On the Validity of Geosocial Mobility Traces

Mobile networking researchers have long searched for largescale, fine-grained traces of human movement, which have remained elusive for both privacy and logistical reasons. Recently, researchers have begun to focus on geosocial mobility traces, e.g. Foursquare checkin traces, because of their availability and scale. But are we conceding correctness in our zeal for data? In this paper, we take initial steps towards quantifying the value of geosocial datasets using a large ground truth dataset gathered from a user study. By comparing GPS traces against Foursquare checkins, we find that a large portion of visited locations is missing from checkins, and most checkin events are either forged or superfluous events. We characterize extraneous checkins, describe possible techniques for their detection, and show that both extraneous and missing checkins introduce significant errors into applications driven by these traces

Digital fitness: Self-monitored fitness and the commodification of movement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY_ND) Licence. For information on use, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses.This article moves beyond a history of domestic home video fitness programs to explore digital fitness with specific attention to the self-monitored fitness 'movement' and the hardware and software that facilitate its proliferation. The research in this area is currently conducted through preliminary small scale studies, alongside some flawed but still (inadvertently) useful undergraduate and graduate projects. Popular cultural interest is burgeoning, with the popularity of the Fitbit suite and the iWatch surging through an array of commentaries on blogs, YouTube videos, tweets and Facebook posts. This theoretical paper links digitisation with fitness to explore the balance between self-monitoring and surveillance, motivation and shaming. The Fitbit is an example of this self-monitored fitness 'movement' that reveals the ambivalence of quantifying steps and stairs while managing a volatile neoliberal working environment

Privacy Preserving Cryptographic Protocols for Secure Heterogeneous Networks

Disertační práce se zabývá kryptografickými protokoly poskytující ochranu soukromí, které jsou určeny pro zabezpečení komunikačních a informačních systémů tvořících heterogenní sítě. Práce se zaměřuje především na možnosti využití nekonvenčních kryptografických prostředků, které poskytují rozšířené bezpečnostní požadavky, jako je například ochrana soukromí uživatelů komunikačního systému. V práci je stanovena výpočetní náročnost kryptografických a matematických primitiv na různých zařízeních, které se podílí na zabezpečení heterogenní sítě. Hlavní cíle práce se zaměřují na návrh pokročilých kryptografických protokolů poskytujících ochranu soukromí. V práci jsou navrženy celkově tři protokoly, které využívají skupinových podpisů založených na bilineárním párování pro zajištění ochrany soukromí uživatelů. Tyto navržené protokoly zajišťují ochranu soukromí a nepopiratelnost po celou dobu datové komunikace spolu s autentizací a integritou přenášených zpráv. Pro navýšení výkonnosti navržených protokolů je využito optimalizačních technik, např. dávkového ověřování, tak aby protokoly byly praktické i pro heterogenní sítě.The dissertation thesis deals with privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols for secure communication and information systems forming heterogeneous networks. The thesis focuses on the possibilities of using non-conventional cryptographic primitives that provide enhanced security features, such as the protection of user privacy in communication systems. In the dissertation, the performance of cryptographic and mathematic primitives on various devices that participate in the security of heterogeneous networks is evaluated. The main objectives of the thesis focus on the design of advanced privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols. There are three designed protocols which use pairing-based group signatures to ensure user privacy. These proposals ensure the protection of user privacy together with the authentication, integrity and non-repudiation of transmitted messages during communication. The protocols employ the optimization techniques such as batch verification to increase their performance and become more practical in heterogeneous networks.

Ideal Meeting Location According to User privacy

Outfitted with cutting edge Smartphone and cell phones, today's exceptionally interconnected urban populace is progressively reliant on these contraptions to sort out and arrangement their everyday lives. These applications frequently depend on current (or favored) areas of individual clients or a gathering of clients to give the sought administration, which imperils their security; clients would prefer essentially not to uncover their current (or preferred) locations to the administration supplier or to other, potentially untrusted, clients. In this paper, we propose protection saving calculations for deciding an ideal meeting area for a gathering of clients. We perform an intensive security assessment by formally measuring protection loss of the proposed methodologies. With a specific end goal to concentrate on the execution of our calculations in a genuine organization, we actualize and test their execution effectiveness. By method for a focused on client study, we endeavor to get an understanding into the protection familiarity with clients in area based administrations and the convenience of the proposed solutions.[1

