Search results

Using Internet‐enabled mobile handheld devices to access the World Wide Web is a promising addition to the Web and traditional e‐commerce. Mobile handheld devices provide convenience and portable access to the huge information on the Internet for mobile users from anywhere and at anytime. However, mobile commerce has not enjoyed the same level of success as the e‐commerce has so far because mobile Web contents are scarce and mostly awkward for browsing. The major reason of the problems is most software engineers are not familiar with handheld devices, let alone programming for them. To help software engineers better understand this subject, this article gives a comprehensive study of handheld computing and programming for mobile commerce. It includes five major topics: (i) mobile commerce systems, (ii) mobile handheld devices, (iii) handheld computing, (iv) server‐side handheld computing and programming, and (v) client‐side handheld computing and programming. The most popular server‐side handheld applications are mostly functioning through mobile Web contents, which are constructed by using only few technologies and languages. On the other hand, various environments/languages are available for client‐side handheld computing and programming. Five of the most popular are (i) BREW, (ii) J2ME, (iii) Palm OS, (iv) Symbian OS, and (v) Windows Mobile. They are using either C/C++ or Java programming languages. This article will explain J2ME, a micro version of Java, and Palm OS programming, using C, by giving step‐by‐step procedures of J2ME and Palm application development.

The capabilities of embedded devices such as smartphones are steadily increasing and provide the great flexibility of data access and collaboration while being mobile. From the distributed computing point of view, fundamental issues in mobile computing include heterogeneity in terms of varying device capabilities (i.e., operating systems and various hardware platforms), performance characteristics and real‐time behavior, and the ability to discover and interact with peers seamlessly. Web services are a family of XML based protocols to achieve interoperability among loosely coupled networked applications. We propose the use of Web services on embedded devices in order to solve interoperability issues in distributed mobile systems. We discuss various toolkits available for embedded devices and investigate performance characteristics of embedded Web services on smartphones. Our goal is to guide the design of Web services based applications on mobile devices, and provide estimates of performance that can be expected.

The number of mobile phone users is increasing rapidly and this will provide opportunities for developing additional business in the mobile device market. Wireless online games is one of the rising stars in the market. Nevertheless, the insecurity of data transmission through wireless networks and the low performance of the central processing unit (CPU) of mobile devices create a barrier to doing business through these wireless networks. This paper proposes an “interactive dynamic cryptosystem” for enhancing the security of data transmission through wireless networks and a multi‐tier architecture for improving the performance and management of the multi‐user wireless online games system. Based on the proposal, a safe environment can be set up for truly real‐time interactive wireless online games.

Spatial messaging is a direct extension to text and other multi‐media messaging services that have become highly popular with the current pervasiveness of mobile communication. It offers benefits especially to mobile computing, providing localized and therefore potentially more appropriate delivery of nearly arbitrary content. Location is one of the most interesting attributes that can be added to messages in current applications, including gaming, social networking, or advertising services. However, location is also highly critical in terms of privacy. If a spatial messaging platform could collect the location traces of all its users, detailed profiling would be possible – and, considering commercial value of such profiles, likely. The purpose of this paper is to present Air‐Writing, an approach to spatial messaging that fully preserves user privacy while offering global scalability, different client interface options, and flexibility in terms of application areas.

The authors contribute both an architecture and a specific implementation of an attribute‐based messaging platform with special support for spatial messaging and rich clients for J2ME, Google Android, and Apple iPhone. The centralized client/server approach utilizes groups for anonymous message retrieval and client caching and filtering, as well as randomized queries for obscuring traces.

Two user studies with 26 users show that the overall concept is easily understandable and that it seems useful to end‐users. An analysis of real‐world and simulated location traces shows that user privacy can be ensured, but with a trade‐off between privacy protection and consumed network resources.

Air‐Writing, both as an architectural concept and as a specific implementation, are immediately applicable to practical, globally scalable, private group messaging systems. A publicly available messaging platform is already online as beta version at http://airwriting.com Originality/value – Air‐Writing addresses three concerns: flexibility concerning arbitrary messaging applications, user privacy, and global scalability of the associated web service. To the best of the authors' knowledge, previous approaches focus on at most two of these issues, while the authors' approach allows all three requirements to be fulfilled.

