Recommendation and planning through mobile devices in tourism context

In this paper we present a mobile recommendation and planning system, named PSiS Mobile. It is designed to provide effective support during a tourist visit through context-aware information and recommendations about points of interest, exploiting tourist preferences and context. Designing a tool like this brings several challenges that must be addressed. We discuss how these challenges have been overcame, present the overall system architecture, since this mobile application extends the PSiS project website, and the mobile application architecture.

Projecto de conceito e estrutura de uma aplicação mobile para a marca NIVEA

Trabalho de projecto apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Publicidade e Marketing.

A framework for QoS-Aware service-based mobile systems

In this paper we propose a framework for the support of mobile application with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, such as voice or video, capable of supporting distributed, migration-capable, QoS-enabled applications on top of the Android Operating system.

Mobile cockpit system for enhanced electric bicycle use

This paper presents the project of a mobile cockpit system (MCS) for smartphones, which provides assistance to electric bicycle (EB) cyclists in smart cities' environment. The presented system introduces a mobile application (MCS App) with the goal to provide useful personalized information to the cyclist related to the EB's use, including EB range prediction considering the intended path, management of the cycling effort performed by the cyclist, handling of the battery charging process, and the provisioning of information regarding available public transport. This work also introduces the EB cyclist profile concept, which is based on historical data analysis previously stored in a database and collected from mobile devices' sensors. From the tests performed, the results show the importance of route guidance, taking into account the energy savings. The results also show significant changes on range prediction based on user and route taken. It is important to say that the proposed system can be used for all bicycles in general.

Server to Mobile Device Communication: A Case Study

Develop a client-server application for a mobile environment can bring many challenges because of the mobile devices limitations. So, in this paper is discussed what can be the more reliable way to exchange information between a server and an Android mobile application, since it is important for users to have an application that really works in a responsive way and preferably without any errors. In this discussion two data transfer protocols (Socket and HTTP) and three serialization data formats (XML, JSON and Protocol Buffers) were tested using some metrics to evaluate which is the most practical and fast to use.

Estudo de usabilidade das aplicações mobile: caso prático o Meethub

Relatório de estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.

Vehicle-to-anything application (v2anything app) for electric vehicles

This paper presents a mobile information system denominated as Vehicle-to-Anything Application (V2Anything App), and explains its conceptual aspects. This application is aimed at giving relevant information to Full Electric Vehicle (FEV) drivers, by supporting the integration of several sources of data in a mobile application, thus contributing to the deployment of the electric mobility process. The V2Anything App provides recommendations to the drivers about the FEV range autonomy, location of battery charging stations, information of the electricity market, and also a route planner taking into account public transportations and car or bike sharing systems. The main contributions of this application are related with the creation of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platform, recommender systems, data integration systems, driver profile, and personalized range prediction. Thus, it is possible to deliver relevant information to the FEV drivers related with the electric mobility process, electricity market, public transportation, and the FEV performance.

Improving quality of medical service with mobile health software

An increasing number of m-Health applications are being developed benefiting health service delivery. In this paper, a new methodology based on the principle of calm computing applied to diagnostic and therapeutic procedure reporting is proposed. A mobile application was designed for the physicians of one of the Portuguese major hospitals, which takes advantage of a multi-agent interoperability platform, the Agency for the Integration, Diffusion and Archive (AIDA). This application allows the visualization of inpatients and outpatients medical reports in a quicker and safer manner, in addition to offer a remote access to information. This project shows the advantages in the use of mobile software in a medical environment but the first step is always to build or use an interoperability platform, flexible, adaptable and pervasive. The platform offers a comprehensive set of services that restricts the development of mobile software almost exclusively to the mobile user interface design. The technology was tested and assessed in a real context by intensivists.

