News and Events from InfoLab21
InfoTextX
News and Events from InfoLab21
October 2006
Welcome to the October issue of InfoTextX – the e-newsletter from the Knowledge Business Centre at InfoLab21, aimed at keeping you informed about developments inside InfoLab21 and other news which we hope will be of interest to you.
If you would like to contribute news items to future editions of InfoTextX and our new website, or know someone else who would like to receive this InfoTextX please contact the editor – Amanda Ross - at a.ross@lancaster.ac.uk
A new section for InfoLab21 Associate Profiles has been added to the InfoLab21 site and the first few profiles have been added. This section of the website provides Associate Companies with the opportunity to include a 120 word profile about their company, including corporate logos and a link to their site. This should provide E-Marketing benefits for Associates due to the status of the InfoLab21 site and its prominence on the web. We would value your contributions. Associate Companies can now fill in their details online:
If you would like to become an Associate of InfoLab21, please contact the Editor, a.ross@lancaster.ac.uk.
CM is a software development company specialising in the design, build, integration and support of solutions, under a company-wide information security system certified to ISO27001. CM services include provide Software Development and Project Management, Support, Consultancy, Hosting and Data Centre services Outsourcing
For full profile see: Commerce Media
Savant is an independent, well-established IT company specialising in developing software for the clinical, medical and healthcare sector. Since 1982, Savant have been developing software, relational databases and information management systems for a range of UK clients.
For full profile see:
ICT Focus welcomed 68 new students to their Foundation Degree courses this month. Demand for courses is so high that they are running additional cohorts of Certificate in Microsoft Technologies in November and the Certificate in Cisco Networking Technologies in January 2007.
If you would like to reserve a place or need further information, please email ictfocus@lancaster.ac.uk
Could your organisation be the Best of British Industry? The Best of British Industry Awards will be the UK's first ever award ceremony celebrating success right across industry. They aim not only to recognise past achievements, but to foster a new culture of enthusiasm for the skills, opportunities and promise of so many British industrial companies.
It's free and easy and you can enter for multiple awards.
http://www.britishindustryawards.co.uk/
Thanks to all those who attended the latest event at InfoLab21 Innovate:
Postgraduate Show.
http://www.innovateshow.info/
The next InfoLab21 event will be held on December 7. More details will be in the next issue.
To find out more abut the event and to register, please contact the KBC
Business Development Officers:
Nick King n.king@lancaster.ac.uk
Colin McLaughlin c.i.mclaughlin@lancaster.ac.uk
InfoLab21’s Department of Computing is looking for suitable projects for its Masters students. If your business is interested in new technology and has the resources to support a student project, they can help you to evaluate issues, solve problems, build a prototype, test or devise theory, all for free.
Previous project proposals have included:
WiFi Ad-hoc message propagation over GPRS networks (2) (BT)
QoS in next generation converged hub/router (BT)
Project Traffic Matrix (Dante)
The W-Files... Mobile Multiplayer AR Gaming (Winmarleigh Hall)
Managing the location and maintenance of potholes (Atlantic Geometrics)
Mobile anti-virus evaluation / development (St Georges)
For further details see Free Graduate Support
The course description and skill base of the students can be found here: Computing MSc
For more information, please contact the KBC Business Development Officers:
Nick King n.king@lancaster.ac.uk
Colin McLaughlin c.i.mclaughlin@lancaster.ac.uk
Imagine spinning or throwing a tiny computer round your body to create your own visual projections, music or light show. InfoLab21 company BigDog Interactive have developed a new piece of digital art that featured as part of the F.city exhibition.
