The Impact of Mobility on Social and Political Movement

The strength of social and political movements is often correlated with the cost and risks of organizing the effort. Reaching large numbers of people to inform them of a movement’s goals, and the ability to recruit supporters, has historically relied on mass media, both printed and electronic, along with traditional canvassing, public assembly, and public speaking. This has naturally favoured economic and political elites who had easier access to media channels, and who controlled in many cases the rights to public assembly and free speech. The emergence of affordable communications in general and mobile communications in particular, is bringing radical change to this balance of power. This chapter explores some of these changes and suggests directions for future research in this area.

mHealth

Mobile Healthcare, or mHealth, involves the use of mobile devices in healthcare. It is considered a revolutionary approach to delivering health care services such as diagnosis and treatment, research, and patient monitoring. Much of its revolutionary reach is due to the widespread adoption of mobile devices such as mobile smart phones and tablets such as the Apple Ipad. It is estimated that there are over five billion mobile devices in use throughout the world. In terms of demographics, in the United States, it is estimated that five out of seven Medicaid patients carry a mobile smart phone. One result of this mobile reach is the ability to provide healthcare services to people nonambulatory and isolated in their homes, and in underdeveloped and emerging countries, in ways that were previously cost prohibitive. mHealth is also seen as a way to emphasize prevention through mobile monitoring devices and thereby reduce the overall cost of healthcare. mHealth is viewed as changing the healthcare landscape by changing the relationship between the patient, healthcare provider, and between healthcare providers. “A new generation of eHealth products and services, based on wireless and mobile technology, is putting diagnosis and treatment management into the hands of the patient” (The Mobile Health Crowd, 2010). There is clearly a growing interest in, and emphasis on, mobile healthcare applications in the world today by vendors, physicians and patients. It is predicted that the mobile health application market alone will be worth over $84 million, and that by the year 2015, more than 500 million people will be actively using mobile health care applications (Merrill, 2011; Merrill, 2011b).

Introduction to Mobile Technologies

Mobile devices are no longer simple voice communication devices. They have become a medium to create voice, music, text, video, and image communications. Importantly, these various interactions can be created and shared on demand by the mobile user. In addition to communication methods, mobile devices are also a tool used to access the Internet, view television and movies, interact with GPS (Global Positioning System), play games, and read and respond to barcode and augmented reality messages. The reach and functionality of mobile devices depends on their underlying network infrastructure and the capabilities of the mobile device or handset. Mobile communications also rely on specific access methods which operate on top of the physical wireless architecture. There are generally three types of access methods in use: FDMA, TDMA and GSM, and CDMA. Although mobile devices are most commonly associated with mobile phones, there are many types of mobile devices. Some have broad usage such as smart phones and mobile tablet devices, and some are very specific such as telematic devices in vehicles and devices that monitor vital signs in healthcare. “It’s all about the apps” is a common refrain we hear in the world of mobile technology. Not only are mobile applications the key to innovation and customer expansion, it is also a high revenue business. There have been over 300,000 mobile applications developed over the last 3 years, and these applications have been downloaded 10.9 billion times. Whether the applications are used for communication, entertainment, socio-economic growth, crowd-sourcing social and political events, monitoring vital signs in patients, helping to drive vehicles, or delivering education, this is where the mobile technology has been transformed from a mode to a medium.

Mobile Security

Over the past few years, cyber criminals have expanded their focus from desktop PCs to mobile devices such as smart phones, PDAs, and tablet computers. Unfortunately, even though many mobile devices approach personal computers in functionality, most mobile users are not aware of the degree of security threats in the mobile environment. “As mobile Internet usage continues its rapid growth, cyber criminals are expected to pay more attention to this sector” (Siciliano, 2010, p. 1). There are several security threats related to mobile devices. The most common security threat associated with mobile devices is their propensity to become lost, stolen, or misplaced. Social Engineering is a method used by cybercriminals to trick users into providing personal or financial information, or downloading malicious software. One common social engineering attack against mobile devices involves attempts to collect personal, credit card, and banking information from users. Malware is short for malicious software and refers to a collection of malevolent software tools designed to attack the pillars of information security: confidentiality, integrity, availability, and authentication. Although malicious software and security attacks can occur in a number of ways such as SMS text messaging, the primary mode of infection is through the download of mobile applications such as games. Unfortunately, all mobile devices and all mobile operating systems are subject to mobile malware attacks. As a result, malware has become a prevalent threat to mobile devices.

