Lightening talk given on Mobile Campus Assistant at the 2010 Dev8D event.

1. Mobile Campus Assistant
Mike Jones (mike.a.jones@bristol.ac.uk)
Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT),
University of Bristol
@MrJ1971

2. JISC Funded
• A Rapid Innovation project under the
Information Environment strand
• £40,000 grant
• 6 Months @ 1.1 FTE
• Most of the work done during August to
November

3. The Pitch ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonivc/2283676770 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nullalux/2261949240
A time and location sensitive application
for students ....

4. Examples ...
• Where is the nearest wireless
hotspot?
• Where is there a free PC to use?
• When is the next bus to the hall of
residence?
• Which library is open now?

5. Website and native
applications for ...
Android iPhone

6. Why?
• Increasingly popular devices
• iPhone OS works also on iPod Touch -
cheaper, but no GPS
• Both use Webkit for web browser rendering
engines
• Team has experience with programming
languages used in SDKs
• Developers have an interest in both platforms
• I wanted an iPhone

7. Our Solution
Remote
Remote
Remote
Website
Website
Website
HTML/JSON JSON RDF
Proxy Harvest
RESTful Interface Proxy Harvester
Update
Query
Datastore

8. Demo
When is the next bus?

10. Native Android app for bus
times

11. Problems encountered
• No Data
- The University needs a
geo-location database. KML
files can only take you so far.
• Data, but the wrong format
- We needed to scrape HTML
pages in some circumstances,
e.g. PC availability
• Data - inaccurate information Photo by dullhunk - http://flic.kr/p/yBG4q
- RSS feeds of the Service Status don’t always reflect
the corresponding website

12. The Future ...
• Promote the project outputs within the
University to create interest
• Try and create a community with other
institutions ... the software is open
source
• Look for further public funding or
commercial support

13. Alternatives
• University of Oxford is creating a
Python/Django based open source
project to deliver services to mobile
devices. This is based on their Mobile
Oxford work
• Commercial solutions like campusM
from oMbiel

14. More Information
• Demo Site:
<http://mca.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
• Project Blog:
<http://mobilecampus.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
• Source code:
<http://github.com/MikeJ1971/mobile-
campus-assistant>
For general queries about the project please contact Nikki Rogers
(nikki.rogers@bristol.ac.uk). For technical queries please contact
Mike Jones (mike.a.jones@bristol.ac.uk).