Context-aware platform for mobile data management

Interaction design is a major issue for mobile information systems in terms of not only the choice of input/output channels and presentation of information, but also the application of context-awareness. To support experimentation with these factors, we have developed platforms to support the rapid prototyping of multi-channel, multi-modal, context-aware applications. The Java-based platform presented here is based on an integration of a cross-media link server and an object-oriented framework for advanced content publishing, along with a Client Controller and Context Engine. We also describe how this platform was used to develop a mobile tourist information system for an international arts festival where interaction was based on a combination of interactive paper and speech outpu

Mobile Advertising Using Bluetooth Pull-based Technology

Advertising on mobile devices has large potential due to the very personal and intimate nature of the device and high targeting possibilities. This project is called B.L.U.E system, an advertising system for delivering location-aware mobile advertisement that allow personalization to mobile phones using Bluetooth pull-based technology. This report covers the background study, literature review and theory based on research, and also methodology used in researchand design phase. In research, questionnaire is used to gather information pertaining to user preferences. Meanwhile, in design phase, the methodologies used are Incremental Development and Release; and Assembling Reusable Components. The last two part of this report covers result and discussion from the research and testing phase, and also recommendationfor future work

Leverage viral growth inherent in mobile peer-to-peer telematics to strategic advantage

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-139).Telematics, defined as the vehicle features and services made available through a wireless connection to data or other resources not onboard the vehicle, provides one of the most promising areas of innovation and value creation in the automobile market today. However, up to now the US market has only experienced successful telematics businesses in the quazi-insurance field of Safety and Security. In contrast, Consumer Telematics, defined as the confluence of consumer electronics and vehicle telematics, presents a much more exciting market opportunity. In spite of this, inadequate bandwidth, poor usability, fragmented standards and excessive cost have together created sufficient barriers so as to deter any automakers from entering the market. In this thesis, we argue that the viral growth inherent in Wi-Fi class mobile peer-to-peer (mP2P) telematics presents an opportunity for an automotive OEM with significant marketshare to transcend these barriers, and thus capture significant value from this up-to-now elusive market. To do so, we analyze the proposed business through the filters of technology, value chain, applications and market dynamics in order to craft a comprehensive strategy for entering the market and insuring sustained return through its maturation. The technology analysis both presents the potential benefits and limitations of mP2P as well as likely competitors and substitutes. It suggests that mP2P has a sustainable cost and bandwidth advantage over other architectures. Our examination of the Telematics value chain indicates that the wireless connectivity and IP backhaul segments of the chain are predisposed towards commodization and thus should be outsourced in a manner that retains flexibility to switch carriers and even technologies as the market(cont.) evolves. By segmenting the most promising applications according to their connectivity demands, we plot out how service offerings should evolve in concert with the quality of wireless connectivity and market adoption. Finally, analyzing the market dynamics indicates the critical mass threshold where customer willingness-to-pay exceeds the cost, and thus the trade-offs between investment and strategy necessary for success. We conclude that this critical mass where viral growth ensues exists at only 3-5% market penetration, a target easily achieved by an Automotive OEM with dominant marketshare such as General Motors. The proposed strategy resulting from this analysis endeavors to ensure sustained return by embracing an evolving business model. While initial value is captured through vehicle differentiation, it then shifts to primarily service revenue. Eventually, if the business is successful in garnering widespread adoption, value would eventually be principally derived through hardware licensing and operating system revenue. In the end, the key to success for the OEM is to set aside its traditional ways of doing business in order to leverage the complementary market forces that drive viral growth. Without this, this business is daunting and risky ...by Erik C. Bue.S.M.M.B.A

Mobile Library

Wireless application system and application has large potential due to the very personal and intimate nature of the device and high targeting possibilities. Due to rapid advancement of advertising and informing technologies recent years, the concepts and such applications have been significantly extended. This research will look deeply into the acceptance level of implementing the wireless system at the defined area. In this project the application and the function of advertising on mobile device has been modified to another alternatives that can enhance the environment surrounding us. This project is basically will be functioning as a reminder system. This system will establish the connection between the server and the Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The system will deliver location-aware of information that allows the transition info from the server to the PDAs using WiFi pull-based technology. The objective of this system being developed is to enhance the idea and the technologies of wireless nowadays which definitely can be implemented in various ways later on. In this project, several techniques have been used starting with ideas and information research and gathering that have been done through journals, existing paper work, and previous systems that create by previous students. This report covers the background study, literature review and theory based on research, and also methodology used in research and design phase. In research, questionnaire is used to gather information pertaining to user preferences. Meanwhile, in design phase, the methodologies will be explained more in chapter three (3). The lasttwo part of this report covers result and discussion from the research and testing phase, and also recommendation for future work. I

Mobile Library

Wireless application system and application has large potential due to the very personal and intimate nature of the device and high targeting possibilities. Due to rapid advancement of advertising and informing technologies recent years, the concepts and such applications have been significantly extended. This research will look deeply into the acceptance level of implementing the wireless system at the defined area. In this project the application and the function of advertising on mobile device has been modified to another alternatives that can enhance the environment surrounding us. This project is basically will be functioning as a reminder system. This system will establish the connection between the server and the Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The system will deliver location-aware of information that allows the transition info from the server to the PDAs using WiFi pull-based technology. The objective of this system being developed is to enhance the idea and the technologies of wireless nowadays which definitely can be implemented in various ways later on. In this project, several techniques have been used starting with ideas and information research and gathering that have been done through journals, existing paper work, and previous systems that create by previous students. This report covers the background study, literature review and theory based on research, and also methodology used in research and design phase. In research, questionnaire is used to gather information pertaining to user preferences. Meanwhile, in design phase, the methodologies will be explained more in chapter three (3). The lasttwo part of this report covers result and discussion from the research and testing phase, and also recommendation for future work. I

