CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

Title: Locative Media and Communities

Guest Editors:
Katharine S. Willis (University of Siegen)
Keith Cheverst (University of Lancaster)

TOPIC
The development of locative media applications is not simply about the physical location or social setting in which the interaction occurs, but rather about situating the media within the social setting of a community. This Special Issue will explore the potential for locative media applications to support community cohesion and the integration of such media within existing community structures and practices. The workshop will address the dual challenge of capturing the temporary and spatially changeful nature of behaviours with locative media, as well as responding to the intricate web of strong and weak social ties that make up local social networks, in order to find ways to support community practices. In terms of methodology it will focus on the potential of ethnographic approaches for investigating and evaluating the integration of media in these social settings. This special issue aims to present a set of high-quality and original research outcomes. We hope to receive submissions that offer insights into appropriate methodologies for identifying requirements, evaluating behaviour and integrating locative media in real-world communities. We invite contributions that respond to some of the following questions:

• How can mobile media be located within existing communities and social settings?
• How can we find better ways of enabling and supporting locative media in
community practices?
• How can mobile media foster communities and facilitate daily living, such as for
communities in rural areas or the elderly?
• How can ethnographic methods inform and evaluate the place and integration of
media in community settings?

SUBMISSIONS
This special issue follows from a workshop held a MobileHCI09: Community Practices and Locative Media (http://www.uni-siegen.de/locatingmedia/workshop.html?lang=de). We now invite members of the research community to submit original articles relevant to the topic.

Although articles must be based on original research, extended versions of conference papers may be acceptable if they contain at least 50% new material. Papers will be subject to the full IJHCS review process.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Manuscripts should generally not exceed 7000 words. Papers should be prepared according to the IJHCS Guide for authors, and should be submitted online. The IJHCS Guide for authors and online submission are available at http://ees.elsevier.com/ijhcs/.

For information on the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies see:
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhcs.

TIMELINE
28th February 2010: Paper submission deadline
Early May 2010: Notify authors of paper acceptance
Target Publication date: Autumn 2010

CONTACT
Katharine S. Willis
Locating Media Graduate Research School
University of Siegen, Germany
Email: willis[at]locatingmedia.uni-siegen.de

Keith Cheverst
Computing Department,
Lancaster University, UK
Email: kc[at]comp.lancs.ac.uk

QA Distiller is a great quality control tool I came across when I was working on the Marketing project I already mentioned in an article about XML in Localisation.
Developed and distributed by Yagamata Europe, this tool has a lot to offer to client-side engineers, multilingual vendors and freelancers alike. In fact I was even using it to enforce proper and consistent use of Terminology in source marketing content, before sending for localisation.

With the impending release of version 7 at the end of this month, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to talk about it on Loc Loc. The purpose of QA Distiller is to batch process quality checks on bilingual files. Essentially, it performs similar tasks to the QA Checker in Trados’s TagEditor, but with some major differences.

The benefits

Multiple file processing: QA Distiller allows you to run a highly customizable list of checks on batches of files. There is no need to open of each individual TTX file, or run the QA Checker successively on each one. Just select the files to process, the settings to apply and run the tool to output a comprehensive report for your follow-up. This is a great way to control and enforce consistency across entire handoffs or projects. Translation quality, Terminology consistency etc. are simultaneously audited across all the files selected.

Multi-lingual processing: better yet, this can also be done across all languages at once, which is particularly powerful for controlling Do Not Translate instructions have been adhered to, for example.

Interactive reporting: the report output is another great selling point. It rates and classifies errors and lets you update it as you review and fix or discard candidate errors. It can be exported to a variety of formats where source, target and error details are summarised and categorised. This is very helpful to communicate with vendors on queries, as well as measure the quality od deliveries. Finally, the report has hyperlinks not only to the file, but to the actual segment where the potential error was detected. This makes the implementation of fixes really quick and easy. No more peeling your eyes out to find typos or endless finger-cramping Ctr+F session. If there is an error, QA Distiller will get you right there!

Software stability: my experience (version 6 in Windows XP) has shown very solid performance and compatibility, and certainly far less crashes than SDL’s QA Checker.

Some rare shortcomings

One of the limitations I found in the current version was that the Translation Consistency check did not work when running QA Distiller across several languages. Instead of reading the language code of each file and filtering the comparison, it reported the fact that translations differed from one language to the next. Not particularly helpful.

