Examining the role of initial trust in user adoption of mobile payment services: an empirical investigation

User adoption of mobile payment (m-payment) is low compared to the adoption of traditional forms of payments. Lack of user trust has been identified as the most significant long-term barrier for the success of mobile finances systems. Motivated by this fact, we proposed and tested an initial trust theoretical model for user adoption of m-payment systems. The model not only theorizes the role of initial trust in m-payment adoption, but also identifies the facilitators and inhibitors for a user’s initial trust formation in m-payment systems. The model is empirically validated via a sample of 851 potential m-payment adopters in Australia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling is used to assess the relationships of the research model. The results indicate that perceived information quality, perceived system quality, and perceived service quality as the initial trust facilitators are positively related to initial trust formation, while perceived uncertainty as the initial trust inhibitor exerts a significant negative effect on initial trust. Perceived asset specificity is found to have insignificant effect. In addition, the results show that initial trust positively affects perceived benefit and perceived convenience, and these three factors together predict usage intention. Perceived convenience of m-payment is also found to have a positive effect on perceived benefit. The findings of this study provide several important implications for m-payment adoption research and practice.     

基于Android平台的实时自适应音频传输技术及其实现

随着无线和移动网络的迅速发展,流媒体在嵌入式平台上的应用和发展已日益引起各方面的重视,高质量音频的实时传输作为流媒体的一个重要分支也在不断的发展,然而大多数的应用都是在PC平台上,随着嵌入式平台的不断发展,流媒体的应用也在逐步迈向嵌入式系统,该文将以当前热门的Android系统为平台,提出一种高质量音频的实时自适应传输...     

Augmented reality technologies,systems and applications

This paper surveys the current state-of-the-art of technology, systems and applications in Augmented Reality. It describes work performed by many different research groups, the purpose behind each new Augmented Reality system, and the difficulties and problems encountered when building some Augmented Reality applications. It surveys mobile augmented reality systems challenges and requirements for successful mobile systems. This paper summarizes the current applications of Augmented Reality and speculates on future applications and where current research will lead Augmented Reality’s development. Challenges augmented reality is facing in each of these applications to go from the laboratories to the industry, as well as the future challenges we can forecast are also discussed in this paper. Section 1 gives an introduction to what Augmented Reality is and the motivations for developing this technology. Section 2 discusses Augmented Reality Technologies with computer vision methods, AR devices, interfaces and systems, and visualization tools. The mobile and wireless systems for Augmented Reality are discussed in Section 3. Four classes of current applications that have been explored are described in Section 4. These applications were chosen as they are the most famous type of applications encountered when researching AR apps. The future of augmented reality and the challenges they will be facing are discussed in Section 5.     

Neural network ensemble strategies for financial decision applications

Considerable research effort has been expended to identify more accurate models for decision support systems in financial decision domains including credit scoring and bankruptcy prediction. The focus of this earlier work has been to identify the “single best” prediction model from a collection that includes simple parametric models, nonparametric models that directly estimate data densities, and nonlinear pattern recognition models such as neural networks. Recent theories suggest this work may be misguided in that ensembles of predictors provide more accurate generalization than the reliance on a single model. This paper investigates three recent ensemble strategies: crossvalidation, bagging, and boosting. We employ the multilayer perceptron neural network as a base classifier. The generalization ability of the neural network ensemble is found to be superior to the single best model for three real world financial decision applications.     

