In recent years, the presence of ubiquitous computing has increasingly integrated into the lives of people in modern society. As these technologies become more pervasive, new opportunities open for making citizens' environments more comfortable, convenient, and efficient. Enriching Urban Spaces with Ambient Computing, the Internet of Things, and Smart City Design is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the interaction between people and computing systems in contemporary society, showcasing how ubiquitous computing influences and shapes urban environments. Highlighting the impacts of these emerging technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, academicians, and practitioners interested in the influential state of pervasive computing within urban contexts.

Every day we share encounters with others as we inhabit the space around us. In offering insights and knowledge on this increasingly important topic, this book introduces a range of empirical and theoretical approaches to the study of shared encounters. It highlights the multifaceted nature of collective experience and provides a deeper understanding of the nature and value of shared encounters in everyday life. Divided into four sections, each section comprises a set of chapters on a different topic and is introduced by a key author in the field who provides an overview of the content. The book itself is introduced by Paul Dourish, who sets the theme of shared encounters in the context of technological and social change over the last fifteen years. The four sections that follow consider the characteristics of shared encounters and describe how they can be supported in different settings: the first section, introduced by Barry Brown, looks at shared experiences. George Roussos, in the second section, presents playful encounters. Malcolm McCulloch introduces the section on spatial settings and - last but not least - Elizabeth Churchill previews the topic of social glue. The individual chapters that accompany each part offer particular perspectives on the main topic and provide detailed insights from the author's own research background. A valuable reference for anyone designing ubiquitous media, mobile social software and LBS applications, this volume will also be useful to researchers, students and practitioners in fields ranging from computer science to urban studies.

This book introduces the technologies and techniques of large-scale RFID-enabled mobile computing systems. The discussion is set in the context of specific system case studies where RFID has been the core enabling technology in retail, metropolitan transportation, logistics and e-passport applications. RFID technology fundamentals are covered including operating principles, core system components and performance trade-offs involved in the selection of specific RFID platforms.

At the core of this book is the interplay between technological and business innovation and social practice. Although the bene?ts of 50 years of rapid advances in digital telecommunications and computing technology have not bene?ted everyone equally, they have nevertheless transformed almost every aspectofthewaywelive.Oneareawheretechnologyhashada clearimpactis in the way we conduct business. The rate of change that brings about mod- nity has been considerably strengthened by technological advances applied to product manufacturing, distribution, ?nancing, and management, which arguably form the substrate for globalization and consumerism. It is thus no surprise that businesses closely monitor advances in techn- ogy and invest considerable resources in exploring possible new applications and market opportunities. Yet, consumers' acceptance of new ways of buying and selling depends as much on business and technology as on our society's culture and the culture of the material environment that de?nes our values, sensibilities, and thus our commitments. Moreover, the rate of technological innovation is such that to the c- sumer, technology implementation is fully opaque.Nonetheless, opportunities to carry out commerce in novel ways also introduce risk to established - cial structures, conventions, and institutions. In modernity, risk management is one of the core functions of society and to be successful in this, societies depend on their trust of experts. Experts take risks on behalf of society and are responsible for evaluating the full extent of a particular set of hazards including those associated with a particular technology.

Every day we share encounters with others as we inhabit the space around us. In offering insights and knowledge on this increasingly important topic, this book introduces a range of empirical and theoretical approaches to the study of shared encounters. It highlights the multifaceted nature of collective experience and provides a deeper understanding of the nature and value of shared encounters in everyday life.

Divided into four sections, each section comprises a set of chapters on a different topic and is introduced by a key author in the field who provides an overview of the content. The book itself is introduced by Paul Dourish, who sets the theme of shared encounters in the context of technological and social change over the last fifteen years. The four sections that follow consider the characteristics of shared encounters and describe how they can be supported in different settings: the first section, introduced by Barry Brown, looks at shared experiences. George Roussos, in the second section, presents playful encounters. Malcolm McCulloch introduces the section on spatial settings and - last but not least - Elizabeth Churchill previews the topic of social glue. The individual chapters that accompany each part offer particular perspectives on the main topic and provide detailed insights from the author's own research background.

A valuable reference for anyone designing ubiquitous media, mobile social software and LBS applications, this volume will also be useful to researchers, students and practitioners in fields ranging from computer science to urban studies.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International ICST Conference, S-CUBE 2009, held in Pisa, Italy, in september 2009.

The 16 contributions published in this volume were carefully selected from 45 submitted works in a rigorous peer-reviewed process. In addition to this 3 distinguished researchers were asked to contribute 3 invited papers.

The papers examine research challenges facing system development and software support for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Currently, wireless sensor networks introduce innovative and interesting application scenarios that may support a large amount of different applications including environmental monitoring, disaster prevention, building automation, object tracking, nuclear reactor control, fire detection, agriculture, healthcare, and traffic monitoring. The widespread acceptance of these new services can be improved by the definition of frameworks and architectures that have the potential to radically simplify software development for wireless sensor network based applications. The aim of these new architectures is to support flexible, scalable programming of applications based on adaptive middleware. As a consequence, WSNs require novel programming paradigms and technologies. Moreover the design of new complex systems, characterized by the interaction of different and heterogeneous resources, will allow the development of innovative applications that meet high performance goals. Hence, WSNs require contributions from many fields such as embedded systems, distributed systems, data management, system security and applications.