Sharing small snippets of information about your daily life is a key feature of the online social networking revolution. Soon status updates and other social information could be generated automatically.
A team of European researchers are working on merging the instant sharing of social information, popularised by networking and messaging platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, with emerging ambient intelligence systems that use sensors and smart objects to create awareness of users’ whereabouts and activities. Combined, the two technologies promise to provide pervasive awareness, a powerful new way to stay in touch with friends and relatives, whether they live down the street or on the other side of the globe.
“The theory we developed as the basis for our work is that social connections between people are enhanced by both the number and the quality of the interactions between them. Pervasive awareness systems can support and improve this social communication,” explains Achilles Kameas, a senior researcher at the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (raCTI) of Patras, Greece.
Kameas coordinated the EU-funded ASTRA project, which brought together researchers from multiple disciplines, including psychology, interaction design, knowledge engineering and computer science, to take social networking to the next level.
Users of a social networking platform based on the ASTRA approach, for example, would rarely have to post status updates manually to let their family know what they are doing or where they are. Surrounded by smart objects and sensors in their home or office, the system continually updates their status information, automatically telling friends that they are unavailable to receive a phone call while they are busy cooking or that they do not want to be disturbed during a business meeting.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
