Hikester - the event management application

Today social networks and services are one of the most important part of our everyday life. Most of the daily activities, such as communicating with friends, reading news or dating is usually done using social networks. However, there are activities for which social networks do not yet provide adequate support. This paper focuses on event management and introduces "Hikester". The main objective of this service is to provide users with the possibility to create any event they desire and to invite other users. "Hikester" supports the creation and management of events like attendance of football matches, quest rooms, shared train rides or visit of museums in foreign countries. Here we discuss the project architecture as well as the detailed implementation of the system components: the recommender system, the spam recognition service and the parameters optimizer

Workflows and service discovery: a mobile device approach

Bioinformatics has moved from command-line standalone programs to web-service based environments. Such trend has resulted in an enormous amount of online resources which can be hard to find and identify, let alone execute and exploit. Furthermore, these resources are aimed -in general- to solve specific tasks. Usually, this tasks need to be combined in order to achieve the desired results. In this line, finding the appropriate set of tools to build up a workflow to solve a problem with the services available in a repository is itself a complex exercise. Issues such as services discovering, composition and representation appear. On the technological side, mobile devices have experienced an incredible growth in the number of users and technical capabilities. Starting from this reality, in the present paper, we propose a solution for service discovering and workflow generation while distinct approaches of representing workflows in a mobile environment are reviewed and discussed. As a proof of concept, a specific use case has been developed: we have embedded an expanded version of our Magallanes search engine into mORCA, our mobile client for bioinformatics. Such composition delivers a powerful and ubiquitous solution that provides the user with a handy tool for not only generate and represent workflows, but also services, data types, operations and service types discoveryUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Teaching Concurrent Software Design: A Case Study Using Android

In this article, we explore various parallel and distributed computing topics from a user-centric software engineering perspective. Specifically, in the context of mobile application development, we study the basic building blocks of interactive applications in the form of events, timers, and asynchronous activities, along with related software modeling, architecture, and design topics.Comment: Submitted to CDER NSF/IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing - Core Topics for Undergraduate

WEST: A Web Browser for Small Terminals

We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future

Designing a gamified social platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers

In the current paper, a social gamified platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers, integrating a broader diagnostic approach and interactive interventions is presented. The CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD (C-MMD) platform constitutes a support tool for the patient and the informal caregiver - also referred to as the dyad - that strengthens self-care, and builds community capacity and engagement at the point of care. The platform is implemented to improve social collaboration, adherence to treatment guidelines through gamification, recognition of progress indicators and measures to guide management of patients with dementia, and strategies and tools to improve treatment interventions and medication adherence. Moreover, particular attention was provided on guidelines, considerations and user requirements for the design of a User-Centered Design (UCD) platform. The design of the platform has been based on a deep understanding of users, tasks and contexts in order to improve platform usability, and provide adaptive and intuitive User Interfaces with high accessibility. In this paper, the architecture and services of the C-MMD platform are presented, and specifically the gamification aspects. © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Survey of End-to-End Mobile Network Measurement Testbeds, Tools, and Services

Mobile (cellular) networks enable innovation, but can also stifle it and lead to user frustration when network performance falls below expectations. As mobile networks become the predominant method of Internet access, developer, research, network operator, and regulatory communities have taken an increased interest in measuring end-to-end mobile network performance to, among other goals, minimize negative impact on application responsiveness. In this survey we examine current approaches to end-to-end mobile network performance measurement, diagnosis, and application prototyping. We compare available tools and their shortcomings with respect to the needs of researchers, developers, regulators, and the public. We intend for this survey to provide a comprehensive view of currently active efforts and some auspicious directions for future work in mobile network measurement and mobile application performance evaluation.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. arXiv does not format the URL references correctly. For a correctly formatted version of this paper go to http://www.cs.montana.edu/mwittie/publications/Goel14Survey.pd

Bioengineered Textiles and Nonwovens – the convergence of bio-miniaturisation and electroactive conductive polymers for assistive healthcare, portable power and design-led wearable technology

Today, there is an opportunity to bring together creative design activities to exploit the responsive and adaptive ‘smart’ materials that are a result of rapid development in electro, photo active polymers or OFEDs (organic thin film electronic devices), bio-responsive hydrogels, integrated into MEMS/NEMS devices and systems respectively. Some of these integrated systems are summarised in this paper, highlighting their use to create enhanced functionality in textiles, fabrics and non-woven large area thin films. By understanding the characteristics and properties of OFEDs and bio polymers and how they can be transformed into implementable physical forms, innovative products and services can be developed, with wide implications. The paper outlines some of these opportunities and applications, in particular, an ambient living platform, dealing with human centred needs, of people at work, people at home and people at play. The innovative design affords the accelerated development of intelligent materials (interactive, responsive and adaptive) for a new product & service design landscape, encompassing assistive healthcare (smart bandages and digital theranostics), ambient living, renewable energy (organic PV and solar textiles), interactive consumer products, interactive personal & beauty care (e-Scent) and a more intelligent built environment