A Mobile Web 2.0 community service based on near-fieldcommunication
Abstract: Similar to the adoption of the Internet during the '90s', consumer demand isinfluencing companies to adopt mobile as a new channel for communications,marketing, service delivery and payment. Internet adoption started withcompanies providing basic information, which quickly evolved into servicedelivery, marketing and e-commerce. The same phenomenon and adoption curve is unfolding in the mobile world today, as consumers are demanding information and media whenever and wherever they need it. As a result, companies are looking for new ways to satisfy this increasingly mobile consumer base.Moreover, the arrival of Web 2.0 has led to radical changes as regards notonly technical specifications of the net, but in the ways both softwaredevelopers and end-users use the Web. The next step is now to have Web 2.0technology implemented on mobile platforms, since it will lead to a furtherdevelopment of them, and will make group communication systems accessible for almost everyone and everywhere, opening at the same time the door for a huge new upcoming market.This thesis focuses on the idea of extending social relationships created inthe Web to portable devices, thus making it able for the people tocommunicate and interact with each other regardless of where they are. Thesetasks can be carried out by platforms that give support and services tomobile devices through the net. They will also allow people to meet and share experience in new ways, even though they are not always easy to use,especially not with mobile terminals that have limited capabilities. In thisaspect, it is important to minimize set up time, since it is always thebottleneck of a communication process. Regarding that, one communicationtechnology which a lot of research is being done in nowadays is NFC (NearField Communication). It has limited range, but on the other hand its set uptime is much faster than other existent technologies, such as Bluetooth.Since NFC enables quick connection establishment it could be a suitabletechnology to be applied in Social Network building and extending purposes. As a proof of concept, a mobile Social Network platform has been developedwith the purpose of providing Social-Network-related services to cell phonecommon users, such as profiles and users management, storage of relationships between users, privileges and privacy control, multimedia sharing services, etc. In addition of using NFC for building social networks, the platform also takes advantage of third-party APIs offered by external social networks to access them.As for Near Field Communication technology, it has been used in the servicemaybe where it suited the most, provided its fast connection capabilities,that is friends adding. Finally a solid, modular, and easily extensibleprototype has been built. The user can enjoy common social network services,at least in a basic way. Some other services considered to be interestingwere added as well. As for future work, next step could be adding innovativefeatures taking advantage of the Web 2.0 possibilities, since the platformbase is already implemented.
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