Russell Beale

Russell Beale (of Abowd & Beale fame) gave a seminar at ITEE today. He gave a pretty cool talk about some of the projects he’s been working on at Birmingham. Among other things, he talked about his Bluedating prototype (proximity-based profile swapping), BTShare (proximity-based file swapping) and SmartBlog (a blogging system that supports mobile users). Another cool and useful prototype he talked about was a notice board system that he has attached to his office door. If he’s running late for work or for a meeting, he can send an SMS to the electronic notice board, which is comprised of a PDA stuck to his office door and a backend machine that receives the SMSes. Now people waiting for him to arrive at work, such as undergraduate students, can read the notice board to get an idea of how long they’ll have to wait. A lot of this stuff isn’t new. But what is cool is to see it actually working and being used.