Abstract: System and method for remotely managing mobile devices. A virtual instance mobile device is maintained for each physical mobile device to be managed. Each virtual instance mobile device is executable in a computer runtime environment and includes a hardware emulation component configured to emulate the hardware components of the corresponding physical mobile device and a software emulation component corresponding to the software components of the physical mobile device, which is executable within the context of the hardware emulation component. Synchronization between the virtual instance mobile devices and their corresponding physical mobile devices is maintained, and data obtained from the physical mobile devices is stored. The physical mobile devices are remotely managed by utilizing their corresponding virtual instance mobile devices respectively.

Abstract: The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop technology between formal and informal settings. It presents a trial of the technology and learning across a school classroom, sports hall, and library. The main aim of the study was to incorporate inquiry learning activities within an extended school science environment in order to investigate opportunities for technological mediations and to extract initial recommendations for the design of mobile technology to link inquiry learning across different contexts. A critical incident analysis was carried out to identify learning breakdowns and breakthroughs that led to design implications. The main findings are the opportunities that a combination of mobile and fixed technology bring to: manage the formation of groups, display live visualisations of student and teacher data on a shared screen to facilitate motivation and personal relevance, incorporate broader technical support, provide context-specific guidance on the sequence, reasons and aims of learning activities, offer opportunities to micro-sites for reflection and learning in the field, to explicitly support appropriation of data within inquiry and show the relation between specific activities and the general inquiry process.

Abstract: Personal mobile devices are increasingly equipped with the capability to sense the physical world (through cameras, microphones, and accelerometers, for example) and the, network world (with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interfaces). Such devices offer many new opportunities for cooperative sensing applications. For example, users' mobile phones may contribute data to community-oriented information services, from city-wide pollution monitoring to enterprise-wide detection of unauthorized Wi-Fi access points. This people-centric mobile-sensing model introduces a new security challenge in the design of mobile systems: protecting the privacy of participants while allowing their devices to reliably contribute high-quality data to these large-scale applications.We describe AnonySense, a privacy-aware architecture for realizing pervasive applications based on collaborative, opportunistic sensing by personal mobile devices. AnonySense allows applications to submit sensing tasks that will be distributed across anonymous participating mobile devices, later receiving verified, yet anonymized, sensor data reports back from the field, thus providing the first secure implementation of this participatory sensing model. We describe our trust model, and the security properties that drove the design of the AnonySense system. We evaluate our prototype implementation through experiments that indicate the feasibility of this approach, and through two applications: a Wi-Fi rogue access point detector and a lost-object finder.

Abstract: This book looks in depth at the emerging issue of cyber-bullying. In this increasingly digital world cyber-bullying has emerged as an electronic form of bullying that is difficult to monitor or supervise because it often occurs outside the physical school setting and outside school hours on home computers and personal phones. These web-based and mobile technologies are providing young people with what has been described as: ‘an arsenal of weapons for social cruelty’. These emerging issues have created an urgent need for a practical book grounded in comprehensive scholarship that addresses the policy-vacuum and provides practical educational responses to cyber-bullying. Written by one of the few experts on the topic Cyber-Bullying develops guidelines for teachers, head teachers and administrators regarding the extent of their obligations to prevent and reduce cyber-bullying. The book also highlights ways in which schools can network with parents, police, technology providers and community organizations to provide support systems for victims (and perpetrators) of cyber-bullying.

Abstract: There has been increasing interest in informal learning in recent years alongside interest in how such learning can be supported by technology. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which adults make use of their own mobile devices to support informal learning. In this study, a survey was used to investigate whether, and to what extent, experienced users of mobile devices use their mobile devices to support intentional informal learning. If so, do they make use of mobile device connectivity to support opportunistic informal learning and does such connectivity support or encourage collaborative informal learning? Experienced mobile device users were recruited from web forums and business, and asked whether they used their devices to support informal learning. A pattern of learning uses emerged, some of which deployed the mobile device capabilities relatively unchanged, others triggered adaptations to typical learning activities to provide a better fit to the needs of the learner. These informal learning activities provided the basis for the design of a flexible mobile learning framework that can be extended to support developments in mobile technology, and increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies by informal learners.

