How to design and develop There App: A mobile app focused on live video streaming, promoting new social interactions

This work project aims to demonstrate how to design and develop an innovative concept of video streaming app. The project combines technology push and market pull theories into developing a product that is more suitable for the customer needs, with the particularity that there is no other way of seeing any place in the world, live and ondemand. An analysis on the bigger influencers in terms of design-thinking and new product development, as Tim Brown or Paul Trott, lead to a better understanding on how There App should evolve, keeping in mind the customer desires and technical features.

Impact of mobile app user acquisition on managerial decisions: Evidence from empirical experiment

In this research we conducted a mixed research, using qualitative and quantitative analysis to study the relationship and impact between mobile advertisement and mobile app user acquisition and the conclusions companies can derive from it. Data was gathered from management of mobile advertisement campaigns of a portfolio of three different mobile apps. We found that a number of implications can be extracted from this intersection, namely to product development, internationalisation and management of marketing budget. We propose further research on alternative app users sources, impact of revenue on apps and exploitation of product segments: wearable technology and Internet of Things.

Cliente mobile para consumo e disponibilização de serviços georreferenciados

Actualmente as aplicações móveis são indispensáveis para o utilizador. De acordo com estudos recentes, as receitas geradas pela sua utilização resultaram em aproximadamente 20 biliões de dólares só em 2013. Com estes valores estima-se que no futuro estes números aumentem, daí tornar-se imperativo abordar num estudo científico sobre este mercado em expansão. A somar às inúmeras aplicações referentes ao sistema móvel Android, surgem as aplicações de serviços georreferenciados que vão aqui ser abordadas em maior profundidade, nomeadamente o consumo e disponibilização destes serviços em clientes mobile. Ponderadas diversas soluções é possível com alguns melhoramentos atingir benefícios específicos para um maior número de utilizadores tendo em conta as suas características a priori. Uma das questões principais passa pela capacidade de publicação de diversas fontes de informação (vários publishers) com o uso de uma Application Programing Interface (API) documentada e aberta para que qualquer entidade possa publicar os seus conteúdos georreferenciados. O consumo por parte dos utilizadores (subscriber) é feita numa plataforma móvel Android onde os possam vários publishers possam publicar os seus conteúdos a partir da posição do utilizador. Esta publicação será facilitada criando bases de dados para o armazenamento de todas as informações relevantes tanto da parte dos publishers como dos subscribers. A validação deste trabalho consistiu em testar vários tipos de publicações, nomeadamente texto, imagem e gráficos na sua pesquisa e consumo numa plataforma móvel Android. Numa segunda fase, foi testada a publicação de gráficos em tempo real na plataforma.

Augmenting spaces and creating interactive experiences using video camera networks

This research addresses the problem of creating interactive experiences to encourage people to explore spaces. Besides the obvious spaces to visit, such as museums or art galleries, spaces that people visit can be, for example, a supermarket or a restaurant. As technology evolves, people become more demanding in the way they use it and expect better forms of interaction with the space that surrounds them. Interaction with the space allows information to be transmitted to the visitors in a friendly way, leading visitors to explore it and gain knowledge. Systems to provide better experiences while exploring spaces demand hardware and software that is not in the reach of every space owner either because of the cost or inconvenience of the installation, that can damage artefacts or the space environment. We propose a system adaptable to the spaces, that uses a video camera network and a wi-fi network present at the space (or that can be installed) to provide means to support interactive experiences using the visitor’s mobile device. The system is composed of an infrastructure (called vuSpot), a language grammar used to describe interactions at a space (called XploreDescription), a visual tool used to design interactive experiences (called XploreBuilder) and a tool used to create interactive experiences (called urSpace). By using XploreBuilder, a tool built of top of vuSpot, a user with little or no experience in programming can define a space and design interactive experiences. This tool generates a description of the space and of the interactions at that space (that complies with the XploreDescription grammar). These descriptions can be given to urSpace, another tool built of top of vuSpot, that creates the interactive experience application. With this system we explore new forms of interaction and use mobile devices and pico projectors to deliver additional information to the users leading to the creation of interactive experiences. The several components are presented as well as the results of the respective user tests, which were positive. The design and implementation becomes cheaper, faster, more flexible and, since it does not depend on the knowledge of a programming language, accessible for the general public.

