Invisible Yet Necessary

My position paper has been accepted for a second Workshop at CHI: IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home .
I will present the interaction design side of my research on end-user networking and the issues and opportunities with multiple channels to access information.

• How can we move from a device (or connectivity) centered approach (for ex: using a mobile phone, TV or Wi-Fi ) to a activity centered approach (watching a video, accessing securly a bank statement)?
• How can we help turn network connectivity consumers into producers (similarly to what has been done in digital media for example)?
• How can we help users have an optimal unified experience despite technologies like DRM, network neutrality,….
• How do we design networking technologies to better account for information asymmetry or bounded rationality..

Related:

• Network neutrality and the state of broadband
• Spanish company, Fon, wants to let wireless internet users share their connection
• Ubicomp 2005 video: Yellow chairs
• Yahoo! Research Labs–Berkeley and SIMS Garage Cinema

There has been a lot of talk about the state and the future of broadband Internet lately. Since I am looking into the design of ubiquitous systems for my research and the legal perspective, I looked at the concept of network neutrality and its possible impact on wireless network infrastructure design. This year, the US Congress will probably enact legislation about network neutrality that could change the way Internet is, and not just in the US. Because of that, there has been a lot of activity and discussion about what network neutrality should be and how it should be protected.
But first, what is network neutrality?

[Network neutrality] suggests that (1) to maximize human welfare, information networks ought be as neutral as possible between various uses or applications, and (2) if necessary, government ought to intervene to promote or preserve the neutrality of the network. (Wikipedia)

Network neutrality basically means that whatever content you want to transmit over the network, this content will be treated in the same way as any other content by the network infrastructure. The Internet was built on a the principle of best effort delivery, which means it can guarantee you that it will deliver your content but it will do its best.

Best-effort delivery describes a network service in which the network does not provide any special features that recover lost or corrupted packets. These services are instead provided by end systems (Linktionary)

The 2 concepts of network neutrality and best efforts are usually associated to a third concept: common carrier.

A common carrier is an organization that transports a product or service using its facilities, or those of other carriers, and offers its services to the general public. (Wikipedia)

The best example of common carrier are post offices. A post office usually pick up and deliver letters and packages regardless of their content (unless the content is deemed dangerous to transport).

When Internet took off, telephone companies were considered common carriers and will transport the traffic from and to their clients to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that the client has chosen.

When dial-up was still prevalent:

1. The phone companies like BellSouth, Qwest or Verizon would provide the phone line (the “pipes”)
2. ISP like Earthlink or AOL will provide the Internet service on top of the phone line.

But with broadband technologies like DSL, phone companies could better control both the pipes and the service .

And this is where the problem lies.

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Co-creator of Blogger, author and software developer still finds time for Oregon blog directory

Blogger, MySpace, Facebook and Livejournal are words that have become popular on campuses around the country. Corvallis resident Paul Bausch contributed to the development of the technology that made blogs and social community a reality.

Bausch studied journalism at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. But he quickly got disillusioned by the broadcasting industry. He felt that local news was dictated by national agencies like The Associated Press and that only national events mattered. The role of local or campus news outlets was basically to republish whatever story was provided to them.

“Find a local angle and rewrite it … ,” said Bausch of his college journalism experience. “This was extremely discouraging to me.”

While working on his degree, Bausch also did programming on the side. After graduation, he moved to San Francisco to work for an e-commerce company. Not long after, two of his classmates asked him to become the first employee of Pyra Labs, the company they had just created. The company’s goal was to develop new project management tools. While the tool itself never found a sizeable audience, one of its components generated a lot of interest. The component was an application that will list notes in reverse chronological order. Pyra Labs decided to shift its focus to develop the component. Bausch, along with Pyra Labs co-founders Meg Hourihan and Evan Williams, ended up writing most of the code for the new application, a Weblog tool named Blogger.

Weblog was not a novelty by then and Bausch was already maintaining one to find connections with other people through the Internet. But Blogger would participate in the blog revolution by easing the process of creating and maintaining a blog. The Blogger service took off on its own and the usage exploded once the company started Blogspot, a hosting service for blogs.

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Messaging service offers live help from library staff

Initiative is part of larger project to bring more library services online, accessible to students

By Riad Lemhachheche

“The primary target is the OSU community. We want to be able to provide real-time help wherever someone needs it,” said Ruth Vondracek, head of Reference and Instruction at OSU Valley Library.

The live reference service enables patrons to exchange text messages with librarians. The system also enables the user and the librarian to share a common browser window. Librarians can use the window to point to a location from where the resource researched can be accessed. Librarians can also display particular pages on the patron’s computer.

While the service has not been widely publicized yet, this option has proven popular to help patrons navigate through menus to locate the article or resource they are looking for.

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A workshop at CHI 2006 in Montreal that matches my research topics. Submission deadline of position papers has been extended to Jan 16th.

IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home
CHI 2006 Workshop

Call for Participation

The home is becoming a complex and hard to manage collection of
computers and digital lifestyle devices. The work to setup and
maintain a network of digital living devices in the home is similar
to the work of IT professionals. Indeed the growing complexity of
interconnected digital devices results in more and more time spent
solving problems with those devices and their configurations, an
important part of computer use that we call “IT@Home”. The workshop
will be structured to consider four areas of focus:

• Perspectives – How should we consider IT@Home? What theories
  apply to IT@Home?
• Problem Framing – What are critical problems in IT@Home?
• Empirical Study – Case studies and examples of effectively
  studying home IT.
• Design – What are some critical design issues for IT@Home?

Contributions to these conceptual areas that are illustrated through
data and case studies will be valued by researchers, designers,
product teams and market analysts through the coming years.

Individuals interested in participating in this full-day workshop
should submit a position paper on IT@Home that addresses one of the
four areas listed above. Position papers should be limited to 4
pages. Submissions in PDF or Word should be sent to David McDonald
dwmc at u.washington.edu by Monday, January 16, 2006. Notifications of
acceptance to the workshop will be made in early February 2006.

For more information on the workshop please visit:
IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home
CHI 2006 Workshop