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"This often happens: you imagine a territory rich in possibilities and try to think of how you might get to it, and then suddenly one day you look around and realise that you have been there for quite a long time." Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land. 1982.
Currently I am a Professor of Computing in the School of Computing & Information Systems (YAMM) at the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Founded in 1890, UTAS is one of Australia's oldest universities (sometimes called sandstone universities) and a leading research university.
Physically I am situated in Hobart which is Australia's second oldest (and also second driest only second to Adelaide) capital city. Hobart is also Australia's southernmost capital city and gateway to Antarctica. Considering the location it is perhaps not surprising that during summer, Hobart experiences the most daylight hours of any capital city in Australia.
Check the Wrest Point Webcam on top of the Wrest Point tower to get an impression of the Sandy Bay suburb where the university campus is located and this picture to see Hobart and the Derwent River from Mount Wellington (1270m). And here you can see Mount Wellington, downtown Hobart and the Tasman Bridge from the other side of the River Derwent.
Before coming to beautiful Tasmania I was Professor and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) Chair of eBusiness at Charles Darwin University (arguably Australia's youngest university founded in 2004) which is located in Darwin at Australia's tropical top end. Darwin is a relatively small and definitely remote multi-cultural city (some say a 19th century frontier town catapulted into the 21 century) of about 100,000 people (including Palmerston and other nearby settlements). Check here to get an impression of the Territory (especially this one). Despite Darwin's tropical climate I was able to buy this Lebkuchenhaus (gingerbread house) at Bar Espresso on Mitchell Street. Darwin's coziest coffeeshop is The Shed which is hidden away on CDU's Casuarina campus (a Darwin suburb).
Prior to the Darwin stint 2004-2005 I was with the Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. Check the Sydney harbour cam to get an impression of one of the most beautiful cities on this planet (don't forget that we are 10 hours ahead of GMT and compared to the Northern hemisphere the seasons are reversed! Also, you'll need to have java enabled to control the camera).
Before I moved to Sydney in October 2000 I was with the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Information Technology, University of Zurich, Switzerland (4.5 years as doctoral student and research assistant followed by 12 months as postdoc). The lab just celebrated its 20th Anniversary! I spent the last two of my Zurich years managing the department's participation and conducting the relevant research in a large European research project on information filtering and collaborative filtering (SELECT). Check the NZZ Webcam or the Switch LiveCam to get an impression of "little big city" Zurich.
Please see my research page for information about my research activities, publications and grants.
"I am not sure, if you remember me. I was IT student at $university. You were my lecturer/tutor for $subject. You were one of the best teachers I have come across in Australia. I was one of the most active student in your class."
At UTAS I am teaching KXT313 Human-Computer Interaction (3rd year undergraduate unit) in Semester 1, 2008. I updated & taught KXA358 Human-Computer Interaction (3rd year undergraduate unit) in semester 1, 2007; developed & taught KXA435/KXA436/KXA403 Computing in Context (postgraduate HCI/CSCW flavored research unit) in 2005, 2006, 2007.
At Charles Darwin University I taught HIT243 eBusiness Risk and Security Management (2nd year) in 2005; co-taught HIT161 Computer Systems (1st year) and co-taught HIT322 Enterprise Application Development (3rd year) in 2004.
At the University of Technology, Sydney I was involved in the capstone project Information Technology Project Planning and Design (with Rene Leveaux), 31950 Networked Enterprise Design (lecturer, coordinator), Masters/MBA subjects 32532 Conducting Business Electronically (lecturer, coordinator) and 32531 Global Information Systems (coordinator).
Deputy Research Coordinator, School of Computing & Information
Systems, UTAS (1/2008-); Deputy Head, School of Computing, UTAS (1/2007-EOS), Research Coordinator, School of Computing,
UTAS (1/2006-EOS); Research Program Coordinator
"Enterprise-centric Computing", ARC Research Network in Enterprise
Information Infrastructure; Coordinator (with Dr Jennie Carroll,
University of Sydney) "Mobility & Accessing Information
Infrastructure" taskforce, ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information
Infrastructure. Also at various stages Deputy Honours Coordinator, School
of Computing, UTAS; Research Champion, School of Information Technology,
CDU; Faculty Research Group Convenor, Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Technology, Sydney. And on the more geeky side of life I was
Usenet (Netnews) server administrator approx. 1995-2001. The skills
acquired certainly helped conduct research including this
(a more detailed version can be found in this book
chapter) and this. Participation in various development workshops and courses covering
topics including presentation techniques, people management, graduate
research supervision, leadership. Please email
lueg@it.uts.edu.au
or my UTAS address for detailed CV. Catch us on ABC Hobart
during "Technology
talk" with Louise Saunders (every second Wednesday since 13 Feb 2007).
