Digital Media and Entertainment

In an age where technology drives the pace of change, many universities are struggling to keep up with high-tech education alternatives. However, instead of ignoring the inevitability of change, how can institutions incorporate these disruptive technologies within the traditional university?

Peter Kinnaird, master's student in Georgia Tech's College of Computing, built Connect 2 Congress to help people keep up with their representatives votes and political leanings.

Most of us know who the President is, but fewer can name their U.S. Senators or Representatives. Even fewer can name how their congressional representatives voted on specific bills. And if you ask most people how many bills their members have sponsored or co-sponsored, you’d most likely be given a blank stare.

An image of the Home Watcher screen shows the downloads of the user represented by the blue dot being throttled on the downloads, while the green dot's uploads are throttled. The other users are enjoying a relatively unlimited downloading and uploading speed. (Photo: Marshini Chetty/Microsoft Research)

Most people don’t understand how their broadband Internet connection works, they just know when it doesn’t. When that happens, they do one of two things: consult the tech wizard in their house, or call their Internet provider. But what if regular people had information about how their Internet connections were performing at their fingertips? What if they could easily give priority to uploads or downloads on one computer over another, making sure their kids’ YouTube antics don’t interfere with their work? They may soon be able to do just that.

This fruit merchant in Bangalore, India used his multimedia capable phone to watch videos and listen to songs. He doesn't have a computer of his own, so he obtained his content from other phones via Bluetooth file transfer. (Photo: Thomas Smyth)

A new study on how people in India use mobile computing devices suggests that users can devise new and innovative uses for them, if they have sufficient motivation. Researchers also found that entertainment may be viewed as a necessity by the media-consuming public and not merely a desire. The findings, which have implications for computer program design the world over, will be presented at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, being held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, April 10-15.

The Georgia Institute of Technology announces the release of the developer preview of Kamra, the first mobile augmented reality (AR) browser for the KHARMA (KML/HTML Augmented Reality Mobile Architecture) development platform based on open Web standards. The developer preview will be released at ARE2010 - Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, CA June 2. The release of Kamra for the iPhone in the iTunes Store is expected before the end of June.

What Kamra is: