Mobile Social Networking aided content dissemination in heterogeneous networks

Since more and more mobile applications are based on the proliferation of social information, the study of Mobile Social Net-works (MSNs) combines social sciences and wireless communications. Operating wireless networks more efficiently by exploiting social relationships between MSN users is an appealing but challenging option for network operators. An MSN-aided content dissemination technique is presented as a potential ex-tension of conventional cellular wireless net-works in order to satisfy growing data traffic. By allowing the MSN users to create a self-organized ad hoc network for spontaneously disseminating contents, the network operator may be able to reduce the operational costs and simultaneously achieve an improved network performance. In this paper, we first summarize the basic features of the MSN architecture, followed by a survey of the factors which may affect MSN-aided content dissemination. Using a case study, we demonstrate that one can save resources of the Base Station (BS) while substantially lowering content dissemination delay. Finally, other potential applications of MSN-aided content dissemination are introduced, and a range of future challenges are summarized

WLAN Location Sharing through a Privacy Observant Architecture

In the last few years, WLAN has seen immense growth and it will continue this trend due to the fact that it provides convenient connectivity as well as high speed links. Furthermore, the infrastructure already exists in most public places and is cheap to extend. These advantages, together with the fact that WLAN covers a large area and is not restricted to line of sight, have led to developing many WLAN localization techniques and applications based on them. In this paper we present a novel calibration-free localization technique using the existing WLAN infrastructure that enables conference participants to determine their location without the need of a centralized system. The evaluation results illustrate the superiority of our technique compared to existing methods. In addition, we present a privacy observant architecture to share location information. We handle both the location of people and the resources in the infrastructure as services, which can be easily discovered and used. An important design issue for us was to avoid tracking people and giving the users control over who they share their location information with and under which conditions

Facilitating community building in Learning Networks through peer tutoring in ad hoc transient communities

De volledige referentie is: Kester, L., Sloep, P. B., Van Rosmalen, P., Brouns, F., Koné, M., & Koper, R. (2007). Facilitating Community Building in Learning Networks Through Peer-Tutoring in Ad Hoc Transient Communities. International Journal of Web based Communities, 3(2), 198-205.Learning in a so called Learning Network is particularly attractive to self-directed learners, who themselves decide on their learning programme as well as on the timing, pace and place of their studies. However, such learners may easily become isolated, which is detrimental to their studies. Furthermore, supporting them with their studies rapidly lead to staff overload. This paper discusses of ad hoc, transient communities as a means of tackling both problems. It is argued that such communities are well poised to enhance the sociability of a Learning Network and increase learning effectiveness

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

Entertainment Personalization Mechanism through Cross-Domain User Modeling

Abstract. The growth of available entertainment information services, such as movies and CD listings, or travels and recreational activities, raises a need for personalization techniques for filtering and adapting contents to customer's interest and needs. Personalization technologies rely on users data, represented as User Models (UMs). UMs built by specific services are usually not transferable due to commercial competition and models ' representation heterogeneity. This paper focuses on the second obstacle and discusses architecture for mediating UMs across different domains of entertainment. The mediation facilitates improving the accuracy of the UMs and upgrading the provided personalization. 1

Reflective mobile middleware for context-aware applications

The increasing popularity of mobile devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, and advances in wireless networking technologies, are enabling new classes of applications that present challenging problems to application designers. Applications have to be aware of, and adapt to, variations in the execution context, such as fluctuating network bandwidth and decreasing battery power, in order to deliver a good quality of service to their users. We argue that building applications directly on top of the network operating system would be extremely tedious and error-prone, as application developers would have to deal with these issues explicitly, and would consequently be distracted from the actual requirements of the application they are building. Rather, a middleware layered between the network operating system and the application should provide application developers with abstractions and mechanisms to deal with them. We investigate the principle of reflection and demonstrate how it can be used to support context-awareness and dynamic adaptation to context changes. We offer application engineers an abstraction of middleware as a dynamically customisable service provider, where each service can be delivered using different policies when requested in different contexts. Based on this abstraction, current middleware behaviour, with respect to a particular application, is reified in an application profile, and made accessible to the application for run-time inspection and adaptation. Applications can use the meta-interface that the middleware provides to change the information encoded in their profile, thus tailoring middleware behaviour to the user's needs. However, while doing so, conflicts may arise; different users may have different quality-of-service needs, and applications, in an attempt to full these needs, may customise middleware behaviour in conflicting ways. These conflicts have to be resolved in order to allow applications to come to an agreement, and thus be able to engage successful collaborations. We demonstrate how microeconomic techniques can be used to treat these kinds of conflicts. We offer an abstraction of the mobile setting as an economy, where applications compete to have a service delivered according to their quality-of-service needs. We have designed a mechanism where middleware plays the role of the auctioneer, collecting bids from the applications and delivering the service using the policy that maximises social welfare; that is, the one that delivers, on average, the best quality-of-service. We formalise the principles discussed above, namely reflection to support context-awareness and microeconomic techniques to support conflict resolution. To demonstrate their effectiveness in fostering the development of context-aware applications, we discuss a middleware architecture and implementation (CARISMA) that embed these principles, and report on performance and usability results obtained during a thorough evaluation stage

Context Aware Browser

I will present the Context Aware Browser, a novel paradigm for context-aware access to Web contents with mobile devices. The idea is to allow automatic download of Web pages, and even automatic execution of Web applications, on user\u27s own mobile device. The Web resources are not simply pushed on the mobile device; rather, they are selected on the basis of the context the user is in: context data (mainly location, but not only) are used to build a query sent to an external search engine, that selects the most relevant Web content. I will describe the idea, provide some examples, show a video of a recently built prototype, present implementation issues, discuss our specific evaluation methodology and the results, and sketch future work and problems. This is an ongoing project, started about five years ago; it is joint work with the Context Aware and Mobile Systems laboratory (smdc.uniud.it) and the MoBe spinoff (www.mobe.it) at Udine University

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Ad-hoc networks are a key in the evolution of wireless networks. Ad-hoc networks are typically composed of equal nodes, which communicate over wireless links without any central control. Ad-hoc wireless networks inherit the traditional problems of wireless and mobile communications, such as bandwidth optimisation, power control and transmission quality enhancement. In addition, the multi-hop nature and the lack of fixed infrastructure brings new research problems such as configuration advertising, discovery and maintenance, as well as ad-hoc addressing and self-routing. Many different approaches and protocols have been proposed and there are even multiple standardization efforts within the Internet Engineering Task Force, as well as academic and industrial projects. This chapter focuses on the state of the art in mobile ad-hoc networks. It highlights some of the emerging technologies, protocols, and approaches (at different layers) for realizing network services for users on the move in areas with possibly no pre-existing communications infrastructure