Coffee Shop Magic

Recently I was "working" at one of the many coffee shops that have sprouted up at UBC (Phillip and Matt know which one).

I was trying out one the cool new N80 cell phones that Nokia lent the MAGIC lab and musing about how cool it is to capture high quality photos with this phone, and share them with friends and family on Flikr. I was also thinking of some of the research Matt and Nicole are doing in our lab related to the interactions with small (smart phone) and large displays in the home. Wouldn't it be cool to use public situated displays to share photos from your cell phone with your friends? Here's a simple scenario:

Mike and Rob meet at a coffee shop in Yale Town to catch up. Since they last met, Mike and his family visited France and so he wanted to show Rob some of his better vacation photos. At first Mike considers showing Rob the photos on his smart phone, but then realizes that the screen size is too small to show his vacation photos effectively. He notices a large screen display beside their table in the coffee shop and wonders if it is available for public use. Mike opens his smart phone and discovers the interface to the "smart" coffee shop environment on his phone using his "smart environment browser" application. He uses this application to find his table and the associated display services nearby. He selects the screen and sends his personal photos to the screen's "slide show" service. The screen starts the slide show presentation under the control of Mike's phone.

Since I like to think about "systems" and "middleware" (and who doesn't! ), here what I thought this scenario would require...

Mike needs a way to discover the coffee shop using his smart phone. Since the phone may be connected to a public wide area network such as GSM, a suitable service discovery infrastructure is required, something like Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI).  Maybe we could use a location based services interface that the carriers are starting to offer to locate the closest shop service. Even if he uses WiFi from FatPort or other hotspot vendor, the coffee shop may require Mike to log in before using the screen, so some sort of secure gateway on the Internet is needed.

Not coincidentally, one of the research projects we are working on in MAGIC with MUSE is designing an interoperable programming model and gateway for "smart spaces" like the coffee shop I described, or other places like museums, university campuses, even the home.  If you're interested in learning more let us know.