Secondly, although the pricing structure offers good choice, the full version seems a bit steep at €1000, especially since it also requires Trados to function on TTX files.

Additionnal Technical Information

QA Distiller supports all languages, and a variety of file formats: TRADOStag documents (TTX), FrameMaker RTF (STF), Translation Memory eXchange (TMX).
Terminology can be checked against proprietary-format dictionnaries (DICT) or the industry-standard Term Base eXchange (TBX).

The upcoming version 7 introduces:

• Tag and ID-aware terminology checks
• New Wrench icon funcitonnalities: batch correction of multiple quotation mark and number formatting
• Fine-grained ignore option for improved noise filtering
• Tag and case-independent consistency check
• Full support for Georgian, Malay (Rumi and Jawi), Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic)

The little green man also told me that there are plans to add support for the many different XLIFF flavours like SDL XLIFF, MemoQ XLIFF, WorldServer XLIFF by the first quarter of next year.

For more details, check the cool demo at http://www.qa-distiller.com/movie/‏

Betancourt: How Social Media is Taking the News Local; http://j.mp/2Rbukt

Nov 04, 2009 – XML-INTL’s translation tool XTM Suite has been selected by processor design company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for integration with their DITA-based content management system. This is a strategic technology choice, as AMD seeks to reduce their global localization costs by using XTM Suite. By selecting XTM, AMD will benefit from a fully integrated translation management suite which will enhance their control over the localization process.

The XTM Suite delivers a complete range of tools for the translator, reviewer and project manager via the web. In AMD’s case, the XTM Suite will be tightly integrated with their existing Content Management System, the DITA CMS Framework from IXIASOFT. XML Int’l is working on integrating the XTM Suite tools with this CMS to provide its users access to powerful translation memory tools directly within the system. As a result, AMD will be able to maximize their reuse strategy and continue to drive down localization costs.

Global product releases depend on consistent, localized product documentation that is produced on-time and on-budget. XTM is XML-based, fundamentally using industry-led Open Standards instead of the proprietary file formats common to other translation systems. Combined with AMD’s CMS system, the XTM Suite will facilitate much greater leverage of the company’s existing Translation Memory assets, and its workflow will reduce the amount of time AMD QA staff spends administrating work with Localization Service Providers – all potentially resulting in direct cost savings for AMD.

“We chose XTM to integrate with our CMS because it is an XML based solution, non-proprietary and that they are willing and excited to work with our CMS vendor,” said Keith Schengili-Roberts, the Manager for Documentation & Localization at AMD.
“XTM’s cutting-edge, standards based translation management technology is designed to allow us to streamline our localization process. We spent the better part of a year assessing potential vendors, and we found XTM Suite to be the most cost effective solution for our needs.”

“We are extremely proud to be supplying AMD with our translation tool, XTM. It is a positive endorsement of our technology that they selected it for the critical job of product and engineering documentation localization. Managing localized content directly from within the DITA CMS Framework makes perfect sense as it improves content reuse and ensures an efficient delivery of translated content” said Elliot Nedas, Business Development Manager, at XML-INTL.

This is the one I hinted to a few days ago All of us in the XTM team are extremely proud that the fruit of our labours has been selected. Thanks.

More info to follow.

The Wall Street Journal plans to add a New York Report, adding traditional city desk beats; http://j.mp/ZVNx

1/3 of all netizens visit MSN monthly: time for a relaunch and integration of Facebook and Twitter; http://j.mp/lOguV

Tmp: Search engines and online yellow pages are the primary sources for local business information; http://j.mp/48Im6j

I am currently installing Kubuntu 9.10 to have a look at the localisation issue which was one of Kubuntu’s curses over the last handfull of years. While I am pretty impressed by how polished everythink looks and feels during the installation process, one dialog drew my attention to some minor and less minor issues.

If the author of a dialog designs it so that a certain amount of text fits in certain places, it is going to break in different languages.
The 1st issue is not so bad here; the word is still readable. The 2nd and 3rd issue though make the selections unusable. Or would you select the following option?

