Certificate Handling Middleware for Mobile Devices

The purpose of this thesis was to study how certificates could be used to improve security of mobile devices. In the theoretical part the usage of certificates to improve security is explained. In the practical part a concept of certificate handling middleware is introduced and implemented. This is to demonstrate what kind of functionality is needed to provide an improvement over the current situation in security with mobile devices. The certificate handling middleware is a concept that would work better if implemented directly into mobile device's core functionality. Many of the mobile devices have a certificate store to some degree and often it is not used to store other people's certificates. A certificate store combined with address book and added with possibility to add attributes to the people such as group memberships would be sufficient to satisfy the needs of many emerging sharing and social applications.

Post-industrial 2.0 – Social Web as the second coming of the post-industrial society

This study presents a review of theories of the so-called post-industrial society, and proposes that the concept of post-industrial society can be used to understand the recent developments of the World Wide Web, often described as Web 2.0 or social Web. The study combines theories ranging from post-war management science and cultural studies to software development, and tries to build a holistic view of the development of the post-industrial society, and especially the Internet. The discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society after the World Wars has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. It is furthermore deeply connected with the discourse on the postmodern society, which emphasizes cultural fragmentation, intertextuality, and pluralism. The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. While 1990s Internet technologies often used the network as a traditional broadcasting channel with added interactivity, Web 2.0 technologies are specifically designed to utilize the network model by facilitating communication between various services and devices, and analyzing the relationships between users and objects in order to produce intelligent insight. The wide adoption of the Internet, and recently of Internet-enabled mobile devices, is furthermore continuously producing new ways of communicating, consuming, and producing. Applications of the social Web, such as social media or social networking services, are permanently changing our traditional social, cultural, and economic practices. The study first presents an overview of the post-industrial society, the Internet, and the concept of Web 2.0. Then the concept of social Web is described with an analysis of the term social media, the brief histories of the interactive Web and social networking services, and a description of the concept ―long tail‖, used to represent the masses of information available in the Web that do not receive mainstream attention. Finally, methods for retrieving and filtering information, modeling social and cultural relationships, and communicating with customers, are presented.

Co-created Mobile Narratives

FM Marjo Mäenpään Turun yliopiston Humanistisen tiedekunnan Kulttuurituotannon ja maisemantutkimuksen digitaalisen kulttuurin oppialalle valmistunut väitöskirja Co-created Mobile Narratives tarkastetaan Porin yliopistokeskuksessa 27. huhtikuuta 2013. Marjo Mäenpää tutkii, kuinka ihmiset tarinallistavat elämänsä, kuvittavat ja jakavat kokemuksiaan toisten ihmisten kanssa mobiilin median avulla. Elämänjulkaisemisesta on tullut ihmisten arkista toimintaa. Mäenpää lähestyy jaettuja kännykkävideotarinoita kolmesta eri näkökulmasta. Hän tutkii tarinoiden rakennetta, julkaisemista ja julkaisevia yhteisöjä narratologian, yhteisöjen toiminnan ja mediantutkimuksen valossa. Teoreetikot aina Aristoteleesta klassisen narratologian tutkijoihin ovat esittäneet erilaisia tarinallisuuden kaavoja ja rakenteita, joita on havaittavissa myös yhteisössä tuotetuista videotarinoista. Myöhemmän alan tutkimustradition, mm. kognitiivisen narratologian mukaan ihmiset hahmottavat tarinallisia kokonaisuuksia pienemmistäkin fragmenteista ja vihjeistä. Elämän tarinaa, käännekohtia ja elämyksiä kerrotaan usein – esimerkiksi Facebookissa – yksittäisillä, sattumanvaraisilla kuvilla. Yhteisöllinen tuotanto edellyttää luottamusta. Yhteisö jakaa tarinoita, jotka voivat olla hyvinkin fragmentaarisia, mutta saavat merkityksensä yhteisestä kokemusmaailmasta ja kulttuurista. Julkaiseminen on sattumanvaraista, luovaa toimintaa, jonka lopputulos voi olla ennalta arvaamaton. Kuitenkin julkaiseminen edellyttää jonkinlaista aktiivista toimijaa tai tuottajaa. Rakenteen julkaisemiselle voi antaa tuottaja, moderaattori tai hyvin rakennettu teknologinen julkaisualusta. Monitieteisen väitöstutkimuksen aineisto on peräisin Turun yliopiston, Tampereen teknillisen yliopiston ja Aalto- yliopiston Porin yksiköiden yhteisestä Mobile Social Media -tutkimushankkeesta. Vuosina 2008-2010 hankkeessa suunniteltiin MoViE (Mobile Video Experience) -sovellusta, jonka avulla ihmiset voivat julkaista omia lyhyitä videoitaan ja jakaa niitä toisten käyttäjien kanssa. MoViE-sovelluksen avulla käyttäjät voivat editoida omia ja toisten kuvaamia videoita sekä julkaista kuvallisia tarinoita yhteisöllisistä kokemuksista. MoViE-sovellusta kokeiltiin mm. Pori Jazz -konserteissa. Samasta konsertista taltioitui kännykkävideoille useita näkökulmia, ja testikäyttäjäryhmä koosti useita erilaisia videotarinoita yhteisestä konserttikokemuksestaan. Marjo Mäenpää (1959) työskentelee opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriössä kulttuuriasiainneuvoksena. Hän on toiminut mm. kustantajana, multimedian dramaturgian opettajana Teatterikorkeakoulussa, digitaalisen mediatuotannon professorina Aalto-yliopiston Taiteen ja suunnittelun korkeakoulussa vuosina 2006-2012 sekä Taiteen edistämiskeskuksen väliaikaisena johtajana vuonna 2013.

