obviously the technology was quite slow. This was a live trial and i understand that. the download and upload speed was slow, especially around scicilian avenue, where a lot of people had posted threads.
the map was fine, although you really had to pay attention to where you where going so as not to loose location; there being no road names.
I thought the focus on shops that came from location details might have skewed the posts that I read - how to make the most of this potential and avoid it becoming a shopping guide?
really interested in the clash of personal and cultural naratives that this pulls out though. could develop into a really fascinating interface.
as a prototype its cool.
as more than that its obviously not fully there yet. but we all knew that.
a new physically rooted web..?

It was difficult to make a thread or a pocket due to the technology. I wasn't able to enter either due to the pda crashing and then not being able to log back in from then on.
I found the map difficult to use because there was no street names and I found it hard to place myself visually.
I was a little nervous using the PDA on the street but probably unnecessarily.
Didn't create any threads as noted above.
I was looking forward to adding my own threads and pockets just about my own RANDOM observations of the area.
Enjoyed reading the content, it was interesting to see different people's takes on the area. Woulld have liked to be able to easily scan through the different pockets at each location rather than having to come back to the map screen each time. The slowness of the server when looking at it was frustrating - the pda crashed at least 3 times just moving around the map and reading bits. For this to work it needs to be snappy and instant, this would make fro much more stimulating pockets.
I did get ideas for my own authoring from the ones I'd read its just a shame that I didn't get a chance to do any authoring.
I would suggest clearing some of the pockets from the server to enable new testers to really get a feel for the experience. Although I understand the need to be patient this is stretched to the limit when you are constantly waiting for the pda to catch up. Keeping all the pockets and threads on the system prevented me from experiencing the concept in any real way.

The experience was frustrating because when using the device inside, it was very slow. There were long waits between clicking something and it actually happening. When we went outside, the device failed to log in correctly so I was unable to access any content while outside.

The weather is miserable today - cold, wet and rainy. I was worried about the PDA getting wet (and my fingers were going a bit numb). We didn't wander too far within the area, partly because of the weather - we ended up- lurking furtively in doorways, swearing at the device!

Accessing the pockets was straightforward enough, although a bit slow. I wanted to be able to trace the comments of a particular individual on their authoring journey around the area, but because the synbol/colour combinations are used more than once, this was quite tricky to do. I like the comments under a blue triangle, about feeling like a high-tech burglar casing potential joints. I felt a bit like a spy - using glamorous-looking technologies in shop doorways under cover of a woolly scarf. Although I don't thibnk Bond had problems logging in.

I'd quite like to play a spy game/treasure hunt with this, a bit like the Chasing the Wish online game, where some real-world items/events/people are part of the game, and there are various puzzles to solve.

I didn't create any threads due to technical problems, but I would have liked to see if there was any difference in the way that peopole around me reacted to me using the device in, say, a very studenty area compared with a touristy one.

I quite liked the map, but I think it is tailored to a typically male brain, rather than a female one (see books by Simon Baron-Cohen and Anne Muir) as it based on directional navigating rather than the typical 'female brain' way of navigating which is based on landmarks. The current map relies on the individual to be relatively familiar with the layout of the local area, and what route they have taken to get to their current location. I think users feel some pressure to author their pockets in an accurate location because they know that other people are going to read them, and possibly act on them. But checking that you really are where you think you are is difficult with the map used.

i wasnt very successful at getting any content on and working, i did persist intrepidly - but didnt quite get there.
much the same was true of reading others content.

the conceptual experience of walking in a content rich environment was interesting - as it was possible to speculate further about where this will go

the comments i found were maybe too like tests - i feel like i wanted more detail and more personal experiences. rather than information i wanted a sense of presence from a previous passer by.

i imagine that the map might get tricky to navigate without major sections of green or landmarks.

unfortunately, never got to see much content even tho it was there - tricksy technology all round.

Well, this was fun ... shame about the weather though! I realise that this is at prototype stage. The system will have to work an awful lot faster if this is going to become ubiquitous. I have used iPAQ before and typing using a stylus is not the easiest. Fortunately these machines had a large buffer so you didn't have to wait for each letter to come up before typing the next. The idea of creating an urban thread that might interest or amuse others hadn't occurred to me before, but I quickly found something within a very limited area that I could make a thread about. What will happen when we have a dense maze of threads? How will we navigate them, how will we know that a nearby thread may have interesting content at a node or group of nodes relevant to a thread we are following or constructing? Navigation in thread-space will be an issue.

Simon and I didn't follow another persons thread, we tried to make our own by wandering, looking for cheap places to eat, and arriving at thoughts. We were quite unsystematic about it. One assumes that a systematic approach would have been more productive for using the system, especially given the time constraint.
This raises the question of purposeful navigating as opposed to aimless derives in relation to this system.

When you are with someone you want to chat and the conversation meanders on and off any given topic.
The device itself was quite unresponsive to this and technical delays interrupted any narrative threading.

I would love to try again with a specific quest to find
good, inexpensive eating in the area.
In this area of central London I have difficulty with shopping and eating and generally hate coming out to do it here and would genuinely welcome the timesaving aspects of a pragmatic information and signposting system to help me
find things quickly.

I felt that there was an essential need to be able to know where I was - there was no opportunity to return the cursor to my current location - therefore it was easy to get lost.

text entry is not ideal on an ipaq either and i thought this was a barrier to full participation.

but overall well done - it is good to see innovative thinking like this.