This paper aims to report on lessons learnt from operating a location‐aware mobile social networking application, and critical functionalities that were deemed necessary in order to provide a pleasant user experience. As a result of user feedback, the authors enhanced their social networking system, G2G, with functionalities such as login with Facebook.com credentials without the need to sign up to their system first, and a much improved localization system that works across different mobile operators. Mobile advertisement was included for enhancing the user experience.

A modular approach has been followed for the system design. The original G2G system interfaced cleanly with the Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) and the mobile advertisement subsystem through wrapper components.

The result was a much improved user experience as existing Facebook subscriptions facilitated new users to use the system. Mobile advertisement functionalities were seen as an essential add‐on. The aforementioned functionalities, combined with the ability to upload/search/download location‐aware multimedia notes, and a back‐end interface that allows advertisers to add location‐aware, personalized content, resulted in a significantly enhanced user experience as evidenced by higher user active participation to the system.

The enhanced system integrates seamelessly with Facebook (facilitating thus the entry of new users) and with a mobile advertisement platform, and provides for advanced security functionalities. Moreover, it supports Android‐based smart‐phones.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practicality of an application called the mobile geographic information system (GIS). The authors' purpose was to focus specifically on the mobile GIS application in a prototype, mobile‐based model that is utilized for detecting flood warnings and issuing forecasts. At the end of this research project, a usability study was carried out in a test‐lab environment.

In this paper, research is presented regarding the architecture of a structure that has been built on practicality. Readers will learn about a system that is applicable within a vast array of turning‐point situations where rainfall data are communicated to the system in real time.

It has been revealed that traditional GIS and remote sensing software packages are not as cost‐effective as GIS services that are mobile. Mobile GIS systems have the capability to combine GIS, global positioning system, and remote sensing abilities for retrieving geospatial data sets at costs that are not as pricey as the traditional systems. As time moves on, the need for reliable real‐time data sets is increasing. Additionally, flood management examination provides a valid debate for the combining of mobile GISs within the realm of hydrology. Empirical evidence insinuates and illustrates reliability of GIS and the enhancement in the utilization and creation of devices that are offer mobile capabilities. The usability study revealed that the slope, aspect, watershed, and flow direction functions were not easy to comprehend. It was also discovered during the usability study that the word arrangement, radio button arrangement, and dropdown list caused confusion amongst users. The issue that was deemed as most severe, that was discovered during the usability study, was the blurred comprehension that users experienced regarding the digital elevation model.

Before the wisest solution can be pinpointed, all of the associated constraints of mobile GIS mapping application need to be identified; however, enough constraints have already been identified to bring to a close that a basic mobile GIS mapping application could created and triumphantly used. There are many platforms to choose from in regards to providing a solution to a feasible incorporation of the mobile GISs into the playing field. It should be decided which browser‐based strategy would serve as the highest of benefit based on characteristics that are important to consumers, such as affordability, ease‐of‐use, user‐friendly coding, and acceptability by users.

This research is highly indicative that mobile GIS would be of great benefit for future studies within the realm of disaster monitoring management. The research presented in this paper can be deemed as original due to the fact that it is a study about the utilization of mobile technologically‐advanced gadgets that provide data analysis for flooding in real time. Moreover, these highly technologically‐advanced devices are cost‐effective compared to those in the past.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent service recommendation model. The paper formulates the service adaptation process by using artificial intelligence techniques like Bayesian Network, fuzzy logic and rule based reasoning.

The authors formulate the service adaptation process by using artificial intelligence techniques like Bayesian Network, fuzzy logic and rule based reasoning. Bayesian Network is used to classify the incoming call (high priority call, low priority call and unknown calls), fuzzy linguistic variables and membership degrees to define the context situations, the rules for adopting the policies of implementing a service, fitness degree computation and service recommendation. In addition to this the paper proposes maximum to minimum priority based context attributes matching algorithm for rule selection based on fitness degree of rules. The context aware mobile is tested for library and class room scenario to exemplify the proposed service recommendation engine and demonstrate its effectiveness.