一个移动应用个性化集成框架的研究及其在Android平台的实现

随着互联网和智能手机的日益普及,移动应用数量呈现爆炸式增长,海量的移动应用既是机遇也是挑战。从开发者角度看,基于大量的已有移动应用快捷构造新的移动应用成为了可能,但当前大部分的开发工具对移动应用集成的支持仅停留在应用编程接口和底层运行机制上,尚未出现更高层次的面向执行流程的集成支持;从用户角度看,从众多移动应用中选择符合自己个性化需求的应用成为了可能,但目前大量的移动应用推荐系统集中在单个应用的个性化推荐问题上,未见面向用户个性化需求的移动应用执行序列推荐方法。为此,提出一个移动应用个性化集成框架,主要包括:1)定义了一套意图流程描述执行语言,以便开发者从更为自然的执行流程角度完成新移动应用的构造;2)给出了一个移动应用序列偏好度预测算法,用于解决移动应用执行序列的个性化推荐问题。在当前典型的移动应用平台Android上,实现了相应的移动应用个性化集成开发工具和运行支撑机制,并通过实例初步验证了上述方法的合理性。     

Understanding interaction with mobile devices

This editorial paper introduces an emerging and important area for human–computer interaction research, which concerns interaction with mobile devices. The design of interactive mobile applications should differ from that of traditional desktop applications. To this aim, the paper discusses some concepts and models that help to understand the new challenges as well as recently introduced techniques that can be useful for exploiting the characteristics of these devices. Lastly, tool support for the design of nomadic applications is considered, taking into account the potential contexts of use, with particular attention to the platform features.     

Modeling context in mobile distributed systems with the UML

Context-awareness plays an important role in mobile distributed systems since it enables the adaptation of mobile devices to the users. However, one of the major challenges is the preservation of the users’ privacy. Many different approaches of modeling the context of the user exist, but the incorporation of privacy restrictions into context models, which makes the protection of privacy apparent, is missing. This paper presents the Context Modeling Profile (CMP), a lightweight UML (Unified Modeling Language) extension, as a visual language for context models in mobile distributed systems. The resulting models embody metainformation of the context, i.e. source and validity of context information, and reflect privacy restrictions. The profile provides several well-formedness rules for context models and supports the development of context-aware mobile applications through an adequate visual modeling language. A case study is used to illustrate the approach.     

Beyond ubiquitous computing: The Malaysian HoneyBee project for Innovative Digital Economy

In the proposed advanced computing environment, known as the HoneyBee Platform, various computing devices using single or multiple interfaces and technologies/standards need to communicate and cooperate efficiently with a certain level of security and safety measures. These computing devices may be supported by different types of operating systems with different features and levels of security support. In order to ensure that all operations within the environment can be carried out seamlessly in an ad-hoc manner, there is a need for a common mobile platform to be developed. The purpose of this long-term project is to investigate and implement a new functional layered model of the common mobile platform with secured and trusted ensemble computing architecture for an innovative Digital Economic Environment in the Malaysian context. This mobile platform includes a lightweight operating system to provide a common virtual environment, a middleware for providing basic functionalities of routing, resource and network management, as well as to provide security, privacy and a trusted environment. A generic application programming interface is provided for application developers to access underlying resources. The aim is for the developed platform to act as the building block for an ensemble environment, upon which higher level applications could be built. Considered as the most essential project in a series of related projects towards a more digital socio-economy in Malaysia, this article presents the design of the target computational platform as well as the conceptual framework for the HoneyBee project.     

A reusable structural design for mobile collaborative applications

Architecting mobile collaborative applications has always been a challenge for designers. However, counting on a structural design as a reference can help developers to reduce risks and efforts involved in system design. This article presents a reusable architecture which helps modeling the communication and coordination services required by mobile collaborative applications to support collaboration among users. This architecture has been used as a basis for the design of several mobile systems. Two of them are presented in this article to show the applicability of the proposal to real world collaborative systems.     

Making Augmented Reality Practical on Mobile Phones, Part 1

Since 2003, the authors have been developing three generations of a software framework for handheld augmented reality (AR), targeting mobile phones. This article is the first part of a discussion on the experiences and design decisions that resulted in the current software framework, Studierstube ES (Embedded System). The authors describe the restrictions of the mobile phone platform and a software architecture that allows fast development of mobile phone AR applications.     

