HIIT - ruoholahti2.jpg

HIIT launched a light system for mobile usability testing

noronen — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:54:03 +0000

17 Nov 2008 - HIIT has launched a new multicamera system for mobile usability testing. The portable device light - less than 1 kg - and durable.

CONTEXT: Literature reviews

webmaster — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:18:47 +0000

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Isaacs, E., Walendowski, A., Whittaker, S., Schiano, D., J. & Kamm, C. (2002). The Character, Functions, and Style of Instant Messaging in the Workplace. CSCW ’02.

This study describes in quite detail how people used a prototype application, the Hubbub, for instant messaging. The Hubbub could be run on personal computers and the Palm PDA. During the study over 21,000 IM conversations were recorded among 437 users. 500 of these conversations were then subject to qualitative analysis for determining the conversational characters of IM. Key findings include: media-switching to other media from IM is not very common, most of IM conversations are work related, light and heavy IM-users tend to differ in messaging habits. The study also demonstrates that the availability cues of IM are used by experienced IM-users, and improve the successful initiation of a conversation when compared with other media with no availability cues, such as telephone. (Review by Rantanen, M., 6.5.2003)

Ackerman, M., S. & Starr B. (1995). Social Activity Indicators: Interface Components for CSCW Systems. UIST 95: 159-168.

This paper outlines some of the problems associated with CSCW, such as the “critical mass” and “threshold effect.” It explains why shared representation (e.g. in an aviation cockpit) and social activity indication (e.g. in computer-mediated communication) are important in collaborative work. The study describes the Espresso application, a synchronous chat application that uses social activity indication to inform the user of a potentially interesting virtual conversations taking place. The core of the application is the analysis engine that calculates the relevance of conversations based on user-selected preferences, level of activity and semantic contents. The study proposes alternative visualisations for activity indication, which exploit the relevancy metric calculated by the analysis engine. (Review by Rantanen, M., 6.5.2003)

Vertegaal, R., Dickie, C., Sohn, C. & Flickner, M. (2002). Designing Attentive Cell Phones Using Wearable EyeContact Sensors. CHI 2002: 646-647.

The authors of this paper have recognized that people have sophisticated ways of judging if they can interrupt a conversation without interfering. But this requires visual contact in order for the people to communicate with each other non-verbally e.g. using gestural and postural cues. In telecommunication, e.g. when using the phone, there is limited, if any, way for people to communicate in order to determine if interruption is acceptable. This paper proposes a solution to this problem in the form of a device capable of determining if its user is engaged in face-to-face conversation. This attentive state of the user is determined using a camera, which recognizes eye contact and a microphone that recognizes speech dialogue. If the user is judged by the system to be in a face-to-face conversation, this information is shown to the person that is about to initiate telecommunication. Also, the prototype application enables users to set different notification levels (e.g. vibrate, knock, alert) for calls received in the different attentive states. (Review by Rantanen, M., 6.5.2003)

Cutrell, E., B., Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E. (2000). Effects of Instant Messaging Interruptions on Computing Tasks. CHI 2000: 99-100.

Previous research suggests that interruptions are particularly costly when the interruption is similar to the ongoing task or when it is particularly complex. The hypothesis in this study is that if the similarity of the interruption to the task has an effect on the interruption cost, or if some tasks are more robust to interruptions, applications, such as IM, can be used to govern the timing and nature of interruptions to optimise user satisfaction. User testing was performed in order to evaluate if relevancy of interruptions to the task or the type of task during which an interruption occurs has an effect on the user performance. The initial results suggest that interruptions that are relevant to ongoing tasks are less disruptive than those that are relevant. Also, task-switching times differ for different types of ongoing tasks. This suggests that IM applications could improve user satisfaction and performance by taking into account the type of task and the semantics of the message, and timing message delivery accordingly. (Review by Rantanen, M., 6.5.2003)

Horvitz, E. (1999). Principles of Mixed-Initiative User Interfaces. CHI ’99: 159-166.

This paper does a very good job in explaining the principles of proactive computing, or mixed-initiative user interfaces. Mixed-initiative UIs bind together intelligent services that are automatically invocated using heuristics with conventional direct manipulation interfaces. The design principles of mixed-initiative UIs are exemplified by the LookOut system that helps the user in some routine tasks associated with calendaring and e-mail. The LookOut system makes real-time inferences about the probability of alternative user goals relevant for this specific application. It then uses these estimates of the user goals to evaluate the utility of providing an automated service. If the utility is perceived high, the system acts proactively and delivers the service. The paper elaborates many important issues related to proactive application development, such as decision making under uncertainty, expected utility of service, alternative interaction modalities and timing of service invocation. (Review by Rantanen, M., 6.5.2003)

Horvitz, E., Breese, J., Heckerman, D., Hovel, D. & Rommelse, K. (1998). The Lumiere Project: Bayesian User Modeling for Inferring the Goals and Needs of Software Users. Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, July 1998: 256-265.