Abstract: Review of the book: Naomi S. Baron. Oxford University Press. 304pp, £15.99. ISBN 9780195313055. Published 17 April 2008

Abstract: A mobile communication device receives current information while the mobile communication device is in one of a sleep state or a locked state, and associates one or more portions of the current information with one or more corresponding windows. The mobile communication device also displays, via a display associated with the mobile communication device, the one or more corresponding windows and the one or more associated portions of the current information while the mobile communication device is in the locked state. The mobile communication device further enables a user associated with the mobile communication device to manipulate the one or more displayed corresponding windows while the mobile communication device is in the locked state.

Abstract: Modern mobile devices continue to approach the capabilities and extensibility of standard desktop PCs. Unfortunately, these devices are also beginning to face many of the same security threats as desktops. Currently, mobile security solutions mirror the traditional desktop model in which they run detection services on the device. This approach is complex and resource intensive in both computation and power. This paper proposes a new model whereby mobile antivirus functionality is moved to an off-device network service employing multiple virtualized malware detection engines. Our argument is that it is possible to spend bandwidth resources to significantly reduce on-device CPU, memory, and power resources. We demonstrate how our in-cloud model enhances mobile security and reduces on-device software complexity, while allowing for new services such as platform-specific behavioral analysis engines. Our benchmarks on Nokia's N800 and N95 mobile devices show that our mobile agent consumes an order of magnitude less CPU and memory while also consuming less power in common scenarios compared to existing on-device antivirus software.

Abstract: The technologies of mobile communications and ubiquitous computing pervade our society, and wireless networks sense the movement of people and vehicles, generating large volumes of mobility data. This is a scenario of great opportunities and risks: on one side, mining this data can produce useful knowledge, supporting sustainable mobility and intelligent transportation systems; on the other side, individual privacy is at risk, as the mobility data contain sensitive personal information. A new multidisciplinary research area is emerging at this crossroads of mobility, data mining, and privacy. This book assesses this research frontier from a computer science perspective, investigating the various scientific and technological issues, open problems, and roadmap. The editors manage a research project called GeoPKDD, Geographic Privacy-Aware Knowledge Discovery and Delivery, funded by the EU Commission and involving 40 researchers from 7 countries, and this book tightly integrates and relates their findings in 13 chapters covering all related subjects, including the concepts of movement data and knowledge discovery from movement data; privacy-aware geographic knowledge discovery; wireless network and next-generation mobile technologies; trajectory data models, systems and warehouses; privacy and security aspects of technologies and related regulations; querying, mining and reasoning on spatiotemporal data; and visual analytics methods for movement data. This book will benefit researchers and practitioners in the related areas of computer science, geography, social science, statistics, law, telecommunications and transportation engineering.

Abstract: Consumer configurable mobile communications solution enabling web filtering based on policy-enforcement services allowing authorized users to define, manage and enforce restrictions for mobile web data and services of a secondary mobile device.

Abstract: Mobile radio devices with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are able to share GPS information through a wireless communication connection. When one mobile radio device acquires GPS information associated with positioning of that mobile radio device, the mobile radio device can establish a communication connection with another mobile radio device via a wireless link to share that acquired GPS information with the other mobile radio device.

Abstract: Since English has been an international language, how to enhance English levels of people by useful computer assisted learning forms or tools is a critical issue in non-English speaking countries because it definitely affects the overall competition ability of a country. With the rapid growth of wireless and mobile technologies, the mobile learning has been gradually considered as a novel and effective learning form because it inherits all the advantages of e-learning as well as breaks the limitations of learning time and space occurring in the traditional classroom learning. To provide an effective and flexible learning environment for English learning, this study adopts the advantages of the mobile learning to present a personalized intelligent mobile learning system (PIMS) which can appropriately recommend English news articles to learners based on the learners’ reading abilities evaluated by the proposed fuzzy Item Response Theory (FIRT). In addition, to promote the reading abilities of English news, the unknown or unfamiliar vocabularies of individual learner can also be automatically discovered and retrieved from the reading English news articles by the PIMS system according to the English vocabulary ability of individual learner for enhancing vocabulary learning. Currently, the PIMS system has been successfully implemented on the personal digital assistant (PDA) to provide personalized mobile learning for promoting the reading ability of English news. Experimental results indicated that the proposed system provides an efficient and effective mobile learning mechanism by adaptively recommending English news articles as well as enhancing unknown or unfamiliar vocabularies’ learning for individual learners.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and software for implementing location-based authentication of both online and mobile web-based transactions. This implementation may involve verifying whether a mobile device (such as a cellular telephone) is proximate to a computer from which the transaction is being performed. Depending upon the location of the mobile device, further transactions may be approved or rejected. In further implementations, the transactions may be made from the mobile device itself. In this case, the location of the mobile device compared with one or more pre-stored locations may affect whether further transactions from the mobile device are approved or rejected.

