Truly Moble Applications: Location, Media Capture, and Social Connectivity

Slide 1: Truly Mobile Applications: Location, Media Capture, and Connectivity Frank Bentley Senior Staff Research Engineer Motorola Labs

Slide 2: What is unique to mobile? http://www.flickr.com/photos/artamnesia/135744020/

Slide 3: Rich Mobile Applications ShoZu Yahoo! Go Radar ZoneTag

Slide 4: Overview • Location • Media Capture • Social Connectivity • Putting it all together: ZoneTag

Slide 5: Mobile Location • Cell ID • Available on all GSM phones • Localization to zip-code level • Requires translation to semantically meaningful location • GPS • Needs special hardware • Not available indoors/in cities • Minutes to get first fix

Slide 6: Cell ID • In GSM networks, all cells in the world have a globally unique ID made up of four numbers: cell id, lac, mnc, and mmc • Databases are being made that map cell IDs into locations • Cells can be manually mapped to semantic locations (e.g. Campus, Home, Downtown Boston, etc.)

Slide 7: Cell Density Cell topology scales with population density http://www.intel-research.net/Publications/Seattle/100920061625_366.pdf

Slide 8: Uses of Cell ID Cell ID has been used to: • Determine when someone was at a given place (e.g. home) (see Sohn et al ‘05) • Distinguish between walking/driving/stationary (see Sohn et al ’06) • Provide accurate positioning (e.g. Chen et al ’06) • Down to 95% error of 163m with all visible cells • Determine when people are moving between locations (e.g. Bentley et al ’07) Databases such as ZoneTag and Place Lab can map Cell ID to physical locations

Slide 9: GPS 30 satellites in earth orbit • 6 satellites always in line of site of any place on earth • Receivers must find 4 or more satellites for a fix • First fix usually in 1.5 minutes • Typical phone can last for four hours with GPS turned on • Can get you accurate position within 10m with altitude • People in GPS coverage 4.5% of the day •

Slide 10: GPS Continued… Some phones have built in GPS • All Motorola phones on the iDEN (Nextel) network • Some GSM phones (including European version of the a780, n95 from Nokia, etc.) • Many CDMA phones (e.g. RAZR on Verizon) Phones without GPS can use a bluetooth unit • sends a NMEA stream to the phone • phone can listen through a BT serial connection

Slide 11: Place Its (Sohn et al 2006) The problem: getting reminders in particular locations (e.g. call my mom when I get home, stop at the grocery store on the way home, etc.) • Uses Cell ID to determine when the user is in a given place • Manually connects sets of Cell IDs to places in people’s lives • When user enters a given ‘place,’ if there are any alerts for them, notifies them (also can have leaving alerts)

Slide 12: Motion Presence (Bentley et al 2007) • Augmented phone book • See when close friends and family are moving or in one place • Users used this data to infer location, activity, destination, time to destination, etc. • Used GSM Cell ID changes to determine when people transitioned between moving and at a place

Slide 13: Media Capture • Phone is a window into a person’s world • Data-connected phones allow people to share experiences with others • 29 billion mobile images captured/year http://www.flickr.com/photos/scmtngirl/109216105/

Slide 14: Media Capture Distant Closeness: knowing about others, keeping others informed about oneself, without direct interaction - Nancy VanHouse (Berkeley) Mobile photos taken for: Memory, Relationship Creation and Maintenance, Self-Presentation, Self-Expression, Functional, Social Documentary - Nancy VanHouse (Berkeley) and Marc Davis (Yahoo!) http://www.flickr.com/photos/yorkie/459299857/

Slide 15: Other uses of camera To control a cursor To set a level in a game To determine if the phone is in a pocket/purse Makinde Adeagbo, Ben Lu, Chris Moses, Kah Seng Tay (MIT 21W.780 ’07) QR Codes

Slide 16: Radar Service of TinyPictures Inc. Lightweight Visual Communication • Share media with close circle throughout the day • J2ME application to see photo streams and comment on the go

Slide 17: ShoZu • Allows for photo/ video blogging to: • Blogger • Flickr • Kodak • YouTube • Etc…

Slide 18: Social Connectivity • Not just about access to data • Think access to people and places http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinkreyness/301315926/

Slide 19: Connectivity: SMS • Simple way to send information between phones • Ports allow data to go straight to J2ME applications instead of to Messaging application • No server necessary • No data plan necessary • SMS can auto-start application with MIDlet-Push

Slide 20: Connectivity: Data Data services open up phone to the world of the Internet • Connections with social networks, information, and places • HTTP/HTTPS supported in J2ME • Web services supported on latest handsets • ~10% of US subscribers have data plans

Slide 21: Connectivity: Bluetooth Discovery and communication with nearby devices • Sharing media with co-located people • Discovering who is around for media tagging • Multi-player mobile gaming without need for a server or • data plan

Slide 22: Putting it all together A walk through the ZoneTag application Client for Motorola phones developed by Motorola Labs Server developed by Yahoo! Research Berkeley Allows users to: • capture photos • apply location information (derived from Cell ID) • apply relevant tags based on location • upload tagged photos to Flickr

Slide 23: ZoneTag: Location • On starting application, gets cell id • Resolves this using Yahoo! Research Berkeley’s ZoneTag server • Keeps current location and relevant tags cached • Updates location and tags when cell id changes

Slide 24: ZoneTag: Media Capture • Integrated viewfinder, when supported • File system scanner that runs on launch to find new media • Automatic suggestion to upload photos taken in the past 10 minutes

Slide 25: ZoneTag: Social • Uploads media to Flickr with tags • Allows use of Flickr privacy levels • Allows browsing of photos taken in vicinity or with a given tag

Slide 26: Mobility – More than just on-the-go • Location- Based • Media-Centric • Socially Connected http://flickr.com/photos/pingnews/272805477/

Slide 27: References… • Practical Metropolitan-Scale Positioning for GSM Phones (Chen et al ’06) http://www.intel-research.net/Publications/Seattle/100920061625_366.pdf • Place-Its: A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones (Sohn et al ’05) http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/users/k2li/placeits-ubicomp05.pdf • Mobility Detection Using Everyday GSM Traces (Sohn et al ’06) http://www.placelab.org/publications/pubs/mobility-ubicomp2006.pdf • Distant Closeness, Cameraphones and public image sharing (VanHouse ’06) http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/pics/vanhouse_distant_closeness.pdf • Sharing Motion Information with Close Family and Friends (Bentley and Metcalf ’07) http://web.mit.edu/bentley/www/papers/paper724-bentley.pdf • ZoneTag: Designing Context-Aware Mobile Media Capture to Increase Participation (Ahern at al ’06) http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/pics/papers/Ahern_et_al_zonetag_pics06.pdf • Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share (Consolvo et al ’05) • Place Lab: Device positioning using radio beacons in the wild (LaMarca et al ’05) http://www.placelab.org/publications/pubs/pervasive-placelab-2005-final.pdf • MIT Class 21w.780 http://web.mit.edu/21w.780/www/spring2007