A few weeks back a summer student started with me and Matt Stabler to work on implementing a epidemic style messaging system for mobile devices. The idea is cool - can we get every citizen in Dublin to become a mobile environmental sensor. Currently he's building a simulator. I'll post more as he gets further into the 12 week project.

You can find out about John Paul and the ODCS Summer School which he is on - here www.odcsss.ie .