New Actors and New Media in Technology Discourse: An Investigation of Tech Blogging

Discourse plays an important role in innovation and the diffusion of technology. Various types of actors act as knowledge entrepreneurs to collectively build this discourse. This paper examines the emergence of a new type of actor, tech bloggers, within technology discourse communities. Tech bloggers are authors of web logs focused on developments with new technologies. We examine tech bloggers’ entries collected by a technology news aggregator website, Techmeme. Our analysis demonstrates how tech bloggers through specific discursive practices position themselves as knowledge entrepreneurs within the blogging discourse community and within the wider discourse on technology and innovation. As they attempt to establish claims to legitimacy and influence in this discourse, individual bloggers contribute to the construction of tech bloggers as a collective actor and challenge the positions of established actors. We consider implications for field-level changes and outline areas for further research on technology discourse, new media, and knowledge entrepreneurship

Fitting in Versus Learning: A Challenge for Migrants Learning Languages Using Smartphones

There is great interest in the potential of smartphones to enable language learning during daily activities. However, this overlooks the paradox faced by migrant learners that while they have the educational goal of seeking to improve their language skills, they also have the cultural goal of fitting into the host society. Inappropriate use of smartphones as learning aids makes learners stand out as outsiders. Here, we investigate the use of smartphones by migrants for Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in their daily lives. We report on their participation in the trial of a system that coupled a custom smartphone app with location-based hardware triggers. This presented learning activities based on scenarios from everyday life that were prompted when approaching relevant locations around a UK town. Analysis of pre- and post- interviews indicates that social and cultural influences affect the location, timing and type of learning undertaken using the system. Participants preferred to learn in ways that were unobtrusive, and deferred engagement with content if social context inhibited use of the phone. For example, playing audio in public was seen as inappropriate. Although the app was designed with location-specific content, many participants chose to study elsewhere and at other times, in addition to accessing content from the phone at the time and place that the activity was triggered. We conclude that social context and wanting to belong are important influences for migrant learners, and emphasise the potential of MALL systems in encouraging engagement with physical and digital spaces and reflections about citizenship

Business Model Development in IT Startups - The Role of Scarcity and Personalization in Generating User Feedback

Despite the widely recognized importance of continuous business model development for achieving product market fit, very little remains understood about efficient methods that may support this process in the context of nascent IT ventures. Contributions for supporting value proposition development, especially in the popular field of open innovation, have largely focused on well established firms and more traditional approaches such as the lead user method. More recent findings suggest novel ways of virtual user integration, like the collection of user feedback via promotional campaigns, which is particularly prevalent among IT startups. However, these contributions have remained conspicuously theoretical. Therefore, by drawing on an experimental study in the context of the artificially created online fashion startup StyleCrowd, we investigate the role of scarcity and personalization, two classical promotional cues that have become ubiquitous on the web yet have been overlooked by research, in enhancing the virality of nascent ventures’ online promotional campaigns to enhance user feedback. Our analysis reveals that while scarcity cues affect social sharing regardless of whether a campaign is personalized or not, personalization cues are particularly effective when scarcity is absent, yet are cancelled out when scarcity is prevalent. We discuss implications for research and practice

"Tap it again, Sam": Harmonizing the frontiers between digital and real worlds in education

Lifelong leaners are intrinsically motivated to embed learning activities into daily life activities. Finding a suitable combination of the two is not trivial since lifelong learners have to face conflicts of time and location. Hence, lifelong learners normally build personal learning ecologies in those moments they set aside to learn making use of their available resources. On the other hand, the advent of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology facilitates the harmonization in the interactions between the digital world and daily physical spaces. Likewise, NFC enabled phones are becoming more and more popular. The contribution of this manuscript is threefold: first, scientific literature where NFC has been used with a direct or indirect purpose to learn is reviewed, and potential uses for lifelong learners are identified; based on these findings the Ecology of Resources for Lifelong Learning is presented as suitable setup for the scaffolding of learning activities with NFC augmented physical spaces; finally, this ecology is piloted and different learning scenarios are proposed for further extension

Mobile client for collecting sport activity statistics

Vývoj mobilních aplikací může být poměrně náročný v případech, kdy je vyžadována dostupnost aplikace na více platformách. Cílem této práce bylo prozkoumat možnosti pro vývoj multiplatformních mobilních aplikací, seznámit se s technologií Apache Cordova a použít ji k vývoji mobilního klienta pro uživatele portálu Jäsenverkko.fi. Aplikace umožňuje uživatelům spravovat jejich data uložená na vzdáleném serveru. Pokud je zařízení připojeno k internetu, aplikace data automaticky synchronizuje za použití aplikačního rozhraní portálu, je však schopna pracovat i bez připojení díky implementaci lokálního úložiště. Aplikace umožňuje ukládání vzdáleně definovaných tréninkových statistik pomocí snadno rozšiřitelných modulů. Výsledkem práce je přenositelná aplikace otestovaná na platformách Android a Windows Phone.ObhájenoMobile applications development can be rather demanding in cases where it is required to users on multiple platforms. The goal of this thesis was to investigate methods of mobile multiplatform development, get acquainted with and utilize Apache Cordova to implement a mobile client application for Jäsenverkko.fi portal users. The application allows its users to manage their data stored on a remote server. It automatically synchronizes them using portal's RESTful API when connected to the internet but is able to work even when offline as it contains a local storage facility. The application makes it possible to collect custom sport statistics specified remotely with a module that is easily extendable. A result of the work is a portable application tested on Android and Windows Phone platforms

Cloud-based Virtual Organization Engineering

Nowadays we may notice that SOA arrived to its maturity stage and Cloud Computing brings the next paradigm-shift regarding the software delivery business model. In such a context, we consider that there is a need for frameworks to guide the creation, execution and management of virtual organizations (VO) based on services from different Clouds. This paper will introduce the main components of such a framework that will innovatively combine the principles of event-driven SOA, REST and ISO/IEC 42010:2007 multiple views and viewpoints in order to provide the required methodology for Cloud-based virtual organization (Cloud-VO) engi-neering. The framework will consider the resource concept found in software architectures like REST or RDF as the basic building block of Cloud-VO. and will make use of resources’ URIs to create the Cloud-VO’s resource allocation matrix. While the matrix is used to declare activity-resources relationships, the resource catalogue concept will be introduced as a way to describe the resource in one place, using as many viewpoints as needed, and then to reuse that description for the creation or simulation of different VOs