Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Researchers from Kodak and the University will observe several families who will live in the iSpace for up to five days at a time to see how they integrate a selection of Kodak's new technologies into their everyday lives.

Professor Vic Callaghan of the Digital Lifestyles Centre said: "The use of images is changing rapidly. In the future, imaging, and other networked enabled appliances, brought into a wireless enabled environment will automatically configure and discover other devices and serv ices providing highly flexible and dynamic imaging applications."

BT was the first major organisation to use the iSpace earlier this year to evaluate the use of new communications services and the University hopes that it will become the first port of call for any company wanting to test new technologies.

"With the rapid advance of digital consumer photography we are developing a number of concepts and applications that really take advantage of the incredible power of digital technology to the imaging experi ence," said a Kodak spokesperson.

"It is vital that we get early customer feedback to these concepts so that the products we roll out really address customer needs and desires.

"We work with our customers in a variety of ways and iSpace offers us options that we cannot readily reproduce elsewhere."

Dr Sam Weller, director of Kodak European Research in Cambridge, added: "The goal of the work is to explore how consumers prefer to interact with connected devices such as cameras, frames, computers, printers, phones, etc.

"The information gathered from this project will enable us to provide consumers with exciting new opportunities that will enable them to extend the utilisation of their images however they want to, wherever they are.

"Early feedback from groups experimenting with our concepts will ensure that we really address customer needs and desires, as well as provide the testing of new applications that they may not yet have considered."