A slightly odd experience. We are so technology literate, or expectant I should say, now that when anything doesn't work smoothly we shut down. I can see the potential of this - a localised network of content generated by those that have visited, historic memories, places to eat, fictional stories - but is this the right interface? A wifi network with a decent website? Would that satisfy the need effectively? I have to admit that I got frustrated with trying to post a thread and ended up trying to use the IPAQ to access my emails. It was much quicker and I already felt part of a virtual world I was familiar with.

Using any technology on the street makes you feel slightly uneasy. The cafe on Southampton Row provided a nice place to trawl through, but I got frozen out twice. My mind started drifting and I was eager to start writing a fictional story about the people entering the cafe, to be picked up as a thread by someone else on another day, a rambly fictional story of a real place. But I couldn't post a thread and the creative moment was lost. Shame.

overall, this is a nice experience, aside from the technology being quite slow. i love the idea of creating or reading individual stories or information about a city. it is like a bunch of short stories threaded together in a common area. it is lmost like walking around in a book of shirt stories, except you can feel, hear, smell, and see the same things that the other authors of the pockets and threads did. that was a motivating force for me.

authoring threads and pockets us fairly easy, as long as the system doesn't crash while authoring. i found that i quickly became comfortable with the ipaq keyboard and could type while walking. the one problem was the usual suspect...the technology.

it was easy to locate my pocket, but i didn't get to create too many threads. i ran out of time after taking a while to warm up to the process in the beginning. i wish i could have spent more time on this but time and weather were working against me.

the map on the ipaq was easy to use, though street names would be a great help. otherwise, it was easy to navigate through and looked good as well.

using this tecnology out on the street didn't really feel out of the ordinary. there are many business people and students in the area, so i was not the only one wandering around with a pda. i probably held upo traffic trying to walk and type though. oops.

i created threads about sensory exeriences in the city...the smell of the flowershop, or the warmth of the cafe. these are probably the most basic of thoughts, but these aspects were the first to catch my attention while walking around.

i would have liked to have more time to really observe the area and the experience of being here in london. i would have liked to provided some intersting things from a visitors experience, maybe point out things of use to other people who visit.

i enjoyed reading other peoples threads. i often wonder what other people are thinking about, if they observe the sdame things as i do when i am walking around. there is a very personal aspect of reading other peoples threads and that makes the experience really great.

I think public authoring is a fantastic idea, and it is the technology which needs to catch up with peoples' imaginations, not the other way round. Before I volunteered I had presumed that it would require a big paradigm shift in the way people relate to technology, but in fact they are already well ahead!

Having played around with the device and interviewed others who had been out and about with it, my main experience has been extremely positive, despite the frustrations of crashing etc.

The kinds of threads I created were a mix of personal and social observation. I can see how public authoring could be used by museums or community centres to create very specific, rich content, but I also think it is important to stress that a random, haphazard approach to authoring is equally valid. People may feel afraid that their content is not 'cultured' enough, which is a problem because it goes against the whole sponteneity of the idea.

Sharing content with others rather than accessing the 'official' content of institutions is definitely the way I would like to see things go.

I felt very apprehensive about the test to begin with and didn't feel confident about whether I could make a thread. Once I got started I found it was simpler that I had thought, and enjoyed exploring the area to find the bookshops and coffee houses that make the area so interesting.

The technology is useable although I have a problem with the size of the text and the keyboard. It would have been interesting to explore it more. I'd be interested in seeing how someone younger would tackle the project.

i came to the UT trial with a partiularly loaded set of questions to ask of it: i'm interested in how location-based information systems such as this accomodate the mobile user - that is, me, walking and talking with rachel baker - with information tagged to specific, static locations.

i use an ipaq as part of my everyday note-taking activities and am also very aware of their potential resale value. for this reason i rarely use one *openly* in public, just in case someone takes it for a next-generation phone.
so using an unfamiliar (and slow - ok you know this...) software application on this device in the street was unnerving to some extent, but we persisted nonetheless.

we took jean-paul's advice and headed north over bloomsbury square to look for less densely pocketed locations. Somewhere along the way my machine 'fell-over' - i tried to log-in but failed. this was the first time that i was aware of the network infrastructure on which the system depends and i really *wished* that the ipaq could tell me whether there was any 802.11 in the ether. (i guess it would have, but it was difficult to drop from one app to another through the the 'start' menu as i would usually have expected to do.)

being made so aware of the network infrastructure made me think of the continuing issues of ownership of wireless networks - this will continue to be an issue for projects such as UT. from what i can gather, it's 'access' that is the angle being pushed - this could as easily mean access to corporate/telco provision as it could local council/public service provision. either way, there will be implications for the conditions-of-use of any public authoring system using this technology.

back to my main, and loaded question of the mobile user: ok it seems obvious, we are carrying a mobile *device*, but we have a system (possibly any/every location-based system?) that privileges *static* locations above the movement between them. The user is asked to annotate single locations (and these will be classified into a strict object-hierarchy with RDF, or so i understand) - the demand is made for sedentary knowledge to be recorded, rather than ambulant knolwedge that finds itself between, on the way towards - neither here nor there..

following form this, i also felt some mis-match between the way that 'threads' are represented in the GUI and the actual bodily experience of moving through the physical environment when using the system. the labour of walking is almost entirely erased from the system. So our being diverted around fenced-off areas of park, stumbled down curbs, dodged traffic or got progressively more hungry didn't get noted until now. All that's left is a node and an arc on map.

A few comments on the project overall : i think there's some really good work being done through the design methodology that's been adopted/developed.
the participatory design methods - in particular the 'bodystorming' device, look as though they are really valuable in communicating both the concept of the project and in generating actual 'pockets' of information.