Wasted? Managing Decline and Marketing Difference in Third Tier Cities

Third-tier cities are neglected in the research literature. Global and second-tier cities provide the positive, proactive applications of city imaging and creative industries strategies. However, small cities - particularly those who reached their height and notoriety through the industrial revolution - reveal few strategies for stability, let alone growth. This study investigates an unusual third-tier city: Oshawa in Ontario Canada. Known as the home of General Motors, its recent economic and social development has been tethered to the arrival of a new institution of higher education: the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Yet this article confirms that simply opening a university is not enough to commence regeneration or renewal, particularly if an institution is imposed on unwilling residents. Therefore, an alternative strategy - involving geosocial networking - offers a way for local businesses and organizations to attract customers and provide a digital medication to analogue injustice and decay

Improving Location Accuracy And Network Capacity In Mobile Networks

Todays mobile computing must support a wide variety of applications such as location-based services, navigation, HD media streaming and augmented reality. Providing such services requires large network bandwidth and precise localization mechanisms, which face significant challenges. First, new (real-time) localization mechanisms are needed to locate neighboring devices/objects with high accuracy under tight environment constraints, e.g. without infrastructure support. Second, mobile networks need to deliver orders of magnitude more bandwidth to support the exponentially increasing traffic demand, and adapt resource usage to user mobility.In this dissertation, we build effective and practical solutions to address these challenges. Our first research area is to develop new localization mechanisms that utilize the rich set of sensors on smartphones to implement accurate localization systems. We propose two designs. The first system tracks distance to nearby devices with centimeter accuracy by transmitting acoustic signals between the devices. We design robust and efficient signal processing algorithms that measure distances accurately on the fly, thus enabling real-time user motion tracking. Our second system locates a transmitting device in real-time using commodity smart- phones. Driving by the insight that rotating a wireless receiver (smartphone) around a users body can effectively emulate the sensitivity and functionality of a directional antenna, we design a rotation-based measurement algorithm that can accurately predict the direction of the target transmitter and locate the transmitter with a few measurements.Our second research area is to develop next generation mobile networks to significantly boost network capacity. We propose a drastically new outdoor picocell design that leverages millimeter wave 60GHz transmissions to provide multi-Gbps bandwidth for mobile users. Using extensive measurements on off-the-shelf 60GHz radios, we explore the feasibility of 60GHz picocells by characterizing range, attenuation due to reflections, sensitivity to movement and blockage, and interference in typical urban environments. Our results dispel some common myths on 60GHz, and show that 60GHz outdoor picocells are indeed a feasible approach for delivering orders of magnitude increase in network capacity.Finally, we seek to capture and understand user mobility patterns which are essential in mobile network design and deployment. While traditional methods of collecting human mobility traces are expensive and not scalable, we explore a new direction that extracts large-scale mobility traces through widely available geosocial datasets, e.g. Foursquare "check-in" datasets. By comparing raw GPS traces against Foursquare checkins, we analyze the value of using geosocial datasets as representative traces of human mobility. We then develop techniques to both "sanitize" and "repopulate" geosocial traces, thus producing detailed mobility traces more indicative of actual human movement and suitable for mobile network design

Social shaping of mobile geomedia services: An analysis of Yelp and Foursquare

In their book, Location-Based Social Media: Space, Time and Identity, Leighton Evans and Michael Saker remark on the apparent ‘death’ of location-based social networks, suggesting that location-based social networks can now be understood as ‘a form of “zombie-media” that animates and haunts other media platforms’. In this article, we use this perspective as a point of departure for a social shaping of technology-informed analysis of two key geomedia platforms: Yelp and Foursquare. With Yelp approaching its 15th year of service and Foursquare approaching its 10th anniversary, this article provides a timely opportunity to (re-)examine the significance of Yelp and Foursquare and the many reconfigurations both firms have made to their services since their launch. These include, most recently, Yelp’s integration of artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques to parse, sift and order users’ posts and Foursquare’s development of its Pilgrim SDK (software design kit) to power the location services of other platforms, like Tinder and Snap. A social shaping-inflected approach is productive in this context in that it stresses how many of these developments and strategic reorientations are not just in response to shareholder and investor pressures, they are also fundamentally shaped by and made in response to the fluctuating demands of end-users within a complicated, competitive and continuously evolving geomedia ecosystem. Consequently, we draw from the work of Leah A Lievrouw to examine how dual tensions of contingency/determination shape how these applications are designed and used, and how both design and use continue to evolve in response to various external pressures

Information Outlook, December 2010

Volume 14, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2010/1007/thumbnail.jp