Showing papers on "Mobile search published in 2012"

Mobile Data Offloading through Opportunistic Communications and Social Participation

Abstract: 3G networks are currently overloaded, due to the increasing popularity of various applications for smartphones. Offloading mobile data traffic through opportunistic communications is a promising solution to partially solve this problem, because there is almost no monetary cost for it. We propose to exploit opportunistic communications to facilitate information dissemination in the emerging Mobile Social Networks (MoSoNets) and thus reduce the amount of mobile data traffic. As a case study, we investigate the target-set selection problem for information delivery. In particular, we study how to select the target set with only k users, such that we can minimize the mobile data traffic over cellular networks. We propose three algorithms, called Greedy, Heuristic, and Random, for this problem and evaluate their performance through an extensive trace-driven simulation study. Our simulation results verify the efficiency of these algorithms for both synthetic and real-world mobility traces. For example, the Heuristic algorithm can offload mobile data traffic by up to 73.66 percent for a real-world mobility trace. Moreover, to investigate the feasibility of opportunistic communications for mobile phones, we implement a proof-of-concept prototype, called Opp-off, on Nokia N900 smartphones, which utilizes their Bluetooth interface for device/service discovery and content transfer.

Serendipity: enabling remote computing among intermittently connected mobile devices

Abstract: Mobile devices are increasingly being relied on for services that go beyond simple connectivity and require more complex processing Fortunately, a mobile device encounters, possibly intermittently, many entities capable of lending it computational resources At one extreme is the traditional cloud-computing context where a mobile device is connected to remote cloud resources maintained by a service provider with which it has an established relationship In this paper we consider the other extreme, where a mobile device's contacts are only with other mobile devices, where both the computation initiator and the remote computational resources are mobile, and where intermittent connectivity among these entities is the norm We present the design and implementation of a system, Serendipity, that enables a mobile computation initiator to use remote computational resources available in other mobile systems in its environment to speedup computing and conserve energy We propose a simple but powerful job structure that is suitable for such a system Serendipity relies on the collaboration among mobile devices for task allocation and task progress monitoring functions We develop algorithms that are designed to disseminate tasks among mobile devices by accounting for the specific properties of the available connectivity We also undertake an extensive evaluation of our system, including experience with a prototype, that demonstrates Serendipity's performance

Cloudlets: bringing the cloud to the mobile user

Abstract: Although mobile devices are gaining more and more capabilities (i.e. CPU power, memory, connectivity, ...), they still fall short to execute complex rich media and data analysis applications. Offloading to the cloud is not always a solution, because of the high WAN latencies, especially for applications with real-time constraints such as augmented reality. Therefore the cloud has to be moved closer to the mobile user in the form of cloudlets. Instead of moving a complete virtual machine from the cloud to the cloudlet, we propose a more fine grained cloudlet concept that manages applications on a component level. Cloudlets do not have to be fixed infrastructure close to the wireless access point, but can be formed in a dynamic way with any device in the LAN network with available resources. We present a cloudlet architecture together with a prototype implementation, showing the advantages and capabilities for a mobile real-time augmented reality application.

System and method for using impressions tracking and analysis, location information, 2d and 3d mapping, mobile mapping, social media, and user behavior and information for generating mobile and internet posted promotions or offers for, and/or sales of, products and/or services

Abstract: A method, apparatus, computer readable medium, computer system, network, or system, is provided for using impressions tracking and analysis, location information, 2D and 3D mapping, social media, and user behavior and information for generating mobile and internet posted promotions or offers for, and/or sales of, products and/or services, for example, through an advertising application programming interfaces (APIs) on mobile devices, tablets, or computers, that provides mobile and web based promotions or offers that connect information and user behavior data to a user or related demographic location or user specified or predicted demographic location(s), such as through the use of as social networking, user or demographic profiles, behavior, and/or relationships, for targeted promotions or offers for products and/or services.

