Apps for local government and mobile web usage

Introduction Australia is slowly shifting to the concept of open and transparent governance that relies on a two-way communication system between the Government and citizens. One of the ways in which councils are engaging more with citizens is through the use of smart phone applications, or “apps” as they are more commonly known. App is a term used to describe Internet based applications that run on smart phones and other mobiles devices. Apps help users by connecting them to internet services more commonly accessed on desktop or notebook computers, and can make a website mobile phone viewer friendly. Over one billion of the world’s four billion plus mobiles phones are now smart phones, and at least three billion of all mobile phones are SMS enabled. By 2014, mobile internet-usage will overtake desktop internet usage and already in 2011 and currently more than 50% of all “local” searches are done from a mobile device. Councils can benefit from developing mobile apps as they can provide “…social networking platforms, content creation and sharing tools, weblogs and micro blogging tools that allow for a bidirectional information exchange within governmental organizations and government’s interactions with citizens.” This preliminary report is based upon a desktop search of apps (completed in two stages during Feb-June 2012), some extracts from the draft discussion paper From explanation to engagement: Application and use of social media to enhance local government performance (Anne Howard, ACELG-University of Canberra December 2011) and conclusions of the co-authors. Every effort has been made to compile lists of all relevant apps (Apple iPhone and Android platforms). However, this area of mobile web applications is moving very quickly. New apps are being released every day, and this includes many specifically for local government

Effectiveness of Context-Aware Character Input Method for Mobile Phone Based on Artificial Neural Network

Opportunities and needs are increasing to input Japanese sentences on mobile phones since performance of mobile phones is improving. Applications like E-mail, Web search, and so on are widely used on mobile phones now. We need to input Japanese sentences using only 12 keys on mobile phones. We have proposed a method to input Japanese sentences on mobile phones quickly and easily. We call this method number-Kanji translation method. The number string inputted by a user is translated into Kanji-Kana mixed sentence in our proposed method. Number string to Kana string is a one-to-many mapping. Therefore, it is difficult to translate a number string into the correct sentence intended by the user. The proposed context-aware mapping method is able to disambiguate a number string by artificial neural network (ANN). The system is able to translate number segments into the intended words because the system becomes aware of the correspondence of number segments with Japanese words through learning by ANN. The system does not need a dictionary. We also show the effectiveness of our proposed method for practical use by the result of the evaluation experiment in Twitter data

Understanding Mobile Search Task Relevance and User Behaviour in Context

Improvements in mobile technologies have led to a dramatic change in how and when people access and use information, and is having a profound impact on how users address their daily information needs. Smart phones are rapidly becoming our main method of accessing information and are frequently used to perform `on-the-go' search tasks. As research into information retrieval continues to evolve, evaluating search behaviour in context is relatively new. Previous research has studied the effects of context through either self-reported diary studies or quantitative log analysis; however, neither approach is able to accurately capture context of use at the time of searching. In this study, we aim to gain a better understanding of task relevance and search behaviour via a task-based user study (n=31) employing a bespoke Android app. The app allowed us to accurately capture the user's context when completing tasks at different times of the day over the period of a week. Through analysis of the collected data, we gain a better understanding of how using smart phones on the go impacts search behaviour, search performance and task relevance and whether or not the actual context is an important factor.Comment: To appear in CHIIR 2019 in Glasgow, U

Mobile Search and Advertising

Mobile advertising is a rapidly growing sector providing brands and marketing agencies the opportunity to connect with consumers beyond traditional and digital media and instead communicate directly on their mobile phones. Mobile advertising will be intrinsically linked with mobile search, which has transported from the internet to the mobile and is identified as an area of potential growth. The result of mobile searching show that as a general rule such search result exceed 160 characters; the dialog is required to deliver the relevant portion of a response to the mobile user. In this paper we focus initially on mobile search and mobile advert creation, and later the mechanism of interaction between the user’s request, the result of searching, advertising and dialog

Emerging aspects of mobile phone use

The mobile phone is a modern-day invention, which has managed to reach many parts of the world enabling telecommunications across areas where it was not possible before. Although these devices have proved to be life saving in certain circumstances (e.g., after accidents) and helped improve the quality of life in some sectors, concerns continue to be raised about potential adverse health impacts associated with their use. These range from cancer and cognitive deficiencies to subjective effects, such as a feeling of warmth around the ear used, headache and fatigue. We provide an overview of the concerns raised and summarise what is known about them. We conducted a literature search in Pubmed/Medline to identify published papers on health effects of mobile phones, and an intensive search on the Internet to collect data on the global use of mobile phones. In the year 2000, there were an estimated 500 million mobile phone users worldwide. Today, there are about 3.3 billion users. The use of mobile phones among young children and adolescents is also increasing. Health-risk research has mainly focused on adults and on a single outcome, brain tumours. No significant relationship has been established between mobile phone use and the incidence or growth of brain tumours. Other research indicates emerging concerns, including hearing problems and self-reported health symptoms, such as tiredness, stress, headache, anxiety, concentration difficulties and sleep disturbances, but results remain inconclusive. Currently, there is little epidemiological evidence indicating that the use of mobile phones causes adverse health effects

The Open University Library in your pocket

The Open University library is working to support mobile learners through provision of mobile access to information management skills tutorials, the library website, and the library helpdesk. In 2007, we joined hands with the Athabasca University library team to develop the first mobile-friendly version of our library website. Since then, we have been actively researching and developing around other mobile library services, and more recently have consulted users to identify their requirements and what services they–d prefer to access through mobile phones. Recommendations from this user consultation (and from other sources, including regular users' feedback and by tracking user behavior through Google Analytics) include revamping the mobile version of the Library website to offer only the most used services on the home page, implementing SMS (Short Messaging Service) such as loan reminders or library reference service, and developing a consolidated search to offer results from various sources including the library catalogue and e-journals collection

Use of Mobile Phone by Rural Women in Their Daily Activities: A Systematic Review

Abstract Purpose: This study analyze the literature on the use of mobile phone by the rural women, the challenges they are being faced, the opportunities connected with this usage and mobile phone supports by the rural women in their daily Activities. Method: A systematic review was used following the PRISMA guidelines. Three major scholarly databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus and HEC digital library Summon search were used to find the relevant material. Finally, 20 articles have been selected fulfilling the inclusion criteria for this study. Findings: The findings revealed that Access and use of Mobile Phones by Rural Women, Mobile Phone Supports Rural women in their daily Activities, Challenges and opportunities of Mobile Phone are categories in this study to better understand of access and use of mobile phones in their daily activities. They want to play games, listen to music, and connect with family members on their phones. Additionally, people feel closer to their loved ones and friends when they use their phones. The difficulties faced by rural women primarily fall into these broad areas. Lack of access to technology, digital gap, poor network coverage, language barrier, slow internet speed, lack of confidence, lack of connectivity, lack of electricity, lack of education, lack of training for handling mass media, lack of communication, lack of family support, lack of free time, social and cultural challenges, domestic issues. Implications: The practical and decision making described that Women in rural areas have access to and use mobile phones in their daily activities. In a male-dominated society in developing nations, there are numerous barriers that prohibit women from using mobile phones. Mobile phones can play an important role in empowering rural poor women to campaign for and demand a higher priority for themselves by enhancing access to information that can help them make better decisions

Isomorph-Free Branch and Bound Search for Finite State Controllers

The recent proliferation of smart-phones and other wearable devices has lead to a surge of new mobile applications. Partially observable Markov decision processes provide a natural framework to design applications that continuously make decisions based on noisy sensor measurements. However, given the limited battery life, there is a need to minimize the amount of online computation. This can be achieved by compiling a policy into a finite state controller since there is no need for belief monitoring or online search. In this paper, we propose a new branch and bound technique to search for a good controller. In contrast to many existing algorithms for controllers, our search technique is not subject to local optima. We also show how to reduce the amount of search by avoiding the enumeration of isomorphic controllers and by taking advantage of suitable upper and lower bounds. The approach is demonstrated on several benchmark problems as well as a smart-phone application to assist persons with Alzheimer's to wayfind