Mobile clinics in public health care: Integrated service offerings for rural elderly

This research is an analysis of the value and content of local service offerings that enable longer periods of living at home for elderly people. Mobile health care and new distribution services have provided an interesting solution in this context. The research aim to shed light on the research question, ‘How do we bundle services based on different customer needs?’ A research process consisting of three main phases was applied for this purpose. During this process, elderly customers were segmented, the importance of services was rated and service offerings were defined. Value creation and service offering provides theoretical framework for the research. The target group is South Karelia’s 60 to 90-year old individuals and the data has been acquired via a postal questionnaire. Research has been conducted as exploratory research utilizing the methods of quantitative and social network analysis. The main results of the report are identified customer segments and service packages that fits to the segments’ needs. The results indicate the needs of customers and the results are additionally analysed from the producer’s point of view. In addition to the empirical results, the used theory framework has been developed further in order for the service-related theories to be seen from the customer’s point of view and not just from the producer’s point of view.

Adherence to Treatment in Psychotic Disorders - Development of user-centered mobile health intervention

The aim of this study was to explore adherence to treatment among people with psychotic disorders through the development of user-centered mobile technology (mHealth) intervention. More specifically, this study investigates treatment adherence as well as mHealth intervention and the factors related to its possible usability. The data were collected from 2010 to 2013. First, patients’ and professionals’ perceptions of adherence management and restrictive factors of adherence were described (n = 61). Second, objectives and methods of the intervention were defined based on focus group interviews and previously used methods. Third, views of patients and professionals about barriers and requirements of the intervention were described (n = 61). Fourth, mHealth intervention was evaluated based on a literature review (n = 2) and patients preferences regarding the intervention (n = 562). Adherence management required support in everyday activities, social networks and maintaining a positive outlook. The factors restricting adherence were related to illness, behavior and the environment. The objective of the intervention was to support the intention to follow the treatment guidelines and recommendations with mHealth technology. The barriers and requirements for the use of the mHealth were related to technology, organizational issues and the users themselves. During the course of the intervention, 33 (6%) out of 562 participants wanted to edit the content, timing or amount of the mHealth tool, and 23 (4%) quit the intervention or study before its conclusion. According to the review, mHealth interventions were ineffective in promoting adherence. Prior to the intervention, participants perceived that adherence could be supported, and the use of mHealth as a part of treatment was seen as an acceptable and efficient method for doing so. In conclusion, the use of mHealth may be feasible among people with psychotic disorders. However, clear evidence for its effectiveness in regards to adherence is still currently inconclusive.

