On September 19 a flock of specially equipped homing pigeons will once again set out to blog about air quality, this time over Newport Beach, CA. The pigeon bloggers sport custom-built miniature pollution sensors that collect and send information to an online server where pollution levels are visualized and plotted in real-time using Google Map. This project has two main goals: 1) to re-invoke urgency around a topic that has serious health, environmental and political consequences, but lacks public action and commitment to change; and 2) to broaden the notion of grassroots scientific data gathering while building bridges between scientific research agendas and activist oriented citizen concerns.

PigeonBlog is one of the ubiquitous computing demonstrations planned for UbiComp 2006. UbiComp is an international meeting focused on ubiquitous computing. You should check out the other demonstrations of ubiquitous computing posted on the conference website. They range from A Persuasive Game to Encourage Healthy Dietary Behaviors in Kindergarten Children to a MASTABA: A Digital Shrine for Family.