Mobile communities: How viable are their business models? An exemplary investigation of the leisure industry

Communities (especially Virtual Communities) of Interest have been the focus of substantial discussion in academic literature. This paper addresses Communities of Interest within the leisure industry and discusses possible business models for the parties operating the platform. The described community platform is an innovative value added service concept for a mobile coordination support for individuals—A Mobile Community Support System. In this paper we extend the discussion about mobile communities to hybrid communities. The communities are hybrid in two ways: they use two different access channels, the Web and mobile devices, and they are built on real-world leisure communities that constitute themselves in the form of buddy lists in the virtual world of an ICT supported platform. We briefly depict the state of the art of IT in the leisure industry and describe the empirical aspects of the project objectives of the MCOR (Mobile Community Online Reservation) system. We conclude with some final remarks about design considerations and a blueprint for future research. Felix Hampe holds a chair for Corporate Communication Systems and is Director of the Institute for IS Research at the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany. He studied at the Free University of Berlin and worked later for the University of Bielefeld and the Philipps-University of Marburg prior to his appointment to Koblenz. In 2004/2005, he spent one year as a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, School of Computer and Information Systems. Beside his research interest in application aspects of communication systems, Professor Hampe started very early research in the area of mobile applications and especially mobile commerce. He was cofounder and board member of the Mobile Application Research Center (MARC), a German network for joint research on mobile business. Professor Hampe authored several international conference articles in the area and served for many international conferences.     

基于J2ME的移动通讯设备游戏开发

在众多开发游戏的技术中,J2ME由于开发速度快、周期短、开发资源丰富等优点成为当今最受欢迎的手机开发平台。J2ME的应用为移动互联网引入了一种新的模式．既允许手机用户可以从互联网上下载各种应用程序,并在手机上创造一个离线运行这些程序的可执行环境．而且J2ME应用程序可运行在不同制造商的不同设备上,真正体现了Sun公司所倡导的“write once,run anywhere”。本文主要介绍了J2ME基本概念．开发平台和无线环境的应用框架,然后给出手机游戏的开发流程,最后通过一个游戏实例的开发,给出基于谊技术的手机程序开发的系统设计和关键技术。将老少皆宜的经典作品移植到手机上来。为更流行的硬件平台提供应用软件。     

Uncertain context data management in dynamic mobile environments

Building systems that acquire, process and reason with context data is a major challenge. Model updates and modifications are required for the mobile context-aware systems. Additionally, the nature of the sensor-based systems implies that the data required for the reasoning is not always available nor it is certain. Finally, the amount of context data can be significant and can grow fast, constantly being processed and interpreted under soft real-time constraints. Such characteristics make it a case for a challenging big data application. In this paper we argue, that mobile context-aware systems require specific methods to process big data related to context, at the same time being able to handle uncertainty and dynamics of this data. We identify and define main requirements and challenges for developing such systems. Then we discuss how these challenges were effectively addressed in the KnowMe project. In our solution, the acquisition of context data is made with the use of the AWARE platform. We extended it with techniques that can minimise the power consumption as well as conserve storage on a mobile device. The data can then be used to build rule models that can express user preferences and habits. We handle the missing or ambiguous data with number of uncertainty management techniques. Reasoning with rule models is provided by a rule engine developed for mobile platforms. Finally, we demonstrate how our tools can be used to visualise the stored data and simulate the operation of the system in a testing environment.     