Examining human-centered design practice in the mobile apps era

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a well-recognized approach to the design of interactive computing systems that supports everyday and professional lives of people. To that end, the HCD approach put central emphasis on the explicit understanding of users and context of use by involving users throughout the entire design and development process. With mobile computing, the diversity of users as well as the variety in the spatial, temporal, and social settings of the context of use has notably expanded, which affect the effort of interaction designers to understand users and context of use. The emergence of the mobile apps era in 2008 as a result of structural changes in the mobile industry and the profound enhanced capabilities of mobile devices, further intensify the embeddedness of technology in the daily life of people and the challenges that interaction designers face to cost-efficiently understand users and context of use. Supporting interaction designers in this challenge requires understanding of their existing practice, rationality, and work environment. The main objective of this dissertation is to contribute to interaction design theories by generating understanding on the HCD practice of mobile systems in the mobile apps era, as well as to explain the rationality of interaction designers in attending to users and context of use. To achieve that, a literature study is carried out, followed by a mixed-methods research that combines multiple qualitative interview studies and a quantitative questionnaire study. The dissertation contributes new insights regarding the evolving HCD practice at an important time of transition from stationary computing to mobile computing. Firstly, a gap is identified between interaction design as practiced in research and in the industry regarding the involvement of users in context; whereas the utilization of field evaluations, i.e. in real-life environments, has become more common in academic projects, interaction designers in the industry still rely, by large, on lab evaluations. Secondly, the findings indicate on new aspects that can explain this gap and the rationality of interaction designers in the industry in attending to users and context; essentially, the professional-client relationship was found to inhibit the involvement of users, while the mental distance between practitioners and users as well as the perceived innovativeness of the designed system are suggested in explaining the inclination to study users in situ. Thirdly, the research contributes the first explanatory model on the relation between the organizational context and HCD; essentially, innovation-focused organizational strategies greatly affect the cost-effective usage of data on users and context of use. Last, the findings suggest a change in the nature of HCD in the mobile apps era, at least with universal consumer systems; evidently, the central attention on the explicit understanding of users and context of use shifts from an early requirements phase and continual activities during design and development to follow-up activities. That is, the main effort to understand users is by collecting data on their actual usage of the system, either before or after the system is deployed. The findings inform both researchers and practitioners in interaction design. In particular, the dissertation suggest on action research as a useful approach to support interaction designers and further inform theories on interaction design. With regard to the interaction design practice, the dissertation highlights strategies that encourage a more cost-effective user- and context-informed interaction design process. With the continual embeddedness of computing into people’s life, e.g. with wearable devices and connected car systems, the dissertation provides a timely and valuable view on the evolving humancentered design.

Le projet du Wapikoni mobile, médiation et représentation : création audiovidéo et changement socioculturel dans la communauté atikamekw de Manawan

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

El caso de perdurabilidad empresarial de Crepes & Waffles desde una perspectiva de responsabilidad social empresarial e innovación en valor en Colombia

La multinacional Crepes & Waffles posee una historia extraordinaria de emprendimiento y arte en la gestión, con la cual construye un valor agregado diferenciador en la industria gastronómica de Colombia, pues mediante el uso de una estrategia enfocada hacia la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial (RSE) genera Innovación en Valor y por consiguiente la satisfacción de cada uno de sus clientes tanto internos como externos (Stakeholders) estableciendo lazos de confianza y compromiso. El presente trabajo de grado busca incluir como ingrediente clave de la perdurabilidad a la RSE creadora de Innovación en Valor, ya que por medio del estudio del caso Crepes & Waffles, se concluye que una gerencia humana, holística y comprometida con la construcción de su entorno, puede lograr que una empresa sea legitimada por la sociedad en la que está inmersa. Una buena dosis de RSE estratégicamente aplicada se configura hoy por hoy como la receta innegable del éxito y aunque un sinnúmero de teorías organizacionales tratan de establecer las pautas para impulsar el crecimiento de las empresas, únicamente la entidad que logre ingresar al corazón de sus Stakeholders y crear fidelidad, se mantendrá en el tiempo y se sumergirá en un nicho de mercado carente de competidores, o en lo que los escritores W. Chan Kim y Renée Mauborgne (2005) describen en su libro “La estrategia del Océano Azul” como “Un espacio de mercado no disputado donde la competencia es irrelevante”.

