09/08/2008 by nicola.

Being freed from regular time constraints…getting round to reading some of the stuff have bookmarked

Collaborating with Surfaces sphere , Concept browsers of the future from Mozilla Labs, Eco phones, 100 days in China as a mobile nomad, an invitation to collaborate on understanding Islam through virtual worlds, thoughts on blogging in Iran blogging within HE, in Iran, an award winning Palestinian journalist arriving back and facing Israeli soldiers, Eight stages of social development, Enabling Personal Mobile Applications through Semantic Web Services, Nokia’s semantic applications toolkit, Adobe Mobile Demos, Digital Activism in action, online village volunteering education ideas in the Nabuur neighbourhoods, transforming a waste heap into a farm in Kenya.

A whole bunch of stuff on mobility - Michiel de Lange’s research writing, about mobility and nomadic projects, 2 posts on MAMK re the recent Economist mobility special report and Jan Chipchase digital nomad experiment, an article about IP mobility and the idea of seamless roaming, as opposed to connecting the dots (this article was written in 2003 but some of these issues still unresolved); and finally a green paper from the European Commission about migration, mobility and opportunities for EU education systems

Finally, a interesting discussion on which words to put as hyperlink text (it appears that even in 2008, those with different levels of web experience have different opinions) and 20 strategies to defeat the urge to do useless tasks.

Before I forget…

Carpentry videos - tried one with 3 mobile phones at 3 different angles showing various drilling ‘actions’ when making a DVD cabinet. The angles were fine and it all looked ok, but was unable to get a decent volume for both voice whilst drill was on and whilst talking ‘inside’ half a cabinet (if that makes sense) without a microphone and can’t think of a way in which to record with a separate microphone. If you hold one of the phones or even one phone close enough to get the ideal volume, then you can’t get the right angle for showing hands using a tool - it is too close. The plan was to use mobile phone for quick informal learning ‘pieces’ which this would not achieve, so putting videos on hold indefinitely for now.

Second Life presentation - a few weeks ago temporarily put some info up about a presentation from a student at Surrey who did a presentation of her machine ethics dissertation, in Second Life - to cut a long story short, we don’t have video / machinima footage due to total lack of notice and total lack of ever trying before on my part with a laptop that doesn’t have capability to do both Rather than put up bits and pieces which have since removed (e.g. the text chat with context of Anna answering the questions in Second Life is interesting but without real context), Anna VartapetianceSalmasi or Dr Lee Gillam - hopefully both, should be presenting this again at the Immersive Worlds workshop in Coventry in October and there is a possibility that Anna will be repeating the presentation in Second Life later this month.

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

01/07/2008 by nicola.

Hi, some have started appearing, if you have contacted me via email between Monday am - now and have not received a response, please could you resend / contact via alternative means : nicola@aydindesign.com or Skype,
Thanks for your patience and apologies for any inconvenience
Nicola

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

30/04/2008 by nicola.

What will mobile web be about?

Very nice overview from ‘Kodel’ in Belgium, if you really don’t have time to look through - slide 34 will give you the answer - but not the why - so go look at the rest too

| View | Upload your own

Posted in Mobile phones, mobile web design, Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

15/04/2008 by nicola.

George Siemens post & Stephen Downes comment made me think - they both refer to the need for a shift in thinking and that coverage - e.g. the article in NY Times about Jan Chipchase’s research, is distracting wider issue of this need. I think I have missed or misunderstood what both George and Stephen are referring to in terms of shift in thinking because I feel depressed now.

I have been following Jan’s research and blog for some time, he has been touring various parts of the world, taking loads of photos, meeting loads of people and looking at their behaviour, wishes and use of mobile phone devices. He mentions many ideas that he has discovered in Asia and some of Middle East, that are familiar to me from living in Turkey and mobile phone usage from my in-laws (2000+) who are scattered around various bits of Turkey. They have mixed levels of income, mixed levels of network coverage but a shared fascination with a device that allows them to chat to each other - sometimes without actually talking - for example - they often ring once then ring off - this is a way of saying ‘hello’ and ‘I’m thinking about you’ - but they don’t have to spend any money doing it (i.e. no call charge). This appears to be similar in other parts of Asia mentioned in Jan’s blog. Also anyone who has been to Turkey will know that the concept of ‘fake’ may be viewed differently to how it is viewed e.g. in the UK (am not talking about judgement of the ethical issue - more around economic conditions and issues that mean ‘fake’ products are in existence).

