The 'Pervasive Computing' Community

Roland Piquepaille writes "Most of us are using computers, but also PDAs and cell phones. And this trend is accelerating in our increasingly networked wireless world. We might use hundreds of computing devices by the end of this decade. Still, we are slaves to our machines. With every new device, we have to learn new commands, languages or interfaces. The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), a strategic alliance between the University of Cambridge in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., has enough of it and wants to give back control to the users. So it launched its 'Pervasive Computing' initiative with the intention to tackle this challenge. In particular, the group wants to develop new technologies to make easier for us to interact with all these computers. This overview contains more details and references about this initiative."

Comments

Long overdue.

[torpor]

Disclaimer: I work for a synthesizer manufacturer.

Synthesizers and other forms of electronic musical instrumentation have been having the same problems as computers.

Nevertheless, the paradigms of "Page Up/Page Down" and "Parameter Left/Right", and "Patch Up/Dn", and "Edit/Play", as horrible as they are, have served 'standard interface' requirements for years. There is a 'standard user interface' in this realm, as crap as it is.

Manufacturers in this market have copied each others interface ideas freely and easily, and it has resulted in an, admittedly hodge-podge, 'general user interface' set of 'music machine hacker' chops. "Multi-mode"/"Single-mode", etc. can generally be found on most modern synth platforms. Any synth geek around knows that the patch +/- keys are the ones you look for first, then the 'filter resonance knob', or whatever.

Computers would do well to learn from the lessons of musical instruments in this regard. It never ceases to amaze me that all these TLA "Initiatives" often disregard even the most obvious examples of solutions to problems... I guess because their grants aren't "directed" to those realms.

In any case, I hope to see some interesting results from CMI. At Access, we're really interested in human/user-interface problems and good ways to solve them ...

Interface research

[PlatinumInitiate]

Georgia Tech and others are working on a product called Squeak which could gain ground in this regard. Some of the players involved are key names from the early years of computer interface/graphics research, including Dr Alan Kay.

Squeak is an open source product with quite a flexible license, and although they are mainly concentrating on educational apps, it is worth noting that in the system itself they have developed an unusual, yet addictive, UI. It is such an easy system to learn, that quite complex tasks can be done within a few hours of learning the basics of the system and going through the tutorials.

Doesn't the market already take care of this?

[StateOfTheUnion]

Doesn't the market already regulate this . . . to a certain extent creating standards by embracing ideas that are well accepted by the customer base?

For example the Apple Newton's terrible handwriting recognition system vs Palm Pilot's . . . and Palm's system of handwriting recognition is becoming more ubiquitous as others license the operating system (handspring (now part of palm), Sony, etc.)

Or a simple example, how many software products for sound recording or CD audio playing do not have the familiar play, rewind, FF and stop that look like a right arrowhead, double left arrowheads, double right arrowheads, and a square? If someone tried to write a player/recorder without this interface, would a significant number of people actually buy it even if in all other respects it was a great program?

What about a trash can in the GUI for deleting files? . . . or even the concept of a mouse? All these became "standards" in their own right because they were well accepted by the consumer.

A standards body may save some knock down drag out fights over "standards" in the marketplace and may speed things up a bit, but the ultimate challenge is the marketplace . . . if people think that the interactive experience from a product sucks, then they're not going to buy it . . .

Uhh... IBM's had a Pervasive Computing Lab since..

[Hollinger]

While I do applaud these two institutions for their initiative, and wish them the best of luck, I feel that the poster has put a little bit of an unfair spin on the news, as if this is something that they just dreamed up entirelyon their own.

IBM, for example, has had a Pervasive Computing Lab in Austin, TX for several years that has produced several applications in a multitude of markets.

In fact, those of you that are fans of Opera may want to check out Multimodal Browsing on the Sharp Zaurus. Those of you with Windows may want to check out IBM's Multimodal Toolkit for creating these new X+V pages that we might be hearing more about in the future.

Enjoy the links!
~ Mike