Teleconsultation in sexual and reproductive health for young adults through mobile devices: Experience in Colombia

Background: Sexual risk behaviors associated with poor information on sexuality have contributed to major public health problems in the area of sexual and reproductive health in teenagers and young adults in Colombia. Objective: To measure the perception of changes in sexual and reproductive risk behavior after the use of a teleconsultation service via mobile devices in a sample of young adults. Methods: A before and after observational study was designed, where a mobile application to inquire about sexual and reproductive health was developed. The perception of changes in sexual and reproductive health risk behaviors in a sample of young adults after the use of the application was measured using the validated survey “Family Health International (FHI) – Behavioral Surveillance Survey (BSS) – Survey for Adults between 15 to 40 Years”. Non-probabilistic convenience recruitment was undertaken through the study´s web page. Participants answered the survey online before and after the use of the mobile application for a six month period (intervention). For the inferential analysis, data was divided into three groups (dichotomous data, discrete quantitative data, and ordinal data), to compare the results of the questions between the first and the second survey. For all tests, a confidence interval of 95% was established. For dichotomous data, the Chi-squared test was used. For quantitative data, we used the Student’s t-test, and for ordinal data, the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test. Results: A total of 257 subjects were registered in the study and met the selection criteria. The pre-intervention survey was answered by 232 subjects, and 127 completely answered the post-intervention survey, of which 54.3% did not use the application, leaving an effective population of 58 subjects for analysis. 53% (n=31) were female, and 47% (n=27) were male. The mean age was 21 years, ranging between 18 and 40 years. The differences between the answers on the first and the second survey were not statistically significant. The main risk behaviors identified in the population were homosexual relations, non-use of condoms, sexual relations with non-regular and commercial partners, the use of psychoactive substances, and ignorance about the symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV transmission. Conclusions: Although there were no differences between the pre- and post-intervention results, the study revealed different risk behaviors among the participating subjects. These findings highlight the importance of promoting educational strategies on this matter and the importance of providing patients with easily accessible tools with reliable health information.

La relación entre los conceptos de relación estratégica comunitaria de las organizaciones con las comunidades y la responsabilidad social

Para maximizar los beneficios, una compañía fundamenta sus acciones en ciertas estrategias que ayudan a cumplir su objetivo de generar utilidades. Entre las diferentes acciones que una organización puede utilizar, están las de responsabilidad social y las de relaciones estratégicas con la comunidad. Partiendo de la definición de comunidad, pasando por una descripción de responsabilidad social y sus diferentes formas de aplicabilidad dentro de una empresa, hasta la definición de relación estratégica con la comunidad; esta investigación dirige sus esfuerzos a determinar el vínculo que existe entre los conceptos de responsabilidad social y relación estratégica comunitaria. Adicionalmente, se plantea que otras estrategias de relacionamiento con clientes, como el mercadeo relacional o el CRM, las cuales enfocan sus esfuerzos en conocer a cada uno de los clientes de una compañía para plantear una oferta acorde a sus necesidades, no son muy efectivas a la hora de crear un vínculo emocional con la comunidad.