My password is used for login and to decrypt my persona…

Well, things improved a lot already and they will maturate further. And by the way, congratulations for getting the release out to the wilderness.
It is time to get more KDE 4.3+ distros out so that people finally stop complaining about KDE 4.1.

//Gartentechnik.com bietet Onlinemarketing für Fachhändler: Hintergrundinfos in der Taspo; http://j.mp/Gartentechnik_com

La résidence Les Renaissances se situe en plein cœur de Nantes dans un quartier dynamique et proche des commerces. Rue Dobrée, à 5 minutes à pied, se situe une excellente boulangerie-pâtisserie. A deux pas de la résidence, un bureau de tabac, une pharmacie, un coiffeur ainsi qu’un cordonnier constituent un périmètre commerçant utile et pratique. Pour les courses alimentaires, un petit supermarché à côté de la place René Bouhier est d’un accès facile. A proximité d’endroits clés, dans un quartier vivant de Nantes, la vie est douce et plaisante !

En effet, à 10 minutes de marche se trouve l’élégante place Graslin, porte ouverte sur le centre-ville commerçant et piétonnier. Le grand Théâtre Graslin y propose une saison culturelle riche, la fameuse brasserie La Cigale un menu authentique dans un décor de rêve et le haut de la rue Crébillon signe de bien prometteuses séances de shopping !

Toujours à distance à pieds, la place Delorme, le Cours Cambronne, la place Canclaux et la place du Général Mellinet restent toutefois particulièrement bien desservies par les transports en commun. Et si l’envie d’une promenade en bord de Loire se fait sentir, celle-ci se trouve quasiment au pied de la Résidence. Longeant le fleuve, le Tramway nantais dessert avec régularité et fréquence un grand nombre de stations dont une est accessible à 150 mètres de la résidence.

View Larger Map

- Un emplacement géographique idéal pour continuer de mener ses activités, dans un cadre de vie agréable-

Vous en voulez du théâtre! Quoi de mieux que de savoir rapidement où ils se situent, quel est leur mandat.

Le Théâtre Du Nouveau Monde, fondé en 1951, est situé au 84 rue Ste-Catherine Ouest à Montréal (Québec). Son mandat artistique est de produire et de diffuser les oeuvres majeures du répertoire international et national tout en accordant une place de choix à la création. Ce théâtre est actuellement sous la direction de Lorraine Pintal.

Le Théâtre du Rideau Vert se situe au 4664, rue Saint-Denis à Montréal (Québec). Son mandat artistique est d’offrir au public montréalais un théâtre populaire de qualité, en ouvrant sa scène à une diversité de productions. Le Théâtre du Rideau Vert est sous la direction de Denise Filiatrault.

Le Théâtre La Licorne se situe au 4559, avenue Papineau à Montréal (Québec). Son mandat artistique est de favoriser la découverte et l’épanouissement d’une dramaturgie actuelle qui questionne notre société et les enjeux, intimes ou collectifs, de sa constante mutation. Le théâtre La Licorne agit sous la direction artistique du Théâtre de La Manufacture.

Le Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui est situé au 3900 rue Saint-Denis à Montréal (Québec). Son mandat artistique est de se consacrer exclusivement à la création, la production et la diffusion de la dramaturgie québécoise et canadienne d’expression française. De plus, le Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui est un théâtre d’auteurs où le texte dramatique constitue à la fois le point de départ et le centre des projets artistiques. Ce théâtre est, depuis 2004, sous la direction de Marie-Thérèse Fortin.

Le Théâtre l’Espage Go est situé au 4890 boulevard Saint-Laurent à Montréal (Québec). Le mandat artistique de l’Espace Go est de diffuser des productions nouvelles, en plus de favoriser la découverte de la dramaturgie de langue française. Les pièces proposées dans ce lieu théâtral sont adaptées à l’époque actuelle.

On Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 November, ProZ.com organises its first Netherlands Conference in Soesterberg. The programme includes sessions on subjects such as translator-agency communication, online networking, freelance career building, translation quality, transcreation, video game localisation and interpreting.

For more information, check out the conference website.

Portrait Professional

Localization of Software, Website, Manual, Press-release etc.