This paper begins with a short discussion on different types of applications that have exploited user modelling. It then focuses on describing the Microsoft Lumiere/Excel prototype whose derivative, the Microsoft Office Assistant, shipped with the Microsoft Office ’97. The Lumiere prototype is intended to help the user in spreadsheet tasks, thus it needs to infer from user actions when the user is in need of assistance to reach his/her goal. The prototype uses a Bayesian Network for modelling the user, and the paper describes very clearly the different design issues that have to be taken into account when inferring user needs under uncertainty. Also interesting is the “Wizard of Oz” design approach where experts are used in the early stage of application development to guess user needs through the “keyhole” of the user interface and evaluate the feasibility of application. The paper also describes the Lumiere Events Language that was developed during the project to enable proactive application development. (Review by Rantanen, M., 7.5.2003)

Van Dyke, N., Lieberman, H. & Maes, P. (1999). Butterfly: A Conversation-Finding Agent for Internet Relay Chat. IUI 99: 39-41.

The authors have recognized that IRC (Internet Relay Chat) users have the problem of finding the conversations that they are interested in. This is due to the absence of hierarchy or organization mechanism to aid a user finding channels. The authors on the other hand do not address the problem of IRC channel activity fluctuation and the need for real-time activity indication (see Ackerman and Starr above). To aid users finding the relevant IRC channels, this study proposes an agent called the Butterfly that visits IRC channels on behalf of users and builds a model of the channel in the form of a vector, and recommends channels that match user preferences. The Butterfly incorporates a user interface via which users may specify preferences regarding the type of content they are interested in, the Butterfly then matches channels to users, in other words, does recommendations for users. The paper addresses the issue of privacy of chat channels, and the authors have designed the Butterfly so that the users on a channel are aware of the presence of the agent, when it is modelling the channel content. The paper also recognizes the problem with private IRC channels, and as future research proposes separate group agents for private channels that invite new participants. (Review by Rantanen, M., 7.5.2003)

4.5.2007: Esko Kurvinen's dissertation

mam — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:00:00 +0000

HIIT researcher Esko Kurvinen will present his doctoral thesis "Prototyping Social Action" in a public defence at the Helsinki University of Arts and Design. The official opponent will be Dr. Jack Whalen from PARC.

Events:

Events 2007

HIIT submits five proposals to TEKES' Ubicom programme

mam — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:00:00 +0000

30 Mar 2007 - Researchers of HIIT submitted five new project proposals for consideration of inclusion in the new TEKES' Ubicom research programme that had its first submission deadline on 30.3.2007. In addition, HIIT also participated in research consortia of several other proposals coordinated by other institutions. The proposals cover a wide range of ground in ubiquitous computing from basic human-centric issues to novel technologies, platforms, and applications. The call is likely to be very competitive. If funded, the projects will commence during late 2007.

3.3.2007: Aura Soininen's dissertation

mam — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Former HIIT researcher Aura Soininen will present her doctoral dissertation Patents in the Information and Communications Technology Sector in a public defense at the Lappeenranta University of Technology at 12 o'clock noon. The custos will be professor Jukka Kemppinen and the opponent professor Lionel Bently from University of Cambridge.

Events:

Events 2007

27.2.2007: HIIT Board meeting 1/2007

mam — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0000

HIIT Board meeting 1/2007 will be held on 27 February 2007 at 10 in Ruoholahti, HTC/Pinta. The agenda will be available in the HIIT Board meetings page.

Events:

Events 2007

HIIT Retreat 2006: HIIT research programmes 2006-2008, 22.-23.5.2006

mam — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:22:58 +0000

HIIT Retreat Objectives

The annual HIIT Retreat event will be held on May 22 - 23 in Haukilammen toimintakeskus under the theme "HIIT Research Programmes 2006-2008 ".

As a step towards the joining of the present two units of HIIT, the HIIT Board accepted on May 11, 2006, the titles and missions of the four research programmes of HIIT: Algorithmic Data Analysis, Future Internet, Network Society, and Probabilistic Adaptive Systems. The prime objective of the retreat is to discuss and decide how the research programmes will carry out their missions. Issues include the organisation and decision-making procedures, transparency towards partner research groups and participating companies, and the role of research programmes in education. Also the possibilities of launching a fifth research programme will be discussed.

