Research- Web app for android

Application development for mobile devices has evolved substantially in recent years. Creating apps for mobile systems is becoming a standard in order to create better solutions to meet the market demand. Currently, half of the US population own Smartphones. This market comprises 150 million people, and 28% of these people consider mobiles their primary way of accessing the Web (Hales, 2013). A common feature of most websites tailored for mobile devices is that they are reduced versions of the desktop site. Several factors that must be considered when making this transition from desktop sites to mobile devices are: identifying elements from the desktop website that should be displayed on the mobile device screen; the amount of information the institution (BSU in this case) wishes to provide and designing an interface that will please the users;

Remote Control of Mobile Devices in Android Platform

Remote control systems are a very useful element to control and monitor devices quickly and easily. This paper proposes a new architecture for remote control of Android mobile devices, analyzing the different alternatives and seeking the optimal solution in each case. Although the area of remote control, in case of mobile devices, has been little explored, it may provide important advantages for testing software and hardware developments in several real devices. It can also allow an efficient management of various devices of different types, perform forensic security tasks, etc ... The main idea behind the proposed architecture was the design of a system to be used as a platform which provides the services needed to perform remote control of mobile devices. As a result of this research, a proof of concept was implemented. An Android application running a group of server programs on the device, connected to the network or USB interface, depending on availability. This servers can be controlled through a small client written in Java and runnable both on desktop and web systems.

Construction Plan Image Service for Mobile Devices

The forthcoming media revolution of exchanging paper documents to digital media in construction engineering requires new tools to be developed. The basis of this bachelor’s thesis was to explore the preliminary possibilities of exporting imagery from a Building Information Modelling –software to a mobile phone on a construction yard. This was done by producing a Web Service which uses the design software’s Application Programming Interface to interact with a structures model in order to produce the requested imagery. While mobile phones were found lacking as client devices, because of limited processing power and small displays, the implementation showed that the Tekla Structures API can be used to automatically produce various types of imagery. Web Services can be used to transfer this data to the client. Before further development the needs of the contractor, benefits for the building master and inspector and the full potential of the BIM-software need to be mapped out with surveys.

Web app per la gestione della propria auto elettrica

In questa tesi viene analizzato il concetto di mobilità elettrica e viene proposta un’applicazione per la gestione della propria auto elettrica. L'applicazione in questione si pone come scopo l’agevolazione delle interazioni dell’utente con l’auto a distanza. Analizzando le caratteristiche principali dell’auto elettrica, ne vengono delineati i benefici e le limitazioni dell’autonomia, per la quale si suggerisce soluzione tramite regole da adottare alla guida. Attraverso la comparazione con le tipologie di applicazioni esistenti per la mobilità si decide che genere di approccio adottare nella realizzazione della nostra applicazione. Seguono la descrizione delle tecnologie di sviluppo del progetto sotto forma di applicazione ibrida, tra le quali ci si sofferma sull'utilizzo di linguaggi di markup, fogli di stile e JavaScript lato client. Di quest’ultimo ne vengono elencate le API utilizzate, in particolare Google Maps e Google Charts. Successivamente si introduce il concetto di simulazione server ed i metodi e le tecniche adottate per renderlo effettivo. Infine vengono spiegate le scelte implementative nonché i metodi e le decisioni presi in ambito di sviluppo per realizzare al meglio l’applicazione, fornendo una presentazione dettagliata delle sue funzionalità.

User-independent accelerometer-based gesture recognition for mobile devices

Many mobile devices embed nowadays inertial sensors. This enables new forms of human-computer interaction through the use of gestures (movements performed with the mobile device) as a way of communication. This paper presents an accelerometer-based gesture recognition system for mobile devices which is able to recognize a collection of 10 different hand gestures. The system was conceived to be light and to operate in a user -independent manner in real time. The recognition system was implemented in a smart phone and evaluated through a collection of user tests, which showed a recognition accuracy similar to other state-of-the art techniques and a lower computational complexity. The system was also used to build a human -robot interface that enables controlling a wheeled robot with the gestures made with the mobile phone.

The usefulness of Usability and User Experience evaluation methods on an e-Learning platform development from a developer's perspective: A case study

The development of a web platform is a complex and interdisciplinary task, where people with different roles such as project manager, designer or developer participate. Different usability and User Experience evaluation methods can be used in each stage of the development life cycle, but not all of them have the same influence in the software development and in the final product or system. This article presents the study of the impact of these methods applied in the context of an e-Learning platform development. The results show that the impact has been strong from a developer's perspective. Developer team members considered that usability and User Experience evaluation allowed them mainly to identify design mistakes, improve the platform's usability and understand the end users and their needs in a better way. Interviews with potential users, clickmaps and scrollmaps were rated as the most useful methods. Finally, these methods were considered unanimously very useful in the context of the entire software development, only comparable to SCRUM meetings and overcoming the rest of involved factors.

Towards user profiling for web recommendation

Collaborative recommendation is one of widely used recommendation systems, which recommend items to visitor on a basis of referring other's preference that is similar to current user. User profiling technique upon Web transaction data is able to capture such informative knowledge of user task or interest. With the discovered usage pattern information, it is likely to recommend Web users more preferred content or customize the Web presentation to visitors via collaborative recommendation. In addition, it is helpful to identify the underlying relationships among Web users, items as well as latent tasks during Web mining period. In this paper, we propose a Web recommendation framework based on user profiling technique. In this approach, we employ Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) to model the co-occurrence activities and develop a modified k-means clustering algorithm to build user profiles as the representatives of usage patterns. Moreover, the hidden task model is derived by characterizing the meaningful latent factor space. With the discovered user profiles, we then choose the most matched profile, which possesses the closely similar preference to current user and make collaborative recommendation based on the corresponding page weights appeared in the selected user profile. The preliminary experimental results performed on real world data sets show that the proposed approach is capable of making recommendation accurately and efficiently.