Postill, J. (forthcoming) Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account. Oxford and New York: Berghahn

In 2002 I took up a Volkswagen Foundation fellowship at Bremen University and joined a team of European anthropologists studying local governance and Internet technologies in multiethnic areas of six different countries. Having chosen as my main field site Subang Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur justly famous in Malaysian technology circles as an extraordinary Internet laboratory, I conducted fieldwork there from 2003 to 2004 followed by additional online research from Britain. Although the fieldwork went well, on returning home my attempts at placing the various Internet initiatives I had studied – ranging from a multimedia library and a cybermosque to several Web forums and a ‘smart community’ project – along a community-network continuum soon foundered. Eventually I realised that I had fallen into the community/network trap that lies at the heart of Internet Studies and that I seek to avoid in this book (see Chapter 1). The trap consists of reducing the plurality and flux of social formations that one invariably finds in urban and suburban areas (e.g. peer groups, cohorts, associations, gangs, clans, sects, mosques, factions, families, action committees, mailing lists, online forums, Twitter tribes, etc.) to a crude community vs. network binary. This is the misguided idea that our ‘local communities’ are being impacted upon by a global Network Society and by that ‘network of networks’ known as the Internet (see Castells 2001).

In search of a way out of this impasse, I dusted off my old undergraduate books and rediscovered the early work of Victor Turner, A.L. Epstein and other members of the Manchester School of anthropology. I also found unexpected connections between this ancestral body of work and more recent anthropological explorations (e.g. Amit and Rapport 2002, Gledhill 2000) as well as signs of a renewed interest in their pioneering studies (Evens and Handelman 2006). The Manchester scholars conducted fieldwork in a very different part of the world (British Central Africa) and under radically different historical conditions: the end of Empire. Yet the conceptual issues they confronted were strikingly similar to those I was struggling with after returning from fieldwork in postcolonial Malaysia. The problem boils down to how to study a locality under conditions of rapid social and political change when ‘tribal’, linguistic and other ‘community’ groupings appear to be in flux and new kinds of affiliations and social formations are being constantly made and remade, e.g. around novel occupational or recreational practices. Faced with such fluid actualities on the ground, the Manchester scholars moved away from the then predominant structural-functionalist paradigm and towards historical-processual accounts informed by new concepts such as ‘field’, ‘network’, ‘social drama’ and ‘arena’.

In Localizing the Internet I synthesise this approach with the equally historical and processual field-theoretical model developed by Pierre Bourdieu, best demonstrated in his monograph The Rules of Art. Rather than positing the existence of a ‘local community’ being impacted upon by global networks, my focus is on how variously positioned field agents and agencies in Subang Jaya (residents, politicians, committees, councillors, journalists, and others) compete and cooperate over matters concerning the local residents, often by means of the Internet. I call this dynamic set of projects, practices, technologies, and relations the field of residential affairs, and what follows is an anthropological account of its uneven development from 1999 to 2009.

The book starts with a photographic essay that introduces some of the key agents in Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs. This is followed by a chronology of the main events, agents and Internet initiatives that have shaped the field from 1992 to the present. Chapter 1 is a critical review of the interdisciplinary and anthropological literature pertinent to the study of Internet localisation. Chapter 2 discusses the regional context of the study and the main research methods adopted. Chapter 3 is an overview of Subang Jaya’s field of residential affairs which I define as a specific kind of Internet field. Chapters 4 to 6 develop this point further through case studies of the personal media practices of leading field practitioners, of two field conflicts (or ‘Internet dramas’) that broke out in 2004, and of three of the many types of field sociality that have emerged over time. The book ends with a brief recapitulation of the main argument and with a traditional Web genre: a list of FAQ (frequently asked questions).

The market for local services, RedBeacon, wins the top prize at TechCrunch50 2009; http://j.mp/4xy8lY

BlackBerry iPassConnect Client permet aux utilisateurs du terminal de RIM de profiter des 140 000 points d’accès sans fil dans 83 pays d’iPass.

En situation de nomadisme, trouver un point d’accès WiFi pour se connecter avec son smartrphone peut se révéler problématique : localisation, coût (notamment en roaming), accessibilité. C’est en partant de ce constat que iPass a lancé il y a plusieurs années ses solutions.

A travers des accords avec des opérateurs locaux, iPass offre à ses utilisateurs le moyen de se connecter simplement et de la même façon à 140 000 hotspots répartis dans 83 pays sur la planète à travers un profil unique. De quoi se simplifier la vie.