Senior researchers from HIIT and representatives from companies and partner institutions are invited to the event.

Monday,
22.5.2006

08:15 Car transport from HTC to Haukilampi
09:15 Arrival
09:30 Opening remarks (Martti Mäntylä and Esko Ukkonen)
10:00 TKK CS Research Strategy (Heikki Saikkonen)
11:00 Coffee break
11:20 HIIT Research Programmes 2006-2008 (Patrik Floréen)
11:50 Guest presentation: EU 7th Framework eMobility SRA (Mika Klemettinen, Nokia)
12:20 Introduction to working group session (Martti Mäntylä)
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Working group session I: Vision and mission
- Group I: Algorithmic Data Analysis (Heikki Mannila)
- Group II: Probabilistic Adaptive Systems (Petri Myllymäki)
- Group III: Future Internet (Kimmo Raatikainen)
- Group IV: Network Society (Marko Turpeinen)
14:30 Coffee break
15:00 Working group session II: Modus operandi
- Group I: Algorithmic Data Analysis (Heikki Mannila)
- Group II: Probabilistic Adaptive Systems (Petri Myllymäki)
- Group III: Future Internet (Kimmo Raatikainen)
- Group IV: Network Society (Marko Turpeinen)
16:30 Discussion
17:30 Dinner
19:30 Informal program

Tuesday,
23.5.2006

8:00 Breakfast & coffee
9:00 Summary of working group presentations
- Group I: Algorithmic Data Analysis (Heikki Mannila)
- Group II: Probabilistic Adaptive Systems (Petri Myllymäki)
- Group III: Future Internet (Kimmo Raatikainen)
- Group IV: Network Society (Marko Turpeinen)
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 Discussion and next steps (Martti Mäntylä)
12:30 Lunch
13:15 Car transport Haukilampi-HTC
14:15 Arrival at HTC

Summer internship positions for 2007 available

mam — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:00:00 +0000

15 Jan 2007 - HIIT has opened the call for applications to summer internship positions for talented bachelor-level students of Helsinki University of Technology and University of Helsinki whose competence matches HIIT's research themes. The DL is 31.1.2007.

Future User

webmaster — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 14:24:49 +0000

Contact person: Antti Oulasvirta, antti.oulasvirta(at)hiit.fi

New: See the newly released video recording equipment we have developed in the PASION project!

Problem description

From the perspective of the user, what does it mean that computers will be increasingly more distributed into our environments, act more on their own, and assume new ways of making themselves understandable? The era of desktop-based Human-Computer Interaction has focused on tasks (e.g., visual search from a graphical user interface), activity domains (e.g., information retrieval) and contexts of use (e.g., organizational or work context) that are too narrow for understanding the future user. The challenges that are novel in comparison to desktop-based HCI include:

use of space
using while moving
being present in a virtual and a "real" world simultaneously
constant multitasking, integration of interaction with "natural", non-computerized tasks
use of novel modalities
leisure-oriented activities
being connected all the time
managing information and computation distributed into the environment
understanding the operating logic of intelligent systems
...

Studying the fragmentation of cognitive processing of interactive task in mobile HCI

Research questions

The track centers on studying the human as a user of novel interactive technologies and in novel settings. From the perspective of the track, interaction per se is not of primary interest, but the latent causes of behavior in HCI. Through analyses of psychological and social factors, the track aims to contribute to theories in HCI. It will describe and explain the user in the various emerging settings of HCI. This scoping of research represents a distinctive position in the field of HCI focusing organizational and safety-critical settings and on direct construction of ubiquitous systems.

The main contribution of this kind of research will be two-fold. First, the track will identify new problems and opportunities in human-computer interaction. Second, the track will produce concepts, models, methods, and theories for and of the user and user groups, helping to solve those problems. The accuracy and validity of these theories will be put into test from the perspective of how sound bases they form for the design and engineering of "natural" ubiquitous technologies.

Projects

The track is advanced in in ContextCues, Pasion, IPCity, and CALLAS.

Publications

Jacucci, G., Oulasvirta, A., & Salovaara, A. (in-press). Active construction of experience through multimedia: a field study with implications for recording and sharing. Accepted to Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol 10.

Oulasvirta, A., & Blom, J. (in revision). Motivations for personalisation of information technology. Interacting with Computers.

Oulasvirta, A., Petit, R., Raento, M., & Tiitta, S. (2007). Inferring and acting upon mobile awareness cues. Human-Computer Interaction.