First, it was found that there was reduction in application searching time in different contexts. For example, if user enters into the library, the proposed mobile will be adapted to the library situation automatically by configuring its desktop and internal settings to facilitate the library services like book search, web link, silent mode and friends search. Second, the design of the recommendation engine, utilizing contextual parameters like Location (class room, college campus, house, etc.) Personal (age, name), Temporal (time, date), Physical (fall, normal), and schedule agendas, was found to be of importance.

Exploitation of hybrid fuzzy system, Bayesian Networks and the utility theory (usage history and context history) for modeling and implementation.

In many settings, the users are mobile (e.g. away from their desks) while high quality multimedia telephony equipment has fixed locations. This may result in unsuccessful multimedia calls and motivates a context aware system which supports session mobility. This paper aims to address these issues.

The approach is to utilize state‐of‐the‐art in‐context awareness and integrate this into a real time telecom system based on SIP. System requirements are formulated and the system is designed, implemented and (technically) tested.

The paper contains a thorough analysis of why baseline SIP and SIP REFER alone cannot solve our case and why a new SIP extension is introduced. The solution is evaluated and compared to solutions such as “virtual terminals”.

It is pointed out that the context model does not directly support roaming between two different business domains. This issue is however of limited impact in an enterprise setting. The current prototype is thoroughly tested from a technical viewpoint, but user studies in real organizations are recommended as further work.

The paper shows that human issues and issues relating to computer mediated communication (CMC) are strongly linked to technical details in SIP. In practice this means that researchers in CMC and CSCW should look more into building prototypes where real time conversational features are supported together with dynamic change of media types.

The main value of the paper is a thorough described technical realization of the context aware multimedia application ENriched MEdia (ENME). The background material and the appendix should be of value to anyone interested in convergence between computing and communication.

Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spywares have been effective for quite sometime in the domain of digital computers. These malicious software cause millions of dollars of loss in assets, revenue, opportunity, cleanup cost, and lost productivity. To stop virus attacks, organizations frame up different security policies. These policies work only within the limited domain of the organization’s network. However, the emergence of wireless technologies, and the seamless mobility features of the wireless devices from one network to the other have created a challenge to uphold the security policies of a particular network. Hence, in this digital society, while mobile devices roam in foreign networks, they get infected through viruses in the foreign network. Anti‐virus software is not so effective for novel viruses. There have been no reports of mobile‐phone viruses in the wild as yet. However, with the emergence of execution environments on mobile phones, it will be possible to write viruses and worms for mobile devices in cellular networks. We should be prepared to fight against viruses in the cellular networks. All the technologies available to fight against viruses are specific to virus signatures. We propose that this fight needs to be multilayered. In this paper the authors have proposed a novel philosophy in cellular network called Artificial Hygiene (AH), which is virus neutral and will work at the class level. With this process a device and the network will take the necessary steps to keep the digital environment safe.

The purpose of this mainly conceptual paper is to analyze key changes in the institutional setting for standardization and to discuss what they indicate about further developments of the mobile sector. The intention is that this conceptual analysis will complement and contextualize the analysis of Nordic players found in the other papers of this special issue.

The paper is concerned with issues of industrial organization. The paper presents a treatment of industrial dynamics in them mobile telecom sector and the changing role of standards in it. We approach the substantial changes in the mobile telecom sector, focusing on the correspondence of the changes in the standards system to overall industry dynamics. Empirical information from the Symbian case is used to illustrate the hypothesis of standardization process and of the industry at large.

The paper identifies changing patters in the organization of technological standardization which represents a microcosm of the larger reorganization of the sector. Nordic actors, whose present position owes much to success in linking capabilities to sequential mobile standards. The paper draws out implications of the limits to “intergenerational leveraging” in standards.

The major contribution of the paper is to focus on changes in the organization of the standardization process in order to discuss the industrial dynamics of an industry which is undergoing a period of rapid change. Its reference to industrial dynamics perspective allows it to link the literature on dominant design to the field of standards research.