Games 'make drivers go faster'

BBCNews reports in 'Games 'make drivers go faster'' how more than a third of young drivers are more likely to go faster on the roads after playing on-screen driving games:

And 27% of motorists aged under 24 admitted more risk-taking on the road after a gaming session. A thousand drivers were questioned on behalf of driving school BSM.

BSM's road safety consultant Robin Cummins said the results showed an 'indisputable' link between gaming and dangerous driving. A quarter of drivers even said they imagine they are in a driving simulation game while driving for real - men are the worst offenders for this.

The poll also found that 34% of the 1,000 young drivers questioned think computer games can improve real-life driving ability, with two in five reckoning the games can help their reflexes.

So, another survey that shows the effect of the digital realm onto the physical...

The rise of technology addiction

The BBC site Click has a piece on 'The rise of technology addiction':

The seemingly exponential growth of portable technology has sparked fears that people are becoming addicted or swamped by gadgets and their uses. One major consequence of this phenomenon is that the line between work and private life is much more blurred, now that e-mail and phones provide a 24-hour link between employers and staff.

Experts believe that even the decision-making process of the average person can be adversely affected. However, others think that the bombardment of various communications can enhance the brain's ability to process information.

Over-reliance, or required relationship?

A new mobile-society site

The well-used Mobile-Society text based sharing list has been upgraded by Rich Ling to a multi-media social networking site called Mobile communication - this new site allows readers to share much more than text, and is a great addition to how news can be shared.

A recommended site to visit!

BBC Digital Planet February 27 2007

A few days late, yet here is the most recent BBC Digital Planet podcast: it looks at what the future holds for 'Citizen Journalists'.

Download here

Online journal 'Re-public' - has a special issue on Time & Governance as 'Time has been for too long a relatively “hidden” concept in mainstream discussions about politics, more often presupposed rather than clearly articulated.'

One of the short article contributions is from myself, and is titled - 'Real-time and the politics of presence' - in this piece I discuss how

processes are increasingly dynamic as they shift relations within systems beyond the individual such that “what matters is not technology itself, but its relationship to us“. Developments in computerization have taken relationships away from fixed locations as in the stand-alone PC, to laptops that could be carried around, to wireless PDAs, to Internet connectivity on mobile phones. This trend in distributed computing fundamentally alters how events, people, and places are constituted and enacted within time.

Maybe it's worth a quick plug...

Novel antenna for in-car satellite receivers

The ESA reports on satellite multimedia system for cars. Another ESA Telecommunications project, NATALIA, is designing a mass-producible antenna for this and similar systems:

The satellite multimedia system for cars works in a similar manner to a satellite receiver for television channels. However, a car cannot have a large dish antenna on its roof. The demonstrator vehicle uses a specially designed mobile antenna, reduced in height to make it practical for mobile use.

To receive the signals, the antenna must be pointed towards the satellite. For mobile receivers, the antenna direction must be adjusted as the vehicle orientation changes. On the demonstration vehicle this is accomplished by using a motor to turn the whole antenna.

	NATALIA concept

NATALIA

The New Automotive Tracking Antenna for Low-cost Innovative Applications (NATALIA) project aims to design an antenna that is electronically steerable in both azimuth (compass direction) and elevation (height above the horizon). The design is intended to be suitable for mass production.

Read in full in Novel antenna for in-car satellite receivers

MIT Mobile Experience Lab

More innovative news from the people over at MIT - The MIT Mobile Experience Lab is,according to the blurb: 'a newly established research lab within the MIT Design Laboratory. Our research focuses on radically reinventing and designing the connections between people, ideas and physical places using cutting edge information technologies in order to improve people's lives through meaningful experiences'.

Some of their projects include:

Smart mobility
Interactive bus stops
Metro 2.0: smart crowds
Sustainable cities
Designing Green Villages
Castel Pulci
Connecting Pitti
Connected neighborhood
Elens

Some great work here - and definately deserves being kept an eye on!

Via Smartmobs

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Mimicing the brain for automobile driver's assistance

ZDNet has a post on 'Computers mimicking the brain' whereby "Researchers at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research have used a biological model to train a computer model to recognize objects in busy street scenes, such as cars or people".

Also, that "Their very innovative approach, which combines neuroscience and artificial intelligence with computer science, mimics how the brain functions to recognize objects in the real world. This versatile model could soon be used for automobile driver's assistance, visual search engines, biomedical imaging analysis or robots with realistic vision."

Bumping along the arrival of computer-controlled motorways.

The Engineer Online has a post on research on computer-controlled motorways from Manchester University:

Engineers at The University of Manchester have developed an extendable car bumper that could help speed along the arrival of computer-controlled motorways.

They described the system in a paper presented at the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) World Congress and Exhibition, winning the authors, from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the Best Scientific Paper award.