Oulasvirta, A., & Sumari, L. (accepted). Mobile kits and laptop trays: Managing multiple devices in mobile information work. Accepted to Proceedings of CHI 2007, ACM Press.

Oulasvirta, A., Tamminen, S., Roto, V., and Kuorelahti, J. (2005). Interaction in 4-second bursts: The fragmented nature of attentional resources in mobile HCI. Proceedings of CHI 2005, ACM Press, pp. 919-928.

Oulasvirta, A. (2006). Studies of working memory in interrupted human-computer interaction. Research reports of the Department of Psychology, no. 38, University of Helsinki.

Tamminen, S., Oulasvirta, A., Toiskallio, K., & Kankainen, A. (2004). Understanding mobile contexts. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8 (2), 135-143.

Virtual consumerism research at HIIT

webmaster — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 14:18:35 +0000

Research on virtual consumerism issues began at HIIT in 2004 during the MC2 project, where real-money trade of virtual assets ('RMT') was studied from the point of view of virtual world operators. Extensive data was also collected on the users of Habbo Hotel, a service based on selling virtual items to its users. In fall 2006, a proposed research project called DOTORI is intended to continue the work, focusing on business scenarios, consumer behaviour and legal issues. DOTORI is part of HIIT's Network Society research program.

People

Mikael Johnson, researcher [home page]
Kai Kuikkaniemi, researcher
Vili Lehdonvirta, researcher [home page]
Marko Turpeinen, principal scientist
Perttu Virtanen, researcher [home page]

Partners

Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Economic Sociology unit, professor Terhi-Anna Wilska
Finland Futures Research Centre, development director Mika Aaltonen
Distributed and Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory, Waseda University, professor Tatsuo Nakajima

Introduction

In the modern consumer society, one of the building blocks of social identity, status and organisation is the ownership and display of consumer goods. On the other hand, more and more aspects of human life from work to leisure are carried out online. Social relations in particular are conducted through email, mobile phones, web sites and online services. The concept of consumption is alien to this virtual domain, since bits of information can be reproduced freely. But even in cyberspace, some assets are inherently rivalrous. Common examples of such virtual property are domain names and email accounts. Other examples are the virtual clothes, characters, and castles found in massively-multiplayer online games ('MMORPG').

Our research focuses on a phenomenon we call virtual consumerism, where people invest significant sums of real money to obtain virtual property. Major questions include what motivates this behaviour, to what extent can it substitute physical forms of consumption, and what is the legal status of virtual property. One of our hypotheses is that people spend money on virtual property largely for the same reasons as they consume real property. Currently virtual consumerism is mostly observed in various games and virtual worlds, but as part of our research we will also experiment with introducing it to new platforms and audiences.

Resources

Virtual Economies: An Annotated Bibliography

Virtual Assets, Real Value – A basic presentation on real-money trade of virtual assets

MC2 SIG on Virtual Consumerism – seminar materials

Publications

Publications related to virtual consumerism produced during earlier HIIT research projects

Lehdonvirta, Vili. Real-Money Trade of Virtual Assets: Ten Different User Perceptions. Proceedings of DAC 2005, IT University of Copenhagen, 1-3 December 2005.

Lehdonvirta, Vili. Real-Money Trade of Virtual Assets: New Strategies for Virtual World Operators. Proceedings of Future Play 2005, Michigan State University, 13-15 October 2005.

Lehdonvirta, Vili. Virtual Economics: Applying Economics to the Study of Game Worlds. Proceedings of Future Play 2005, Michigan State University, 13-15 October 2005.

Johnson, M., Toiskallio, K. Fansites as Sources for User Research: Case Habbo Hotel. Proceedings of IRIS’28, August 6-9, 2005.

Lehdonvirta, Vili. Economic Integration Strategies for Virtual World Operators. Master's thesis, Helsinki University of Technology, 31 May 2005.

In the media

HIIT virtual consumerism research appearing in mainstream media reports

Airikka Mannerkoski, Ylen aikainen, Radio Suomi, 8 August 2006.

Tuomo Väliaho, "Sammon takojat", HS Nyt, 5 May 2006.

"Virtuaaliesinekauppa", Tilt.tv Gamestyle 14 & 15, MTV3, April 2006.

Terhi Pietikäinen, "Unelmakämppä", Image 3/2006, April 2006.

Annamari Nurminen, "Virtuaalisia tavaroita oikealla rahalla", Turun Sanomat, 12 March 2006.

Mikko Torikka, "Vain muutaman pikselin tähden", Tekniikka & Talous, 23 February 2006.