Adaptive Privacy Management System Design For Context-Aware Mobile Devices

While mobile technologies can provide great personalized services for mobile users, they also threaten their privacy. Such personalization-privacy paradox are particularly salient for context aware technology based mobile applications where user's behaviors, movement and habits can be associated with a consumer's personal identity. In this thesis, I studied the privacy issues in the mobile context, particularly focus on an adaptive privacy management system design for context-aware mobile devices, and explore the role of personalization and control over user's personal data. This allowed me to make multiple contributions, both theoretical and practical. In the theoretical world, I propose and prototype an adaptive Single-Sign On solution that use user's context information to protect user's private information for smartphone. To validate this solution, I first proved that user's context is a unique user identifier and context awareness technology can increase user's perceived ease of use of the system and service provider's authentication security. I then followed a design science research paradigm and implemented this solution into a mobile application called "Privacy Manager". I evaluated the utility by several focus group interviews, and overall the proposed solution fulfilled the expected function and users expressed their intentions to use this application. To better understand the personalization-privacy paradox, I built on the theoretical foundations of privacy calculus and technology acceptance model to conceptualize the theory of users' mobile privacy management. I also examined the role of personalization and control ability on my model and how these two elements interact with privacy calculus and mobile technology model. In the practical realm, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the tradeoff between the benefit of personalized services and user's privacy concerns it may cause. By pointing out new opportunities to rethink how user's context information can protect private data, it also suggests new elements for privacy related business models.

MyTopRoom : Aplicación para Android: Buscador de ofertas de hoteles

El objetivo de este proyecto es el desarrollo de una aplicación móvil para dispositivos con sistema operativo Android que permita la búsqueda de ofertas de hotel de una forma diferente a las actuales. Para ello se ha empleado el modelo del ciclo de vida en cascada, con las fases de análisis, diseño, construcción y pruebas del sistema desarrollado. El software final sigue una arquitectura de tipo cliente/servidor y ha sido realizado con Java como lenguaje base de programación, haciendo uso de algunas librerías como Apache HTTP Request para las conexiones con el servidor remoto como las propias de Android, que facilitan la creación de interfaces gráficas y la gestión de los recursos de los dispositivos en el desarrollo de aplicaciones móviles.

Dynamic application development in Symbian OS

Diplomityössä tutkitaan, kuinka Symbian-sovelluskehitystä voitaisiin tehostaa. Työssä esitellään Symbian-käyttöjärjestelmä, sekä pohditaan haasteita ja rajoitteita joita Symbian sovelluskehityksessä kohdataan. Myöskin jo olemassa olevia kehitystapoja pohditaan työn tavoitteen kannalta. Symbian-sovelluskehityksessä tehdään toistuvasti samoja asioita. Koska Symbian on avoin käyttöjärjestelmä, sovelluskehittäjiä on paljon. Tehokkaamman kehitystavan löytäminen säästäisi paljon resursseja. Tällä hetkellä perinteiset ohjelmointitavat näyttävät olevan suosituin tapa kehittää sovelluksia. Kuitenkin on jo olemassa useita ratkaisuja, jotka pyrkivät tehostamaan sovelluskehitystä, mikä todistaa tarpeen kehittää tehokkuutta. Työssä toteutettu systeemi ajaa Symbian sovelluksia XML-määrityksen pohjalta. Kun käytetään XML-määritystä C++-koodin sijasta, sovelluskehitys muuttuu. Näiden muutosten täytyy kuitenkin olla myönteisiä, eivätkä ne saa haitata ohjelmiston laatua tai käytettävyyttä.

Business on demand and its mobile solution - study with SAP ByDesign

Business On-Demand solutions are widely used by SMEs in the world today. When I started working in SAP, SAP had just launched its first version mobile solutions for Business On-Demand solutions. SAP ByDesign mobile solution is great, but I believe we could do something even better on mobile phones. My job is focusing on mobile application development. Therefore, I have lots of thoughts about how we could make the mobile solutions better serve desktop solutions and how to distinguish the mobile solutions. Finally I decide to have a further research into this area. The purpose of this thesis is trying to find out how to improve the mobile solutions for Business On-Demand, find out its benefit and limits, and distinguish SaaS mobile solutions from desktop ones. In order to conduct this research, I had some online literature search to find out the Business On-Demand market and major players in this area. I compare the materials from public internet with the ones that are used internally in SAP. I had some interviews with SAP solution manager and SAP‟s potential customers. I finally made some pro-posals for mobile SaaS solutions which I believe will make the solutions better present and much helpful to the customers.