I’m unsure about the shift that is needed in how we interact with developing nations. From what I understand, mobile phones are working well in terms of helping people e.g. start a business, reporting on something good or bad that is happening - because they don’t have / can’t afford another device, bandwidth, connectivity to try anything else. I can see benefits in moving money around using a mobile phone and I can see how useful that it can be to make a Remade phone: in some ways it is similar to FairTrade except that you are ‘growing your phone’ from materials that may or may not have been purchased in traditional (legitimate? depends who is judging / legislating ?) ways, and that the phone can be sold based on the labour and skill involved in creating a phone from these materials.

However mobile phones are primarily helping in terms of improving people’s circumstances including their personal financial ones because they are a portable communication device - they allow people to carry out business using voice and text. Mobile activism is driving changes, mobile citizen journalism is presenting different insights into how people are living, working and the good & bad stuff that is happening around them. For example in Turkey, as mobile phone device ownership increased, there appeared to be a radical shift in thinking - people no longer felt that their problems were unique and isolating - by finally being able to chat with others for extended periods of time (a luxury not previously granted due to telephone landlines). So there is already a shift in thinking.

I seem to have more questions than I have answers e.g

With ownership of devices, finding out local information that can improve a business locally, perhaps transferring money using phones and potentially selling ‘green’ phones to the developed nations - does that help people find a way out of poverty ?

Is the focus on mobile phones just presenting opportunities for healthy, developed, multinational companies to invest in businesses in developing nations and increase their billion dollar profits further ?

Is the huge growth of mobile device ownership and mobile services allowing network operators in developing nations to become small empires and form partnerships with other mobile network operator or manufacturing multinational ‘giants’ and therefore benefitting the shareholders but perhaps not the overall users to share the same amount of personal ‘wealth’ ?

Does the implementation of the web accessible via mobile phones - put a stranglehold on local innovation and development in order to sell their services or applications - i.e. we are replicating current commercial, copyright & IP issues but on a smaller device ?

Are the advantages of using mobile phones for communication including voice calls, text/SMS, VOIP and a variety of mobile social networks and social media benefitting the richer inhabitants of this planet as much as the others - so actually not changing anything at all ?

Up until this moment I really believed that mobile phones are the best way that I have come across for helping inhabitants of developing nations find ways of improving their circumstances - as opposed to other technology tools (although sites like AfriGadget are also highlighting fantastic examples of innovation from a range of both original and recycled materials); because I do not see another solution such as pc internet connectivity for all being implemented in the short term - although again web usage in developing nations is increasing hugely. I also thought that mobile learning was a way of promoting wider access to learning that could be implemented now, but maybe doing that does just allow circumstances to stay as they are.

I don’t have answers and I don’t get it.

Posted in mobsessed, mproject, Mobile phones, mobile learning, Uncategorised | Print | 2 Comments »

07/04/2008 by nicola.

Some of it has been filed, a lot in recycle bin - some bits still to sort, but not too bad start - keeping it like this going to be the issue…

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

06/04/2008 by nicola.

We don’t get much here and I’m not a great photographer so thought I’d try out the N82 and see what happened. With winters getting increasingly warmer here, it was a nice opportunity to record the environment at its most beautiful.

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

29/02/2008 by nicola.

There is a migration of our hosting platform which will be performed between 03/03/2008 and 04/03/2008, from 11pm to 5am GMT

During this period, our websites / servers etc will be temporarily unavailable for approx. 15 minutes

Apologies for any inconvenience

Posted in Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

29/02/2008 by nicola.

As seen on Julia Roy’s blog - Wow

Posted in Mobile phones, mobile learning, Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

01/02/2008 by nicola.

Brilliant presentation from Roo Reynolds, explaining the people and social, community interaction rather than just the tech side of virtual worlds.

| View | Upload your own

Starting to look more and SL and virtual worlds as part of my new role here, pedagogical benefits, learning opportunities and social interaction etc

Posted in virtual world, Technology, eLearning, Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »

30/01/2008 by nicola.

This quick sketch will give an indication of the variations that can occur using some sample widths, heights, depths. Will also help structure the links should these become mobile web pages. If you’re not a carpenter this may seem very meaningless but if you have furniture to make, having sizes as a reference that you can quickly open is useful.

On a separate note, Microvision among others, demo’d a mobile phone friendly projector at CES 2008. This seems more significant in terms of changing how mLearning can be created than device specific learning such as iPhones, although it will be interest to see projects emerge with those this year. However, mobile projector means that you can quickly display at your line of vision, instead of having to look down at a device, if you are in a practical role, learning ‘on the job’ - being able to quickly project something will be invaluable. Also, in terms of size, you no longer need to take as much of account of having either miniaturised or mobilised screen, your options are greatly increased. Can’t wait to see more of this.

Posted in Mobile phones, mobile web design, Uncategorised | Print | No Comments »