"Mikä virtuaalimaailmoissa viehättää", YLE Aamu-TV, 23 February 2006.

Digital Content Communities (DCC)

webmaster — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:00:03 +0000

Digital Content Communities explores computing as part of the everyday life: the creation of in particular digital content and groups and communities using this data.

Our work focuses on three areas:

We are deeply engaged to build the future, and apply versatile methods, including in-the-wild, action research and design research. Similarly, we aim to interact with the society, in forms of policy consultation, public apperances and working with the industry. Our back is multi-diciplinary, including computer science, artistic research, and, social science.

Personal Data and Society

We support MyData ecosystem through research and development efforts in

empowering individuals to control their personal data and thus to manage their own lives and privacy both online and offline
enabling the conversion of data from closed silos to reusable resources
decentralizing the management of personal data

We help to renewing European data protection regime as we

produce scientific knowledge about privacy and data protection
make it easier for companies to comply with the legal requirements
help individuals to better understand their rights

Augmenting participation

We study environments to facilitate participation in events and spaces

development of Presemo and live participation practices
how performers integrate the audience input as part of the on-stage performance
challenges which emerge when mediated environments are brought to events

We analyze augmented participation in cross-disciplinary collaboration together with social scientists

Digital-Media Influence Index measures how much the various digital footprints impact the media agenda
Automated Discourse Quality Index supports political scientists measuring deliberation by using computational text classification

Smart Spaces

T4Tags 2.0 is an open-ended toolkit for programming Web-connected and versatile tokens that embed different sensing technologies

attach the tokens to existing artifacts to create smart behaviors at home
share their programmed behaviors or take into use those created by others

Spaceify is an open source client-edge-server ecosystem that integrates your physical space with the web

enable web apps controlled access to resources such as big screens, sensors and lighting in your space

People

Projects

Virtual economy site opened

mam — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:00:00 +0000

6 Sep 2006 - HIIT opened a collaborative site http://virtual-economy.org/ aiming to link researchers interested in "virtual property", an emerging field linking games research and experimental economy. The intention to create a "hub" around the theme, increasing the visibility and impact of the research. For more information, please contact Vili Lehdonvirta.

29.11.2005: The Centennary Fund of Helsingin Sanomat awards a grant to Vili Lehdonvirta

mam — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:00:00 +0000

The Centennary Fund of Helsingin Sanomat awarded a one-year grant to Researcher Vili Lehdonvirta, M.Sc. (Tech.), for research on virtual consumerism carried out at Waseda University, Japan. Mr. Lehdonvirta's research forms a part of the larger Virtual consumerism research project currently under development at HIIT's Network Society research program. The project is concerned with the business, legal and societal impact of game items and other "virtual assets" that users perceive as possessing real value and trade for significant sums of money. For more information, see http://www.hiit.fi/u/vlehdonv/.

1.11.2004: Päivi Saarinen nominated as Planning Officer

mam — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:00:00 +0000

M.Sc. Päivi Saarinen joined HIIT as the new planning officer of HIIT ARU. Her precedessor M.Sc. Mervi Rantanen moved to another position at TKK.

28.10.2004: HIIT and m-cult sign co-operation MOU

mam — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:00:00 +0000

The centre for new media culture m-cult moved to share the HTC 5th floor space with HIIT. A small seminar was arranged. On the same date, HIIT and m-cult signed a memorandum of understanding aiming at linking new media culture and ICT research to facilitate new social innovations for advancing information society. To achieve this, m-cult and HIIT will share their multi-disciplinary networks and align their research agendas.

27.10.2004: Professor Shoshana Zuboff visits HIIT

mam — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:00:00 +0000

Professor Shoshana Zuboff from Harvard Business School visited HIIT that arranged an informal seminar focusing on societal computing research.

HIIT Update 1/2004

noronen — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 22:00:00 +0000

Headlines in this issue:

- FOREWORD
- NEW PROJECTS AND GRANTS
- MOBILIFE INTEGRATED PROJECT IN NEGOTIATION WITH CEC
- WIRELESS WOODSTOCK SERVICES PROJECT GETS CELTIC LABEL
- CO-OPERATION WITH TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY, CHINA
- HIIT SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD MET FOR THE FIRST TIME
- PROFESSOR LAWRENCE LESSIG VISITS HIIT: CREATIVE COMMONS AND HIIT PUBLISH FINNISH VERSIONS OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
- TEKES PUBLISHES THE REPORT OF THE WELFARE OF NATIONS PROJECT
- HIIT RETREAT: MOBILE COMPUTING @ HIIT HELD AT SJÖKULLA, KIRKKONUMMI
- HIIT STRATEGY PROCESS LAUNCHED
- PROFESSOR ANTHONY JOSEPH TO VISIT HIIT IN AUG-NOV 2004
- SENIOR PERSONNEL NEWS: DR. MARKKU STENBORG JOINS HIIT
- FUTURE EVENTS