Abstract: Recent studies have explored English vocabulary learning in environments where students used mobile technologies for prescribed vocabulary learning tasks, or tested designed personalized learning systems to enhance student vocabulary learning for short periods of time in language related courses. Dictionary use via mobile devices has mostly been used for referential purposes. Referential use refers to applications that provide student access to content such as dictionaries, e-books, etc. at places where learning activities occur, taking advantage of the portability and mobility of mobile devices. Research on free student use of mobile devices to foster incidental vocabulary learning in non-English courses remains scant, and no in-depth studies have been carried out to investigate the value of dictionary use on mobile devices for incidental vocabulary learning in higher education. This one-year multiple-case study investigated undergraduate students' dictionary and other uses of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to enhance their incidental vocabulary learning in an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) university. The research findings show: (a) the students made various uses of the PDA to improve their vocabulary learning, namely, referential, situated, constructive, reflective, explorative and conversing uses, (b) the students adopted integrated uses of the tools on the PDA and the computer for their incidental vocabulary learning, and (c) the integrated use of the PDA and the computer shaped the vocabulary learning activities and vice versa. These research results indicate that PDAs can be used in more flexible, novel and extended ways for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) vocabulary teaching and learning in higher education, taking student needs and contexts into consideration.

Abstract: Systems, methods and interfaces are disclosed for managing communications associated with a mobile communication device. Mobile communication devices process environmental inputs and transmit mobile communication device context information to a communication management system. The context information may, for example, reflect the motion and/or geographic location of the mobile device, and may reflect the risk associated with using the device to handle a call or other communications session. The communication management system uses the context information, optionally in combination with communication device profiles, to determine how to manage incoming and/or ongoing calls or other communication sessions. Mobile device users may also be inhibited from initiating communication sessions.

Abstract: In light of emerging forms of software, interfaces, cultures of uses, and media practices associated with mobile media, this collection investigates the various ways in which mobile media is developing in different cultural, linguistic, social, and national settings. We consider the promises and politics of mobile media and its role in the dynamic social and gender relations configured in the boundaries between public and private spheres. In turn, the contributors revise the cultural and technological politics of mobiles. The collection is genuinely interdisciplinary, as well as international in its range, with contributors and studies from China, Japan, Korea, Italy, Norway, France, Belgium, Britain, and Australia.

Abstract: Mobile phones have invited a number of dystopian understandings, particularly as far as young people are concerned. They have been variously argued to contribute to poor spelling and grammar, disturb attention to school work, facilitate text bullying, lead to brain cancers and promote the destruction of face-to-face relationships. Despite these concerns, text messaging is by far the most common form of mobile communication between young people in New Zealand. Drawing on actor-network theory and qualitative research conducted with New Zealand teenagers, we explore how teenagers, cell phones, socio-spatial relations and discourses exist within a hybrid and interdependent network which we have termed digital sociality. This network seems to facilitate rather than destroy proximal contact. The machine and the human, in a cyborgian sense, meld to develop new and complex workings of space and the social which suggests mobile technologies are not as damaging to young people as many have suggested and calls for p...

Abstract: The invention relates to a new “mobile and online based ordering and reservation system” by integrating, synchronizing and utilizing the capability of wireless devices, Internet servers, business web sites and service aggregation portals, to automate the mobile and online ordering and reservation processes in real time, and therefore offering a plural of new mobile and online services and applications. More specifically, the Internet server serves as the host to the service aggregation and as the intermediary device between customers and business. It automatically synchronizes all of the service requests and responses. Therefore, this invention takes full advantage of the flexibility, mobility, availability and convenience of the wireless devices, and the reliability, scalability, the huge processing power of the Internet servers, and the great broadband penetration of the computers into businesses and consumers. The unique and novel, mobile and online based ordering and reservation platform and system, for such time sensitive services, provides the mobile phone and Internet users and various types of business owners with comprehensive sets of options, including the mobile phones installed with the open source “Android” software platform developed by the “Open Handheld Alliance (OHA), such as the “gPhone” released by “Google”, to deliver the requests and responses automatically and instantly through means of synchronization between mobile and Internet communications. Based on the open source mobile phone platform and the Internet server infrastructure, an intuitive and easy-to-use mobile phone and online based ordering and reservation management system is uniquely defined in the architecture of the current invention to allow both the business owners and end consumers with real time communications for a plural of mobile and online ordering and reservation services.

