
TA2 vision:
Making communications and
engagement easier among groups
of people separated in space and time

How can technology help to nurture relationships between
households? This is the question asked by the collaborative project
“Together Anywhere, Together Anytime” (TA2).
Many of our enduring experiences, holidays, celebrations and moments of
fun and laughter are framed as group, often family, events. Yet modern
media and communications serve individuals, not groups. Phones,
computers and electronic games devices tend to be individually owned and
provide individual experiences. TA2 seeks to explore how technology can
support group to group communication.
Social letters will be read by many members of a household; games are
often played between families working as teams. Memories in the form of
videos and photographs are often shared within families. TA2 wants to
enhance and support these processes; enabling people to share their
stories, pass digital photos and videos around, add comments to them,
and to pass them back. TA2 wants to build systems that allow people to
play games with each other, seeing and hearing each other as they laugh
with, and at, each other, as they struggle with games like Ludo®,
Labyrinth® or Pictionary®. And TA2 also wants to find ways in which
modern sensors and IT equipment can give people in one household a
better awareness of the activity in another, whilst maintaining every
individual's right to privacy.
TA2 media and communication experiences will be characterised by their
naturalness; clear relaxed voice communication and intelligently edited
video. Through the TA2 system, stories are automatically generated from
home-related content, the personal home video or from the antics of a
lively game.
TA2 is an Integrating Project within the European Research Programme 7 and receives funding from the European Commission. TA2 will run for four years and will finish in January 2012.
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