University of Washington Emerging Technology

Presentation

Ryan Sarver – Director of Consumer Products (Skyhook Wireless/Loki)

This session was about introducing practical tools that allow developers to add location capabilities to a website or application.

Location adds a new level of extra meaning and metadata so you can push meaningful data to the user based on a person’s location. This will give your users another level of context to work with based on where they are.

Location data comes in different variations:
1. Lat and long
2. Polygon area
3. Street address
4. Street intersections
5. Area title = “south of market”

Due to privacy risks there are means of blurring location such as using general location data like “I am in Fremont” vs a street address.

Some showcased tools:

My.loki.com

Here is an example website which will detect your current location based on wifi location (mapped out wireless access points ) and allow you to share location with friends. This site and its associated browser plugins is based on the Skyhook wireless SDK. www.skyhookwireless.com

Fireball: www.fireballapp.com
At the Web2.0 Expo, attendees were given access to a new application still in development called Fireball.

Taken from the Fireball site:

“Fireball is a location-based mashup designed to find out where your friends are. Instead of creating Yet Another Social Network, forcing you to re-add all your friends (AGAIN), we just tie together the best tools out there (that you probably already use). This includes using Twitter (for messaging and your social/attention network), Upcoming (for event and place names) and Fire Eagle (for location queries and updates).”

The location input is through Twittering, so it requires a user to type in their location, while Loki only requires you to push a button to determine current location.

FireEagle.com a Yahoo! service

Taken from the FireEagle site:

“Fire Eagle is a system that brokers location information. It is designed to help users safely share information about their location with sites, services and people on the Internet.
The service has two major functions for users—it allows a user to update their location and then gives them full control of how and where they share that location. A user can perform these functions on the central site, but can also update or access their location data using any other authorized 3rd party application - on the web, on a desktop application or on a mobile device. Applications that access a user’s location information can then personalize their service accordingly.”

This system serves as repository for users to store location information. Applications are then developed against it to either query for location or input new location data. The system has tools which allow users to control application and data access to their own location data.

Geolocation Methods:

Triangulate
Determining position of an unknown object relative to known objects

• wifi (wireless access points - maps out wireless access points)
• gps (satellites - one meter)
• cell towers

Accuracy:
GPS - 1 meter
Wi-Fi - 20 meters
Cell Tower - 2000 meters

Here is a good link that describes the various location providers currently available.
http://www.locationaware.org/wiki/Location_providers

Here is a link to existing standards for location data
http://www.locationaware.org/wiki/Existing_Standards

Mobile Location APIs

- iPhone core location API
- WIFI, Cell tower
- Symbian S60 location api
- GPS, A-GPS
- J2ME JSR-179 (Java)
- GPS, device-specific

More info for developers

Skyhook SDK
www.skyhookwireless.com

Where Widgets
http://developer.where.com

Cell Tower Data:
- developer.yahoo.com/yrb/zonetag
- www.opencellid.org
- celldb.org

More ways to update your location:

* Get Dopplr to tell Fire Eagle the city you’re in
* Send your location to the Twitter user Firebot
* Install the Navizon client on your iPhone to update your location every few minutes
* Use ZoneTag on Nokia 60 phones to broadcast your location automatically

eTech TakeAways:

1. We can start exploring these new location aware technologies NOW and determine what works and doesn’t as it relates to the technology and more importantly privacy issues.

2. Start thinking about various possibilities here that would add real world value to our UW community.

3. Lets find a study problem that would be best served through location awareness and solve it.

Presentation Slides

Speaker: Brian Fling (Fling Media)

This was a 3-hour work shop given during the first day of the conference. This workshop goes thru the basics of mobile technology and explains the current and possible future mobile environment. The talk also included a healthy dose of iPhone development.

