Mobile Muse at the MAGIC lab

The team at UBC's MAGIC lab have been pretty busy recently. The main context aware platform for the campus wifi environment has been finalized and activity switched to the test applications.

Our original application - a generic location aware media application called PlaceMedia - has been finalized on PDAs (where we explored the use of Ajax and Google Maps) and is being reworked for cell phones.

We are now working on extending it to include the notion of tours allowing anybody to create a tour using a GPS based application and a simple editor. Audio, video and stills can be attached to media markers on the tour route and then set to 'trigger' when the user comes close to the virtual marker.

We've also been working hard on developing a set of technologies to allow us to interact with large screen displays with an eventual goal of exploring public displays in urban settings. Current stutus allows us to use a Nokia N80 (via WiFi) to upload and download content to the screen and to use the cell phone interface to control screen applications.

Our latest work is extending this to some user studies to look at how users switch between content on the large screen and on their cell phone with a goal of understanding interaction and interface issues when cell phones are used with large displays.

rodger @ MAGIC