Digital Photo Sharing and Emotions In A Ubiquitous Smart Home

Ubiquitous computing has come a long way since Weiser introduced the concept in 1988 where he put forward some ideas as to how the future of computing would allow us to interact more freely. Today this paradigm of computing is affecting us in more than one way from homes, to offices, to travel, to even the way we are presenting ourselves, with smart clothes embedded with technology. When it comes to the home environment we look at objects as personal attributes and form a close relationship with them. Today the PC has become a personal communication tool, which is being used for variety of purposes like Internet browsing, shopping, photo sharing. The combination of Internet and digital photography has allowed people to share photos with friends and families who are geographically separated. And when we look at smart homes of the future we expect networking and the Internet to form the central hub for information for the homeowners, hence providing an environment for anytime anywhere computing. We aim to provide a ubiquitous photo sharing environment for the smart home of the future which will allow the users to receive, store, and distribute images between various devices and allow them to attach emotions and personal feelings to pictures in a convenient and enjoyable way, as home is a place where we express most of our emotions. This paper provides the design scenario of how the photo-sharing environment will be built and evaluates how social relationships can be enhanced by the use of digital data related to emotions and photographs. We will look at the factors, which govern the use of digital image technology to provide the level of social interaction and entertainment expected within the smart home to support positive ways of living. We believe that a photo-sharing environment for a smart home could help people in providing important reminders and alerts during critical