Understanding user privacy expectations: A software developer’s perspective

Software developers are trained to develop and design software applications that provide services to users. However, software applications sometimes collect users’ data without their knowledge. When applications collect and use users’ data without transparency, this leads to user privacy invasions because users do not expect the application to collect and use these information. Therefore, it is important that software developers understand users’ privacy expectations when designing applications in order to handle user data transparently in software applications. However, due to the lack of systematic approaches to extract user privacy requirements, developers end up designing applications either based on their assumptions on user privacy expectations, or relating to their own expectations of privacy as a user. Nevertheless, how accurate these perceived privacy expectations are against actual user expectations is not currently known. This research focuses on investigating developers’ privacy expectations from a user point of view against users’ privacy expectations. We also investigate developers’ assumptions on user privacy expectations against actual user privacy expectations. Our findings revealed that developers’ assumptions on user privacy expectations are close to their own expectations of privacy from a user point of view and that developers’ privacy expectations from a user point of view are significantly different from actual user privacy expectations. With this understanding, we provide recommendations for software developers to understand and acknowledge user expectations on privacy when they design and develop applications.     

Mobile application market: A developer’s perspective

Major software companies, such as Apple and Google, are disturbing the relatively safe and established actors of the mobile application business. These newcomers have caused significant structural changes in the market by imposing and enforcing their own rules for the future of mobile application developments. The implications of these changes do not only concern the mobile network operators and mobile phone manufacturers but also bring additional opportunities and constraints for current mobile application developers. Therefore, developers need to assess what their options are and how they can take advantage of these current trends. In this paper, we take a developer’s perspective in order to explore how the identified trends will impact the mobile application development markets. Our preliminary analysis leads us to suggest eight propositions which summarize our findings and can be the starting points for future empirical research.     

A software protection framework for mobile devices

The software protection technology is the main component of modern software security technology. Generally, confusion and encryption methods are using in software protection technology to provide traditional desktop applications. But applications based on mobile devices are also faces with threats such as piracy and tampering. The security problem in existing applications for mobile devices will do far more harm to users than traditional virus, but there is no effective software protection security framework for them. A software application framework for mobile devices is proposed in this paper, and the white box decryption algorithm involved is improved. And it is analyzed in this paper the performance and security of the framework proposed, the operational efficiency of the improved encryption algorithm is verified.     

Building a Platform to Bridge Low End Mobile Phones and Cloud Computing Services

Two waves of technology are dramatically changing daily life: cloud computing and mobile phones. New cloud computing services such as webmail and content rich data search have emerged. However, in order to use these services, a mobile phone must be able to run new applications and handle high network bandwidth. Worldwide, about 3.45 billion mobile phones are low end phones;they have low bandwidth and cannot run new applications. Because of this technology gap, most mobile users are unable to experience cloud computing services with their thumbs. In this paper, a novel platform, Thumb-in-Cloud, is proposed to bridge this gap.Thumb-in-Cloud consists of two subsystems: Thumb-Machine and Thumb-Gateways. Thumb-Machine is a virtual machine built into a low end phone to enable it to run new applications. Thumb-Gateways can tailor cloud computing services by reformatting and compressing the service to fit the phone' s profile.     

Mobile Commerce: Framework,Applications and Networking Support

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress towards strategies, requirements, and development of e-commerce applications. However, nearly all e-commerce applications envisioned and developed so far assume fixed or stationary users with wired infrastructure. We envision many new e-commerce applications that will be possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless and mobile networks. To allow designers, developers, and researchers to strategize and create mobile commerce applications, we propose a four-level integrated framework for mobile commerce. Since there are potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce applications, we attempt to identify several important classes of applications such as mobile financial applications, mobile inventory management, proactive service management, product location and search, and wireless re-engineering. We discuss how to successfully define, architect, and implement the necessary hardware/software infrastructure in support of mobile commerce. Also, to make mobile commerce applications a reality, we address networking requirements, discuss support from wireless carriers, and present some open research problems.     

Ubiquitous Information Services with JAIN Platform

To provide responsive information services in a ubiquitous computing environment, service software and system development are indispensable. A component-based ubiquitous information system with a JAIN (Java APIs for Integrated Networks) platform to achieve seamless transmissions and reach-everywhere communications was designed in our research. In this development, numerous ubiquitous service modules were identified: location management, roaming, mobile IP and WAP networking. These component-based network modules were constructed using a component composition language with component specification and interface definition, running on top of a distributed service architecture using a JAIN platform to distribute the ubiquitous information services to mobile users. Two applications, Wireless-Application-Protocol (WAP) Mail and Video-on-Demand (VoD) services, show that the JAIN-like platform with the developed networking components effectively fills the gap for application developers between mobile appliances and various kinds of ubiquitous information services.     