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FOREWORD

After a longer break than originally intended, this new issue of HIIT Update has a lot of activities and news to report of. After the previous update, HIIT has launched its first EU-funded research activities; HIIT's Scientific Advisory Board had its first meeting; new projects, co-operation activities, and inititiatives have been launched. More importantly, the scientific, industrial, and societal impact of HIIT's research has made continuous progress, thus keeping HIIT steadily on its chosen path towards a leading international research institute. This issue reports of many of these developments, and invites the readers to study further information available on HIIT's WWW pages or directly from HIIT researchers. Enjoy!

Martti Mäntylä
Director of Research, Professor

Mervi Rantanen
Planning Officer

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NEW PROJECTS AND GRANTS

The Academy of Finland awarded four-year funding for the project DRAMA: Scenario Methods for User Centric Product Concept Development from its Industrial Design Programme. Launched on January 1, 2004, the project studies how the methods of narrative theatre can be applied to study interactively scenarios embodying the use of technology in a future setting. The project is executed in co-operation with the dramaturgy unit of the Stadia Polytechnic and it is led by Professor Martti Mäntylä. For more information, contact the Project Manager Vesa Kantola or see project's WWW page in http://www.hiit.fi/drama/.

The Academy of Finland awarded HIIT a grant of 50,000€ from its Infrastructure Program 2004 for the acquisition of a grid-type computational server, mainly needed for research in probabilistic modelling in the Complex System Computation Group led by professor Henry Tirri. The cluster will find immediate use in Next Generation Search project cluster of HIIT, but is likely to be used also in other research activities of HIIT involving intensive computation. The cluster currently consists of a master node, disk space in HIIT's disk array and nine calculation nodes. Hardware specifications are:

Master node
Hewlett-Packard Proliant DL380 G3
- dual 2,8 GHz Intel Xeon prosessors
- 3,5 GB of RAM
- two 36 GB Ultra320 SCSI disks (RAID-0)
- two fibre channel host bus adapter's

Two calculation nodes
Hewlett-Packard Proliant DL380 G3
- dual 2,8 GHz Intel Xeon prosessors
- 3,5 GB of RAM
- two 146 GB Ultra320 SCSI disks (RAID-0)

Seven calculation nodes
Hewlett-Packard Proliant DL360 G3
- dual 3,06 GHz Intel Xeon prosessors
- 4 GB of RAM
- two 72 GB Ultra320 SCSI disks (RAID-0)

All nodes are connected to Hewlett-Packard ProCurve 2848 gigabit switch through two gigabit NICs. The cluster was installed succesfully in March 2004, and it's been in production since then. For more information, contact High Performance Cluster management team (mailto:hpc-info(a)HIIT.FI).

The National Technology Agency Tekes awarded first-year funding for the project Muppet: Managing Privacy and Trust in P2P Communication. Professor Martti Mäntylä leads the project. Its industrial partners are Nokia, Ericsson, Finnish Broadcasting Corporation and Leiki Oy. The project will focus in trust and reputation management especially in mobile P2P systems. After an intensive preparation stage, the project was lauched 1 April 2004. For more information, contact Muppet's Project Manager Juho Heikkilä.

Tekes has also awarded HIIT a grant for preparation of joint research activities with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China and with Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. The aim of this work is to prepare and launch new bilateral research activities between HIIT and these universities to launch in late 2004 or 2005. For more information, contact professor Martti Mäntylä or professor Kimmo Raatikainen.

After a project planning stage, the European Commission signed the contract for the project Alvis: Superpeer Semantic Search Engine in late 2003. Hence, the project was launched 1 January 2004. HIIT is the coordinator of an effort involving ten other partners, including Tsinghua University, Beijing. The project aims to build a next-generation search engine and infrastructure based on full-document retrieval and a distributed architecture. The system will be made available to Internet community in open source. The project is led by professor Henry Tirri and managed by Dr. Wray Buntine. Mikko Kontiainen is the administrative coordinator of the project. For more information, see http://cosco.hiit.fi/search/alvis.html.