Systems and methods for mobile and online payment systems for purchases related to mobile and online promotions or offers provided using impressions tracking and analysis, location information, 2d and 3d mapping, mobile mapping, social media, and user behavior and information for generating mobile and internet posted promotions or offers for, and/or sales of, products and/or services in a social network, online or via a mobile device

Abstract: A method, apparatus, computer readable medium, computer system, network, or system is provided for mobile and online payment systems for mobile and online promotions or offers or daily deal coupons or daily deal coupons aggregation provided using impressions tracking and analysis, location information, 2D and 3D mapping, social media, and user behavior and information for generating mobile and internet posted promotions or offers or daily deal coupons or daily deal coupons aggregation for, and/or sales of, products and/or services in a social network, online or via a mobile device-for mobile and web based promotions or offers that connect information and user behavior data to a user or related demographic location or user specified or predicted demographic location(s) for targeted promotions or offers for products and/or services in a social network, online or via a mobile device.

Vehicular Cloud Computing

Abstract: Mobile Cloud Computing is a new field of research that aims to study mobile agents (people, vehicles, robots) as they interact and collaborate to sense the environment, process the data, propagate the results and more generally share resources. Mobile agents collectively operate as Mobile Clouds that enable environment modeling, content discovery, data collection and dissemination and other mobile applications in a way not possible, or not efficient, with conventional Internet Cloud models and mobile computing approaches. In this paper, we discuss design principles and research issues in mobile cloud computing. We then focus on the Mobile Vehicular Cloud and review cloud applications ranging from urban sensing to intelligent transportation.

Inferring land use from mobile phone activity

Abstract: Understanding the spatiotemporal distribution of people within a city is crucial to many planning applications. Obtaining data to create required knowledge, currently involves costly survey methods. At the same time ubiquitous mobile sensors from personal GPS devices to mobile phones are collecting massive amounts of data on urban systems. The locations, communications, and activities of millions of people are recorded and stored by new information technologies. This work utilizes novel dynamic data, generated by mobile phone users, to measure spatiotemporal changes in population. In the process, we identify the relationship between land use and dynamic population over the course of a typical week. A machine learning classification algorithm is used to identify clusters of locations with similar zoned uses and mobile phone activity patterns. It is shown that the mobile phone data is capable of delivering useful information on actual land use that supplements zoning regulations.

Systems and methods for a mobile application development and deployment platform

Abstract: Systems and methods for developing, customizing, and deploying mobile device applications are provided through a mobile application development and deployment platform. Preferably, these systems and methods are implemented in an Internet based environment that allows non-technical users to build sophisticated, highly-customizable cross-platform mobile applications. The platform allows users to select, input, create, customize, and combine various content, design characteristics, and application components, such as modules, some of which make use of features and functionality associated with various mobile devices and mobile operating systems. In certain embodiments, the platform allows users to compile the mobile application for various mobile operating systems and generates a configuration file for the mobile application that can be distributed to end users for execution on various mobile devices. When the mobile application is installed on, or executed by the mobile device, the configuration file may enable the retrieval of various data associated with the mobile application.

Breaking for commercials: characterizing mobile advertising

Abstract: Mobile phones and tablets can be considered as the first incarnation of the post-PC era. Their explosive adoption rate has been driven by a number of factors, with the most signifcant influence being applications (apps) and app markets. Individuals and organizations are able to develop and publish apps, and the most popular form of monetization is mobile advertising. The mobile advertisement (ad) ecosystem has been the target of prior research, but these works typically focused on a small set of apps or are from a user privacy perspective. In this work we make use of a unique, anonymized data set corresponding to one day of traffic for a major European mobile carrier with more than 3 million subscribers. We further take a principled approach to characterize mobile ad traffic along a number of dimensions, such as overall traffic, frequency, as well as possible implications in terms of energy on a mobile device. Our analysis demonstrates a number of inefficiencies in today's ad delivery. We discuss the benefits of well-known techniques, such as pre-fetching and caching, to limit the energy and network signalling overhead caused by current systems. A prototype implementation on Android devices demonstrates an improvement of 50 % in terms of energy consumption for offline ad-sponsored apps while limiting the amount of ad related traffic.