Should Quinta dos Açores expand its retailer network in lisbon?

The primary purpose of this research is to examine the feasibility of expanding Quinta dos Açores retailer network in Lisbon starting from 2015 onwards. A time series model was developed to estimate the company’s future production and sales. A Discounted Cash Flow analysis was also conducted to determine the profitability of this expansion opportunity. Our findings reveal that Quinta dos Açores will face negative results in the first two years of the expansion strategy, but the overall opportunity presents a net positive result of almost three million euros.

A business plan for a new mobile application to the consumer foodservice industry

The Portuguese consumer foodservice industry is experiencing a boost in technology adoption, driven by significant changes in consumer behavior and business dynamics, due to mobile increasing penetration. Accordingly, the present work project consists on developing a business plan for meeting an identified opportunity in the technological foodservice landscape. Therefore, this report is divided into three sections, each of which addressing different objectives: (A) External Environment, providing key external insights that support the opportunity; (B) Strategy Formulation, establishing a strategic direction; and (C) Action Plan, determining an implementation plan for starting the business

The new economy: Essays in network economics and two-sided markets

Following the Introduction, which surveys existing literature on the technology advances and regulation in telecommunications and on two-sided markets, we address specific issues on the industries of the New Economy, featured by the existence of network effects. We seek to explore how each one of these industries work, identify potential market failures and find new solutions at the economic regulation level promoting social welfare. In Chapter 1 we analyze a regulatory issue on access prices and investments in the telecommunications market. The existing literature on access prices and investment has pointed out that networks underinvest under a regime of mandatory access provision with a fixed access price per end-user. We propose a new access pricing rule, the indexation approach, i.e., the access price, per end-user, that network i pays to network j is function of the investment levels set by both networks. We show that the indexation can enhance economic efficiency beyond what is achieved with a fixed access price. In particular, access price indexation can simultaneously induce lower retail prices and higher investment and social welfare as compared to a fixed access pricing or a regulatory holidays regime. Furthermore, we provide sufficient conditions under which the indexation can implement the socially optimal investment or the Ramsey solution, which would be impossible to obtain under fixed access pricing. Our results contradict the notion that investment efficiency must be sacrificed for gains in pricing efficiency. In Chapter 2 we investigate the effect of regulations that limit advertising airtime on advertising quality and on social welfare. We show, first, that advertising time regulation may reduce the average quality of advertising broadcast on TV networks. Second, an advertising cap may reduce media platforms and firms' profits, while the net effect on viewers (subscribers) welfare is ambiguous because the ad quality reduction resulting from a regulatory cap o¤sets the subscribers direct gain from watching fewer ads. We find that if subscribers are sufficiently sensitive to ad quality, i.e., the ad quality reduction outweighs the direct effect of the cap, a cap may reduce social welfare. The welfare results suggest that a regulatory authority that is trying to increase welfare via regulation of the volume of advertising on TV might necessitate to also regulate advertising quality or, if regulating quality proves impractical, take the effect of advertising quality into consideration. 3 In Chapter 3 we investigate the rules that govern Electronic Payment Networks (EPNs). In EPNs the No-Surcharge Rule (NSR) requires that merchants charge at most the same amount for a payment card transaction as for cash. In this chapter, we analyze a three- party model (consumers, merchants, and a proprietary EPN) with endogenous transaction volumes and heterogenous merchants' transactional benefits of accepting cards to assess the welfare impacts of the NSR. We show that, if merchants are local monopolists and the network externalities from merchants to cardholders are sufficiently strong, with the exception of the EPN, all agents will be worse o¤ with the NSR, and therefore the NSR is socially undesirable. The positive role of the NSR in terms of improvement of retail price efficiency for cardholders is also highlighted.

Genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction of Polaromonas sp. strain JS666: analysis of cDCE degradation rates and design of experiments for bioremediation improvement

Release of chloroethene compounds into the environment often results in groundwater contamination, which puts people at risk of exposure by drinking contaminated water. cDCE (cis-1,2-dichloroethene) accumulation on subsurface environments is a common environmental problem due to stagnation and partial degradation of other precursor chloroethene species. Polaromonas sp. strain JS666 apparently requires no exotic growth factors to be used as a bioaugmentation agent for aerobic cDCE degradation. Although being the only suitable microorganism found capable of such, further studies are needed for improving the intrinsic bioremediation rates and fully comprehend the metabolic processes involved. In order to do so, a metabolic model, iJS666, was reconstructed from genome annotation and available bibliographic data. FVA (Flux Variability Analysis) and FBA (Flux Balance Analysis) techniques were used to satisfactory validate the predictive capabilities of the iJS666 model. The iJS666 model was able to predict biomass growth for different previously tested conditions, allowed to design key experiments which should be done for further model improvement and, also, produced viable predictions for the use of biostimulant metabolites in the cDCE biodegradation.

Using mobile technology to conduct epidemiological investigations

INTRODUCTION : The aim of this study was to report the experience of an epidemiological field survey for which data were collected and analyzed using tablets. METHODS : The devices used Epi Info 7 (Android version), which has been modeled a database with variables of the traditional form. RESULTS : Twenty-one households were randomly selected in the study area; 75 residents were registered and completed household interviews with socioeconomic and environmental risk variables. CONCLUSIONS : This new technology is a valuable tool for collecting and analyzing data from the field, with advantageous benefits to epidemiological surveys.

Frequency-domain receiver design for doubly-selective channels

This work is devoted to the broadband wireless transmission techniques, which are serious candidates to be implemented in future broadband wireless and cellular systems, aiming at providing high and reliable data transmission and concomitantly high mobility. In order to cope with doubly-selective channels, receiver structures based on OFDM and SC-FDE block transmission techniques, are proposed, which allow cost-effective implementations, using FFT-based signal processing. The first subject to be addressed is the impact of the number of multipath components, and the diversity order, on the asymptotic performance of OFDM and SC-FDE, in uncoded and for different channel coding schemes. The obtained results show that the number of relevant separable multipath components is a key element that influences the performance of OFDM and SC-FDE schemes. Then, the improved estimation and detection performance of OFDM-based broadcasting systems, is introduced employing SFN (Single Frequency Network) operation. An initial coarse channel is obtained with resort to low-power training sequences estimation, and an iterative receiver with joint detection and channel estimation is presented. The achieved results have shown very good performance, close to that with perfect channel estimation. The next topic is related to SFN systems, devoting special attention to time-distortion effects inherent to these networks. Typically, the SFN broadcast wireless systems employ OFDM schemes to cope with severely time-dispersive channels. However, frequency errors, due to CFO, compromises the orthogonality between subcarriers. As an alternative approach, the possibility of using SC-FDE schemes (characterized by reduced envelope fluctuations and higher robustness to carrier frequency errors) is evaluated, and a technique, employing joint CFO estimation and compensation over the severe time-distortion effects, is proposed. Finally, broadband mobile wireless systems, in which the relative motion between the transmitter and receiver induces Doppler shift which is different or each propagation path, is considered, depending on the angle of incidence of that path in relation to the direction of travel. This represents a severe impairment in wireless digital communications systems, since that multipath propagation combined with the Doppler effects, lead to drastic and unpredictable fluctuations of the envelope of the received signal, severely affecting the detection performance. The channel variations due this effect are very difficult to estimate and compensate. In this work we propose a set of SC-FDE iterative receivers implementing efficient estimation and tracking techniques. The performance results show that the proposed receivers have very good performance, even in the presence of significant Doppler spread between the different groups of multipath components.

Tecnologias da informação e comunicação na formação continuada de professores: estudode caso em escolas do Brasil e Portugal com recursos e aplicação do Google+

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (área de especialização em Tecnologia Educativa)

