Desing and Validation of a Light Inference System to Support Embedded Context Reasoning

Embedded context management in resource-constrained devices (e.g. mobile phones, autonomous sensors or smart objects) imposes special requirements in terms of lightness for data modelling and reasoning. In this paper, we explore the state-of-the-art on data representation and reasoning tools for embedded mobile reasoning and propose a light inference system (LIS) aiming at simplifying embedded inference processes offering a set of functionalities to avoid redundancy in context management operations. The system is part of a service-oriented mobile software framework, conceived to facilitate the creation of context-aware applications—it decouples sensor data acquisition and context processing from the application logic. LIS, composed of several modules, encapsulates existing lightweight tools for ontology data management and rule-based reasoning, and it is ready to run on Java-enabled handheld devices. Data management and reasoning processes are designed to handle a general ontology that enables communication among framework components. Both the applications running on top of the framework and the framework components themselves can configure the rule and query sets in order to retrieve the information they need from LIS. In order to test LIS features in a real application scenario, an ‘Activity Monitor’ has been designed and implemented: a personal health-persuasive application that provides feedback on the user’s lifestyle, combining data from physical and virtual sensors. In this case of use, LIS is used to timely evaluate the user’s activity level, to decide on the convenience of triggering notifications and to determine the best interface or channel to deliver these context-aware alerts.

Industry in Motion: Using Smart Phones to Explore the Spatial Network of the Garment Industry in New York City

Industrial agglomerations have long been thought to offer economic and social benefits to firms and people that are only captured by location within their specified geographies. Using the case study of New York City’s garment industry along with data acquired from cell phones and social media, this study set out to understand the discrete activities underpinning the economic dynamics of an industrial agglomeration. Over a two week period, data was collected by employing the geo-locative capabilities of Foursquare, a social media application, to record every movement of fashion workers employed at fashion design firms located both inside and outside the geographical boundaries of New York City’s Garment District. This unique method of studying worker activity exposed the day-to-day dynamics of an industrial district with a precision thus far undocumented in literature. Our work suggests that having access to the cluster provides almost the same agglomeration economies as residing within its borders.Rockefeller Foundatio

UbiqLog: a generic mobile phone based life-log framework

Smart phones are conquering the mobile phone market; they are not just phones they also act as media players, gaming consoles, personal calendars, storage, etc. They are portable computers with fewer computing capabilities than personal computers. However unlike personal computers users can carry their smartphone with them at all times. The ubiquity of mobile phones and their computing capabilities provide an opportunity of using them as a life logging device. Life-logs (personal e-memories) are used to record users' daily life events and assist them in memory augmentation. In a more technical sense, life-logs sense and store users' contextual information from their environment through sensors, which are core components of life-logs. Spatio-temporal aggregation of sensor information can be mapped to users' life events. We propose UbiqLog, a lightweight, configurable and extendable life-log framework that uses mobile phone as a device for life logging. The proposed framework extends previous research in this field, which investigated mobile phones as life-log tool through continuous sensing. Its openness in terms of sensor configuration allows developers to create exible, multipurpose life-log tools. In addition to that this framework contains a data model and an architecture, which can be used as reference model for further life-log development, including its extension to other devices, such as ebook readers, T.V.s, etc

Smart technologies for personalized experiences: a case study in the hospitality domain

Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of innovative technological smart solutions providing unprecedented opportunities for application in the tourism and hospitality industry.With intensified competition in the tourism market place, it has become paramount for businesses to explore the potential of technologies, not only to optimize existing processes but facilitate the creation of more meaningful and personalized services and experiences. This study aims to bridge the current knowledge gap between smart technologies and experience personalization to understand how smart mobile technologies can facilitate personalized experiences in the context of the hospitality industry. By adopting a qualitative case study approach, this paper makes a two-fold contribution; it a) identifies the requirements of smart technologies for experience creation, including information aggregation, ubiquitous mobile connectedness and real time synchronization and b) highlights how smart technology integration can lead to two distinct levels of personalized tourism experiences. The paper concludes with the development of a model depicting the dynamic process of experience personalization and a discussion of the strategic implications for tourism and hospitality management and research

How “phubbing” becomes the norm: The antecedents and consequences of snubbing via smartphone

Smartphones allow people to connect with others from almost anywhere at any time. However, there is growing concern that smartphones may actually sometimes detract, rather than complement, social interactions. The term “phubbing” represents the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by concentrating on one’s phone instead of talking to the person directly. The current study was designed to examine some of the psychological antecedents and consequences of phubbing behavior. We examined the contributing roles of Internet addiction, fear of missing out, self-control, and smartphone addiction, and how the frequency of phubbing behavior and of being phubbed may both lead to the perception that phubbing is normative. The results revealed that Internet addiction, fear of missing out, and self-control predicted smartphone addiction, which in turn predicted the extent to which people phub. This path also predicted the extent to which people feel that phubbing is normative, both via (a) the extent to which people are phubbed themselves, and (b) independently. Further, gender moderated the relationship between the extent to which people are phubbed and their perception that phubbing is normative. The present findings suggest that phubbing is an important factor in modern communication that warrants further investigation

Mobile Phones and Social Signal Processing for Analysis and Understanding of Dyadic Conversations

Social Signal Processing is the domain aimed at bridging the social intelligence gap between humans and machines via modeling, analysis and synthesis of nonverbal behavior in social interactions. One of the main challenges of the domain is to sense unobtrusively the behavior of social interaction participants, one of the key conditions to preserve the spontaneity and naturalness of the interactions under exam. In this respect, mobile devices offer a major opportunity because they are equipped with a wide array of sensors that, while capturing the behavior of their users with an unprecedented depth, are still invisible. This is particularly important because mobile devices are part of the everyday life of a large number of individuals and, hence, they can be used to investigate and sense natural and spontaneous scenarios

Methodological strategies to understand smartphone practices for social connectedness in later life

Digital practices in later life are not yet well understood. Therefore, this paper discusses the framework for a research design project that aims at tracing differences and similarities in how older adults use their smartphones in circumstances in and outside their homes in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The research questions of this international research project focus on the extent to which digital mobile practices relate to perceived social connectedness among older adults aged 55–79 years old. While studies have shown that the subjective experience of ‘being connected’ supports continued wellbeing in later life, there remains an insufficient understanding of the processes through which digital mediated social interaction is effective for social connectedness. The analytical framework of the project prioritizes the co-constituency of (digital) technology and ageing, and takes digital practices in everyday life as its entry point. The main data collection tool will be the tracking of smartphone activity of 600 older adults (150 per country) during four weeks. An online survey and qualitative interviews will gather data about the meanings of the quantified digital practices, and how they shape (if they do) the participants’ connection to the world. This approach will allow us not only to get insight into what older adults say how they used their smartphone but also to gain insight into their real-life daily use. The assessment of the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods contributes towards an accurate and appropriate interpretation of empirical results and their implications