Sony Goal: 90% of ALL Our Products Networked By 2010

An article at Gizmodo suggested that sony are planning to make 90% of their devices networked by 2010, which is pretty interesting, as it means Ubicomp researchers can munge all these things together to make cool new systems! That is, if the devices can be programmed and tinkered with.

However this will hopefully mean the more consumer devices will become 'connected' and therefore accessible by pervasive systems at least in some minor way. One issue I see though is that of privacy, if all of these devices are connected, we have to make sure that the data they are transmitting is non-private or reliably encrypted, and of course network attack proof!

I found this amusing when trying to muck around with Firefox 3's configuration settings by putting about:config into the address bar :)

I've been mucking around with some FOAF stuff recently, and spent some time making a FOAF exploring application.

This is very basic and does not work completely, but it is quite interesting.


It uses the Joseki project to perform SPARQL queries on remote RDF files (i.e. It does pretty much the same as Construct does, but supports a FROM clause, in which you can specify a remote resource).

The project is currently on my server. But requires that I have the Joseki server running, so may not work.

Using the following SPARQL query, it is possible to get some data out about a person. However, there is a flaw which I have not solved: How to get only that information about the top level person! As at the moment, I am using the rdf:ID="#me" part of a FOAF profile to get the data, but this is not a defined standard, so somehow it needs a more general way of finding it.


PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns>
SELECT ?name ?nick ?title ?homepage ?mbox ?mbox_sha1sum ?img ?depiction ?surname ?family_name ?givenname ?firstName ?gender ?img ?workplaceHomepage ?workInfoHomepage ?schoolHomepage
FROM <http://mattstabeler.co.uk/foaf.rdf>
WHERE {
OPTIONAL {
<http://mattstabeler.co.uk/foaf.rdf#me> foaf:name ?name.
?y foaf:name ?name.
}
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:nick ?nick . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:title ?title . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:homepage ?homepage . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:mbox ?mbox . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:mbox_sha1sum ?mbox_sha1sum . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:img ?img . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:depiction ?depiction . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:surname ?surname . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:family_name ?family_name . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:givenname ?givenname . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:firstName ?firstName . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:gender ?gender . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:workplaceHomepage ?workplaceHomepage . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:workInfoHomepage ?workInfoHomepage . }
OPTIONAL { ?x foaf:schoolHomepage ?schoolHomepage . }
}



If anyone is interested in the code, its a bit ropey, but I will be happy to send it on.

Other useful SPARQL queries:

Find who the Person knows

PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
SELECT ?name ?seeAlso ?mbox_sha1sum
FROM <http://mattstabeler.co.uk/foaf.rdf>
WHERE {
?x foaf:name ?name .
OPTIONAL { ?x rdfs:seeAlso ?seeAlso . }
}


Find out a Person's OnlineAccounts

PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
SELECT ?accountName ?accountProfilePage ?accountServiceHomepage
FROM <http://mattstabeler.co.uk/foaf.rdf#me>
WHERE {
OPTIONAL{?x foaf:accountName ?accountName .}
OPTIONAL{?x foaf:accountServiceHomepage ?accountServiceHomepage .}
OPTIONAL{?x foaf:accountProfilePage ?accountProfilePage . }
}


As part of my Structured PhD Program, I have to take a number of modules for the structured part (as I skipped doing a Masters degree). Today, the results were released, and I managed to do OK! :)

Graded Modules:

Machine Learning (5) - B+
Natural Computing (5) - A+
Distributed Systems (5) - A+
Agent Oriented Software (10) - A

Pass/Fail Modules:

Core Research Skills (2.5) - Pass
Intro. to Entepreneurship (2.5) - Distinction


Which all adds up to the 30 credits I need (?)(along with writing a transfer report which I am yet to write) to help me to get to stage II of my PhD, which has no coursework requirement, but will be much, much harder! :)

I was catching up on blogs this morning, and found geffys post about the GENI site, which lets you map out your family tree - it's pretty interesting and very addictive!

We have Mario Kart at our place too, I wondered why Laura is so keen on taking bananas to work!

