För att elever i skolan ska kunna inhämta kunskaper behöver de ha fungerande verktyg. Att läsa och skriva är viktiga redskap för detta ändamål. Elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter kan behöva använda sig av alternativa verktyg för att lyckas med sin kunskapsinhämtning. Det här arbetet var en del i ett större projekt på Linnéuniversitet. Syftet med studien var att bidra med förståelse för om ett multifunktionellt tekniskt verktyg, i detta fall smartphone, fungerar som ett alternativt verktyg som kan öka möjligheterna till en likvärdig utbildning för elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter i grundskolan. Under arbetets gång utvecklades frågeställningen till att mer specifikt beröra hur användarvänliga de olika verktygen uppfattades samt vilka motiverande faktorer man kunde se hos användarna. Datainsamlingen gjordes genom intervjuer, fältstudier och olika enkäter. Både positiva och negativa faktorer redovisas i arbetet. Resultaten mättes i en teoretisk modell över hur mänskliga faktorer kan påverka framgångsfaktorn i användandet av alternativa verktyg. Generellt sett var motivationen hög och detta ökade framgångsfaktorn hos deltagarna i projektet. När det gäller de mer specifika redskapen verkar läsverktygen och studieverktygen vara de som tenderar att ha högst framgångsfaktor. Hur stor framgång verktyget får för den enskilde användaren kan bero på många olika mänskliga faktorer. / Alternativa verktyg; ett stöd för läs- och skrivutvecklingen

The number of smartphones in use is overwhelmingly increasing every year. These devices rely on connectivity to the Internet for the majority of their applications. The ever-increasing number of deployed 802.11 wireless access points and the relatively high cost of other data services make the case for opportunistic communication using free WiFi hot-spots. However, this requires effective management of the WLAN interface, because by design the energy cost of WLAN scanning and interface idle operation is high and energy is a primary resource on mobile devices. This thesis studies the WLAN interface management problem on mobile devices. First, I consider the hypothetical scenario where future knowledge of wireless connectivity opportunities is available, and present a dynamic programming algorithm that finds the optimal schedule for the interface. In the absence of future knowledge, I propose several heuristic strategies for interface management, and use real-world user traces to evaluate and compare their performance against the optimal algorithm. Trace-based simulations show that simple static scanning with a suitable interval value is very effective for delay-tolerant, background applications. I attribute the good performance of static scanning to the power-law distribution of the length of the WiFi opportunities of mobile users, and provide guidelines for choosing the scanning interval based on the statistical properties of the traces. I improve the performance of static scanning, by 46% on average, using a local cache of previous scan results that takes advantage of the location hints provided by the set of visible GSM cell towers.

Sociala medier har de senaste åren expanderat med en enorm kraft. Facebook som startades år 2004 är idag världens största sociala media och har i dagsläget över 500 miljoner användare. Om ökningen av användare fortsätter som den gjorde under år 2010 så kommer det år 2012 finnas fler Facebookanvändare än det finns invånare i Europa. Detta gör att det känns oerhört intressant och relevant för oss som medie- och kommuni-kationsvetare att undersöka området. Syftet med uppsatsen är att med hjälp av aktiva samtal i fokusgrupper undersöka användningen av sociala medier via den nya tidens mobiltelefoner (smartphones). Detta är viktigt att studera på grund av att fenomenet sociala medier har blivit en viktig del för oss medie- och kommunikationsvetare och kommer vara en stor del i kommunikationsbran-schens framtid. Vi har använt oss av aktiva fokusgruppssamtal för att få fram svar på våra frågeställningar. Fokusgrupperna genererade ett tydligt resultat som visade att användarna ser den ökade tillgängligheten som den största faktorn till förändringen i deras användning. Dessutom har tillgängligheten skapat ett ständigt pågående samtal på de sociala medierna som tidigare inte fanns där. Den ökade användningen har även medfört ett behov att hålla sig uppdaterad på de sociala medierna.

En e-guide är ett fenomen som kan ge mervärde för besökaren. Det innebär en övergång ifrån en mänsklig guide till en digitaliserad. Det har tidigare skapats e-guider som inte har haft de tekniska aspekterna som krävs för att kunna framföra informationen till besökaren på det sätt utvecklarna och andra inblandade har önskat. Vi har undersökt och utvärderat en av dessa eguiderför att skapa en prototyp för en e-guide över Elsborg, som är en del av Världsarvet Falun. Prototypen utgår ifrån smartphones och operativsystemet Android. Utifrån tidigare och nutida eguider och prototypen, har vi analyserat resultaten och därigenom undersökt möjligheten för att skapa en generisk arkitektur, i form av en applikation för en e-guide som ska kunna appliceras på olika sammanhang oberoende av dess innehåll. Våra efterforskningar har dock visat att det ärsvårt att skapa en så pass generaliserad mall att den direkt går att implementera utan vissa justeringar.

Cognitive radio networks require the use of computational resources to reconfigure transmit/receive parameters to improve communication quality of service or efficiency. Recent emergence of smart phones has made these resources more accessible and mobile, combining sensors, geolocation, memory and processing power into a single device. Thus, this work examines an integration of a smart phone into a complex radio network that controls the beam direction of a phased array using a conventional method, but utilizes the phone's internal sensors as an enhancement to generate beam direction information, Bluetooth channel to relay information to control circuitry, and Global Position System (GPS) to track an object in motion. The research and experiments clearly demonstrate smart phone's ability to utilize internal sensors to generate information used to control beam direction from a phased array. Computational algorithms in a network of microcontrollers map this information into a DC bias voltage which is applied to individual phase shifters connected to individual array elements. To test algorithms and control theory, a 4 by 4 microstrip patch array is designed and fabricated to operate at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. Simulations and tests of the array provide successful antenna design results with satisfactory design parameters. Smart phone control circuitry is designed and tested with the array. Anechoic test results yield successful beam steering capability scanning 90 degrees at 15 degree intervals with 98% accuracy in all cases. In addition, the system achieves successful beam steering operable over a bandwidth of 100 MHz around resonance. Furthermore, these results demonstarate the capability of the smart phone controlled system to be used in testing further array formations to achieve beam steering in 3-Dimensional space. It is further noted that the system extends capabilities of integrating other control methods which use the smart phone to process information.

