Showing papers by "Nigel Davies published in 2005"
TL;DR: It is suggested that for species like red-winged blackbirds, which nest on flexible substrates, nestlings readily beg to vibrational cues such as nest movement, so parent alarms are important to switch off begging at inappropriate times, and in phoebes begging is ‘switched on’, by parental calls.
59 citations
TL;DR: This special issue gives some excellent examples of pervasive technology in sports and points to future directions.
Abstract: Sensors and other ubiquitous computing technologies have slowly penetrated the arena of sports. This special issue gives some excellent examples of pervasive technology in sports and points to future directions.
52 citations
TL;DR: This issue's articles represent some of the best recent advances in applying rapid prototyping to ubiquitous systems development.
Abstract: This issue's articles represent some of the best recent advances in applying rapid prototyping to ubiquitous systems development.
40 citations
19 Sep 2005
TL;DR: This paper reports on a field study in which user reaction to the use of digital image capture and recognition to support mobile tour guides that use digital photography for real-time object recognition is investigated.
Abstract: Users of mobile tour guides often express a strong desire for the system to be able to provide information on arbitrary objects they encounter during their visit - akin to pointing to a building or attraction and saying "what's that ?" to a human tour guide. This paper reports on a field study in which we investigated user reaction to the use of digital image capture and recognition to support such functionality. Our results provide an insight into usage patterns and likely user reaction to mobile tour guides that use digital photography for real-time object recognition. These results include the counter-intuitive observation that a significant class of users appear happy to use image recognition even when this is a more complex, lengthy and error-prone process than traditional solutions. Careful analysis of user behavior during the field trails also provides evidence that it may be possible to classify tourists according to the methods by which they prefer to acquire information about tourist attractions in their vicinity. If shown to be generally true these results have important implications for designers of future mobile tour guide systems.
38 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that cowbirds do not tune into phoebe host parent vocalizations, suggesting that it may be most adaptive for generalist brood parasites simply to respond to general vibrational or visual cues likely to be encountered across all hosts.
32 citations
02 Dec 2005
TL;DR: It is argued that the distributed, spontaneous nature of these applications places additional demands on the Event Heap that require extensions to both the engineering and API.
Abstract: The Stanford Event Heap has been shown to provide appropriate support for constructing interactive workspace applications. Given this success it is natural to consider the Event Heap as a platform to support other classes of Ubiquitous Computing applications. In this paper we argue that the distributed, spontaneous nature of these applications places additional demands on the Event Heap that require extensions to both the engineering and API. Suitable extensions are described and their use to support a typical Ubicomp application is discussed.
6 citations
01 Jan 2005
1 citations
01 Jun 2005
TL;DR: It is argued that a flexible and extensible framework is required to extricate different parties from the burden of this complexity and that the European Union funded Simplicity research project introduces the notion of a Simplicity Device to end users.
Abstract: With the rapid development of mobile devices, wired and wireless communication technologies, and network based services, people are able to access information ubiquitously using a variety of devices. At the same time, users are often overwhelmed by the complexity of interacting with different sorts of devices and services available to them. Moreover, the lack of agreements and standardisation complicates the design and deployment of adaptive services by service providers and network operators. This excessive complexity prevents novel information technologies from being quickly accepted by end users and widely adopted by service providers. In this paper we argue that a flexible and extensible framework is required to extricate different parties from the burden of this complexity. The European Union funded Simplicity research project introduces the notion of a Simplicity Device to end users. Simplicity Devices allow them to store personal profiles and preferences in a secure way and enable them to customise devices and services with minimal effort. Simplicity offers a flexible and extensible Brokerage Architecture to service providers and network operators, facilitating uniform treatment of device personalisation and service adaptation by employing policy based decision mechanism. This simple framework can be used by third party application components to acquire the necessary information for configuring and adapting themselves. Moreover, Simplicity is able to provide support for heterogeneous platforms on a wide range of devices, e.g., PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, MP3 players, TV sets and smart spaces.