SmartLab in Torino: Social Media Application Research and Tagging Laboratory

The blog of SmartLab, an interesting new lab in Torino devoted to social media, went live yesterday.

SmartLab is the acronym of the Social Media Application Research & Tagging Laboratory established in March 2006 by CSP and the IT Department of the University of Torino “to investigate and test digital contents and media in ‘digital environments” and to examine the “new opportunities offered by digital media and the web” and the different approaches they imply for users.

In particular, SmartLab designs and tests Web 2.0 applications, identifies innovative application solutions and environments to use new media with particular attention to re-using applications and content syndication with RSS in multi-channel form.

The lab’s scientific committee includes Derrick DeKerckhove, Luca Console, Franco Carcillo, Giuseppe Granieri, Andrea Toso and Eleonora Pantò.

The launch email calls particular attention to the iCity Programme, a project in collaboration with the City of Torino aimed at increasing citizen participation and creating urban social networks.

Some of the other projects the lab is or will be involved with include:

• Urban Blog, dedicated to the localisation of contents in an urban environment (with use of maps and geo-localisation)
• Interactive map: experiments with geo-references of contents in a multi-channel environment
• Social tagging and social book-marking: studies on the semantics of ‘bottom-up’ digital contents (users)
• Design of collaboration and digital identity models
• BlueTo: trials in town with push Bluetooth technologies for services to people equipped with compatible mobile telephones in various parts of the city
• Multi-channel Hub: multi-channel aggregating tool for different contents in different digital formats (rss, xml, xhtml, pdf, mp3,…)
• Digital Semantic Assistant: multi-channel ubiqua guide trial based on intelligent agents and user groups able to refer to contents and assign them a semantic value (part of the iCITY program)
• Research and guidelines on MHP usability for digital TV
• Usability research and trials for mobile applications (pda, mobile phones)
• Usability of web-oriented interactive maps
• Investigation on web navigation advance assistance systems (accessibility for the blind and disabled wheelchair bound people)