Blogs

Mobile Muse has just activated an exciting new project in partnership with the Pacific Parklands Foundation to pioneer effective new forms of public engagement related to natural capital appreciation and growth. The first phase of "Friending Mother Nature" has begun and runs through the end of 2012.

... or, Streethacking with Ubiquitous Media, if you prefer? Mobile MUSE has a new applied research program underway in connection with a research cluster called the Greenest City Conversations Project, a collaborative effort of a number of researchers at UBC and SFU, based at UBC's Centre for Sustainability. Our research into mobile channel effects involves a participatory design exercise, in which a team of local smartphone/tablet users will be performing a needs assessment for what the mobile/ubicomp sphere can do to improve or better facilitate public awareness, dialogue and participation in urban sustainability issues. Then, we'll turn to designing an application (or a 'connective tissue' piece between existing platforms and/or applications) in conjunction with student interns.

This project will unfold over the next 6-8 months, culminating in a launch of an application. Please stay tuned.

Mobile MUSE is proud to showcase its innovation once again in the form of an interactive audio tour. In partnership with the City of Vancouver, we have developed informative audio content, accessible via mobile phones, to enhance fourteen public art installations as part of the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program. Simply visit one of the sites listed in the City's brochure (PDF), call the phone number on your mobile, and follow the interactive menus for information about the various works and artists.

I will be speaking briefly and offering a demonstration of the current Mobile Muse platform at MoMoVan this evening, at Workspace (400-21 Water Street in Gastown).

During the demo you'll have a chance to interact with our platform via SMS/MMS VoiceXML, and even streaming video (if you and your smartphone are so inclined!. I'm a bit of a n00b still at our VJ application, but I'll do my best to remix the content and give a glimpse of what is possible with our screen-and-mobile-audience-participation toolkit.

Register at the event's Eventbrite page if you haven't already.

Last week Nokia announced its Calling All Innovators global mobile development contest, which should be of interest to people and companies in our community. They're specifically seeking mobile client applications that focus on social enterprise, health, environment, and other areas. Entrants need to submit their code directly to the contest and provide a video tutorial, among other requirements. See here for more details and how to submit an application.

Sunday's Open Mobile event was a resounding success, one I hope we can repeat soon. We saw presentations about the hows and whys of open technologies in efforts to bridge the digital divide. We were given insight into the future of a mobile-accessible web, and the centrality of context awareness in designing for the mobile. We caught a glimpse of how to plan and excute event documentation using mobile videography, with hints on how to build a business model out of this. We were shown an intriguing experiment in sound design using the moods of multiple users in a shared location. We were offered a rare view into Latin American approaches to mobile phone art.

Following on the heels of the wildly successful MobileCampVancouver 2008, Mobile Muse is proud to present - in conjunction with New Forms Festival - Open Mobile on Sunday September 21st. I will be kicking off the day with a talk about the future of mobiles, accompanied by visuals from Roland Tanglao and Jesse Scott. The rest of the day will be filled with a range of provocative and highly informative presentations from artists, mobile marketers, event programmers, social activists, and just plain old mobile geeks. See the eventbrite page for exact location, times, and speaker topics.

Sponsored by Mobile Muse, MobileCampVancouver is bringing together iPhone junkies, Crackberry addicts, couch surfers, coffee shop hackers, vagabonds and mobile nomads to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility. MobileCampVancouver hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a truly mobile life. Topics may include - but are not limited to - mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents. MobileCampVancouver is an ad-hoc conference in the spirit of Barcamp. Check out the the Rules of Bar Camp to learn what to expect. MobileCampVancouver will

Whether you're a social services provider, an arts collective, a commercial event producer, a mobile application developer, or even a group or company with some brilliant idea about bringing advanced mobile web services to the masses, Mobile Muse is for you.

You're probably wondering "how"? Perhaps also "why"?

Starting next week, I will post here the first article in a series that introduces Mobile Muse - its mission and mandate, our current and past projects, future directions for mobile, and a friendly guidebook of sorts that orients readers to our development process. Watch for interviews with our developer community, highlights from our current crop of showcase projects, and the occasional guest post from experts in this area.

Along the way I'll point the way to the resources available within not only this site, but also among our network of researchers, developers and community groups.

Over at Clicknoise I've posted a video documenting some of the potential in using GPS data (logged using a Nokia N82) in Google Earth.