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MOBILIFE INTEGRATED PROJECT IN NEGOTIATION WITH CEC

Since August 2002, HIIT has participated in the preparation of the Wireless World Initiative (WWI), ultimately planned to consist of five Integrated Projects (IP) and a coordination action all belonging to the IST priority of EU's 6th Framework Programme. Three of the planned IPs were accepted for funding in the first call of the IST priority. Both units of HIIT participate in the Nokia-coordinated IP application MobiLife – Mobile Life, which concentrates on ubiquitous mobile applications and services from a user-centric point of view. Its application was submitted to the second call of the IST priority in October 2003. The evaluation of the proposal was favourable and MobiLife has commenced the contract negotiations with CEC in February 2004. The project itself is likely to commence 1 September 2004. For more information on WWI, please refer to http://www.wireless-world-initiative.org/.

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WIRELESS WOODSTOCK SERVICES PROJECT GETS CELTIC LABEL

In response to the first call of proposals to the Eureka cluster programme Celtic (http://www.celtic-initiative.org/), the project proposal Wireless Woodstock Services was submitted to the Celtic organisation on November 28, 2003. The international project is coordinated by Ericsson Research, Sweden, and its Finnish participants include TeliaSonera Finland and HIIT. After a technical evaluation, the project has been accepted to the Celtic programme (i.e. given a "Celtic label") in March 2004. Currently under consideration by Tekes, the project is expected to launch immediately. Its aim is to study new service concepts, business models, and technical infrastructures for creating and launching digital services for large events such as music festivals and sports events. The Finnish part of the project plans to conduct its first user studies in the Neste Rally event in August, 2004. For more information, contact research director Martti Mäntylä or program coordinator Olli Pitkänen.

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CO-OPERATION WITH TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY, CHINA

Since late 2002, HIIT has actively prepared co-operation with the Department of Computer Science and Technology of the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China (http://www.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/EnglishVersion/Default.aspx). This preparation has made considerable progress during the recent months, with the launch of the first joint project Alvis (reported above) and several visits of HIIT personnel. Research Director Martti Mäntylä has visited Tsinghua in November 2003 and in March 2004, mainly to suggest and prepare new joint research initiatives. Professor Henry Tirri, Dr. Wray Buntine and project coordinator Mikko Kontiainen visited Tsinghua in mid-May in relation to the Alvis project. In addition, professor Kimmo Raatikainen and Dr. Pekka Nikander visited Tsinghua in February, 2004 in connection of the WWRF meeting. HIIT has also received a preparation grant from Tekes. As a result of these activities, HIIT expects a second bilateral project to launch in late 2004. We are also expecting a Chinese visitor at HIIT during autumn 2004.

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HIIT SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD MET FOR THE FIRST TIME

The first meeting of the HIIT Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) was held 16-17 October, 2003 in Helsinki. The SAB consists of internationally prominent scholars who are invited by the HIIT Board. The objective of the SAB is to provide critical guidance about HIIT’s research activities and to advise the HIIT Board on strategic planning of the future research directions of HIIT. Of the members of the board Professor Christos Faloutsos, Professor Randy Katz, Professor Martin Kersten, Professor Kari-Jouko Räihä, Professor Mart Saarma and Professor John Shawe-Taylor participated in the October meeting.

In its concluding comments the SAB focused on the scientific level of HIIT's research, as well as on the quality of graduate and postdoctoral education. Neither industrial nor societal impact was commented as it was considered hard for SAB to determine. The overall evaluation was that HIIT's research is generally of world class with impressive collaborations. The graduate and postdoctoral education was considered impressive, having excellent facilities and great projects to work on, and excellent students. The main recommendations of SAB were that collaboration between the research groups in HIIT should be further strengthened, that the strategic goals of HIIT should be clarified and that more emphasis should be put on PR-activity and publicity. Of the different research areas, the SAB especially appreciated the research done in data mining, mobile computing, intelligent systems and computational neuroscience.

For more information on the meeting, please refer to http://www.hiit.fi/sab/2003.

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PROFESSOR LAWRENCE LESSIG VISITS HIIT: CREATIVE COMMONS AND HIIT PUBLISH FINNISH VERSIONS OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES

Creative Commons (see http://creativecommons.org/) and HIIT's DE Core project have published on 24 May the official Finnish translations of Creative Commons licenses, a set of freely available content licenses aiming at expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share. The initiator of Creative Commons, Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig (http://www.lessig.org/) gave a presentation in the publication ceremony. See http://creativecommons.fi/.

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TEKES PUBLISHES THE REPORT OF THE WELFARE OF NATIONS PROJECT

The final report of the Welfare of Nations Project, edited by PhD Pekka Himanen and titled "Globaali tietoyhteiskunta: Kehityssuuntia Piilaaksosta Singaporeen" has been published by Tekes in its series. The report is also available in WWW in http://www.tekes.fi/julkaisut/globaali_tietoyhteiskunta.pdf.

