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Emerging pervasive games use sensors, graphics and networking technologies to provide immersive game experiences integrated with the real world. Existing pervasive games commonly rely on a device screen for providing game-related information, while overlooking opportunities to include new types of contextual interactions like jumping, a punching gesture, or even voice to be used as game inputs. We present the design of Spellbound, a physical mobile team-based game, to help contribute to our understanding of how we can design pervasive games that aim to nurture a spirit of togetherness. We also briefly touch upon how togetherness and playfulness can transform physical movement into a desirable activity in the user evaluation section. Spellbound is an outdoor pervasive team-based physical game. It takes advantage of the above-mentioned opportunities and integrates real-world actions like jumping and spinning with a virtual world. It also replaces touch-based input with voice interaction and provides glanceable and haptic feedback using custom hardware in the true spirit of social play characteristic of traditional children's games. We believe Spellbound is a form of digital outdoor gaming that anchors enjoyment on physical action, social interaction, and tangible feedback. Spellbound was well received in user evaluation playtests which confirmed that the main design objective of enhancing a sense of togetherness was largely met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active Messenger (AM) is a software agent that dynamically filters and routes e-mail to a variety of wired and wireless delivery channels, monitoring a message's progress through various channels over time. Its goal is to ensure that desired messages always reach the subscriber, while decreasing message volume when the user is less reachable through location awareness. AM acts as a proxy, hiding the identity of the multiple device addresses at which the subscriber may be found and caches channels to guarantee seamless information delivery in a heterogeneous network. Our previous experience with mobile messaging influenced the initial requirements and design of AM. We describe the operation and evolution of AM to meet changing user needs, and how our own communication patterns and expectations have changed as we relied increasingly on mobile delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the issues regarding the navigation and presentation of voice documents and their application to NewsComm, a hand-held audio playback device. Roles of speech in creating NewsComm; Components that contributes to acoustic derivation of audio structure; Presentation of digital audio recordings; Features and functions of NewsComm; Acoustic structure of NewsComm; Audio server of NewsComm; Hardware implementation of NewsComm hand-held unit.

Presents introduction to articles published in the December 2004 issue of "Personal and Ubiquitous Computing."

Nowadays, mobile computing and communication devices provide access to information from nearly anywhere, and many of these devices know where they are. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission requires that 95 percent of mobile phones must be able to determine their location within 50 to 300 meters by the end of 2005, and that wireless carriers must make this information available to emergency call responders. Much current research focuses on using location awareness to provide information about a user's surroundings. It is believed that geographic information can be personalized based on its relevance to the user, with appropriate descriptions or granularity to deliver valuable location-aware services. To demonstrate the practicality of this approach, several prototype applications are implemented in mobile phones that combine location awareness with communication technology.

The article discusses the AreWeThereYet (AWTY) digital auction player. AWTY is an example of a temporally-aware, wearable device that can select and play audio content based on how much available time the wearer has. AWTY interacts with GPS-enabled technology to learn about a person's routine and make accurate estimates of time available for listening to recorded content. AWTY can match content to available time by either selecting content of an appropriate length, or using compression techniques to make the content fit the available time.