Brian takes us through the jargon map for the mobile landscape and further explains mobility using a layered diagram. See slide #56

A slide of the Top Network Operators. See slide #59

A slide of various GSM Mobile Networks and their speeds. See slide #63

A pie chart comparing various mobile devices. See slide #67

A table listing various mobile platforms and their descriptions such as Java ME, Palm, iPhone, etc… See slide #69

A table listing various mobile operating systems and their descriptions such as Symbian, Windows mobile, OS X, etc… See slide #71

A table listing various application frameworks and their descriptions such as BREW, Web, Flash lite, etc… See slide #73

An awesome video showing why companies are finding it hard to innovate with mobile phones due to government and industry restrictions. The video is taken during Jason Devitt’s (founder of Skydeck) appearance before the US congress on July 11th 2007.

Here are a couple quotes from Brian that I certainly agree with - “Mobile will revolutionize the way we gather and interact with information in the next two years.” & “Mobile has the potential to reach anybody through any medium”

Mobile 2.0 is used to describe the current and new advancements (evolution) with mobile phones and devices.

Brian offers 5 points to why the mobile device is unique as a computing platform.

1. First truly personal mass media
2. First always-on mass media
3. First always-carried mass media
4. Only mass media with a built in payment channel
5. Offers point of thought

See slide #106

An important mobility feature that is changing mobile usage is location awareness. Methods of triangulation to provide location data: wifi access points, gps, and cell towers.

Location awareness brings with it many opportunities to help bring a new level of context and value to users. How does knowing whether your customer is in close proximity to your office affect how your site and data is presented to the user?

A good slide on the mobile evolution based on types of phones. See slide #145

This slide shows the differences between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0. See slide #148

Good summary of Mobile 2.0. See slide #158

See slide #187 for a list of iPhone strengths

Types of iPhone Applications:

1. Productivity (eg. Calendar)
2. Utility (eg. Weather reports)
3. Immersive (eg. Use of accelerometer, physical movement of device)

A comparison of benefits between web apps vs iPhone apps. See slide #235

Brian’s suggestion: “Build Web Apps first. iPhone Apps second.”

A comparison between network speeds such as EDGE vs Wi-Fi. See slide #255

Brian shows off his Leaflets technology which he uses to showcase an iPhone web application and describe iPhone web application best practices. See slide #266

eTech key take aways:

1. The number of iPhone/iPodTouch devices on the UW campus should reinforce our development focus on Safari webkit applications.

2. Web applications for mobile devices will provide a new vehicle for UW data and information to reach our constituents around the world like never before. For example, we can tackle research which is taking place in developing countries where data connectivity is challenging.

3. Location awareness within mobile devices will help enhance the services we can bring to students, faculty, and researchers in every UW campus. A simple example is an interactive campus map on a mobile device which guides a student from one class to another in real time.

4. Taking pop quizzes to the next level, where timed quizzes can be given to students any time of the day.

Presentation slides

Speaker: Daniel Appelquist (Senior Technology Strategist - Vodafone)

Daniel predicts that within 5 years, the majority of Web usage worldwide will be mobile. Mobile application developers are increasingly choosing the web as a platform. This is helping break up closed carriers.

Developing countries are driving mobile usage due to the fact mobile phones are more accessible than traditional computers. Mobile phones are a powerful platforms because they are always close to the individual, almost always on, and people usually do not typically share their phone with others so it is a very personal and social device.

Mobile 2.0 is used as a term for describing the next wave of mobile advancements. Here is a sample list of these advancements:

SMS -> IM, mobile blogging
Java Games -> Connected Applications
Presence & Push-To-Talk -> VOIP applications
WAP sites -> Web sites that adapt for mobile browsers
WAP pus -> RSS Readers
Location based services -> Proximity and location-aware services
Content comsumption -> Content creation (e.g. mobile blogging)
Carrier/Operator chooses -> User chooses

Top 11 Mobile 2.0 Trends:

See slide #8

Why is Mobile Different?

See slide #10

Mobile Web Best Practices and Ajax

Start at slide #11

eTech key take aways: