Mobile Computing and Social Networks Essay
“Geolocation in general is the practice of determining the physical, real world location of a person, device or subject matter using digital information processed through the Internet or other electronic means of communication” (How Accurate is GeoLocation? ). You will be using this type of technology to acquire data from one person’s computer/mobile device, to try and identify where their actual location is. This type of technology has become very popular over the years with the ongoing social networking craze. It’s also a great way to know where your friends are and a way you can check into your favorite places.Geolocation has truly made an impact on the world. In the past, individuals used to print out their directions and used paper to tell them where to go. The only problem with this is that you could potentially lose the paper or if you wanted to do add a route onto it, there was no possible way because you wouldn’t have access to the Internet.
Now with the onslaught of Smartphones, tablets, etc. you can plug in your information and your current location is already saved on the server. You are able to find your current location on your mobile device by the GPS chip that is installed on them.The GPS chip is where all of the data is stored, sent, and received. Smartphones, tablet, and Internet devices all should have GPS chips within their systems.
The iPhone and “The iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G models do have built-in GPS chips that receive signals from the global GPS satellite system to determine your location – as closely as three meters, depending the number of satellite signals the chip is receiving. GPS in the iPad 2 is classed as assisted GPS, also known as AGPS, which enhances the performance of standard GPS in devices connected to Wi-Fi or the cellular network.The iPad 2 W-Fi + 3G may be used for the full range of apps that require detailed location information wherever you may be on the planet, including mapping, driving, services locators, and more” (Zahradnik, 2011). With the GPS chip being a driving force for data within model devices, it will have its disadvantages. You may lose signal with your device if there is bad weather, you’re within a tunnel on the road, or you’re just in a bad reception area. Service availability will be your lifesaver in these circumstances. Sometimes you may also have trouble finding where places are.This might not be due to bad service availability, but because you are trying to find places that are within offices plazas, malls, high-populated areas, etc.
You should pay attention to your surrounding and make sure you typed in the correct address. Most of the time these location apps are pretty accurate though. Mobile-based applications, like anything else over a network, will have its own set of privacy concerns. With location applications being mobile-based, you have the luxury of sharing your location of your social networking sites.This is a hit on your privacy because everyone will know where you currently are and where you are going. This isn’t good because anyone can follow you to your location and thieves will know whenever your home is unattended. The best way to fight privacy concerns is to set your own personal privacy settings.
Pick who can view your post and to what extent they can view. There’s a lot of great potential with these types of devices but you need to know how to work them to protect yourselves. When it comes to mobile computing, customers are starting to realize the benefits that it contains.Cloud computing has been a huge help to this as well. Cloud technology has made everything a lot easier for customer because it’s easily assessable and pretty mobile. Everything in the world is becoming portable from laptop, Kindles, GPS devices, tablets, smartphones, etc. There are so many ways that customers can access their data on the go that they keep wanting more. Consumers can now have access to there banking accounts where they can pay bills, view their account, transfer money, and check their balances of each account.
Aside from personal banking, individuals may also check their social networking accounts, check their emails, search the web, play games, view photographs, call, and listen to music. There is so much to do through mobile applications now, that you really don’t have to spend a lot of money on a personal computer. The Cloud system is a great benefit for customers. It’s a very convenient system to have.
You can be in another part of the country or world, and you’ll still be able to check in, view, and be in everyday talks with your business. Another main benefit is that it can save you money.You don’t have to spend your hard earned cash on expensive hardware, software, servers, etc.
“Companies evolve constantly as well as their needs, and you may not know what will be yours in few months. Cloud computing companies operate on a pay-as-you-use model, so you only pay for the services you require and use and can easily adjust your exigencies in power, space and services at any time” (Thakral). There are also on-demand resources and customers will have access to a large amount of applications. They don’t have to download or install these applications either.
Small screens form a challenge when it comes to developing applications that run on mobile devices. Mobile devices have changed throughout the years. They aren’t the same giant box that they used to be.
Mobile devices have adapted a more sleek and slim look with a more powerful processor and sharper resolution and display. Even with all this type of evolution, it still wouldn’t be a great idea to transfer larger applications and websites onto those devices. The devices will tend to run a lot slower then normal and the performance will suffer with multiple issues.