Research on mobile cloud computing: Review, trend and perspectives

Abstract: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) which combines mobile computing and cloud computing, has become one of the industry buzz words and a major discussion thread in the IT world since 2009. As MCC is still at the early stage of development, it is necessary to grasp a thorough understanding of the technology in order to point out the direction of future research. With the latter aim, this paper presents a review on the background and principle of MCC, characteristics, recent research work, and future research trends. A brief account on the background of MCC: from mobile computing to cloud computing is presented and then followed with a discussion on characteristics and recent research work. It then analyses the features and infrastructure of mobile cloud computing. The rest of the paper analyses the challenges of mobile cloud computing, summary of some research projects related to this area, and points out promising future research directions.

Advancing the state of mobile cloud computing

Abstract: The capabilities of mobile devices have been improving very quickly in terms of computing power, storage, feature support, and developed applications. However, these mobile applications are still intrinsically limited by a relative lack of bandwidth, computing power, and energy compared to their tethered counterparts. Cloud computing offers abundant computing power that can be tapped easily. Apple iCloud and Amazon Silk browser are two recent mobile applications that leverage the cloud. In this paper, we systematically explore the fundamental research questions when combining mobile and cloud computing. We will highlight some of the challenges we face and some of the solutions we are pursuing.

MAPCloud: Mobile Applications on an Elastic and Scalable 2-Tier Cloud Architecture

Abstract: The rise in popularity of mobile applications creates a growing demand to deliver richer functionality to users executing on mobile devices with limited resources. The availability of cloud computing platforms has made available unlimited and scalable resource pools of computation and storage that can be used to enhance service quality for mobile applications. This paper exploits the observation that using local resources in close proximity to the user, i.e. local clouds, can increase the quality and performance of mobile applications. In contrast, public cloud offerings (e.g. Amazon Web Services) offer scalability at the cost of higher delays, higher power consumption and higher price on the mobile device. In this paper we introduce MAP Cloud, a hybrid, tiered cloud architecture consisting of local and public clouds and show how it can be leveraged to increase both performance and scalability of mobile applications. We model the mobile application as a workflow of tasks and aim to optimally decompose the set of tasks to execute on the mobile client and 2-tier cloud architecture considering multiple QoS factors such as power, price, and delay. Such an optimization is shown to be NP-Hard, we propose an efficient simulated annealing based heuristic, called CRAM that is able to achieve about84% of optimal solutions when the number of users is high. We evaluate CRAM and the 2-tier approach via implementation(on Android G2 devices and Amazon EC2, S3 and Cloud Front)and extensive simulation using two rich mobile applications(Video-Content Augmented Reality and Image processing). Our results indicate that MAP Cloud provides improved scalability as compared to local clouds, improved efficiency (power/delay)(about 32% lower delays and power) and about 40% decrease in price in comparison to only using public cloud.

WalkSafe: a pedestrian safety app for mobile phone users who walk and talk while crossing roads

Abstract: Research in social science has shown that mobile phone conversations distract users, presenting a significant impact to pedestrian safety; for example, a mobile phone user deep in conversation while crossing a street is generally more at risk than other pedestrians not engaged in such behavior. We propose WalkSafe, an Android smartphone application that aids people that walk and talk, improving the safety of pedestrian mobile phone users. WalkSafe uses the back camera of the mobile phone to detect vehicles approaching the user, alerting the user of a potentially unsafe situation; more specifically WalkSafe i) uses machine learning algorithms implemented on the phone to detect the front views and back views of moving vehicles and ii) exploits phone APIs to save energy by running the vehicle detection algorithm only during active calls. We present our initial design, implementation and evaluation of the WalkSafe App that is capable of real-time detection of the front and back views of cars, indicating cars are approaching or moving away from the user, respectively. WalkSafe is implemented on Android phones and alerts the user of unsafe conditions using sound and vibration from the phone. WalkSafe is available on Android Market.