Automated Highway Systems (AHS) and Co-operative Vehicle Highway Systems (CVHS) have been under development for many decades. CVHS promotes a vision that vehicles would not be independently driven, but regulated and controlled via information beamed from transmitters at the side of the road. Cars would also communicate and co-operate with the vehicles around them to ensure a safe and fast journey for everyone. With the use of UK motorway space estimated to be as little as five per cent, the grouping or ‘platooning’ of cars is seen as one way to increase capacity and reduce congestion. As computer-controlled vehicles would be able to travel much closer together, it would mean less fuel consumption due to a reduction in aerodynamic drag.

The University of Manchester academics note that concerns over legal and liability issues, in the event of failure, seem to have held back development. The system proposed by the University of Manchester team would use a ‘bridging damper’ in the event of a signal failure. This would be an intelligent bumper, which would extend to touch the car in front, should the main communication system break down.

Read more at Manchester’s bumper project

Mobile phone gets a Driverless bus

Mobile Magazine reports on a newly created driverless bus, which needs room for only the passengers:

It's an electric-biofuel hybrid that can transport up to 24 passengers at once and following a line of magnets embedded under the pavement. You can use your mobile to hail it, specifying your location and your destination, so the bus knows where to pick you up and where you want to be dropped off. The bus uses satellite navigation and onboard sensors to restrict unsafe speed and direction. Since they mentioned safety, with no personnelle, where does the fate of these passengers lie? Serious trials begin in 2010.

Read more here

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Space Tourism - Virgin Style!

A new partnership between ailing NASA and rising Virgin Galactic!

NASA said Wednesday it has inked a two-year agreement with space-tourism company Virgin Galactic to collaborate on future technologies for commercial spaceflight:

As part of the deal, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic will work with the scientists and facilities at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley to support its current plans for suborbital spaceflight. By 2008, Virgin Galactic, a U.S. subsidiary of Branson's Virgin Group, plans to take six passengers up to a low-Earth orbit in its SpaceShipTwo. How exactly NASA will assist in that effort is still up for discussion, according to a NASA representative.

In addition, NASA and Virgin Galactic will explore the development of technologies that go beyond Virgin's suborbital effort. Those will include hybrid rocket motors and hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five times the speed of sound, according to NASA.


Read the story here from C/Net

The 21st Century Network

BBCNews reports in 'BT investing £260m in NI network' how BT is spending £260m to create a new hi-tech communications network in Northern Ireland:

The new communications system, known as the 21st Century Network, will power all of BT's telephone, broadband and ISDN services. The company is spending £10bn on the project in the UK and Europe, with £260m of that invested in NI.

As part of the upgrade, NI's 160 local telephone exchanges will converge in three major hubs. Two will be in Belfast and one in Portadown, County Armagh. BT Managing Director Alastair Hamilton said the new network would have important benefits for businesses and help to attract more inward investors who demand high speed communications.

Well, I hope they upgrade my exchange while they're at it!

A Life on Record - a life in storage

Yes, its more talk on Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits project - ScientificAmerican.com has a feature on Bell called 'A Digital Life':

Human memory can be maddeningly elusive. We stumble upon its limitations every day, when we forget a friend's telephone number, the name of a business contact or the title of a favorite book. People have developed a variety of strategies for combating forgetfulness--messages scribbled on Post-it notes, for example, or electronic address books carried in handheld devices--but important information continues to slip through the cracks. Recently, however, our team at Microsoft Research has begun a quest to digitally chronicle every aspect of a person's life, starting with one of our own lives (Bell's). For the past six years, we have attempted to record all of Bell's communications with other people and machines, as well as the images he sees, the sounds he hears and the Web sites he visits--storing everything in a personal digital archive that is both searchable and secure....

...In 20 years $600 will buy 250 terabytes of storage--enough to hold tens of thousands of hours of video and tens of millions of photographs. This capacity should be able to satisfy anyone's recording needs for more than 100 years.

Its an interesting read and review... a life lived 'On the Net'... is it desirable?

Tony Blair's reply to the road pricing signatories

As of 12 midnight last night - GMT - the now infamous online petition on the Downing Street website against road pricing closed: with over 1.7 million signatures. As of 8am this morning the offically posted reply from Mr. Blair himself was:

It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically, feasible.

That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance. This is a complex subject, which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.

But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing.

Read the rest here

Blair states that 'we have not made any decision about national road pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so'. At least this is true, for the technology required to put road-pricing into operation isn't 'operational' itself yet. Individualised road-pricing will involve satellite tracking, to be supplied via the Galileo project of 30 satellites and responder ground stations. Whilst this project was scheduled to be ready for 2008 it is now 3-4 years behind. So the government is testing the water with these plans, hoping to have ironed out any problems and resistances by 2011/2. By that time it is hoped that the general public will have been resigned, or nullified, into accepting the inevitable shift into an increased control society. New mobility or the illusion of freedom and mobility?