Live coverage via internet streaming is available here
and here
you can peek into the studio. Our work on the
wider impact of spam filtering was featured on the ABC Science Show
presented by Robyn Williams (24 June 2006); "Faster, funkier" in the
(Attitude section of The
Mercury, 7 April 2006) refers to Hobart-based mobile computing
studies conducted in late 2005 (with Christoph Goeth, University of
Zurich), "Internationales Symposium fur Informationswissenschaft (ISI)
an der HTW Chur" (REVUE
ELECTRONIQUE SUISSE DE SCIENCE DE L'INFORMATION No 1 January 2005, p.
34) mentions our Darwin work on mobile information access in the context
of public transport (with Omer Mahmood, Charles Darwin University); some
of my Sydney-based ubiquitous computing work is discussed in "Forschung
aktuell: Seifenschachteln und intelligente Raeume. Pervasive 2002 in
Zuerich" (c't Magazin fuer Computer
Technik 19/2002),
"Pervasive 2002: Big Brother als Butler und persönlicher Sekretär" (Heise Online August 2002); some of my
Zurich-based work is discussed in "Intelligente Software ist zu dumm"Administration
CV
Media
Other media events: "Moving to hi-tech beat" (The Mercury 13 August 2006); "Remote Control Rage" (The Mercury 20 August 2006); "Computerforscher mit Weitblick" [in German] (academics.de 23 March 2006); "Jetzt ruft Australien. Hattinger nimmt Lehrauftrag in Sydney an (in German)" (Westfaelische Rundschau 5 October 2000), "Ruf fuer Dr. Lueg nach Sydney (in German)" (Ruhr-Nachrichten 26 September 2000).
EOS = End Of School. As of 1/1/2008 the School of
Computing has merged with the School of Information Systems to become the
Never again: Bose charges USD 100 (more precisely: they tried to charge USD 100) for fixing a tiny problem with the USD 299 QuietComfort 2 Noise Cancelling headset. A lot of customers perceive the problem as being caused by the inappropriate use of cheap plastic (see for example comments here). What an unusual way to tell customers to shop elsewhere next time. (1/11/07)
Interesting: a few days ago habbo.de (habbohotel.com) informed me, via email, that my child registered on their web site. The idea seems to be that children have to provide the email address of a parent so that parents are informed about their children's activities. The interesting thing is that, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have any children. habbo.de never replied to my inquiry as to how they verify that an email address belongs to a parent... (23/11/07)
Amazing: In early December I stayed at the Mercure Hotel Sydney. For the past two weeks I am trying to get a proper invoice. The booking was made electronically which means somewhere they must have an electronic record of my (correct) details. First I received an invoice where both name and address were incorrect topped up by an incorrect parking charge (I did not even bring a car). Second, I received an invoice where the address was correct but the name was still incorrect. After phoning(!) them (and talking to four different staff) I received an invoice where -for the first time- my name was correct but the address was reverted to a nonsense address. AAAArgh! (20/12/207)
t-mobile.de seems to be one of the last companies unable (or unwilling?) to provide vendor-independent web access (sponsored by M$ perhaps?) When visiting their web site to check an MMS message I received I was told "You are using another browser that is not Internet Explorer 6.0 [sic] or above. With the browser that you are using we cannot guarantee the full functionality of this website". A bit of functionality would be sufficient but retrieving the MMS message did not work at all when accessing the site using Apple's Safari browser. Firefox triggered the same warning but at least I could check my Chrissie message! (20/12/207)
Always expect the unexpected (when dealing with banks). Australian bank ANZ introduced a new pre-paid looks-like-a-credit-card VISA-branded "gift card". The fine print reveals that businesses may apply "tolerance factors" (what the heck is that supposed to mean?) that can be as high as 20%(sic) of the bill. In the case of restaurants it's only 10% but watch out (again): "For example, if using the Visa Gift Card at a restaurant where your bill is $100 dollars, your Visa Gift Card balance must be $110 otherwise the transaction will be declined." You couldn't use the card even if you decided not to tip or to tip using other means as this requires that "the transaction has been settled by the merchant (sometimes a few days later)".
"Panda Security" recently started to spam one of my accounts. Genuine spam--I never requested their services. You know there are people out there who can help you understand why spamming is a bad thing...
| Research | Teaching | Administration | Media | CV | Conferences of Interest |
Last major update July 2007. Accesses since $date: 