一种基于文档的移动平台间UI控件对应方法

多平台开发是移动应用软件开发的一个重要特点,同时还具有版本演化快和开发周期短的要求,这给移动开发带来了巨大的挑战。由于目前主流的移动平台大多采用MVC架构模式,并且在开发上体现出了UI驱动和事件驱动的特点,因此不同平台(如iOS和Android等)之间的UI控件具有较强的对应性,这给移动应用的开发人员在多平台开发时提供了重要的参考。提出了一种基于文档来理解不同平台之间UI控件对应性的方法,该方法以iOS和Android两种移动平台为研究对象,通过自然语言处理技术来分析从官方文档中抓取的UI控件描述文字,基于空间向量模型计算控件之间的相似度,并针对移动应用的特点设计了同义词集来保证匹配的准确性。基于所提方法,对iOS和Android平台上的典型UI控件进行了具体实验,结果表明,在单控件对应性方面,该方法能找到大部分的控件对应性,具有较高的准确度。     

Persistent problems and practices in information systems development: a study of mobile applications development and distribution

The widespread uptake of mobile technologies has witnessed a re‐structuring of the mobile market with major shifts in the predominance of particular firms and the emergence of new business models. These sociotechnical trends are significant in the ways that they are influencing and shaping the working lives of software professionals. Building on prior research investigating the persistent problems and practices of systems development, this paper examines mobile applications development and distribution. A qualitative study of 60 developers based in Sweden, the UK and the USA was analysed around the interrelated problems of diversity, knowledge and structure. The analysis revealed how platform‐based development in an evolving mobile market represents significant changes at the business environment level. These changes ripple through and accentuate ongoing trends and developments, intensifying the persistent problems and challenges facing software developers.     

A multiplatform methodology: developing mobile device applications

When the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the American University of Beirut decided to launch a computing course on mobile computing devices, the author designed a course to meet industry requirements and to introduce students to the major platforms used to build practical applications. He dedicated much of Pervasive Computing Systems and Applications, EECE 679, to teaching mobile device application programming through code demonstrations and in-class application building. The course also covered front-end mobile device technologies and back-end infrastructures. Today, many pervasive computing courses focus on research and theory. Those that do deal with developing mobile applications often limit their coverage to a specific platform. This course covers practical and theoretical pervasive computing, lets students acquire hands-on application-building experience in multiple platforms, and acquaints students with recent developments in related technologies and research. The course includes a mix of lectures, code demonstrations, and student presentations.     

An evaluation framework for cross‐platform mobile application development tools

The mobile application market is becoming increasingly fragmented with the availability of multiple mobile platforms that differ in development procedures. Developers are forced to choose to support only some platforms and specific devices because of limited development resources. To address these challenges, numerous tools have been created to aid developers in building cross‐platform applications; however, there is no metric to evaluate the quality of these tools or the applications produced by them. This paper introduces a framework for evaluating the features, performance, and development experience of existing and future cross‐platform development tools. The framework is implemented by benchmarking several tools, and the results identify a disparity in the features and performance of applications built using different development tools. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motion coordination and reactive control of autonomous multi-manipulator systems

The emerging field of service robots demands new systems with increased flexibility. The flexibility of a robot system can be increased in many different ways. Mobile manipulation—the coordinated use of manipulation capabilities and mobility—is an approach to increase robots flexibility with regard to their motion capabilities. Most mobile manipulators that are currently under development use a single arm on a mobile platform. The use of a two-arm manipulator system allows increased manipulation capabilities, especially when large, heavy, or non-rigid objects must be manipulated. This article is concerned with motion control for mobile two-arm systems. These systems require new schemes for motion coordination and control. A coordination scheme called transparent coordination is presented that allows for an arbitrary number of manipulators on a mobile platform. Furthermore, a reactive control scheme is proposed to enable the platform to support sensor-guided manipulator motion. Finally, this article introduces a collision avoidance scheme for mobile two-arm robots. This scheme surveys the vehicle motion to avoid platform collisions and arm collisions caused by self-motion of the robot. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

基于MDA的移动应用开发框架

手机应用软件开发需要耗费大量时间用于跨平台的移植,但该过程通常是重复的编码工作。为此,提出一种基于模型驱动架构的手机应用软件开发框架(MDMF)。利用模板将抽象出的平台无关模型转换为多个手机平台上的特定模型,进而生成对应的应用程序。应用结果表明了MDMF的有效性。