How to implement a local aware messaging service easily

Abstract: During the last years the use of SMS had a lot of competition because of the rise of the social networks like Twitter and Facebook. If somebody wants to share something with his friends or even the world he can just post it on these social networks instead of sending an SMS to his friends. On the other hand this provides a lot of information to everyone that makes it impossible to see what is interesting or what is not. Using these networks the information a person sees gets filtered on content for Twitter, friendship connection for Facebook or people who now your phone number for SMS. But what if you want to know something about the people around you or if you want to share something with the people in your location? This thesis will look into the three main problems this creates to make a local messaging service for a smartphone. 1) The connection problem, where different connectivity possibilities that can be used will be studied. 2) The social problem, where the problem of filtering out interesting information will be studied. 3) The programming problem where we will take a look on the possibilities different implementation approaches have to offer. Using this information we implemented a proof of concept as a web application and used a server to store all the information. Therefore we made use of the mobile internet and the GPS sensor in a smartphone. To filter out interesting content we placed messages in categories. The biggest benefit using these technologies is the fact that there is no limit on the size and location of the area in which someone wants to send a message. Another benefit is the fact that receivers won’t poll for updates on the server because we made use of a Comet server that is able to push updates to the clients.