Poi is a traditional Maori art form, the Poi dance was originally used by Maori women for keeping their hands flexible for weaving and by the men for strength and coordination required during battle. iPOI is a sensor packed upgrade of the original that can trigger visual and audio soundscapes in real time using the magic of wireless technology.
iPOI was Built and performed by Jennifer G. Sheridan (Computing Department, Lancaster University), Alice Bayliss (School of Performance and Cultural Industries, Leeds University), Nick Bryan-Kinns (IMC Group, Queen Mary, University of London), Trans-Mutation (www.trans-mutation.com), and Matt Cooper (Poi Artist, Lancaster).
http://www.bigdoginteractive.co.uk/
Researchers in the Computing department have developed a technique to help gain a better insight into visualisations of large amounts of data. They are looking for businesses to participate in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of their information visualisation application which utilises their novel sampling technique.
Ideally they would like users who regularly use interactive parallel coordinate plots or scatter plots to analyse their data and have large amounts of data that cannot normally be displayed all at once on the screen due to overplotting of the lines or points.
The tool can be used to spot correlations in data and has many potential applications, for example, spotting market trends and analysing buying behaviour.
For more information and examples of how the lens works, see The Sampling Lens Poster
InfoLab21’s M-Ventions, releases its latests invention this month and would like feedback from users. Location based mobile blogging (LocoBlog) - "Locoblogging" is an example of one of the expected high-impact technologies for Web 2.0 - the 'mashup', which is application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service. Their application allows users to compile a log of photos and text from their mobile phone, which is tagged with their current location obtained by the phone connecting to a GPS receiver via Bluetooth. The application sends this data to a website running Google maps so that a travelogue of their journeys can be created whilst they are on the move. Anyone who is interested in participating in the trials can have the application sent direct to their mobile phone.
They are now waiting to see how some of the world's estimated 100 million bloggers react to their site www.locoblog.com.
Dr Paul Coulton and Dr Reuben Edwards of InfoLab21 company M-Ventions and two InfoLab21 students who helped invent a pioneering mobile phone game have been invited to Hollywood to receive an award at the American Film Institute. PhD students Will Bamford and Omer Rashid have been awarded the Computers in Entertainment Scholarship Prize 2006 from the US-based ACM which is one of the world's premier computer societies. Their invention is the first game in the world to use mobile phones equipped with Radio Frequency Identification Tags.
For full story see http://www.infolab21.com/latest_news/?article_id=293
www.pac-lan.com
M-Ventions
Profile
The 2006 International Symposium on Evolving Fuzzy Systems (EFS'06) offered a forum for the academic community and industry to share views and ideas about developing and using Evolving Intelligent Systems - technology that can make possible computers and machines that can 'think', 'learn', adapt and self-develop like humans. Experts at InfoLab21’s Department of Communication Systems have developed mobile robots that can explore the parameters of an unknown environment in real-time without pre-training or prior knowledge of potential obstacles using Evolving Intelligent Systems.
For full story see http://www.infolab21.lancs.ac.uk/latest_news/?article_id=292
MS2395 Designing, Deploying, and Managing a Network Solution for
the Small- and Medium-sized Business
24-26 October 2006.
ICT Focus still has a few places left on this 3-day Microsoft course aimed at IT professionals who work for and with small and medium-sized businesses. These courses provide an affordable way to work towards vendor qualifications (Microsoft's MCSE and Cisco's CCNA) as well as building upon those skills with additional background and contextualisation, and by reflecting upon their use within the workplace.
The cost is £450.00( no VAT) and includes courseware, refreshments, parking permit and free Transcender practice exam.
Please call 01524 510425 to book or request further information
or see the official Microsoft website
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/syllabi/en-us/2395Afinal.mspx#EJB#
Sony has now advised a dozen laptop makers to recall batteries, as the true extent of the overheating fault the led first Dell and then Apple to offer to replace batteries becomes clear.
http://www.computershopper.co.uk/?news/news_story.php?id=94952
An international team of scientists at InfoLab21 are trying to predict “space weather” in an attempt to prevent global power failures and damage to satellites. The researchers from Europe, the USA, China and the UK are investigating measurements from satellites orbiting the Earth together with data from a worldwide network of ground-based experiments. The aim is to try to predict the effects of geomagnetic storms, when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
For full story see: http://www.infolab21.lancs.ac.uk/latest_news/?article_id=281