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| "The news,
Sulevi", says Riitta. Sulevi has learned which news Riitta wants to watch
this time of the day, and fetches first the social news onto the display.
This newscaster reads the news very briefly, and when she is talking about
the illnesses of queen Victoria, Riitta asks for the
details by pressing the Enter button on Sulevi. Then she continues
to stroke him.
After listening the news about Victoria's back problems Riitta wants to hear how Victoria's children and grandchildren are doing. She browses the information hierarchy with the track ball embedded on Sulevi’s head (she prefers the ball because her hands are shaking a bit). When she has seen that Jakob has began remote studies in Oxford, but everything else is the same as before, she browses back to the news titles. |
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Fetching the news: Whenever Sulevi recognizes the word "the", it starts
to define the object which the user tries to point to. If there is just
one object, like "the kitchen", the definition is easy. The other possibility
is that "the" refers to the object that was spoken of or handled previously.
"The news" is more problematic, because there are so many news that Riitta
watches during the day. Because Riitta watches ITV a lot, she has told
Sulevi which are her preferred news, soaps etc. at different times of the
day.
News details: The ITV program is built so that the user may ask for
details of the subject being spoken of just by pressing a single key, like
Enter. Sulevi just sends the Enter event for the TV system.
Strokable: Sulevi is like a real pet in that it has a soft fur. Then
it looks like a pet and the user can stroke it.
Track ball: The functions of an ITV program are complicated and different
from each other, so there is no chance that a keyboard or voice control
system could know all the commands beforehand. That is why a cursor controlling
system is needed as an input device. Riitta has chosen a track ball, because
her hands are shaking a bit and the track ball is not that sensitive. It
also is an ergonomic input device, because the wrist can rest on Sulevi
while using the ball.
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