Localization in underground tunnels

Positioning technologies are becoming ubiquitous and are being used more and more frequently for supporting a large variety of applica- tions. For outdoor applications, global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs), such as the global positioning system (GPS), are the most common and popular choice because of their wide coverage. GPS is also augmented with network-based systems that exploit existing wireless and mobile networks for providing positioning functions where GPS is not available or to save energy in battery-powered devices. Indoors, GNSSs are not a viable solution, but many applications require very accurate, fast, and exible positioning, tracking, and navigation functions. These and other requirements have stim- ulated research activities, in both industry and academia, where a variety of fundamental principles, techniques, and sensors are being integrated to provide positioning functions to many applications. The large majority of positioning technologies is for indoor environments, and most of the existing commercial products have been developed for use in of ce buildings, airports, shopping malls, factory plants, and similar spaces. There are, however, other spaces where positioning, tracking, and navigation systems play a central role in safety and in rescue operations, as well as in supporting speci c activities or for scienti c research activities in other elds. Among those spaces are underground tunnels, mines, and even underwater wells and caves. This chapter describes the research efforts over the past few years that have been put into the development of positioning systems for underground tun- nels, with particular emphasis in the case of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), where localiza- tion aims at enabling more automatic and unmanned radiation surveys. Examples of positioning and localization systems that have been devel- oped in the past few years for underground facilities are presented in the fol- lowing section, together with a brief characterization of those spaces’ special conditions and the requirements of some of the most common applications. Section 5.2 provides a short overview of some of the most representative research efforts that are currently being carried out by many research teams around the world. In addition, some of the fundamental principles and tech- niques are identi ed, such as the use of leaky coaxial cables, as used at the LHC. In Section 5.3, we introduce the speci c environment of the LHC and de ne the positioning requirements for the envisaged application. This is followed by a detailed description of our approach and the results that have been achieved so far. Some last comments and remarks are presented in a nal section.

Human mobility patterns at the smallest scales

We present a study on human mobility at small spatial scales. Differently from large scale mobility, recently studied through dollar-bill tracking and mobile phone data sets within one big country or continent, we report Brownian features of human mobility at smaller scales. In particular, the scaling exponents found at the smallest scales is typically close to one-half, differently from the larger values for the exponent characterizing mobility at larger scales. We carefully analyze 12-month data of the Eduroam database within the Portuguese university of Minho. A full procedure is introduced with the aim of properly characterizing the human mobility within the network of access points composing the wireless system of the university. In particular, measures of flux are introduced for estimating a distance between access points. This distance is typically non-Euclidean, since the spatial constraints at such small scales distort the continuum space on which human mobility occurs. Since two different ex- ponents are found depending on the scale human motion takes place, we raise the question at which scale the transition from Brownian to non-Brownian motion takes place. In this context, we discuss how the numerical approach can be extended to larger scales, using the full Eduroam in Europe and in Asia, for uncovering the transi- tion between both dynamical regimes.

Dynamic group formation in mobile computer supported collaborative learning environment

Forming suitable learning groups is one of the factors that determine the efficiency of collaborative learning activities. However, only a few studies were carried out to address this problem in the mobile learning environments. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic, customized, and dynamic group formation in Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) contexts. The proposed solution is based on the combination of three types of grouping criteria: learner’s personal characteristics, learner’s behaviours, and context information. The instructors can freely select the type, the number, and the weight of grouping criteria, together with other settings such as the number, the size, and the type of learning groups (homogeneous or heterogeneous). Apart from a grouping mechanism, the proposed approach represents a flexible tool to control each learner, and to manage the learning processes from the beginning to the end of collaborative learning activities. In order to evaluate the quality of the implemented group formation algorithm, we compare its Average Intra-cluster Distance (AID) with the one of a random group formation method. The results show a higher effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in forming homogenous and heterogeneous groups compared to the random method.

Cost-effective and lightweight mobile units for MixAR: A comparative trial among different setups

Cultural heritage has arousing the interest of the general public (e.g. tourists), resulting in the increasing number of visitations to archaeological sites. However, many buildings and monuments are severely damaged or completely destroyed, which doesn’t allow to get a full experience of “travelling in time”. Over the years, several Augmented Reality (AR) approaches were proposed to overcome these issues by providing three-dimensional visualization of reconstructed ancient structures in situ. However, most of these systems were made available through heavy and expensive technological bundles. Alternatively, MixAR intends to be a lightweight and cost-effective Mixed Reality system which aims to provide the visualization of virtual ancient buildings reconstructions in situ, properly superimposed and aligned with real-world ruins. This paper proposes and compares different AR mobile units setups to be used in the MixAR system, with low-cost and lightweight requirements in mind, providing different levels of immersion. It was propounded four different mobile units, based on: a laptop computer, a single-board computer (SBC), a tablet and a smartphone, which underwent a set of tests to evaluate their performances. The results show that mobile units based on laptop computer and SBC reached a good overall performance while mobile units based on tablet and smartphone did not meet such a satisfactory result even though they are acceptable for the intended use.