Ideas for context automation at BYU

Posted by on 10 May 2010 14:17 Leave a comment (6) Go to comments

  • The book you placed on hold last week at the BYU Library is now in for you to pick up. You receive a notification on your phone just as you enter the atrium. Want to check it out right now?

  • Your favorite stand-up comedy group is doing a show right now next to the Cougareat. Your phone alerts you to such as you walk through the quad just outside the Wilk. Care to take a look?

  • Your Physics 121 homework is in your backpack, all finished. Now that you’re in the MARB, your phone reminds you to run upstairs and turn it in before you forget.

  • You’re still on the other side of campus and class starts in 10 minutes. Since you’re on your work computer, perhaps you’re deep in thought on a project. Don’t forget to leave in time!

  • You’ve been searching Google, Wikipedia, and the Library’s website for 10 minutes with keywords all relating to Rembrandt and van Gogh. You don’t seem to have found anything satisfactory yet. There’s an art history subject librarian online right now. (She even has a specialty in Dutch painters.) Maybe she can help you break this mental block–care to chat?

Location-aware context automation is an extremely powerful and relevant concept. The possibilities are endless.

How do we make this a reality on a college campus?

BYU could use information I supply about my intent to give me relevant, useful information (call it advertising if you must): books I want to read, my favorite groups, academic interests, homework reminders, etc.

Such location-aware context automation is currently a hot topic at Kynetx, industry leader in pioneering the purpose-based, context-aware web of the future.

Kynetx provides the platform to enable the kind of context-aware applications I mentioned earlier.

What if BYU’s network routers were Kynetx endpoints? Then my smartphone (also acting as a Kynetx endpoint, probably through an app) could detect when I’m in range of one of these wireless access points. It can also trivially determine which building or perhaps even which classroom I’m in. That takes care of the location part of the context puzzle.

What if my laptop were a Kynetx endpoint that knew what building I was in and what I was working on–where I’m browsing the web, whether I’m online on my chat client, etc.?

Other data can be used to determine the intent part of my context–books of my Amazon.com wish list, books I’ve checked out or reserved at the library (both currently and in the past), classes in which I’m enrolled, clubs of which I’m a member, homework assignments that are due soon. Insert your favorite piece of data here. You get the idea.

Given that information, BYU could provide me contextually relevant information to make me more productive at my current location or the current time of day. That context automation could stretch across my web browser, my computer, or my smartphone.

That opens the doors for some really powerful applications that aren’t currently possible with the web as we know it.

What ideas do you have?

internet, mobile,
  • http://geek.michaelgrace.org/ MikeGrace

    Love it! Keep those awesome ideas rollin!

  • Mary Joy LIttke

    Steven, Congratulations on your position at Kyntex it sounds like you are doing great things in technology. What a brain, to my understanding which is limited you are really on top of it. Please stay intouch with all these new developments.
    I just had a grand time with my sister and niece going to Mazatlan for a week. saw many neat things and enjoyed the beach. LOve, Grandma Littke

  • Matt Stiles

    Do you want more ideas like those bullets at the top?

  • http://globalconstant.wordpress.com/ Steven Nay

    Sure. Ideas with what you'd like to see done. Or ideas about whether you think that sort of thing is useful at all. Or whatever.

  • Steve Olsen

    Not to be a nay-sayer, but let me play devil's advocate here.

    Question: How do we convince the paranoids (such as myself) that we're only doing GOOD and HARMLESS things with all this personal data collected? And where is the line drawn on privacy of the individual? For a recent horror story that happened in Pennsylvania, see: http://tinyurl.com/344w9bh. Furthermore, isn't it plausible that our creative, innocent intentions could be easily abused by someone else at a later date?

    I'm not saying this is all a bad idea — I'm just saying that I don't want a wi-fi router detecting which school toilet I'm using, for example.

    P.S. I don't use Facebook either, which I'm sure is obvious by now :)

  • http://globalconstant.wordpress.com/ Steven Nay

    One huge difference with Kynetx technology is that it's all opt-in. I (as the user) decide which information I want the system to be able to find out about me, or even if I want to use the system in the first place. That information never gets stored anywhere than its original source (such as Amazon.com or Facebook)–it just gets pulled in for reference by the Kynetx engine when it's relevant.

    The paranoids don't have to give any information out if they don't want to. And the ones who do trust the system will, frankly, just trust the system. They understand that they can get a lot of benefit by giving up some anonymity (which never was really privacy in the first place), and they like that.

    I also think this has a lot to do with the generation gap becoming more and more evident as social networks open up their data. Younger people (e.g., the college-age population to which such systems would cater at BYU) aren't as worried about their own anonymity than their older counterparts (e.g., the ones who would largely be in charge of running such systems).