Research Interest
Click here to read my blog post on 'My Vision of Future Mobile Phone'.
Click here to read my blog post on 'My Idea of Next-Gen Location-aware services'.
Do check my blog for future posts related to Mobile technologies.
Below is a list of my research interests. Click on each of them to read more.
Ubiquitous Computing
With the advent of personal and ubiquitous computing devices like laptop computers, personal digital assistants and smartphones the dominance of desktop computing is quickly fading away and making way for the Third Way of Computing, i.e. Ubiquitous Computing, as visualized by Mark Weiser himself who is considered its founding father.
What is Ubiquitous Computing ?
Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.
Want to know more ?
Location Aware Services
Ask any college student attending a university in the Northeast or Midwest, and you'll discover that in the world of frigid-winter academia, there is nothing worse than just missing the campus shuttle bus in 12-degree weather. Today, however, students at a handful of colleges can stay warm and cozy inside their dorm rooms while they track the location of the shuttle bus on their cell phones - all thanks to the implementation of location-aware services (LAS) on their campuses.
But just what are location-aware services? To put it simply, they are applications that deliver location-based information whenever and wherever it may be needed. Ideally, these services are accessed via whatever means is convenient to the user: mobile phone, PDA, pager, laptop, or desktop. LAS is part of the larger location-based solutions (LBS) picture that comprises GPS-enabled mobile computing services (communication and computation via mobile devices), location-enabling services (used for user-locating), and locationaware services (IP-based applications).
In a nutshell, the technology behind LAS enables people, computers, and other devices to know, within a few feet, where another is, at all times; such services or applications then allow individuals - or their devices - to make "decisions" based on that knowledge.
What to learn more ?
- Architecture for Location Aware Applications
- Location Awareness
- Google Latitude
- Herecast : An open infrastructure for location-based services using WiFi
- Best practices for location-aware services
- Locale - An Android application developed by students at MIT exhibiting location-awareness.
Mobile Application Development
Imagine having internet access anywhere, every minute of every day. Or being able to pull up any document or presentation, and get directions to the local coffee shop - all without a computer.
With today's smartphones, all these things are possible. A recent study from In-Stat found that 8 percent of regular business travelers have ditched their land lines and rely solely on their mobile phones. And while some people do consider mobile phones little computers, the current phones are only glimpses of their true potential.
The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors
User Interface Design