<p> The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between Facebook usage and self-efficacy in collegiate athletes. The data for this study was provided by St. Thomas University athletes in the United States. The variables used to represent Facebook usage, Facebook frequency of use, Facebook number of friends and Facebook frequency status updates were measured using Facebook Intensity Scale (Ellison et al., 2007). The dependent variable used in this study is self-efficacy which is measured using the General Self-efficacy (GSE) developed (Jerusalem &amp; Schwarzer, 1979). Data analyses indicated a statistically significant relationship between Facebook number of friends and self-efficacy. The data also indicated significant inverse relationship between Facebook frequency status updates and self-efficacy. The results of the correlation analysis indicated inverse relationships between frequency status updates and frequency of use, and frequency status updates and Facebook number of friends. These findings suggest that once the coaches, administrators, and professors attend to the issue of Facebook usage for collegiate athletes, it may enhance self-efficacy and psychological benefits.</p>

Beacons are small devices that can broadcast messages using Bluetooth and other communication technologies using low power consumption. Beacons technology started to emerge lately and many companies has started to see opportunities. One usage of beacons is improving online advertising by using localized information. The most common way to consume beacons today, is by using a native application. This solution is viable in many cases, but not for online advertising. The reason for this is that users do not want to download a native application only for advertising. In this study, solutions for online advertising using beacons, are examined. The study is focused around a case study on implementing a plugin for Android applications. The plugin consists of a background service that listens for beacon messages, converts the beacon messages to geographic information and gathers user information. All that information is sent to a web service to later perform retargeting. This improves online advertisement, since localized advertisement can be displayed to the user. The results of the case study showed that the plugin is a viable solution for online advertising using beacons. The plugin could be integrated and launched from different Android applications in a simple way. Measurements of the RAM usage and battery consumption indicates that the plugin can run with no huge impact on the performance or battery of the phone. The purpose of the study is to present different ways of using beacons for online advertising. / Beacons är små enheter som kan sända ut meddelanden genom att använda Bluetooth eller andra kommunikationstekniker med låg energiförbrukning. Teknologin bakom Beacons började framträda nyligen och många företag har redan sett de möjligheter som finns med teknologin. Beacons kan bland annat användas till att förbättra digital reklam genom att använda lokaliserad information. Det vanligaste sättet att konsumera beacons är att använda en lokal applikation. Det sättet är användbart i många fall, men inte för digital reklam. Anledningen till det är att användare tenderar att inte vilja ladda ner applikationer endast för att få reklam. I den här studien undersöks lösningar för att använda beacons för digital reklam. Studien fokuserar kring en fallstudie om ett insticksprogram till applikationer för Android. Insticksprogrammet består av en bakgrundstjänst som lyssnar efter meddelande från beacons, konverterar meddelandet till geografisk information, samlar information om användaren och skickar informationen till en web service, som senare använder informationen för att ge användare anpassad reklam. Detta förbättrar reklamen, eftersom användarens position kan användas för att ge bättre anpassad reklam. Resultaten från fallstudien visar att insticksprogrammet är en genomförbar lösning för att använda beacons för digital reklam. Insticksprogrammet kan integreras och startas från en applikation i Android på ett enkelt sätt. Mätningar av insticksprogrammets RAM-användning och batterianvändning visar på att det kan köras utan att märkbart påverka telefonens prestanda eller batteri. Syftet med den här studien är att visa olika sätt som beacons kan användas för digital reklam.

Today more and more objects in our daily lives are getting connected to the Internet. This phenomenon is called the Internet of Things and is a way for physical things such as cars, buildings or even bus stations to get access and communicate with other objects using the Internet. The problem is that for every Internet of Things device, an application is often needed in order to communicate with these devices. Developing mobile applications in a separate programming language for each operating system can be an expensive and time consuming task. In this thesis, we implement and evaluate a cross-platform mobile solution for users to interact with smart things using the advantages of web technologies. To compare previous findings in this area, two literature reviews has been performed to find out which is the state of the art on cross-platform mobile development frameworks and smart-things technologies used for interacting with physical objects. The result is a mobile application developed using PhoneGap and jQuery Mobile that interacts with iBeacons, where students inside a university building can get directions and schedules for different rooms. The application received good results from a couple of usability studies, and performed well when measuring its performance. The outcome shows that web technologies that exist today are a viable solution to native mobile applications in terms of interacting with smart things such as tagging technologies.