When registering to CHI2010 I got the option of not getting a paper conference program and getting it as an iPhone app instead (of course I selected yes)

If we take into account that an iPhone has quite a low CO2 impact, that there are around 2000 people attending, and that probably almost everyone in CHI owns an iPhone, the savings for this measure can be quite significant. Good example of dematerialization.

Good Guide, empowering consumers, making data transparent through ICT. I like it. Check their iphone app too.

(Met some of the people working there when at Berkeley last spring)

The mobile phone generation divide, originally uploaded by juicyrai.

In India a total of 15.41 million wireless subscribers have been added during the month of January 2009.

Yes, more than 15 million new mobile users in one month.

From http://www.trai.gov.in/

I’m the kind of person (mac user, usually early adopter) that should have got an iphone. I should probably have gotten one of the first generation for more than one year ago. But all the hype, the apple locks and limitations, that you almost have to “sell your soul” to the operator to get one, that it didn’t have any special new technical functionality that my p1 didn’t already have, I didn’t like the input mode (I like hand written recognition)…

Now we have got one for the persuasive services project to develop some applications. And after one week I was sold. It is just too good, I understood the hype. The app store and the amount of creative things people have made for it just rocks. And with the interface and easiness to use typical of apple.

So what happened with my first 2009 challenge:

>To go completely mobile for all my work & leisure activities. From sending emails, blogging (I’m writing this from my mobile), editing papers…Why mobile? I have the opinion that mobiles are key for sustainability. Not only  they have a small carbon footprint (around 25kg per subscriber and year), but they are the most widely lCT product in the world, ever, 60% of the world population owns one.

Iphone solved all that in one week:

• Email + safari + contacts + calendar. All basic functions works perfectly, in sync with my macbook, they make my life much easier.
• Outpost. Having control over my basecamp account in my mobile was what I was waiting for. Killer app.
• Flickr works beautifully on it.
• Fring for having Skype.
• Tweetie for microblogging.
• WordPress for blogging.
• TouchTerm for having SSH terminal access to my servers and fixing technical things on the go.
• And more, from reading ebooks, to writing notes, to planning routes… And if it’s not there yet probably it will soon.

But there are some questions arising:

1.  Convergence of devices. Iphone is as powerful as many computers, and with telephone capabilities as good as any phone. There is few things I will need a computer to (if I didn’t need to program and such things). Will be follow japan’s lead and abandon computers towards personal mobile devices?

2. What interesting green applications can you do with this toy? I’ll post a list of some applications I have been testing.

3. Hardware sustainability. I feel bad about having still another electronic device. What is the impact of changing electronics so often? What is the real impact to the environment? and for climate change? Is there any possibility to reverse this trend and reduce the impact? how? I’ll try to develop my ideas about this in a following article.

Mobile social media, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

I’m taking a mediated course about mobile social media connecting Växjö / Tampere / Pori and myself in Stockholm.
We are using online collaboration tools (nothing advance, file sharing, forums..) and videoconference.I loaned this star-trek looking tandberg machine from Leif Handberg and it worked really fine. Good quality of sound and image. A bit difficult to engage as I was still in my office. Does the context matter that much? Do I need to be in a classroom to feel that I’m attending a lecture? Or is it just getting used to it? Or maybe I need a 50 inches immersion screen..
I will write more about the course and the experience of being a mediated student.

I have been using Viasat To-go TV for some time. I am from the opinion that many technology will converge into mobile devices (as it is doing already), and most of the content and computer power will be virtualized into the data-grid of servers. But mobile tv doesn’t work, television is a medium that is probably sentenced by the potential of internet of providing asynchronous entertainment where and when you want. When I commute I don’t want to just watch what’s on CNN on that moment, I want to see the news, without advertisement. A video podcast work much better for that purpose.

  

Mobile everything, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

The three things no one leaves at home are the wallet (some kind of id, money), the keys, and the mobile phone. (See Chipchase et al (2005) Mobile Essentials)

In my new apartment we have a RFID card that opens all the doors, from the apartment one to the mailbox. Hanging from my mobile phone (together with a lego brick =) it’s one thing less to remember.

How mobile phones can start having this other functionality so we only need one device when leaving home? Mobile payment as the japanese suica? some kind of personal id combined with biometrics as fingerprint? RFID keys integrated on the device for opening the apartment or using public transportation? Which kind of security problems arise? How more traumatic the loss of the mobile device would be?

Living off-grid, originally uploaded by It’s a mobile world.

I’m out in the Swedish’s countryside enjoying peaceful and sunny holidays. But not even here I can stop thinking about my research.
This days I’ve been experimenting with high-tech living off-grid, using my mobile phone for taking pictures and uploading directly to flickr using 3G and then blogging from it, using the sony ereader in the outdoors instead of carrying a heavy bunch of books, reading my emails and updating facebook in the middle of the forest, and using only solar energy to charge the devices!
How can ICT and mobility help living more sustainable in rural settings? how these technologies can help living off-grid, in places without electricity?