Mobile information.

The provision of information by mobile technologies has become an integral part of our everyday life. The idea of compressing information and carrying it around for immediate satisfaction of one’s information needs didn’t take a long time to gain users’ appreciation. We no longer use our mobile devices just for calling and texting. It seems (according to Richard Butterworth) to be their least used function. We grew quite addicted to mobile technology with its magical power to connect us to the external world regardless of our location.  The decreasing cost of devices paired with their ever increasing functionality make them a must of our daily routine.

As with all great things in this life and with technology in particular there are some limitations that may render users frustrated and dissatisfied. Some issues such as battery life or the speed and ubiquity of the internet access might be resolved over time according to Moore’s law, which states that semi-conductive technology evolves in 18-month cycles. Most likely, the majority of us have already experienced the fast pace of technology evolution: mobile devices are most likely to become outdated within six months of purchase. Or on the more positive side of things, if one hadn’t got the means or opportunity to buy a first generation smartphone, later on they could buy more sophisticated devices that performed much more smoothly. However, the inherent problems of mobile devices such as limited screen and keyboard size are unlikely to be solved in the foreseeable future.

The main advantage of mobile devices is their context awareness which allows them to continuously provide useful information for users. Currently, GP systems provide 40m scope which is not sufficient for augmented reality, i.e. providing additional information about objects. The European satellite project Galileo will provide 1m accuracy, and commercial users could get up to a centimetre accuracy. The major problem of satellite technology is the interference, since it relies on a simultaneous signal from three or four satellites, thus clouds, mountains and buildings can still stand in the way of this multi-million dollar, miracle-of-science technology.

As opposed to humans, machines are falling behind in visual recognition. Even though there is face recognition software for PCs, it doesn’t perform dazzlingly on the phones. It does better with place recognition, which can come in handy.

Bluetooth transmits data over short distances up to 10-15 meters. This technology is limited by privacy issues rather than by its functionality. Very few users would appreciate being fed information by information fountains coming via Bluetooth; or seeing personalised billboards when passing by them with Bluetooth on. I certainly wouldn’t.

Limitations.

Limited screen size represents a challenge for website designers. They would normally create a single document which would contain all possible information. CSS will determine how to process the document in response to requests from different devices. In case of mobile device only essential information will be displayed; all fancy graphics and images will be stripped so that the document could fit within the small screen and download faster.

Keyboard size might represent an issue, especially if one is getting on. Although there are some ideas on how to tackle the issue of keyboard size, e.g. keyboards which could be folded or rolled and carried in one’s pocket could be fun albeit tricky to use, but currently people still find them not as good as they’d wish them to be. Hence, auto-correction and auto-completion are built-in, but whether anyone uses them or not is beyond the scope of this discussion.  

In the lab, we had to design an interface that would satisfy our information needs as DITA students. I joined Caroline and Brittany in their brainstorming. We came up with some functions that we thought would be useful in the mobile information context. The idea was to complement the bits we thought were missing on Moodle for more efficient and comprehensive studying. Brittany even made a fancy drawing, so you can have a look on her blog. I will limit myself to a concise list of our ideas.

We bore in mind that it would be a complementary mobile phone interface; by no means did we intend to replace Moodle. It’s too complicated.

1)    Lectures in two different formats: pdf and podcast (we loved the idea to listen again to the lecture to comprehend the material presented after a lab session or after we’ve done some reading).

2)    Exercises in two formats: pdf and visual aids, i.e. screenshots of the steps we are to take, some prompts on how we could take it further. Half of us are usually wasting time struggling to understand how to do them. We could use this time for actual learning.

3)    Events – curriculum: lecture dates and times; and relevant events, conferences, seminars related to the course. It is really tiring to click through dozens of buttons back and forth trying to find things.

4)    Newsfeed/ Discussion boards feed. We’d love to be alerted when there are new posts and we would appreciate retrieving them better than we can do now.

5)    Blog or as Brittany suggested “Ask Andy” button.

APIs, XML and Mashups

Last time we discussed the main features of Web 2.0 and issues associated with using it and contributing to its content. This week’s lecture shed light on how Web 2.0 is rendered practical.

Web service is a type of API. Web services are the technical infrastructure which ensures Web 2.0 usability. To provide flexible and permanently evolving content, servers send information to clients which the latter read, process and personalise for users’ information needs. They serve as an intermediary between complex services on the internet and users.

In the Web 2.0 environment, there is no need to purchase software as in good old times. Still can’t believe how much I used to pay for a piece of software. The software stored on the internet has a proprietary status.  The data sent from users’ computers is processed by the software sitting on the remote machines on a pay per usage basis. The idea of having nothing on one’s hard drive is taken even further by the concept of cloud computing which allows users to access and manage data stored on the internet. Personally, I do have some issues with it. How is the privacy/control ensured? What happens if servers are shut down, confiscated, hacked, sold etc? For instance, Google must disclose users’ personal information without notifying them if subpoenaed by the US government.

XML (standing for eXtensible Markup Language) is a set of conventions used to create a language which can communicate any data in any form between machines. It does contain tags and attributes as HTML but those are created by users in order to convey and contain the information required.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) provide the user-friendly interfaces that conceal the complexity of the data storage and management from users. They allow users to build their own systems. A mashup is widely used to create new user-oriented content and services by combining information from different Web services and APIs. 

At the lab we had the opportunity to create our own mashup web page.

The first task was to create a static map with several location markers on it using Google API. The process consisted of copying and pasting the adequate strings of HTML to my HTML document and putting exact geographical coordinates for the location I wanted to mark. In the second task I created a “LIKE” button by embedding in my mashup web document  a string of HTML  generated for me by Facebook web service. For the third task I used the web service provided by Twitter to create a Twitter update feed on my web page. By the end of the session I managed to produce a basic mashup page, where various external resources were combined in order to make a page’s content versatile, interactive and informative.