The Anatomy of a Context-Aware Application

We describe a sensor-driven, or sentient, platform for context-aware computing that enables applications to follow mobile users as they move around a building. The platform is particularly suitable for richly equipped, networked environments. The only item a user is required to carry is a small sensor tag, which identifies them to the system and locates them accurately in three dimensions. The platform builds a dynamic model of the environment using these location sensors and resource information gathered by telemetry software, and presents it in a form suitable for application programmers. Use of the platform is illustrated through a practical example, which allows a user's current working desktop to follow them as they move around the environment.     

液晶荧幕中卷动文件对视觉绩效与视觉不适之研究

汽车液晶荧幕愈来愈广泛,其中文件浏览工具为一种应用范围.浏览文字或图片资讯时,大部分软件都提供可以缩放荧幕文件大小与卷动文字页面这些功能.然而,有时持续性的跳动对视觉产生很大影响,眼睛随著快速的卷动很容易造成疲劳与不适.在快速卷动下,文字太小,不容易辨识,文字太大,也容易产生模糊.本研究利用阅读文件来了解卷轴速度与缩放比例对视觉绩效与疲劳之影响.结果得知缩放比例对于视觉疲劳有显著影响,因此,文件浏览工具的设计可以改善视觉不适的现象.     

Energy efficiency of mobile handsets: Measuring user attitudes and behavior

The purpose of this research is to understand the behavior and expectations of mobile handset users towards energy consumption. We analyze mobile handset monitoring traces from subsequent years with N = 253 and 105, and questionnaire studies with N = 155 and 150. The data allows us to study both the actual behavior of the users and their explicit attitudes, expectations, and experiences. Additional difference to prior work is the use of longitudinal data from multiple years and a user sample that is much larger than in earlier studies. We present hypotheses drawn both from literature and from our own experience, and use the datasets to support or refute them. Our results indicate that mobile device users need more detailed and clearer information of the battery status and energy consumption. Moreover, users want to understand how different applications and services affect the energy consumption and to learn what they can do to control it.     

如何使 APP 更智能

首先描述了在移动智能终端环境下的制约因素，这些制约因素将会影响应用软件的用户体验。然后我们从用户界面的流畅性和可操作性，移动网络数据传输等方面分析了现有应用软件存在的问题，并且分别给出了指导建议。遵循以下建议，开发者们将能够创造出更智能的应用。     

Challenges for nomadic computing: Mobility management and wireless communications

In this paper, we present several challenges and innovative approaches to support nomadic computing. The nomadic computing environment is characterized by mobile users that may be connected to the network via wired or wireless means, many of whom will maintain only intermittent connectivity with the network. Furthermore, those accessing the network via wireless links will contend with limitations of the wireless media. We consider three general techniques for addressing these challenges: (1) asymmetric design of applications and protocols, (2) the use of network-based proxies which perform complex functions on behalf of mobile users, and (3) the use of pre-fetching and caching of critical data. We examine how these techniques have been applied to several systems, and present results in an attempt to quantify their relative effectiveness.     

移动运营商 如何应对OTT业务的冲击

面对OTT的冲击,移动运营商的主要收入来源(话音和消息)将继续下滑。但与此同时,OTT也需要调整目前的商业模式,这可能会削弱用户原来对OTT业务的感觉。移动运营商可以利用这一点,迅速决定应采取何种策略来应对OTT。     

Multicore compilation strategies and challenges

To overcome challenges stemming from high power densities and thermal hot spots in microprocessors, multicore computing platforms have emerged as the ubiquitous computing platform from servers down through embedded systems. Unfortunately, providing multiple cores does not directly translate into increased performance or better energy efficiency for most applications. The burden is placed on software developers and tools to find and exploit coarse-grain parallelism to effectively make use of the abundance of computing resources provided by these systems. Concurrent applications are much more complex to develop than their single-threaded ancestors, thus software development tools will be critical to help programmers create both high performance and correct software. This article provides an overview of parallelism and compiler technology to help the community understand the software development challenges and opportunities for multicore signal processors.     

Agents on the move [mobile software agents]

The author describes a new kind of software, based on artificial intelligence research, that can move itself from place to place to help people work more effectively. Known as agents, these artificial assistants are software components that live inside computer environments. Developed out of research in artificial intelligence (AI), agents were made in a variety of forms to perform all sorts of useful work-including obtaining airline departure dates and times, filtering e-mail for messages the user considers important, alerting users to significant stock price changes, and a host of other tasks. At first, agents were constrained to a single computer or at most to a single computing environment-a closed, homogenous network of, say, Unix platforms. Their behavior was limited and all the tasks they could do had to be pre-established. Today, agents are breaking the bonds that confine them to a single environment while learning new ways of accomplishing tasks on their own, based on their experience. The newcomers are called mobile agents, because they can move from one computer to another. As they emerge from the shadow of AI research, they are bringing together telecommunications, software, and distributed-system technologies to create new ways of getting things done     

企业云开发平台研究

企业云开发平台提供了一个虚拟的开发环境,开发者可以很方便的获得开发和测试环境.使得开发者可以将精力集中于应用的开发,提供更好的产品.同时该平台还提供了云体验功能,使用户可以在云端试用产品,发现问题,减少购买的盲目性.开发者在云端模拟用户的环境,再现用户的问题,迅速找到解决方案.平台的提供商使用这个平台可以有效地宣传自己的产品,增加合作伙伴和用户的数量.企业云开发平台建立了一个多赢的生态链.     

Mobile Agents for Wireless Computing: The Convergence of Wireless Computational Models with Mobile-Agent Technologies

Wireless mobile computing breaks the stationary barrier and allows users to compute and access information from anywhere and at anytime. However, this new freedom of movement does not come without new challenges. The mobile computing environment is constrained in many ways. Mobile elements are resource-poor and unreliable. Their network connectivity is often achieved through low-bandwidth wireless links. Furthermore, connectivity is frequently lost for variant periods of time. The difficulties raised by these constraints are compounded by mobility that induces variability in the availability of both communication and computational resources. These severe restrictions have a great impact on the design and structure of mobile computing applications and motivate the development of new software models. To this end, a number of extensions to the traditional distributed system architectures have been proposed [26]. These new software models, however, are static and require a priori set up and configuration. This in effect limits their potential in dynamically serving the mobile client; the client cannot access a site at which an appropriate model is not configured in advance. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the paper shows how an implementation of the proposed models using mobile agents eliminates this limitation and enhances the utilization of the models. Second, new frameworks for Web-based distributed access to databases are proposed and implemented.     

Task-based adaptation for ubiquitous computing

An important domain for autonomic systems is the area of ubiquitous computing: users are increasingly surrounded by technology that is heterogeneous, pervasive, and variable. In this paper we describe our work in developing self-adapting computing infrastructure that automates the configuration and reconfiguration of such environments. Focusing on the engineering issues of self-adaptation in the presence of heterogeneous platforms, legacy applications, mobile users, and resource variable environments, we describe a new approach based on the following key ideas: 1) explicit representation of user tasks allows us to determine what service qualities are required of a given configuration; 2) decoupling task and preference specification from the lower level mechanisms that carry out those preferences provides a clean engineering separation of concerns between what is needed and how it is carried out; and 3) efficient algorithms allow us to calculate in real time near-optimal resource allocations and reallocations for a given task.     

移动边缘计算安全研究

移动边缘计算具有靠近用户、业务本地处理、灵活路由等特点,成为满足5G低时延业务需求的关键技术之一。由于移动边缘计算靠近用户、处于相对不安全的环境、核心网控制能力减弱等,存在非授权访问、敏感数据泄露、(D)DoS攻击等安全风险。本文在介绍边缘计算概念、应用场景的基础上,分析移动边缘计算的安全威胁、安全防护框架、安全防护方案,并展望后续研究方向。     

iOS与Android操作系统的优缺点比较

Android和iOS发展至今已经有着界面融合的趋势,双方都在进行取长补短,已经很难说谁比谁更为优秀。Android系统的开发性特点更能够吸引开发者对其进行开发。而随之带来的是手机病毒和恶意吸费软件在损害着Android手机的用户。但是相对较为廉价的优势使得Android的市场占有率远远高于iOS。而iOS封闭的系统能够带来更为安全的保证,但是用户不得不面对应用选择的制约以及系统使用中的一些不便。     

The effect of advice message location on user performance

In 1993, a study began with a large commercial oil and gas software interpretation system to determine the feasibility of a general taxonomy of on-line help content and a corresponding taxonomy of human interface access methods to this content. The preliminary findings from this work were encouraging and indicate that a taxonomic approach makes it easy both for help providers to understand what information they need to supply, and for help users to find the help they need quickly. Part of this taxonomy of help content includes application messaging. Existing studies of on-line help messaging indicate that both user-initiated or system-initiated advice messaging can improve user efficiency by prompting users with information about what something on the interface is, what it does, or what to do once it has been activated. This study examines the placement of on-line help messages in a multiwindow software application on user performance. Subjects were automatically timed as they performed two sets of tasks: one where help messages always appeared at the bottom of an application's main window and one where help messages appeared at the bottom of the current window in focus