A new competence-based approach for personalizing MOOCs in a mobile collaborative and networked environment

Resumen basado en el de la publicaci??n

Mobile Internet : perspectives from the Stakeholders

Mobile internet represents a major new trend in communication technologies use and consumption, but few evidence exists that confirms claims of novelty and social change in association with this technology use. This paper characterizes the use of mobile internet in a southern European country and associated patterns of use, focusing both on users’ profiles, forms of access, motivations to use and most popular activities undertaken via this technology, from a diffusion of innovations and social adoption of technologies perspectives, and tries to compare mobile it with fixed access to the internet in order to validate possible transformations that point to new social configurations. We seek to understand the way stakeholders perceive and characterize the European context of mobile internet. The depicted study involved a qualitative stage consisting of a set of interviews with mobile communications industry representatives and market research community in the country. These interviews were analysed in Nvivo, leading to the following eleven main categories that are explored throughout the paper: smartphones in Europe, mobile internet in Europe, users profiles, obstacles to the spread, forms of access, forms of use, motivations to use mobile internet, limitations of smartphones, apps, digital divide VS digital union and predictions for the future, as well as several subcategories forming a tree categorization. According to the data collected, mobile phones’ sales are decreasing in Europe and worldwide but on the other hand smartphones are having an exponential growth which leads to the democratization of internet access via mobile devices. As a consequence of this, it is believed that mobile internet access will soon exceed the fixed one. Mobile internet users are multiplatform, they exploit all the possibilities of mobility and they are spending less time on computers. The main obstacles to the spread of mobile internet are the high prices of price plans and there is still a lack of information and knowledge regarding the service. Mobile internet users are developing new online surfing behaviours based on apps and less in browsers and social networks represent a very high share of internet traffic through mobile phones. With mobility, “dead time” is turning into useful time and users are more likely to be available to try new services and analyze products. Innovative services concerning geolocation, consumerism, share and relationships are growing and it is necessary to highlight that mobile internet allows calling and texting, which can turn telecommunications companies into the role of Dump Pipes. This exploratory design raises questions in relation with mobile internet access and its social consequences, and provides interesting indicative research results relevant for future research in this area.

Uses of mobile phones in higher education

This brief paper explores the current and potential usage of mobile phones within higher education. It reports on the outcomes of a brain storming session regarding this subject undertaken with a cohort of final year Computer Science students undertaking a Social, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Information Technology course at The University of Reading. Subsequent analysis was undertaken as a result of online discussion using a Managed Learning Environment and a web based survey completed by over 250 undergraduates from around the UK.

Can social interaction skills be taught by a social agent? The role of a robotic mediator in autism therapy

Increasingly socially intelligent agents (software or robotic) are used in education, rehabilitation and therapy. This paper discusses the role of interactive, mobile robots as social mediators in the particular domain of autism therapy. This research is part of the project AURORA that studies how mobile robots can be used to teach children with autism basic interaction skills that are important in social interactions among humans. Results from a particular series of trials involving pairs of two children and a mobile robot are described. The results show that the scenario with pairs of children and a robot creates a very interesting social context which gives rise to a variety of different social and non-social interaction patterns, demonstrating the specific problems but also abilities of children with autism in social interactions. Future work will include a closer analysis of interactional structure in human-human and robot-human interaction. We outline a particular framework that we are investigating.

Social networks: evolving graphs with memory dependent edges

The plethora, and mass take up, of digital communication tech- nologies has resulted in a wealth of interest in social network data collection and analysis in recent years. Within many such networks the interactions are transient: thus those networks evolve over time. In this paper we introduce a class of models for such networks using evolving graphs with memory dependent edges, which may appear and disappear according to their recent history. We consider time discrete and time continuous variants of the model. We consider the long term asymptotic behaviour as a function of parameters controlling the memory dependence. In particular we show that such networks may continue evolving forever, or else may quench and become static (containing immortal and/or extinct edges). This depends on the ex- istence or otherwise of certain infinite products and series involving age dependent model parameters. To test these ideas we show how model parameters may be calibrated based on limited samples of time dependent data, and we apply these concepts to three real networks: summary data on mobile phone use from a developing region; online social-business network data from China; and disaggregated mobile phone communications data from a reality mining experiment in the US. In each case we show that there is evidence for memory dependent dynamics, such as that embodied within the class of models proposed here.