Originally from Jason Nurse

We returned today from Australia, and are both glad the epic 28 hour journey is finally over, and it seems we are more likely to get a nice sun-tan here!

I've put all of the pictures online now - the comprehensive list...

• pervasive08


• Australia2008_part1


• Australia2008_part2


• Australia2008_part3


• Australia2008_surfing

We met up with Vicky and Neil in Brisbane before we headed up the coast, they were planning a camping trip anyway, so they met with us in Noosa.

We spent the afternoon and evening with them, and after a few beers and some expert weather predictions (by ourselves) we came to the conclusion that Laura and I should head south to the Gold coast. That way we might get a chance at getting some sunshine!

We headed back through Brisbane, and went south, stopping briefly at Surfers Paradise, and a couple of other beaches, before settling in Coolongatta for the night - not alot to say about it, but we drank cheap beer at the surf club!

Next morning we headed off to Byron bay, where we stayed in a camp site, with hot showers! We ended up staying there for two nights, as FINALLY the sun came out! :) Just as we were heading into Nimbin, the Maruajana capital of New South Wales. We just had a quick walk around, but were offered 'weed' by every third person we walked passed, so we ducked into the Museum there, which is probably really cool if your stoned but was a little odd!

Today we had our first surf lesson which was very cool! There are some pictures, but i'll have to put them on later.....

'Wildlife' Spotted so far:

Kangaroos (at a distance)
Lots of birds
A few Bugs
nothing scary :)
one lizard.

The second night at the hostel was a bit odd - we stayed in a 4 person dorm room - all was ok til 3am when a drunk/stoned Germand decided that he wanted my bunk. We dissuaded him, but Laura was a little worried about that, we couldnt wait to get our camper!

We picked up our Camper yesterday in the pouring rain, and headed up the coast to explore a little.

We went through Caloundra and ended up in Maroochidore, we spotted a wiked camper in a car park, and pulled up for a chat. We ended up staying there the night and sharing some tasty red wine that we picked up in hunters valley.

Before we got to our camping site, we had to pop up to the Emergency department of the local hospital, for a little recurring problem... but all was ok!

We ate a really nice place called the Boat Shed, we picked our meals, avoidning the expensive ones, only to be politely told by the waitress, that in fact we had picked entree's! (we thought they were slightly overpriced to start with!) so we ended up having a very nice dinner! but paying through the nose for it! hehe oh well

This morning the rain had cleared and we saw some sunshine at last! We've moved up to Noosa to meey Neil and Vicky.

More pictures here

We had a day of wine tasting in the Hunters Valley yesterday, which was pretty good fun, I didnt realise you could just turn up at the wineries, and they would server you their wine to taste. We went to four, the first, Sobels, being the best by far (in my opinion. We bought some Merlot), closely followed by Ivanhoe's. Apparenly Shiraz is what the valley is famous for though. At 40AUD (20GBP) each it wasnt too bad, but on top of that was lunch and the train (36AUD Return) to Missota.
We made the mistake of not actually booking tour, and just getting a train ticket (to Newcastle), luckily the guy at the train station gave us details of a tour company, as otherwise we would have turned up to Newcastle, with little chance of getting a tourbus.

Last night we it up to Brisbane and stayed last night at the Bunks backpackers hostel, which although the price (approx 96AUD) was the same as the hotel we stayed at in Sydney, the room was a little basic which we kind of expected, however the facilities in the hostel look great!

Tonight we will probably just stay in a dorm room (36AUD each). We are planning to get a campervan tomorrow and head up the Sunshine Coast, but the weather forecast doesn't look good, with rain forecast until next Wednesday (when we fly back to Sydney!).

So we may be washed out, but at least if we get a camper our accomodation will be a little cheaper! We could head inland a bit maybe, but we'll just have to see!

The flight from Sydney to Brisbane was really nice - compared to crappy ryanair, the Virgin Blue flight had all the trappings of a long distance flight, helpful friendly staff, and most importantly - cheap! About the same cost of a ryanair flight from Dublin to Gatwick approx 40GBP.


We're planning to meet Neil and Vicky tonight, which i'm really looking forward to, and with any luck we'll spend some time with them over the weekend too (Camping - dependant on weather!).