The idea is to try and fine or develop applications that could be viewed on the small screen of mobile devices. Instead of trying to cram larger applications into the device, you should try and evolve the apps to make sure they fit the mold for mobile devices. There are a ton of challenges that developing applications for small screens could be facing. Some of the well known challenges are mobile devices have different type of keyboards, hardware and software could vary, features within the phone could vary, and screen sizes could be different.
The only way to design applications for mobile devices is that you base it off how others have designed mobile applications. Do your research and know what to do and where to do it. You must also make sure that you aren’t trying to access every type of application and site on every device. Applications and websites vary from device to device. If you’ve done your research, you should know what would be run on each device. Applications can be designed based on what type of device you would want your application ran on.
Also, you should design your product based on who will be using them. Is it going to be kids based, teenagers, adults, etc? If you do this it should make a smooth transition onto your mobile device. “Several new mobile apps enter the market every day, developed by coders at all levels, using multiple platforms. Developers can now choose from various mobile platforms, including Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Symbian, Qualcomm BREW and Sun J2ME. This is great for developers, both creativity-wise and money-wise.The important thing here for the developer is to choose the right kind of mobile platform, analyzing the pluses and minuses of each one before going ahead and creating the app. Here is a how-to on choosing the right mobile platform for developing your mobile application” (Viswanathan). The first method is coming up with whom you should target in terms of audience.
If you would like to target more of a larger genre, iPhone and android would be the best fit. They have everything from music, games, various applications, movies, email, and the web.If you were looking more into the business world, then the Blackberry would probably be the best fit to use. You must always remember that sales s very important, but it’s not everything. The ultimate goal is to make your customers happy, so you need to put their needs before everything else. The second method is to view the technical features of each platform. You should review the color, how much capacity does it hold, the size and weight, location services, cellular and wireless data, display, power, battery, external buttons and connectors, and audio playback.
All of these technical features are very important to tell which platform to support. No platform is perfect, but you would like to find one that is close to it. If one platform is great in some, but is lacking in the categories of battery life and display, you might want to steer somewhere else. It’s always important to do your homework whenever you are making a decision on anything. You don’t want to wind up being screwed in the end. The third method you should consider is the financial aspect that comes with deciding on a platform. Everything cost money and nothing is free unfortunately.
In a perfect world all platforms will have the same income, but this isn’t a perfect world and that’s not the case. Adapting a platform will take some serious cash. You should figure out which platform has made the most sales in the last few months, which one has been struggling, and which one might be on the rise. Figuring out all of these will put a brighter speck on which platform to go with.
The fourth and final method is to look into the future. You should figure out which platforms might be releasing soon and which ones might take a huge leap in sales. Is it stable? Will it survive tomorrow? With the mobile app industry bringing so many changes on a daily basis, you should think long-term. For instance, Microsoft, which was considered the leader just a few years ago, now seems to be giving way to the current hot favorite, Google Android. So understand the long-term consequences of choosing a particular mobile platform” (Viswanathan). In today’s world, you expect a lot out of your devices.
It’s not like it was in the past where you would wait forever for your device to load.Every user wants a fast and reliable device that has easy access to the web and email. Downtown within your network or device is not an option with users. If there was any type of downtime, it could affect the sales, customer service, and overall satisfaction rate.
Users have gotten so used to special services, that they forget how life used to be. Users want 24/7 customer service, 24/7 access to their network, and they demand that they are able to download applications whenever they want. This is fine and all, but what happens when there is downtime?There are no excuses anymore when it comes to this. The old days when weather, a bad connection, and service failures for the excuse why there is downtime is over. You should let your customers know about downtime. Your users will probably be more understanding then if you just do it. Not only will downtime upset your customers, but it also could possibly hurt in the financial department. Users love their applications and want to know they can access them at anytime.
If they aren’t able to, it could be a big problem in the future. Availability engineering is about doing your best to create reliable application components and infrastructure, accepting the reality that your application probably will have at least some failures, and designing in quick recovery technology to minimize (or even eliminate) downtime. Designing for availability is about anticipating, detecting, and automatically resolving hardware or software failures before they result in service errors, event faults, or data corruption — thereby minimizing downtime. The technology part of the solution requires multiple routes to application services and data.The operational part of the solution is to use only tested, proven processes (both automated and people-based) to support the application throughout its entire lifecycle” (Designing for availability). A great method of availability would be clustering. “Clustering is probably the premier technology for creating high-availability applications. With clustering, a multiserver Web site can withstand hardware and software failures on individual servers and continue running with no interruption in service.
