Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be merging The Pennyworth Project with my company Audacious Software. Aside from a URL and aesthetic change, the result will be functionally equivalent with what what is here now. I don’t have any plans to change the licensing of any of the applications distributed here, and I retain my commitment to open research.

The reason for the change is that after a year, I still haven’t found the bandwidth to set up the 503(c) corporation with the state of Illinois, recruit board members, and secure funding for the new entity. Fortunately, Audacious Software is on very good financial footing and can provide the resources required to move forward with ubiquitous context-aware computing. This move is intended to make my life easier and when my life is easier, more code gets written.

Thanks for your patience, and I’ll see you on the other side.

First of all, welcome to the new weblog for Pennyworth and other context-related work. In the coming days, I’ll be shutting down the Context Blog in favor of this one. I’ve already imported the content from that site, so there is no reason that you shouldn’t update your bookmarks accordingly.

Second, I wanted to share some details about new Pennyworth work and how things will proceed moving forward. There are some big changes afoot, and this post describes how the project will move forward.

As some of you already know, I am leaving my graduate program at Northwestern University in order to pursue a full-time job as a software entrepreneur. My new venture is called Audacious Software and I’ve been busy over the past couple of months putting together a new company. The work isn’t complete, but progress is steadily being made.

The original plan was that my new company would continue Pennyworth development as a research activity. I’m still a strong believer in the idea of context-aware computing and I have concrete plans to develop and market a variety of context-aware applications and services in the months ahead. However, after some discussions with other people, I came up with the idea that the Pennyworth work should be its own separate entity in order to make collaborations with others simpler and more efficient. Consequently, I’m in the process of setting up a non-profit corporation to manage and hold Pennyworth and other related properties. I’m using the same model followed by many other open source projects, such as Mozilla, Software in the Public Interest (Debian), and FreeBSD.

My goal in establishing a standalone entity for Pennyworth is to engage other parties interested in collaborating on context-aware technology so that we can collectively put this technology in the hands of users everywhere. Audacious Software is the first sponsor of this work and I hope to find other companies, universities, and organizations willing to partner with in the months ahead. I’ll post more details about this as they become available.

So, what activities will this organization pursue? At the moment, there are three:

1. Continue the Pennyworth and Jarvis work to create and distribute a robust context-inference system for Mac OS X and Windows desktops.

2. Develop and distribute a variety of “example” applications that demonstrate how to use context effectively and spark others’ imagination about what’s possible with using context.

3. Continue to research how to better sense and distribute context in new environments. This includes mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, Maemo, etc.), alternative operating systems (Linux, *BSD), and emerging computing platforms (Chumby, Arduino, etc.).

In the weeks ahead, I plan on resume posting to this weblog regularly so that the work I’ve been doing becomes more visible to outside readers. In the chaos of starting a new company (or two) and managing the transition from graduate school to startup, my updates became less frequent than I would have liked. To make for this, I have a series of posts in the works that should hit all three points mentioned above.

I wanted to let any potential C4[2] attendees know that I’ll be attending the indie Mac developer conference next week.

If anyone would like to get together for drinks or dinner that weekend, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll see about getting something arranged. Likewise, you can keep an eye open for me at the conference.

I’d be particularly interested in talking to any developers who might be interested in taking their apps and making them context-aware.

Pennyworth 1.0b6 is now available for download.

This release includes the smarter C4.5 decision tree, the label management interface, and a new network observer that determines the IP networks your computer currently belongs to.

Prerequisites

MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”

Growl (Recommended): Pennyworth can be used without the Growl notification system by viewing the current predictions, but this occupies precious screen real estate and you attention. In order to receive visual notifications of updated predictions, I recommend that you install and configure the Growl notification system before running Pennyworth.

Source

There is not a source distribution available yet, but if you’d like the source code, it is available via Subversion at

http://context-macosx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Tools/Applications/Pennyworth/

The source requires Xcode 3 to build.

Bugs, suggestions, or comments?

Please post any feedback in the comments below or send it to context@aetherial.net. This is early release software, so there will be bugs, and the application will only improve when problems are identified and submitted.

If you’re using Growl with Genkanban and would like some consistency between the Growl notifications and the predictions window, check out Growl HUD 1.5. It uses Leopard’s new HUD windows, so it should look rather nice.

Thanks Ricky!

Welcome to The Context Blog. I began this weblog on a bit of a whimsy when I realized that I didn’t have a good place to discuss some of my ongoing work and thoughts in the area of context-aware applications and adaptive user interfaces. This area is intended to serve as a half-way point between the chaos inside my head and more formal avenues such as conferences, journals, and books.

A bit about me: I am graduate student at Northwestern University in the Media, Technology, and Society MA/Ph.D. program in the School of Communication. My main research interest is conceptualizing, describing, implementing, and deploying new kinds of applications and user interfaces in both traditional desktop and ubiquitous computing environments.

At the moment, I am working on creating context-aware applications on MacOS X. These applications currently include a context-sensing and learning toolkit, a home automation application, and a “smart” CallerID-based notification system for traditional landline phones. Over the next few weeks, I’ll discuss these specific pieces of software in more detail.

In addition to the technology, I am also interested in studying the impact of these technologies in everyday situations and observing how “smarter” applications change (or not) users’ interactions with both their own computers and other users. Will making applications more knowledgeable about their users make them more effective and usable? I think so, but I’m still far from able to make that case definitively, and this humble weblog will chronicle that journey.

In closing, thanks for tuning in and I hope that you’ll stick around for the ride.