Automated Content Sharing in Extended Homes through Mobile Devices

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Automated Content Sharing in Extended Homes
through Mobile Devices
Shahzad Awan MSc Software Development University
of Tampere Shahzad.awan_at_uta.fi
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Agenda of Presentation

• Background/Introduction
• Problem definition
• Existing solutions
• Proposed solution
• Use case scenario
• Benefits and limitations
• Comparison of existing solutions
• Implementation aspects

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Background/Introduction

• Cameras in mobile phones have totally changed the
  way people capture their personal experiences
• Camera phone sales have significantly, exceeded
  Digital Still Camera (DSC) sales
• At the same time, people have the need to share
  their self-generated content with family
  friends
• On-line sharing services have been very
  successful on the Internet

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Problem Definition

• Once the moment has passed (e.g. the moment of
  capturing the content), people dont really
  bother/forget/are bored to share their content
  with others
• Some of the people that have a camera phone,
  dont even move their captured images out of
  their phone. They just delete them when the
  memory is full
• MMS is expensive and with many limitations.
  Uploading, from mobile, to on-line services is
  also expensive and slow
• There is no easy, automatic and intuitive way of
  sharing content

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Existing Systems

• Couple of existing systems that support content
  sharing are
• MobShare
• Nokia Lifeblog
• Flickr
• Mobile Web Servers (MWS)
• One Push
• FunkyShare

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Existing Systems MobShare

• Background
• Developed at University of California(Berkeley)
  in collaboration with University of Helsinki
• Objectives
• Immediately sharing captured mobile images from
  the phone to an organized and manageable web
  album

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Existing Systems MobShare

• Working
• The client program logs in on the web server
  using the phone number as ID
• Uploads the images and related metadata to the
  server
• User notifies his friends by sending the
  notifications that he uploaded some contents
  which he wants to share with them.

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Existing Systems MobShare

• Limitations
• The GPRS network transfer speed is limited. E.g.
  uploading one image (640x480 pixels)took from 19
  to 30 seconds
• In order to share pictures with others, their
  numbers are required
• Data is shared on third party web server thus
  there are security and data misuse issues.
• Content sharing has to be done manually

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Mobile Web Servers

• New NOKIA devices have a built-in Mobile Web
  Server (MWS), which provides a global URL and
  HTTP access to it
• MWS allows a user to create his/her own mobile
  web site referred as mob site, share his/her
  mobile contents, calendar and web applications
• MWS uses application software that allows owner
  to manage web servers user accounts, server
  settings and shared folders access rights.

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Mobile Web Servers cont

• Owner of MWS can share the following applications
  with other users
• Camera
• Blog
• Guestbook
• Send SMS
• Messaging
• Phone log
• Contacts
• Gallery
• Calendar

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Mobile Web Server cont

• Gallery web application allows users to view
  mobile albums (i.e. images, video and audio
  clips) of MWS owner
• Gallery web application categorizes albums as
  private, phone and memory card. Private album is
  only visible to MWS owner, where as visibility of
  phone and memory card album to users depends on
  their access rights
• Keeping the MWS running and allowing web users to
  access it causes data traffic to users mobile
  device and results in high bandwidth consumption

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Mobile Web Server cont

• Advantages
• Mobile contents can be shared and unshared
  instantly
• Mobile contents can be accessed using normal web
  browsers
• Disadvantages
• MWS results in greater bandwidth and battery
  consumption
• MWS contents will not be accessible if device is
  turned off
• MWS stops when network traffic limit exceeds,
  making it inaccessible to other users.

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One Push

• One Push is a mobile camera application which
  allows owners to share their mobile contents with
  group of users via email
• It provides one push sharing feature, which
  sends mobile generated images to a specific group
  with just a single input
• It is similar in functionality to standard camera
  application, but the only limitation is that
  email is the only means for transferring pictures
  of the phone

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One Push cont

• It allows user to specify three people with whom
  s/he want to share pictures.
• These names appear on the top level menu, thus
  allowing the user to easily select his most
  common recipients rather than going through
  recipients list each time after taking a picture
• Once picture and recipient are selected,
  application sends this data to server using GPRS,
  which in turn sends the picture as an email
  attachment to the selected recipient.

