A business planning framework for WiMAX applications

Mobile networking refers to wireless technologies which provide communications between devices. Applications for mobile networking have a broad scope as they can be applied to many situations in either industrial or commercial sectors. The challenge for firms is to better match market-induced variability to the organizational issues and systems necessary for technological innovation. This chapter develops a business planning framework for mobile networking applications. This framework recognises the fluidity of the situation when trying to anticipate and model emerging wireless applications. The business planning framework outlined in this chapter is a generic model which can be used by companies to assess the business case for applications utilizing mobile networking technologies

mLearning, development and delivery : creating opportunity and enterprise within the HE in FE context

This research project was funded by ESCalate in 2006-7 to support Somerset College in developing the curriculum, as well as widening participation via the use of mobile communications technologies such as mp3 players and mobile phones. The Project represents a highly topical and timely engagement with the opportunities for learning provided by the burgeoning use of mobile computing/ communications devices. Activities bring together colleagues from Teacher Education and Multimedia Computing in an innovative approach to designing for and delivering the curriculum. The Project addresses pedagogic issues and also vitally involves current and future learners, providing them with a new context for skills development and entrepreneurship. Anticipated outcomes include informed development of new HE modules and professional CPD activities which address the skills and context of this emerging approach to delivering the curriculum. The Project also intends to trial and evaluate the use of mobile technologies to support a blended learning approach to programme delivery and the development of a FD module which could be delivered via a mobile computing device. An interim report and a final project report are available as Word and PDF file

Design Implications for Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in Live Music

Mobile and sensor-based technologies have created new interaction design possibilities for technology-mediated au- dience participation in live music performance. However, there is little if any work in the literature that systematically identifies and characterises design issues emerging from this novel class of multi-dimensional interactive performance systems. As an early contribution towards addressing this gap in knowledge, we present the analysis of a detailed sur- vey of technology-mediated audience participation in live music, from the perspective of two key stakeholder groups - musicians and audiences. Results from the survey of over two hundred spectators and musicians are presented, along with descriptive analysis and discussion. These results are used to identify emerging design issues, such as expressive- ness, communication and appropriateness. Implications for interaction design are considered. While this study focuses on musicians and audiences, lessons are noted for diverse stakeholders, including composers, performers, interaction designers, media artists and engineers

Examining User Technology Interaction: Toward a Sociotechnical Theory for Understanding User Adjustment to Mobile Technologies

Researchers from organization, management, and information systems areas have studied the impact of information technology (IT) on users in organizations for several decades. As a form of emerging technology, mobile computing has raised new research directions, as well as challenges for both computer scientists and social scientists. In this paper, we explore the issues of how well the emerging mobile computing technologies conform to past models and predictions that have been offered for explaining the impacts of IT. In particular, this paper identifies the general lack of attention to individual-level differences that may interact with contextual factors to shape organizational users’ reactions to this new computing paradigm. We thus propose that IS researchers consider a specific sociotechnical theory – Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA) – to investigate how individual users adjust to technology-initiated changes in work practices resulting from mobile technologies. By highlighting the insights offered by TWA, we believe that this model is useful for analyzing individual responses to the adoption of mobile computing technologies

Mobile Technologies: Participation and Surveillance

Mobile phones could become the largest surveillance system on the planet. These ubiquitous devices can sense and record data such as images, sound and location. They can automatically upload this data via wireless connections into systems for aggregation and analysis. But unlike traditional surveillance devices, phone sensors can be controlled by billions of individuals around the world. Are emerging mobile technologies platforms for citizen participation in research and discovery? Or new tools for mass surveillance? Location-based technologies and mobile phone applications like carbon footprint calculator Ecorio and Google’s Latitude are attracting attention and raising new questions for engineers, policy makers, and users. These systems collect and combine data in new ways, and their effects cross political boundaries. Who will build and control processes such as data storage, aggregation, sharing, and retention? What policies are required to control this data, and who sets them? And to what purposes will these systems be deployed? Humanists, social scientists, and technologists all have tools and perspectives to investigate these questions and contribute to a discussion of social issues in mobile sensing. This course brings together students from across campus to use some of those disciplinary tools and explore ethics and social challenges engendered by new technologies. Readings, discussion, design exercises and assignments will provide methods, tools, and contexts for unpacking the social issues embedded in emerging technologies. We will concentrate on the features of mobile technologies and how our worldview – specific cultural lenses, research practices, political orientations, economic pressures, popular narratives and fiction – influences how these features are imagined and built

Centralized versus market-based approaches to mobile task allocation problem: State-of-the-art

Centralized approach has been adopted for finding solutions to resource allocation problems (RAPs) in many real-life applications. On the other hand, market-based approach has been proposed as an alternative to solve the problem due to recent advancement in ICT technologies. In spite of the existence of some efforts to review the pros and cons of each approach in RAPs, the studies cannot be directly applied to specific problem domains like mobile task allocation problem which is characterised with high level of uncertainty on the availability of resources (workers). This paper aims to review existing studies on task allocation problems(TAPs) focusing on those two approaches and their comparison and identify major issues that need to be resolved for comparing the two approaches in mobile task allocation problems. Mobile Task Allocation Problem (MTAP) is defined and its problematic structures are explained in relation with task allocation to mobile workers. Solutions produced by each approach to some applications and variations of MTAP are also discussed and compared. Finally, some future research directions are identified in order to compare both approaches in function of uncertainty emerging from the mobile nature of the MTAP

Issues in Mobile E-Commerce

Though many companies are still just beginning to grasp the potential uses and impacts of the Web and e-commerce, advances in technologies and their application continue. These advances often present various managerial and technological issues for individuals, companies, governments, and other entities. One significant area of technological advancement is the development of mobile e-commerce, which encompasses interactive business activities and processes related to a (potential) commercial transaction conducted through communications networks that interface with wireless devices. These systems provide the potential for organizations and users to perform various commerce-related tasks without regard to time and location (anytime from anywhere). This emerging mobile e-commerce environment presents a new set of issues. This paper identifies and categorizes some of these issues so that researchers, developers, and managers have a starting point for focusing their activities within the emerging m-commerce domain. Our examination finds categories that include technological (both client and infrastructure) issues, application issues, and areas for future research

Telehealth Wound Applications: Barriers, Solutions, and Future Use by Nurse Practitioners

Telehealth applications are an emerging technology in a new era of health care system technologies. Although telehealth technologies, including a number of different applications, are used by various members of the health care team, nurse practitioners (NPs) utilize them for a variety of patient issues across healthcare settings. The Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Computer Science Department has recently developed a wound scanning application, WoundView for nurse practitioners to utilize in different healthcare settings. Such telehealth mobile applications are used in clinics, home health, rural, and remote settings where a physician may not be readily available. However, there are obstacles with the current practice of using telehealth technologies such as a dire need for evidence-based research that supports attainable solutions for these barriers. Extensive, ongoing research will allow NPs to anticipate an immense mainstream implementation of telehealth applications in the very near future

Mobilising teacher education: a study of a professional learning community

This paper reports on a study of a community of university educators that investigated the introduction of mobile technologies into their learning and teaching. The study was conducted by a subgroup of that community. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices, members of the community felt they needed to develop expertise in mobile learning so that they could incorporate it into their teaching. They studied their own learning, supported by a critical friend who evaluated the community's functioning and activities, providing valuable feedback. Activities of this group were informed by and focused on: development of awareness of the potential of mobile devices for learning; construction of action plans within the community; and implementation of these plans. They also included investigating best-practice approaches by interviewing experts in the field, exploring the literature on mobile learning and then initiating and testing some mobile learning pedagogies in the context of their own teacher education subjects. The community met regularly to discuss emerging issues and applications. The paper shares some of the findings gained from studying the community, and discusses the challenges and constraints that were experienced. The authors conclude with recommendations for professional learning communities aiming to learn about technology-mediated teaching practices

Web Service Testing and Usability for Mobile Learning

Based on the summary of recent renowned publications, Mobile Learning (ML) has become an emerging technology, as well as a new technique that can enhance the quality of learning. Due to the increasing importance of ML, the investigation of such impacts on the e-Science community is amongst the hot topics, which also relate to part of these research areas: Grid Infrastructure, Wireless Communication, Virtual Research Organization and Semantic Web. The above examples contribute to the demonstrations of how Mobile Learning can be applied into e-Science applications, including usability. However, there are few papers addressing testing and quality engineering issues – the core component for software engineering. Therefore, the major purpose of this paper is to present how Web Service Testing for Mobile Learning can be carried out, in addition to re-investigating the influences of the usability issue with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Out of many mobile technologies available, the Pocket PC and Tablet PC have been chosen as the equipment; and the OMII Web Service, the 64-bit .NET e-portal and the GPS-PDA are the software tools to be used for Web Service testing