Adaptive Computation Offloading from Mobile Devices into the Cloud

Abstract: The inherently limited processing power and battery lifetime of mobile phones hinder the possible execution of computationally intensive applications like content-based video analysis or 3D modeling. Offloading of computationally intensive application parts from the mobile platform into a remote cloud infrastructure or nearby idle computers addresses this problem. This paper presents our Mobile Augmentation Cloud Services (MACS) middleware which enables adaptive extension of Android application execution from a mobile client into the cloud. Applications are developed by using the standard Android development pattern. The middleware does the heavy lifting of adaptive application partitioning, resource monitoring and computation offloading. These elastic mobile applications can run as usual mobile application, but they can also reach transparently remote computing resources. Two prototype applications using the MACS middleware demonstrate the benefits of the approach. The evaluation shows that applications, which involve complicated algorithms and large computations, can benefit from offloading with around 95\% energy savings and significant performance gains compared to local execution only.

A new approach and system for attentive mobile learning based on seamless migration

Abstract: Seamless migration is one of pervasive computing applications. The function of seamless mobility is suitable for mobile services such as mobile Web-based learning. In this paper, we propose an approach that supports an attentive mobile learning paradigm. This mobile learning dynamically follows the user from place to place and machine to machine without user's awareness or intervention by active service. This capability can be obtained by component-based smart system and agent-based migrating mechanism. To demonstrate the approach, the theoretical background of fuzzy-neural network for attentive service will be explained. The proposed fusion decision method is based on fuzzy-neural network which can make the input signal data to fuse better. Using online tuning, the fusion processing can be accelerated and the fusion belief degree can be improved. Description of mobile learning task and migrating granularity of the task is suggested. The design of the seamless migration mechanism is introduced. This includes solving several important sub-problems, such as transferring delay, transferring failure, and residual computation dependency. Our implemented system for attentive mobile learning based on seamless migration is presented. The validity comparison and evaluation of this kind of mobile learning paradigm is shown by experimental demos. This suggested attentive mobile learning paradigm based on seamless migration is useful and convenient to mobile learners.

Mobile Commerce: Technology, Theory, and Applications

Abstract: A Framework for the Study of Mobile Commerce NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode Wireless Devices for Mobile Commerce Locating the Money Towards a Classification Framework for Mobile Location Based Services Wireless Personal and Local Area Networks The Impact of Technology Advances on Strategy Formulation in Mobile Communications Networks The Ecology of Mobile Commerce The Wireless Application Protocol Mobile Business Services Mobile Portal Factors Influencing the Adoption of Mobile Gaming Services Mobile Data Technologies and Small Business Adoption and Diffusion We Know Where You Are M-Commerce and Coca Cola M-Commerce in the Automotive Industry Location-Based Services - Criteria for Adoption and Solution Deployment The Role of Mobile Advertising in Building a Brand Wireless in the Classroom and Beyond.

Systems and apparatuses for a secure mobile cloud framework for mobile computing and communication

Abstract: Systems and apparatuses for a secure mobile cloud framework (referred to as MobiCloud) for mobile computing and communication are disclosed. Embodiments of MobiCloud transfer each mobile node from a traditional strictly layer-structured communication node into a service node (SN). Each SN may be used as a service provider or a service broker according its capability. Each SN may be incorporated as a virtualized component of the MobiCloud. In some embodiments, MobiCloud mirrors an SN to one or multiple virtual images in the Cloud for addressing communication and computation deficiencies of mobile devices. Virtual images can create a visualized MANET routing and communication layer that can maximally assist the mobile nodes to enable pervasive computing services for each mobile device owner. A secure data processing framework is disclosed for the MobiCloud.

