More notspots than hotspots: strategies for undertaking networked learning in the real world

Much of the mobile learning literature implies that connectivity between devices can be taken for granted. This is not clearly not true with patchy network coverage and variable signal strength even in well developed urban areas. In this paper, we describe strategies devised for overcoming the challenges of variable connectivity quality to ensure mobile learning in authentic field locations and also bridging contexts (home, school, work). We consider three approaches: the use of Wi-Fi, 3G phone networks, and working locally with post-activity synchronisation. We conclude with recommendations for practitioners and researchers

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Clouds + Games: A multifaceted approach

The computer game landscape is changing: people play games on multiple computing devices with heterogeneous form-factors, capability, and connectivity. Providing high playability on such devices concurrently is difficult. To enhance the gaming experience, designers could leverage abundant and elastic cloud resources, but current cloud platforms aren't optimized for highly interactive games. Existing studies focus on streaming-based cloud gaming, which is a special case for the more general cloud game architecture. The authors explain how to integrate techniques from the cloud and game research communities into a complete architecture for enhanced online gaming quality. They examine several open issues that appear only when clouds and games are put together. © 2014 IEEE

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Sport, public relations and social media

This chapter examines the disruptive nature of social media as it alters the relationship between sports journalism and public relations. It looks at some key examples and argues that while much is changing, some aspects of the relationship between the media and sports also remain constant

5GNOW: Challenging the LTE Design Paradigms of Orthogonality and Synchronicity

LTE and LTE-Advanced have been optimized to deliver high bandwidth pipes to wireless users. The transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximize single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. Various emerging trends reveal major shortcomings of those design criteria: 1) The fraction of machine-type-communications (MTC) is growing fast. Transmissions of this kind are suffering from the bulky procedures necessary to ensure strict synchronism. 2) Collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users. Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality. 3) The advent of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of carrier aggregation are forcing the transmission systems to deal with fragmented spectrum. 5GNOW is an European research project supported by the European Commission within FP7 ICT Call 8. It will question the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced having these shortcomings in mind and the obedience to strict synchronism and orthogonality will be challenged. It will develop new PHY and MAC layer concepts being better suited to meet the upcoming needs with respect to service variety and heterogeneous transmission setups. Wireless transmission networks following the outcomes of 5GNOW will be better suited to meet the manifoldness of services, device classes and transmission setups present in envisioned future scenarios like smart cities. The integration of systems relying heavily on MTC into the communication network will be eased. The per-user experience will be more uniform and satisfying. To ensure this 5GNOW will contribute to upcoming 5G standardization.Comment: Submitted to Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Communication Systems for 2020 and beyond (at IEEE VTC 2013, Spring

Digital impact, crossover technologies and gambling practices

At this juncture it is instructive to review the convergent media forms as a starting point for a wider debate about the pervasiveness of games technologies and gambling practices. In particular, to focus upon convergences between gambling and gaming and while highlighting the advantages, to examine some of the potential concerns that may arise. It is notable that gaming is becoming a powerful and popular media form, to the extent that some games are being considered as interfaces to a wide range of digital and multimedia content

Youth Data Literacy: Teen Perspectives on Data Created with Social Media and Mobile Devices

This paper examines how American teens conceptualize the term data in the context of social and mobile media like Instagram and Snapchat, or text messaging and cell phone video. Using interview and ethnographic data from a series of interviews with teens, 11 to 18 held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania public libraries over 2016-2017, we report findings about how teens learn about data through the use of social media platforms, the creation of mobile media, and the ownership of mobile devices; the implications that using networked platforms and wireless technology has for contemporary understandings of data literacy; and finally, what this means for teaching and researching the acquisition of data skills. The paper presents findings about how teens learn and acquire knowledge about the interactive and social processes of the data life cycle in public spaces and in online platforms, particularly learning about data awareness through sharing, aging, and owning mobile computing devices

Pervasive Gaming: Testing Future Context Aware Applications

More and more technical research projects take place that weave together elements of real and virtual life to provide a new experience defined as pervasive. They bank on the development of mobile services to drive the expansion of pervasive applications and in particular pervasive games. Using geolocalisation, local networks and short range radio frequencies technologies like RFID or other tagging technologies, pervasive games rely on a close relationship to the environment and thus explore the space between fiction and reality. This is their main quality but possibly their main weakness as the development relies on the production of specific contents in relation to the context of use. In this article, we propose to explore what this entirely new paradigm for game design implies in terms of production and how to overcome the limitations due to this dependency of contents and context. Based on our experience of three pervasive games developed within research projects on adhoc wifi (ANR-Safari and ANRTranshumance) and RFID networks (ANR-PLUG), this paper presents different options to reducing the cost of content production relying on either traditional editors or grass root contributions.pervasive games, content production, game design, geolocalised technologies.