Social and organizational impacts of emerging mobile devices:evaluating use

As mobile devices become increasingly diverse and continue to shrink in size and weight, their portability is enhanced but, unfortunately, their usability tends to suffer. Ultimately, the usability of mobile technologies determines their future success in terms of end-user acceptance and, thereafter, adoption and social impact. Widespread acceptance will not, however, be achieved if users’ interaction with mobile technology amounts to a negative experience. Mobile user interfaces need to be designed to meet the functional and sensory needs of users. Social and Organizational Impacts of Emerging Mobile Devices: Evaluating Use focuses on human-computer interaction related to the innovation and research in the design, evaluation, and use of innovative handheld, mobile, and wearable technologies in order to broaden the overall body of knowledge regarding such issues. It aims to provide an international forum for researchers, educators, and practitioners to advance knowledge and practice in all facets of design and evaluation of human interaction with mobile technologies.

RCOS: Real time context sharing across a fleet of smart mobile devices

Today, biodiversity is endangered by the currently applied intensive farming methods imposed on food producers by intermediate actors (e.g.: retailers). The lack of a direct communication technology between the food producer and the consumer creates dependency on the intermediate actors for both producers and the consumers. A tool allowing producers to directly and efficiently market produce that meets customer demands could greatly reduce the dependency enforced by intermediate actors. To this end, in this thesis, we propose, develop, implement and validate a Real Time Context Sharing (RCOS) system. RCOS takes advantage of the widely used publish/subscribe paradigm to exchange messages between producers and consumers, directly, according to their interest and context. Current systems follow a topic-based model or a content-based model. With RCOS, we propose a context-awareness approach into the matching process of publish/subscribe paradigm. Finally, as a proof of concept, we extend the Apache ActiveMQ Artemis software and create a client prototype. We evaluate our proof of concept for larger scale deployment.

A HUMAN-CENTERED APPROACH TO IMPROVING THE USER EXPERIENCE OF SOFTWARE UPDATES

Software updates are critical to the security of software systems and devices. Yet users often do not install them in a timely manner, leaving their devices open to security exploits. This research explored a re-design of automatic software updates on desktop and mobile devices to improve the uptake of updates through three studies. First using interviews, we studied users’ updating patterns and behaviors on desktop machines in a formative study. Second, we distilled these findings into the design of a low-fi prototype for desktops, and evaluated its efficacy for automating updates by means of a think-aloud study. Third, we investigated individual differences in update automation on Android devices using a large scale survey, and interviews. In this thesis, I present the findings of all three studies and provide evidence for how automatic updates can be better appropriated to fit users on both desktops and mobile devices. Additionally, I provide user interface design suggestions for software updates and outline recommendations for future work to improve the user experience of software updates.

Mining social individuals movements and friends based on mobile devices

Trabalho de Projeto realizado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Creating and optimizing client-server applications on mobile devices

Mobile devices are embedded systems with very limited capacities that need to be considered when developing a client-server application, mainly due to technical, ergonomic and economic implications to the mobile user. With the increasing popularity of mobile computing, many developers have faced problems due to low performance of devices. In this paper, we discuss how to optimize and create client-server applications for in wireless/mobile environments, presenting techniques to improve overall performance.

Accommodation management system using mobile devices

Os dispositivos móveis são pessoais, intransmissíveis e cada vez mais utilizados, tornando-se assim numa boa ferramenta para a realização de um conjunto de serviços na indústria hoteleira. Entre esses serviços que necessitam da identificação pessoal, encontram-se a possibilidade do cliente reservar um quarto ou utilizar o serviço de quartos. Atualmente é muito utilizado, nos locais de alojamento, um smart card que possibilite ao cliente ter acesso a alguns dos serviços disponíveis. O objetivo deste documento é apresentar uma alternativa ao sistema de cartões, utilizando para o efeito, dispositivos móveis. De modo a garantir a segurança e uma utilização semelhante ao sistema de cartões existentes foi utilizada a tecnologia NFC (Near Field Communication) que, ao permitir o modo de emulação de cartão, facilita a transação do sistema de smart card existente, para o da utilização de dispositivos móveis na realização das mesmas funções. Mais concretamente, será abordada a utilização de smartphones para o processo de abertura de portas. Para que exista uma melhor compreensão e para que haja um conhecimento das suas capacidades e limites foram estudados casos de uso da tecnologia NFC. Este documento apresenta ainda os processos de desenvolvimento de uma aplicação nativa para o sistema operativo Android, cujo objetivo é proporcionar ao cliente de um local de alojamento um novo modo de acesso ao quarto, utilizando a tecnologia NFC. Para além desta funcionalidade a aplicação permite ainda ao utilizador fazer reservas, fazer o check-in, fazer o check-out entre outras. Posteriormente serão apresentadas as conclusões e possíveis trabalhos futuros.

Combining WLAN fingerprint-based localization with sensor data for indoor navigation using mobile devices

This project proposes an approach for supporting Indoor Navigation Systems using Pedestrian Dead Reckoning-based methods and by analyzing motion sensor data available in most modern smartphones. Processes suggested in this investigation are able to calculate the distance traveled by a user while he or she is walking. WLAN fingerprint- based navigation systems benefit from the processes followed in this research and results achieved to reduce its workload and improve its positioning estimations.