A Survey and Taxonomy of Cyber Foraging of Mobile Devices

Abstract: With the ever-increasing advancement of mobile device technology and their pervasive usage, users expect to run their applications on mobile devices and get the same performance as if they used to run their applications on powerful non-mobile computers. There is a challenge though in that mobile devices deliver lower performance than traditional less-constrained and non-mobile computers because they are constrained by weight, size, and mobility in spite of all their advancements in recent years. One of the most common solutions that has ameliorated this performance disparity is cyber foraging, wherein nearby non-mobile computers called surrogates are utilized to run the whole or parts of applications on behalf of mobile devices. In this paper, we present a survey of cyber foraging as a solution to resolve the challenges of computing on resource-constrained mobile devices. We also explain the most notable cyber foraging systems and present a categorization of existing cyber foraging approaches considering their type of dynamicity, granularity, metrics used, surrogate types and scale, location of their decision maker unit, remoteness of execution, migration support, and their overheads.

Understanding reuse in the Android Market

Abstract: Mobile apps are software products developed to run on mobile devices, and are typically distributed via app stores. The mobile app market is estimated to be worth billions of dollars, with more than hundred of thousands of apps, and still increasing in number. This explosion of mobile apps is astonishing, given the short time span that they have been around. One possible explanation for this explosion could be the practice of software reuse. Yet, no research has studied such practice in mobile app development. In this paper, we intend to analyze software reuse in the Android mobile app market along two dimensions: (a) reuse by inheritance, and (b) class reuse. Since app stores only distribute the byte code of the mobile apps, and not the source code, we used the concept of Software Bertillonage to track code across mobile apps. A case study on thousands of mobile apps across five different categories in the Android Market shows that almost 23% of the classes inherit from a base class in the Android API, and 27% of the classes inherit from a domain specific base class. Furthermore, on average 61% of all classes in each category of mobile apps occur in two or more apps, and 217 mobile apps are reused completely by another mobile app in the same category.

Vision: mClouds - computing on clouds of mobile devices

Abstract: When we think of mobile cloud computing today, we typically refer to empowering mobile devices - in particular smartphones and tablets - with the capabilities of stationary resources residing in giant data centers. But what happens when these mobile devices become as powerful as our personal computers or more? This paper presents our vision of a future in which mobile devices become a core component of mobile cloud computing architectures. We envision a world where mobile devices will be capable of forming mobile clouds, or mClouds, to accomplish tasks locally without relying, when possible, on costly and, sometimes, inefficient backend communication. We discuss a possible mClouds architecture, its benefits and tradeoffs, and the user incentive scheme to support the mCloud design.

A Taxonomy of Mobile Applications in Tourism

Abstract: The rapid growth in the use of smart phones and respective mobile applications has created new ways for the tourism industry to connect with their visitors while travelling. This paper proposes a taxonomy of mobile apps in tourism from two perspectives: a taxonomy on what services travel-related apps provide to the user and a taxonomy based on the level of customization the user has with the mobile application. The taxonomies provide insights into app development trends as well as gaps in the mobile app landscape. Understanding the opportunities currently provided by apps is also critical from a marketing perspective.

DESKS: Direction-Aware Spatial Keyword Search

Abstract: Location-based services (LBS) have been widely accepted by mobile users. Many LBS users have direction-aware search requirement that answers must be in the search direction. However to the best of our knowledge there is not yet any research available that investigates direction-aware search. A straightforward method first finds candidates without considering the direction constraint, and then generates the answers by pruning those candidates which invalidate the direction constraint. However this method is rather expensive as it involves a lot of useless computation on many unnecessary directions. To address this problem, we propose a direction-aware spatial keyword search method which inherently supports direction-aware search. We devise novel direction-aware indexing structures to prune unnecessary directions. We develop effective pruning techniques and search algorithms to efficiently answer a direction-aware query. As users may dynamically change their search directions, we propose to incrementally answer a query. Experimental results on real datasets show that our method achieves high performance and outperforms existing methods significantly.