The most two popular products in 2009 are smart phone and net-book because of the emersion of mobile computing. Since the mobile computing makes the notebooks more mobile, these kinds of notebooks are called netbook and on the other hand, since the mobile computing makes the cell phones more computing, this kind of cell phones are called smartphone. My research focused mobile computing impact on communication industry. However, the communication industry is big and changing very fast. I tried to predict the communication trends and future competition carefully, and studied the research from the international institutions in good reputation. This research focused carriers, device manufacturers and software industries. The future trends of mobile computing are: Location Based Service, Pre-paradigmatic Design Phase Competition, and Prosumer. Each companies should follow the trends, depending on own resource to make strategies plan, and I tried to gave them suggestions.

No description available.

This thesis project has been performed at (and for) a company named Strödata. The purpose of the project has been to perform a risk analysis on Strödata’s web based business system, and specifically analyze how access to the business system through smartphones would affect the risks posed to the system. This has been done to help decide if smartphone access should be enabled. An implementation of a web application which is suited for use on a smartphone has also been developed, as a proof-of-concept, to grant access to a limited part of the business system. The method used to perform the risk analysis has been CORAS, as presented by Braber et al in [1]. CORAS is a risk analysis method designed with IT-systems specifically in mind. The method is divided into seven steps. The new web application is an ASP.NET MVC3 site that uses JavaScript, jQuery and Ajax-JSON. The risk analysis showed, among other things, that the benefits of enabling smartphone access to the business system are larger than the risks it introduces. Smartphone access also opens up many new possibilities to implement interesting new features or improve old ones. The risk analysis also showed that there are risks to the system that need to be dealt with. For these, risks treatments were identified to lessen their probabilities and/or their consequences should they occur. Some treatments were completely successful in eliminating the risks they treat, others were not. However, the treatments that were not completely successful did reduce the risks far enough that perhaps they should be re-evaluated as un-/acceptable. The conclusions that can be drawn from this thesis project are that although enabling smartphone access to the business system introduces new risks to the system, the access also reduces certain risks. How costly the new risks are and how much the access reduces risks varies from company to company and from system to system. For Strödata, the reduction to certain risks was large enough to outweigh the new risks that would be introduced. Regarding the possibility to implement smartphone access to the business system, it is possible using more modern technologies, methods and frameworks; such as those mentioned above.

As smartphones become more ubiquitous, increasing amounts of information about smartphone users are created, collected, and shared. This information may pose privacy and security risks to the smartphone user. The risks may vary from government surveillance to theft of financial information. Previous work in the area of smartphone privacy and security has both identified specific security flaws and examined users’ expectations and behaviors. However, there has not been a broad examination of the smartphone ecosystem to determine the risks to users from smartphone data sharing and the possible mitigations. Two of the five studies in this work examine the smartphone data sharing ecosystem to identify risks and mitigations. The first study uses multi-stakeholder expert interviews to identify risks to users and the mitigations. A second study examines app developers in order to quantify the risky behaviors and identify opportunities to improve security and privacy. In the remaining three of five studies discussed in this work, we examine one specific risk mitigation that has been popular with policy-makers: privacy notices for consumers. If done well, privacy notices should inform smartphone users about the risks and allow them to make informed decisions about data collection. Unfortunately, previous research has found that existing privacy notices do not help smartphone users, as they are neither noticed nor understood. Through user studies, we evaluate options to improve notices. We identify opportunities to capture the attention of users and improve understanding by examining the timing and content of notices. Overall, this work attempts to inform public policy around smartphone privacy and security. We find novel opportunities to mitigate risks by understanding app developers’ work and behaviors. Also, recognizing the current focus on privacy notices, we attempt to frame the debate by examining how users’ attention to and comprehension of notices can be improved through content and timing.

This thesis presents the design and implementation of I-Shop, a context-aware, shopping smartphone application designed to provide shoppers with relevant advertisements for product and services available in close proximity. We argue that current context-aware mobile applications exhibit significant limitations in the following domains: (1) use of context, (2) invasion of privacy, (3) spam management, and (4) platform dependency. The proposed context model attempts to tackle these shortcomings by exploiting available contextual information from social media networks such as Facebook. Our goal is to use a user’s personal information, such as their native language and personal interests, to direct the most relevant advertisements to them. To alleviate any privacy issues, a user’s personal information is never sent out to any back-end services and only apply the filters locally. In addition, unlike most other predictive approaches that track the user’s location history, we follow a reactive approach which triggers only when the user is close to a shopping area. When a user arrives to a particular shopping area, the application asks whether she wishes to view any advertisements of local products and services. Upon approval, the application retrieves deals on products including services sorted by domain from databases, such as Groupon and our custom extended deals database. Finally, the application filters the retrieved data according to personal interests and then displays the results. As a proof of concept, we designed and implemented the I-Shop prototype application. We built I-Shop as a hybrid application using IBM’s state-of-the-art Worklight infrastructure. This approach lets developers optimize their time and effort; enabling a “write once, deploy everywhere” development model that not only reduces development costs but also increases application performance by providing a combination of native and web capabilities. In addition, I-Shop also leverages several features offered by the IBM Worklight infrastructure including cross-platform support, direct update, internalization, and integration of third-party libraries and toolkits. / Graduate