Designing a usable mobile application for field data collection

Doctor of Science in Engineering - EngineeringThe advent of mobile technology, Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and convergence of voice and data over wireless networks have led to an explosion of a wide range of mobile applications. These applications include mobile internet browsers, handheld GPS navigation systems, Location Based Services (LBS), mobile workforce management systems, and so on. While much of the underlying technology is already available, there are challenges with respect to the usability of mobile applications. This project investigates the usability of a mobile application for field data collection in a utility industry. The purpose of the investigation is to gain a better understanding of the usability requirements for a mobile field data collection application but more importantly, how to meet these requirements using appropriate usability engineering techniques. A usage-centered design approach is used to design the user interface for the field data collection application. During this model-driven design process, the usability requirements are analyzed in terms of the user requirements, field data collection tasks and the operational context of fieldwork. An Underground Utility Closure (UUC) data sourcing work employed at a telecommunications utility is used as a case study for the field data collection work. The user interface is implemented as a functional prototype on a pocket computer and evaluated for usability in a field setting. It is envisaged that the usability requirements and design guidelines presented in this project will enable software engineers to meet the design challenges of usable mobile applications for field data collection and mobile computing in general

Heuristics and policies for online pickup and delivery problems

Master ThesisIn the last few decades, increased attention has been dedicated to a speci c subclass of Vehicle Routing Problems due to its signi cant importance in several transportation areas such as taxi companies, courier companies, transportation of people, organ transportation, etc. These problems are characterized by their dynamicity as the demands are, in general, unknown in advance and the corresponding locations are paired. This thesis addresses a version of such Dynamic Pickup and Delivery Problems, motivated by a problem arisen in an Australian courier company, which operates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, where almost every day more than a thousand transportation orders arrive and need to be accommodated. The rm has a eet of almost two hundred vehicles of various types, mostly operating within the city areas. Thus, whenever new orders arrive at the system the dispatchers face a complex decision regarding the allocation of the new customers within the distribution routes (already existing or new) taking into account a complex multi-level objective function. The thesis thus focuses on the process of learning simple dispatch heuristics, and lays the foundations of a recommendation system able to rank such heuristics. We implemented eight of these, observing di erent characteristics of the current eet and orders. It incorporates an arti cial neural network that is trained on two hundred days of past data, and is supervised by schedules produced by an oracle, Indigo, which is a system able to produce suboptimal solutions to problem instances. The system opens the possibility for many dispatch policies to be implemented that are based on this rule ranking, and helps dispatchers to manage the vehicles of the eet. It also provides results for the human resources required each single day and within the di erent periods of the day. We complement the quite promising results obtained with a discussion on future additions and improvements such as channel eet management, tra c consideration, and learning hyper-heuristics to control simple rule sequences.The thesis work was partially supported by the National ICT Australia according to the Visitor Research Agreement contract between NICTA and Martin Damyanov Aleksandro

Cartographic user interface design models for mobile Location-Based Services applications

Mobile Location-Based Services (mLBS) offer a unique combination of digital content, portability, interactivity, location-awareness and real-time information delivery, providing increased convenience and support for everyday geospatial decision-making tasks, compared to more traditional printed maps and digital cartographic products. In spite of their benefits, however, limitations inherent within mLBS technology (e.g. small screens), along with the dynamic and changeable contexts in which they are used, impact on their effectiveness for communicating geospatial information to end users and, in turn, their overall acceptance. Identifying usefulness (i.e. utility and usability) as a key factor influencing the acceptance of mLBS products, this thesis details the investigation of techniques and a methodology for designing mLBS applications that communicate geospatial information in a useful manner to non-expert, general public users. The research presented here focuses on the usefulness of the entire cartographic user interface (UI) for mLBS applications – i.e. those components that are specifically concerned with the access and representation of, and interaction with, geospatial information – differentiating it from related mLBS research and application design. Particular emphasis was placed on the usefulness of the interplay between various geospatial components of the cartographic UI, in support of a broad range of everyday geospatial tasks for non-expert users. Contributing to this, a wide array of alternative techniques for representing, presenting and interacting with geospatial information were explored. To achieve its aims, the study adopted a qualitative User-Centred Design (UCD) methodology, involving an early focus on users and their tasks, empirical measurement of usage, and iterative design and evaluation, which together ensured that all design efforts were firmly grounded in the needs and characteristics of the end users. Necessarily focused on a specific application area (tourism) and an associated user group (travellers), the UCD process employed by the research was more comprehensive than had previously been undertaken within the cartographic discipline. The primary results of the research comprise a set of cartographic UI design models for communicating geospatial information in a useful manner to the non-expert users of a tourism-related mLBS application. These incorporate a range of alternative cartographic representation, presentation and interaction techniques considered useful by representative users, with egocentric maps arguably holding the greatest importance. The wider benefits of the design models are expected to be twofold: firstly, they offer a structural foundation to researchers and developers seeking to produce useful cartographic UIs for tourism-related mLBS applications; and secondly, they provide guidance regarding specific cartographic representation, presentation and interaction techniques that offer utility and usability in particular contexts. In addition, a number of secondary research outputs offer other benefits to the scientific and commercial mLBS communities. These include the UCD research methodology – which presents a proven guide for ensuring usefulness during the design of mLBS applications in general – and a set of general recommendations for designing useful mLBS applications – which offer assistance for specific design activities while contributing empirical results to the future development of mLBS application design guidelines