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HIIT RETREAT: MOBILE COMPUTING @ HIIT HELD AT SJÖKULLA, KIRKKONUMMI

The annual HIIT Retreat event took place at Sjökulla Education Center, Kirkkonummi, 1 - 2 June under the theme "HIIT Retreat: Mobile Computing at HIIT". The event brought together representatives from industry, universities and HIIT senior researchers to review the present research at HIIT and to discuss its future directions. The objective of the 2004 Retreat was especially to look into the future of the Fuego research programme and some related research lines.

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HIIT STRATEGY PROCESS LAUNCHED

By agreement of the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology, HIIT was originally founded for a period of five years from 1.8.1999 to 31.7.2004, with possible one-year extensions. As the initial five-year period is now drawing to its close, the Board of HIIT has launched a strategy process, aiming at a revised research agenda of HIIT with related institutional changes. The objective is to draft a new agreement to enter into force as of 1.8.2005. At this stage, a first draft of the new strategy has been presented to the Board by the appointed working group in May 2004. The objective is to further revise the draft to be presented to the Scientific and Industrial Advisory Boards in autumn 2004, and subsequently to have the new agreement 2005 - 2010 formally accepted by the two parent universities in spring 2005. For more information, please contact either of the research directors Martti Mäntylä or Heikki Mannila).

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PROFESSOR ANTHONY JOSEPH TO VISIT HIIT IN AUG-NOV 2004

With help of a grant from Nokia Foundation, Professor Anthony Joseph from the Computer Science Department of the University of California at Berkeley will visit HIIT from mid-August to mid-November 2004 as a part of his sabbatical leave from UCB. The scope of the planned visit will be in mobile computing, especially advanced topics in mobile middleware. In preparation of the visit, Professor Joseph visited Finland in May 2004, and met several researchers from HIIT and the CS departments of UH and HUT. For more information, please contact Professor Joseph's host at HIIT, professor Kimmo Raatikainen.

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SENIOR PERSONNEL NEWS: DR. MARKKU STENBORG JOINS HIIT

Dr Markku Stenborg from ETLA (The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy) has joined HIIT as a part-time Senior Research Scientist from April 1, 2004. He will be sharing his time between ETLA and HIIT. At HIIT, he will participate in the recently launched MUPPET project.

Markku Stenborg has a PhD in Economics from the Pennsylvania State University. His 1993 doctoral thesis dealt with incentive contracts and game theory. His research focus at HIIT is on incentives and economics aspects of trust and privacy in mobile peer-to-peer communication. At ETLA, his research topics include competition policy and open source software. Previously, he has been Assistant Professor with the Turku Business School, Senior Adviser at the Finnish Competition Authority and Senior Manager at KPMG Transaction Services. He also works as a part-time consultant providing advice on, e.g., competition policy issues.

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FUTURE EVENTS

21.-24.6.2004: The 4th Helsinki-Berkeley Summer School on Telecommunication Software Architecture will be held at University of California at Berkeley, USA. For more information, see http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kraatika/Courses/berkeley04s.html.

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Newsletter:

HIIT Update

27.-28.8.2003: MobileIPR workshop held

mam — Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:00:00 +0000

The First International Mobile IPR Workshop: Rights Management of Information Products on the Mobile Internet was held in Helsinki on August 27-28, 2003. Keynote speakers of the event included Professor Hal Varian (UC Berkeley, USA) and Professor Ross Anderson (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom). The workshop was organised by HIIT with support of TEKES through the Mobile IPR project. Proceedings of the event are available in the report series of HIIT.

15.8.2003: Search-ina-box project funded by TEKES

mam — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 21:00:00 +0000

TEKES awarded the first-year funding for the project Search-ina-Box (SIB). The project is intended to form a central part of the next-generation Internet search research area at HIIT, already commenced with the support of the Academy of Finland in the PROSE project. SIB will study especially topic-specific search engines for intranets. Besides researchers from the Complex System Computation group at HIIT, the research consortium also includes research groups from the University of Tampere, the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The project is directed by Professor Henry Tirri, University of Helsinki and HIIT.

11.3.2003: MobileIPR workshop CFP published

mam — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 22:00:00 +0000

The call for papers of the First International Mobile IPR Workshop: Rights Management of Information Products on the Mobile Internet was published. HIIT will organize the workshop on August 27 - 28, 2003. Professor Hal Varian (UC Berkeley, USA) will give a keynote speech.