DEVELOPING A CROWDSOURCED VIDEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHOD FOR CONSUMER CULTURE RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to develop a crowdsourced videographic research method for consumer culture research. Videography provides opportunities for expressing contextual and culturally embedded relations. Thus, developing new ways to conduct videographic research is meaningful. This study develops the crowdsourced videographic method based on a literature review and evaluation of a focal study. The literature review follows a qualitative systematic review process. Through the literature review, based on different methodological, crowdsourcing and consumer research related literature, this study defines the method, its application process and evaluation criteria. Furthermore, the evaluation of the focal study, where the method was applied, completes the study. This study applies professional review with self-evaluation as a form of evaluation, drawing from secondary data including research task description, screenshots of the mobile application used in the focal study, videos collected from the participants, and self-evaluation by the author. The focal study is analyzed according to its suitability to consumer culture research, research process and quality. Definitions and descriptions of the research method, its process and quality criteria form the theoretical contribution of this study. Evaluating the focal study using these definitions underlines some best practices of this type of research, generating the practical contribution of this study. Finally, this study provides ideas for future research. First, defining the boundaries of the use of crowdsourcing in various parts of conducting research. Second, improving the method by applying it to new research contexts. Third, testing how changes in one dimension of the crowdsourcing models interact with other dimension. Fourth, comparing the quality criteria applied in this study to various other quality criteria to improve the method’s usefulness. Overall, this study represents a starting point for further development of the crowdsourced videographic research method.

Features for mobile applications popularity

Mobile applications market shows one of the highest growth rates for the market of intellectual products. The market is attractive to investors, despite the fact that the major companies of this industry already firmly consolidated its position. Experts predict the growth of the market for mobile applications with the development of mobile technologies in general. To demonstrate the explosive growth of the market and the scale of its impact, it is worth recalling the mobile game Angry Birds, which was able to achieve a huge reach and formed a full-fledged media brand, comparable to the film industry brands. The reasons why some games become popular and others not, are important for understanding the driving factors of the games industry. The Master’s Thesis explores the factors for mobile games applications popularity and ranking and propose recommendations for mobile games app store optimization of app representation. It discovers particular features of mobile games applications and releases’ influence on their popularity. Also the study assumes usage of such business models as The Business Model Canvas by Osterwalder and The Lean Startup Methodology by Ries, and describes the best practices of mobile application development process and market positioning. Moreover, the Master’s Thesis gives examples of multiple case studies about successful mobile apps developers.

Bridging the digital divide in developing countries: The role of mobile technology in bridging the digital divide

This thesis investigates how mobile technology usage could help to bring Information and communication technologies (ICT) to the people in developing countries. Some people in developing countries have access to use ICT while other people do not have such opportunity. This digital divide among people is present in many developing countries where computers and the Internet are difficult to access. The Internet provides information that can increase productivity and enable markets to function more efficiently. The Internet reduces information travel time and provides more efficient ways for firms and workers to operate. ICT and the Internet can provide opportunities for economic growth and productivity in developing countries. This indicates that it is very important to bridge the digital divide and increase Internet connections in developing countries. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how can mobile technology and mobile services help to bridge the digital divide in developing countries. Theoretical background of this thesis consists of a collection of articles and reports. Theoretical material was gathered by going through literature on the digital divide, mobile technology and mobile application development. The empirical research was conducted by sending a questionnaire by email to a selection of application developers located in developing countries. The questionnaire’s purpose was to gather qualitative information concerning mobile application development in developing countries. This thesis main result suggests that mobile phones and mobile technology usage can help to bridge the digital divide in developing countries. This study finds that mobile technology provides one of the best tools that can help to bridge the digital divide in developing countries. Mobile technology can bring affordable ICT to people who do not have access to use computers. Smartphones can provide Internet connection, mobile services and mobile applications to a rapidly growing number of mobile phone users in developing countries. New low-cost smartphones empower people in developing countries to have access to information through the Internet. Mobile technology has the potential to help to bridge the digital divide in developing countries where a vast amount of people own mobile phones.