Si la solution était accessible aux utilisateurs de terminaux sous Symbian, Windows Mobile et d’iPhone, elle est aujourd’hui compatible avec les BlackBerry à travers BlackBerry iPassConnect Client.

Plus adapté que la 3G pour un usage pro

Pour iPass, dans un cadre professionnel, le WiFi est bien plus pertinent que la 3G. “Malgré l’apport de la connectivité 3G sur de nombreux appareils, les applications avancées qui sont actuellement proposées par des acteurs tels qu’Oracle, Siebel, Salesforce.com ou Microsoft imposent un niveau de fonctionnalités et de performances que seul autorise le haut débit WiFi”, explique la firme.

“Le module iPassConnect pour BlackBerry permet aux utilisateurs de maintenir leur productivité lorsqu’ils sont éloignés de leur bureau. En pouvant accéder au plus vaste réseau mondial de bornes WiFi, les entreprises peuvent surmonter le handicap de performances de la 3G, tout en évitant les surcoûts téléphoniques associés à l’itinérance et en bénéficiant de tous les avantages d’une facturation “mobile” mensuelle à la fois transparente et prévisible”.

D’ailleurs, iPass a constaté une augmentation de 200% de la population de ses utilisateurs de terminaux personnels WiFi entre le premier et le second trimestre 2009, notamment grâce à l’essor des smartphones en entreprises.

Détail qui a son importance, l’application opère en combinaison avec le module BlackBerry Enterprise Server, qui donne aux DSI la capacité de déployer et gérer à distance les modalités d’usage de l’application par les différents utilisateurs.

La solution est compatible avec tous les BlackBerry WiFi, sauf le Storm.

Source : BusinessMobile

A propos de la solution TooFAX® :

TooFAX® est une solution moderne et innovante de Fax dématérialisé, vous permettant l’envoi, la réception, et la sauvegarde de Fax par Internet et ou par e-mail. Depuis votre ordinateur de bureau ou portable, votre PDA, etc, TooFAX® vous permet de faxer par mail sur les 5 continents.

TooFAX® est la synthèse entre les atouts du Fax (rapidité, valeur juridique) et l’aspect pratique de l’e-mail.

Actualité de TooFAX® :

- Site internet : http://www.toofax.com

- Site du service : http://www.service.toofax.com

- Vidéos de démonstration : http://www.video.toofax.com

- Groupe Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/toofax

- Club des utilisateurs de la solution : http://www.club.toofax.com

- Actualités en ligne des services TooFAX® :  http://twitter.com/toofax

- Blog  officiel de la gamme de services TooFAX® : http://toofax.wordpress.com/

- Base de données gratuite de n° de fax pour vos opérations de faxing : http://www.toofaxdata.com

To enable this feature you need to select the ‘Enable Reverse Charge Taxes’ option in Company Set up – (Microsoft Dynaics GP >> Tools >> Set Up >> Company >> Company…and click the Options button). Depending on your set up, you may also need to review the ‘Require Tax Detail Totals to Match the Pre-Tax Amount’ option in the same window.

This opens up interesting possibilities for accounting for European 4th Schedule VAT (or indeed any Sales Tax recording where you need to include an input and output  for a single transaction) .  Say you create a Purchase Tax Detail ID called ‘P4SCHED+’ and you set its tax percentage to be 20%. You then add another Purchase Tax Detail ID called ‘P4SCHED-’, and set its tax percentage to minus 20%.

Then set up a Tax Schedule ID called ‘4SCHED’, and then add both tax details to it (tick ‘Autocalc’). Now, when you enter a transaction and assign this Tax Schedule to it, the net Tax calculated will be zero, however you will have two Tax Detail records – one for Plus 20%, and one for Minus 20%.

Add the 4SCHED+ tax detail to your Purchases Tax and the other to your Sales tax calculation / report. Hey presto – Fourth Schedule VAT accounted for correctly, and as per the Tax authorities requirements. Another example of the flexibility of GP along the lines of that other great discovery way back in 1999 that the Australian GST could be used for witholding tax calculations in Ireland (before the advent of that module in GP).

Previous musings of accounting for VAT here: http://dynamicsgp.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/fourth-schedule-vat/

A new Twitter API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet; http://bit.ly/osL7I