Abstract: Systems and methods for operating a mobile virtual network are disclosed. A mobile virtual network operator is disclosed as an entity that provides a mobile networking service to a user, the mobile networking service being provided using a physical mobile network provided by a third party. The mobile virtual network operator may provide content distribution services, data access services, or messaging services to a user of a mobile device.

Abstract: In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for receiving a webpage, relevant mobile content, or other mobile information based at least in part on behavioral information related to a mobile communication facility user, and displaying the content or other information to the user's mobile communication facility.

Abstract: This chapter gives a general introduction into map-based mobile services which are considered as value-added location-based services. Starting from an overview of digital map types, their rapidly growing affordances and required learning efforts, the natures and design constraints of offline screen maps, web maps and mobile maps are comparatively studied. The aspects of immediate usability are highlighted as a central thread drawing together the essential research challenges involved in the design process of user-centred mobile maps.

Abstract: Systems and methods are described for mobile device collaboration. An exemplary collaborative architecture enables aggregation of resources across two or more mobile devices, in such a manner that the aggregation of resources is practical even considering the miniaturized and limited battery power of most mobile devices. In a video implementation, the exemplary collaborative architecture senses when another mobile device is in close enough proximity to aggregate resources. The collaborative architecture applies an adaptive video decoder so that each mobile device can participate in playing back a larger and higher-resolution video across combined display screens than any single mobile device could playback alone. A cross-display motion prediction technique saves battery power by balancing the amount of collaborative communication between devices against the local processing that each device performs to display visual motion across the boundary separating displays.

Abstract: Methods and systems for determining the suitability of information to be received by a mobile client are disclosed. For example, an exemplary method may include receiving on the mobile client, information relating to a transaction between the mobile client and a transaction host, using a near-field-communication (NFC) link, updating a user profile on the mobile client based on the received transaction information, and performing at least one of receiving, selecting and displaying one or more targeted content messages on the mobile client based upon the updated user profile.

Abstract: Wireless and mobile technology has transformed the didactic world. M-Learning is an emerging field which blends wireless technology and mobile computing to educate the world. This study investigates the effectiveness and viability of cellular technology to teach and train distance learners. The research answers following questions with reference to distance learning in Pakistan but not limited to it: Is this feasible to use cellular technology to educate people on mass scale? How can cellular technology help the Government of Pakistan face the challenge of providing education for all? What can be the motivations for the use of cellular technology instead of TV, radio and internet? What can be the limitations that may hinder the use of mobile devices for learning purpose? The distance learning models of Allama Iqbal Open University of Pakistan (AIOU) and Virtual University of Pakistan (VU) are studied to address the readiness of M-Learning environment in such universities.It is found that cellular technology can increase the efficacy of distance education. It is well suited to teach the language skills and information technology courses. We can use cellular technology as a supplement to the existing learning technologies to reaching huge student masses, in a timely and cost effective manner, through a variety of devices and over a diverse terrain.

Abstract: Mobile devices, mobile device systems and methods applying to mobile devices are provided that employ intelligent agents in combination with a wide array of remote utilities and information sources to facilitate improving a mobile device user's experience. By collecting contextual information from numerous information sources related to the mobile device user's context, more accurate and optimized determinations and/or inferences are formed relating to which remote utilities to make available to the mobile device user. This facilitates less confusion for the user in selecting desired mobile device content, services, and/or applications. The devices, systems, and methodologies also provide for an improved user experience in an open remote utility provider model.

Abstract: Methods and systems for provisioning an application for a mobile device are provided. A user may request an application. A request concerning the application is sent to a provisioning device. The request includes information concerning the mobile device and/or the user of the mobile device. The information is used to determine the requirements for operating the requested application on the mobile device. A hyperlink for downloading the requirements information is sent to the user of the mobile device via text messaging and/or email. The requirements information may be provided directly to the mobile device, to a personal computing device associated with the user of the mobile device, or a combination.

Abstract: Using a map displaying one or more mobile devices based on their current locations, a user of a mobile social networking server selects one or more of his friends, from one of a plurality of friend lists supported, to communicate collectively and share information collectively. For example, by selecting one or more of his friends from one of the friends lists, the user can communicate a recorded message, initiate a conference call, send a task list, retrieve information from their mobile devices, send notifications, etc. If the user of a first mobile device accesses the mobile social networking server using the first mobile device, that user can select one or more friends (from a selected current list) and access their blogs and review their data.