John W. Sherry

Running and grimacing: the struggle for balance in mobile work

The current proliferation of mobile devices in computing, electronics and communications industries has begun to provide consumers and workers with types of experiences that once required being tethered to a particular piece of technology at a fixed location. Advertisers bombard us with images of executives reclining on sun drenched beaches, cheerfully pecking away at their laptops, or struting, like alpha males through airports checking their stock portfolios on PDAs and mobile phones.

Speech-to-text captioning for digital cameras and associated methods

A digital camera includes a processor and a microphone. The camera captures audio speech and converts the speech to text. The text can be combined with a captured image to provide a composite file. The processor executes an instruction set which performs the audio to text conversion. Text conversion is activated using either a user activated input control or through voice commands.

'This all together, Hon?' Ubicomp in non-office work environments

Ubiquitous computing technologies offer the promise of extending the benefits of computing to workers who do not spend their time at a desktop environment. In this paper, we review the results of an extended study of non-office workers across a variety of work domains, noting some key characteristics of their practices and environments, and examining some challenges to delivering on the ubicomp promise. Our research points to three important challenges that must be addressed, these include: (a) variability across work environments; (b) the need to align disparate, sometimes conflicting interests; and (c) the need to deal with what appear to be informal ways of creating and sharing knowledge. As will be discussed, while daunting, these challenges also point to specific areas of focus that might benefit the design and development of future ubicomp systems.

Less Cyber, More Café

Shared models access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), e.g. telecenters and cyber cafes, have been considered as one means to reduce the digital divide. Cyber cafes in particular have proliferated in some locales yet not in others with apparently similar characteristics. This paper questions the prevailing emphasis on the “cyber” characteristics of access, e.g. computing and interne access as is currently known, and attempts to refocus the conversation by considering computing and access in the context of the “cafe”, e.g. as public life in the sense of Habermas. This analysis is based on extant literature and direct ethnographic research in several public places in six countries. We offer design perspectives based on a reflection of “third places” as inspiration for appropriate innovation in the provision of computing and communications.