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One Push cont

• After taking a picture (left), selecting
  Options" will bring up a customizable menu with
  one-push sharing options (right). A person
  specifies one-push sharing recipients by
  selecting the One-Push settings" menu option.

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FunkyShare

• FunkyShare is an application software that
  enhances the co-located synchronous photo sharing
  experience as well as involved social
  interactions around this experience
• It allows users to use PDA and mobile phones to
  share photographs in a co-located setting group
• GUI of FunkyShare is divided into public and
  private parts. Private part shows only those
  images that are private to device user, where as
  public part of GUI shows those images that are
  visible to all users in the session.

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FunkyShare cont

• In order to share a private image, user can
  simply drag it from private part of GUI to public
  part. The photograph is then shown in public
  space of all other devices in the session.

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FunkyShare cont

• Advantages
• It uses Wi Fi for communication, so no traffic
  cost is included
• GUI is user friendly
• Disadvantages
• Users have to be physically located together in
  order to be part of sharing session

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Proposed solution

• A solution that would allow many friends to
  participate in a common sharing session
• Allow their mobile devices to create an alliance,
  for predefined amount of time
• Content captured during that time, would be
  automatically marked for sharing with the rest of
  the group
• When people get at home (where free broadband
  Internet exists), the content would be
  automatically gathered, from all devices, on a
  common location

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Proposed solution cont

• That location could be the home server of one of
  the people. With a single click, contents could
  be uploaded on an on-line sharing service (the
  rest dont need to have an account there)
• We dont want to upload the content to the
  Internet directly from the mobiles because
• Cost of cellular data
• Battery consumption
• Might be out of cellular coverage

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Proposed solution cont

• We dont want to use a dedicated on-line sharing
  service. We cant assume that all our friends are
  subscribers of this service (e.g. Flickr)
• We might not trust on-line services
• We want to utilize our home infrastructure (media
  server broadband connection)

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Use case scenario

• Four friends get together
• One of them, creates (using a special
  application)a common sharing session for 5
  hours
• That means that all content generated for the
  next5 hours will be automatically shared with
  other people
• His home server is automatically notified about
  this new common sharing session

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Use case scenario cont

• The server allocates resources and creates a new
  container for the media
• Then, an invitation to participate is easily sent
  to the rest of the friends
• The invitation includes the method for
  remotelyaccessing the home server and the
  required credentials
• The rest of the people accept

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Use case scenario cont

• For the next 5 hours, all the content that the
  devices create is marked for automatic sharing
• At the end of the day, everybody goes at their
  home
• Automatically, each device establishes a
  connection to the home server of the person that
  created the common sharing session, using the
  details included in the original invitation
• Over the free home connection, all the contents
  are transferred to a common location

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Use case scenario cont
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Benefits and limitations

• Who is benefited
• Our solution is mainly aimed for friends,
  families and relatives who want to share their
  contents on specific events. E.g. wedding, party,
  Christmas etc
• However, it can also be used to share a work
  relation. E.g. a number of journalists
• Benefits
• Automation
• Cost effectiveness
• Privacy/Security
• Availability of service
• Limitations
• Content management and ownership issues
• Limited storage space on sharing session
  creators home server might result in data loss

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Comparison of existing solutions
MobShare Nokia LifeBlog, used with PC album Nokia LifeBlog, used with online Blog Our Solution
Uses third party web server Yes No Yes No
Cost effective No Yes No Yes
Data privacy No Yes No Yes
Requires contents to be moved on PC for sharing No Yes No No
Targeted user level Single Single Group Group
Provides automated sharing feature No No No Yes
Metadata can be stored with contents Yes Yes Yes No
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Implementation aspect

• Mobile software was developed on Symbian S60
  platform 3.1
• Server side software was developed using J2SE
• 70 percent components for mobile software were
  developed from scratch, where as 30 percent were
  reused
• Implementation took 3 months to complete

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Implementation aspect cont

• Mobile software was mainly tested on Nokia N80
  and N93 devices
• Key concepts of symbian utilized in development
  were
• GUI development
• Mobile database programming
• Active objects
• Messaging
• HTTP client programming
• ATOM protocol programming
• WLAN programming

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Thank YouQuestions?Feedback?Suggestions?