Next Generation Multimedia on Mobile Devices

The multiplatform consumption of multimedia content has become a crucial factor in the way of watching multimedia. Current technologies such as mobile devices have made people desire access to information from anywhere and at anytime. The sources of the multimedia content are also very important in that consumption. They present the content from many sources distributed on the cloud and mix it with automatically generated virtual reality into any platform. This chapter analyzes the technologies to consume the next generation multimedia and proposes a new architecture to generate and present the content. The goal is to offer it as a service so the users can live the experience in any platform, without requiring any special abilities from the clients. This makes the architecture a very interesting aspect for mobile devices that normally do not have big capabilities of rendering but can benefit of this architecture.

Potentials and Challenges of Mobile Augmented Reality

In order to deliver a foundation for orientation and decisions in the growing field of Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR), this chapter intends to deliver a realistic picture about MAR, where it comes from, where it currently stands, and where it is going. It distinguishes between the variants of MAR, explains their similarities, differences, and different development stages and outlooks. While describing potential application fields and their current limitations, the opportunities and challenges of MAR become obvious, as well as how much work is still to do. The chapter intends to categorize the challenges for MAR, covering also related issues in the mobile hardware, software, and operator industry, and their efforts in standardization and open interfacing. Besides the technology-driven discussion, a strong emphasis will be taken also to the essential aspect of user experience. With ubiquitous MAR, the technology will become more and more secondary, and the user and her individual context moves into the center of attention.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile technologies have dramatically changed the world’s ability to communicate. The number of mobile phones used worldwide has exceeded 4.6 billion with continued growth expected in the future. In fact, in the United States alone, the numbers of mobile phone users comprise over 80% of the population. Mobile phones and tablets (mobile devices) are not simply voice communication devices. They have become a medium to create voice, music, text, video, and image communications. Importantly, these various types of communication can be created and shared on demand by the mobile user. In addition to communication methods, mobile devices are also a tool used to access the Internet, view television and movies, interact with GPS (Global Positioning System), and read and respond to barcode and augmented reality messages. Each of these methods utilized by the mobile phone user becomes a tool that can be used in mobile marketing to expand beyond traditional marketing methods. Mobile devices are considered to be “the most personal piece of technology that most of us will ever own” (Krum, 2010, p. 7). We usually take them with us wherever we go and are usually reachable through them. However, mobile devices also provide the ability to access the most personal information about us. Mobile devices know who we communicate with and how often. They know our schedule – both business and personal. They often know all of our email addresses and frequently accessed web sites. They know what videos, music, television shows, and movies we like. They know about us through pictures and text messages sent and received. They know where we go, how often, and how long we stay through location tracking technology. This collection of accessible personal information allows mobile marketing to target individuals at the time and place where their message will be most effective. Mobile technologies over the past 20 years have dramatically changed the way people communicate, collaborate, search for, receive, and share information. These dramatic changes have had striking impact on the world of marketing to the extent that mobile marketing has become the predominant form of customer engagement.

Mobile Handheld Devices in Education

Small electronic devices, also referred to as handhelds, are impacting education in a variety of ways including teaching methods, student life, and the need for support from technical staff. This chapter discusses the importance of handhelds in education, how handhelds are being used in education, the challenges presented by handhelds for those in education and what might happen with handhelds in the future.

Mobile Education

The mobile phone is fast becoming an invaluable educational tool that is available the world over. Owing to the diverse applications that are available, educational content and experiences can be provided on the mobile that are simply not attainable elsewhere. Education on the mobile has the potential for becoming one of the main components of mobile functionality, and as such, represents a sizeable niche for mobile application and content developers as well as mobile operators and providers. Aspects indigenous to mobile consumption such as the use of voice and rich media can be judiciously incorporated into the mobile teaching arena, with close attention paid to best practices of effective pedagogy that is well suited and specifically tuned for mobile capabilities but that also take mobile limitations into consideration.

Transforming eMaintenance into iMaintenance with Mobile Communications Technologies and Handheld Devices

iMaintenance stands for integrated, intelligent and immediate maintenance; which can be made possible by integrating various maintenance functions, and connecting these to handheld devices, such as an iPhone, using mobile communication technologies. The main innovation required for developing iMaintenance systems is to integrate the disparate systems and capabilities developed under the current eMaintenance models, and to make these immediately accessible by ubiquitous and intelligent computing technologies –such as Digital Ecosystems and Cloud Computing– connected via wireless networks and handheld devices such as the iPhone. A Digital Ecosystem is a computer-based system that can evolve with the system that it monitors and controls, and can be embedded in the system’s components, thereby providing the ability to integrate new functionality without any downtime. Cloud Computing can provide access to additional software services that are not available in the local Digital Ecosystem. This chapter will show how these computing paradigms can provide mobile computing and communication facilities required to create novel iMaintenance systems.