Also, this is a link to the Eddington Transport Study

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The 3-Wheel, Tilting Plug-in

Green Car Congress has a pice about a newly developed 3-Wheel, Tilting Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle:

Two in-wheel 25 kW electric pancake motors will power the two rear wheels, with a small (15 to 20 kW) flex-fuel genset providing on-road recharging. The hybrid will use a 3 kWh li-ion pack from A123Systems. When garaged, it need only be plugged into a household outlet.

The two different powertrains. Click to enlarge.

The all-electric version is planned to have two in-wheel 20 kW electric motors and a 17 kWh li-ion battery pack.

A key feature of the VentureOne is the patented Dynamic Vehicle Control tilting technology from Carver Engineering that allows the body of the vehicle to actually tilt when going through turns while all three wheels maintain firm contact with the road.

An example of the new mobilities to come...?

Tagging the Patients

This time tagging technology is being flagged not for 'suspects' or schoolkids, but for hospital patients. The BBC reports in 'Tagging' improves patient safety how patients are wearing hi-tech wristbands in the wards:

On arrival, they have a digital photo taken and that, plus the details of the care they need, are loaded on to an electronic tag contained in a wristband they can wear throughout their stay.

The tags mean any member of staff caring for that patient can read the tag details using a PDA to check they are treating the right person.

They can also see what checks the patient has had, or if they are ready for surgery, to ensure they get the right drugs, tests and operations via the checklist on the PDA. Schemes such as this, which tag patients, and bar-coding drugs and hospital equipment, are being seen in a number of UK hospitals.

And what will happen with the information once the patient has left the hospital?

UK Congestion charge zone increases

Well, I guess it was inevitable - it had to come, especially amid all the present talk of UK road-pricing. Now the BBC reports on how London's congestion charge zone is doubling in size with a westward expansion coming into force - see 'Congestion charge zone increases':

The £8-a-day road toll scheme now takes in most of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in west London. Transport for London (TfL) said the first morning rush hour had gone well, but the AA said half-term holidays had reduced the number of cars.

About 55,000 residents in the new zone will receive a 90% discount on the fee - sparking a fear of more congestion. The daily time frame for the entire congestion charge area also changes - it will end 30 minutes earlier at 1800.

For more news reports on the UK traffic scene - see transportinfo.org.uk

Soldiers learn their moves in a 'virtual war'

Both The Guardian - Virtual war helps US soldiers deal with trauma - and the BBC - Virtual treatment for US troops - are commenting upon a "virtual Iraq" simulation that allows soldiers to re-live and confront psychological trauma. The immersive system combines realistic street scenes, sounds and odours to allow patients to relive traumatic events in a controlled environment:

The treatment is a more powerful version of imagination therapy, a traditional technique in which a therapist asks a patient to imagine scenarios connected with a traumatic event. With the software technique, patients talk through their trauma with a therapist while wearing goggles that immerse them in a virtual reality battlefield. The therapist can increase the strength of the scenario by adding elements such as roadside bombs or attacks by insurgents.

An instance where the virtual world is coming into its own in terms of complementing how to deal with certain physical situations.

Mindful Disconnection

Taking time off from the digital connectedness... that's what this piece is about - Mindful Disconnection: Countering the Panopticon from the Inside -

Perhaps the act of mindfully disconnecting specific times, spaces and situations in our lives from technological mediation ought to be considered as a practical form of resistance – an act of will on the part of individual humans as a means of exercising control over the media in their lives. It remains uncertain whether it is possible or preferable to disrupt the technological augmentation of human thought and communication that is becoming available to most of the earth's population. We are not as convinced as others that technology is only, primarily, or necessarily a dangerous toxin. There is a danger in locating technologies' malignancies in the tools themselves rather than the way people use them and mentally distancing us from responsibility for the way we use our creative products might diminishes our power to control our tools.

I think this is a serious issue.. I know I like to disconnect myself from time to time, and take a walk amongst the green fields of Nature's beauty... will living 'off the Net' be an option in the future...?

Via Smartmobs

Digital neighbourhood watch plan

BBC News in their post 'Digital neighbourhood watch plan'discuss how a concept for a neighbourhood watch for the digital age could use the power of social networking, especially in emergency reaction and planning:

Two lecturers in the US have suggested creating a network of Community Response Grids (CRG) in conjunction with the emergency services. Citizens could leave text, video and photos on the site of emergencies, natural disasters and terror attacks.

A pilot could start later this year based at the University of Maryland, driven by 40,000 students and staff. The idea of a nationwide network of 911.gov websites has been proposed by Maryland university lecturers Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece in this month's edition of Science magazine.

"The 911 telephone system functions effectively when there are traffic accidents, health emergencies or small fires, but when large numbers of people are involved it does not handle the capacity," said Professor Shneiderman. He added: "The evolution of the internet and its maturity at this point and the great success of social networking sites like MySpace, Craig's List and Amber Alert, suggests there is an opportunity to do something for emergency response and recovery."

Although much has already been researched on disaster management, this project aims to capitalise on the power of distributed social networks, with the idea that people can work as social objects.