A cluster consists of multiple computers that are physically networked together and logically connected using cluster software.Clustering allows two or more independent servers to behave as a single system. In the event of a failure (such as CPU, motherboard, storage adapter, network card, or application component), the workload is automatically moved to another server, current client processes are switched over, and the failed application service is restarted — all automatically and with no apparent downtime. When either a hardware or software resource fails, customers connected to that server cluster may experience a slight delay but the service will be completed.Cluster software can provide failover support for applications, file and print services, databases, and messaging systems.
” (Designing for availability ). The clustering service offers multiple benefits. Reduced unplanned downtime, reduced planned downtime, continuous health monitoring, and compatible with industry standard hardware are some benefits of clustering. Another method that can be looked at is the use of network load balancing. “One of the two best technologies for high-availability is Network Load Balancing (the other best technology is Microsoft Cluster Service).Should a server fail, with NLB you can redefine the cluster and direct traffic to the other servers.
NLB is especially beneficial for e-commerce applications that link external clients with transactions to back-end data stores: as client traffic increases, additional servers can be added (up to 32 servers in a single cluster). NLB automatically detects a server failure and redirects client traffic to the remaining servers within ten seconds — all the time maintaining continuous, unbroken client service.It is worth noting that NLB is preferable to round robin DNS (RRDNS) because RRDNS does not detect server availability. RRDNS just continues to send work (for minutes or hours) until the system administrator removes the server from the available DNS address list” (Designing for availability ). When it comes down to it, network load balancing is a very important technology for availability purposes. The benefits that are included in this are continuous application service, incremental server additions, and application server 200 ready.There are so many other methods that we can also choose for availability as well. You need to realize that availability is very important, as you should also expect to use at least one of these methods to help assist with your availability issues.
“Smart phones are becoming increasingly popular. Offering Internet connectivity, they function like minicomputers and can download a growing variety of applications and files, store personal information such as credit card numbers, and even conduct financial transactions” (WILL PROPOSED STANDARD MAKE MOBILE PHONES MORE SECURE? ).Consumers used to think that mobile security was the best method to search the web, look at emails, and anything else over the Internet. This isn’t typically the case anymore. With more and more individuals and businesses relying on mobile technology now, more security measure need to be done so our personal data isn’t compromised.
The two threats that hand over mobile technology are theft and a Wi-Fi connection that isn’t secure. If your cellular phone gets stolen, then the individual will have access to all your information that you keep on your device. Hackers and virus writers are becoming more and more frequent in mobile technology.The reason for this is because smartphones are becoming more of the norm in today’s world. Almost everyone has them and they are connected to a network, which makes it easier for hackers and viruses to attack the system.
In order to protect our sensitive information, there are a few steps we need and should take. The first step that we should take is to create a password to open our device. This way, it will be harder for an individual to actually open your phone and viewing your information. This might be a pain and inconvenient to the owner, but it’s a way we could safeguard our system and information.Another step we could take is to erase your history by setting it up automatically or by doing it by yourself. This way, if your phone were stolen it wouldn’t show the places you have been over the network.
Setting up an anti-virus/spyware package on your device might be a great way of fighting current and past viruses. Some devices already have there own protection suites on it, but if you’re able to install another, you should jump on it as soon as possible. The last way you can protect yourself against security threats is to be careful of what your put on your device.In today’s technology, a lot of individuals want to jailbreak and unlock their phones. This is great and all because you can put applications on it that it wouldn’t usually come with, but it’s also very dangerous to your system. If your jailbreak/unlock, you are downloading applications that aren’t protected by the security measures that came on your default system.
This could lead to viruses and hackers looking into your system, because your security programs can’t see them come in. There’s not a lot your can do to protect your devices, but you should at least try all the measures possible. It could be the difference between you losing your information and not.REFERENCEDesigning for availability . (n. d. ).
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