WebCall - A Rich Context Mobile Research Platform
Zhigang Liu, Hawk Yin Pang, Jun Yang,Guang Yang, Peter Boda
(Special thanks to August Joki)
Nokia Research Center
10/27/09
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Outline
• Introduction
• System Architecture
• Features
· Viral Distribution
· Context Sharing
· Localization (Outdoor/Indoor)
· Human-Powered Q&A
· Privacy Control
• Lessons Learned
• Future Work
Introduction
• “Social network” is quite a buzzwordthese days.
• … but, one of the largest and mostimportant social networks has long been inyour pocket - i.e. the phone book or contacts.
• Our goal - further socialize the phone book
· Utilize sensing capabilities on modern mobile phones to share context (beyond content upload/download and status update).
· Enable easy R&D prototyping of mobile social apps for other researchers on a common platform and framework.
WebCall Architecture
• Name of “WebCall” came from pastwork but has since evolved.
• Client-server architecture on Symbian
• Client
· Nokia Web Run-Time (WRT):WebKit-based widget system
· HTTP server in PyS60 to serve local resources
• Server
· Apache HTTP server
· MySQL database
· Django framework in Python to implement service logic
· All logic is implemented on server; client needs no update when new features are added.
Browser/widget (UI & Logic)
Native modules (local resources)
HTTP (Apache)
Service Logic (Django)
Database (MySQL)
WebCall Server WebCall Client
3rd Party Services
People - Places - Stories
04/21/23 © 2008 Nokia / PPB5
STORIESPLACESPEOPLE
[flickr use Savannah Grandfather]
Viral Distribution - Invitation
• Many social networks fail to grow to the “tipping point”.
• WebCall provides an invitation mechanism right in the contacts.
· Inviter sends invitation via SMS with embedded registration link.
· Invitee clicks on link to register and download WebCall app.
· WebCall server keeps track of inviter/invitee relations.
• A crucial way to bootstrap service
Viral Distribution - Registration
• Mobile-optimized registration process
· New user follows link in invitation SMS to registration page.
· Some fields are pre-populated for quick registration.
· Links are provided for easy verification and download.
Context Sharing
• WebCall users may share their contextual information with friends.
• Extensible - new information can be added easily.
• What we have so far
· Location
· Picture
· Business Card
· Calendar
· Weather (3rd party plug-in)
· Activity (3rd party)
· PEIR - Personal EnvironmentalImpact Report (3rd party)
· Advertising (3rd party)
Localization - Indoor
• Power-controllable Bluetooth tags are deployed throughout our office.
· Tag locations are stored in DB.
· Power is controlled to achieve room-level accuracy.
· This was the quickest way for us to experiment.
· Bluetooth LP is expected to come soon.
Localization - Outdoor
• Cell-ID-based localization
· GPS is too power hungry.
· We only need coarse resolution.
• Several open databases are used.
· Open Cell ID
· ZoneTag
· GeoNames (for reverse geo-coding)
• Coarse outdoor location can be used forweather/time-zone mashups, etc.
Human-Powered Q&A
• User may post simple questions to WebCall community.
• Questions are routed to real people who may have the best answers.
· Match personal history and expertise with questions
• Multiple-choice questions make it easy to use on mobile phones.
Privacy Control
• Privacy level of each feature may be individually set.
• Groups may be defined to allow flexibility.
Lessons Learned
• Deployment of indoor localization is challenging
· Bluetooth range (i.e. transmission power) is difficult to fine tune
• Flexible/extensible database design is crucial.
· We face requests of new features throughout development.
· Database schema in constant evolvement.
• Mobile widget systems are still in infancy.
· Nokia WRT 1.0 lacks access to local resources.
· Latest WRT adds certain access but is still limited.
• User study should start early.
Future Work
• User study
• Research trial and scalability study
• Machine learning for better Human Q&A
• User behavior prediction
Video Demo
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