Using On-the-Move Mining for Mobile Crowdsensing

Abstract: In this paper, we propose and develop a platform to support data collection for mobile crowdsensing from mobile device sensors that is under-pinned by real-time mobile data stream mining. We experimentally show that mobile data mining provides an efficient and scalable approach for data collection for mobile crowdsensing. Our approach results in reducing the amount of data sent, as well as the energy usage on the mobile phone, while providing comparable levels of accuracy to traditional models of intermittent/continuous sensing and sending. We have implemented our Context-Aware Real-time Open Mobile Miner (CAROMM) to facilitate data collection from mobile users for crowdsensing applications. CAROMM also collects and correlates this real-time sensory information with social media data from both Twitter and Facebook. CAROMM supports delivering real-time information to mobile users for queries that pertain to specific locations of interest. We have evaluated our framework by collecting real-time data over a period of days from mobile users and experimentally demonstrated that mobile data mining is an effective and efficient strategy for mobile crowdsensing.

A mobile platform for real-time human activity recognition

Abstract: Context-aware applications have been the focus of extensive research yet their implementation in mobile devices usually becomes challenging due to restrictions in regards to processing power and energy. In this paper, we propose a mobile platform to provide real-time human activity recognition. Our system features (1) an efficient library, MECLA, for the mobile evaluation of classification algorithms; and (2) a mobile application for real-time human activity recognition running within a Body Area Network. The evaluation indicates that the system can be implemented in real scenarios meeting accuracy, response time, and energy consumption requirements.

Mobile application, single sign-on management

Abstract: Techniques for managing single sign-on are provided. In some examples, single sign-on functionality may be provided for use on mobile devices (104) by utilizing mobile applications, cloud applications, and/or other web-based applications (208). For example, a mobile application or mobile web browser (204) may request to authenticate with or access one or more service provider computers (116). Authentication credentials may be requested from a user of the mobile device (202) to facilitate such authentication and/or access. Based at least in part on a successful log-in, access to server (212) resources from other applications (226) on the same mobile device (202) may be provided without successive or repetitive credential requests to the user.

Device mobility management in content-centric networking

Abstract: Due to rapid developments in mobile technologies as well as various embedded multimedia features, user created mobile contents are on the increase, in terms of both quality and quantity, and at the same time are shared in real time. To keep pace with such trends, a new networking technology called content-centric networking has appeared. However, it does not consider the extra requirements to support device movements. Thus, this article proposes a mobility management scheme for CCN to provide faster service access latency and lower routing overhead.

Executing mobile applications on the cloud: Framework and issues

Abstract: Modern mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have made many pervasive computing dreams come true. Still, many mobile applications do not perform well due to the shortage of resources for computation, data storage, network bandwidth, and battery capacity. While such applications can be re-designed with client-server models to benefit from cloud services, the users are no longer in full control of the application, which has become a serious concern for data security and privacy. In addition, the collaboration between a mobile device and a cloud server poses complex performance issues associated with the exchange of application state, synchronization of data, network condition, etc. In this work, a novel mobile cloud execution framework is proposed to execute mobile applications in a cloud-based virtualized execution environment controlled by mobile applications and users, with encryption and isolation to protect against eavesdropping from cloud providers. Under this framework, several efficient schemes have been developed to deal with technical issues for migrating applications and synchronizing data between execution environments. The communication issues are also addressed in the virtualization execution environment with probabilistic communication Quality-of-Service (QoS) technique to support timely application migration.

Change and Control Paradoxes in Mobile Infrastructure Innovation: The Android and iOS Mobile Operating Systems Cases

Abstract: The advent of the smart phone as a highly complex technology has been accompanied by mobile operating systems (OS), large communities of developers, diverse content providers, and increasingly complex networks, jointly forming digital infrastructures. The multi-faceted and relational character of such digital infrastructures raises issues around how change and control can be conceptualized and understood. We discuss how change and control are paradoxically related in digital infrastructures and how they affect the evolution of such infrastructures. We examine these paradoxes by examining the change in, and competition between, two mobile operating systems: Apple's iOS and Google's Android along with their related platform features and ecologies. We seek to validate a proposed theoretical framework of the dynamics of change and control through second-order analysis of the two cases. We observe that multiple factors had a significant effect on the evolution of these platforms including user interface, development platforms, business models, and value extraction principles. We observe how these factors significantly affect the evolution of mobile platform ecologies as well as speculate about the future of mobile system platforms.