Help! Help!

1. Help! Help! Syed Fahad Allam Shah

2. Outline • Introduction • Application architecture • View - layer • Controller - layer • Model - layer • User Study • Conclusion • Future Work

3. Introduction • Social Networking (Facebook – 400 million users) • Instant Messaging (AOL IM 30 million, Google Gmail 165 million) • Sms (Twitter 105 million users) • Location – its all about location • Mobile Platform – more powerful devices • Location based social networking

4. Application Architecture

5. Application Windows the client layer - consists of the browser interface (View). the JSP middleware - serves as the controller (business logic) (Controller) the data (Model) resides in the MySQL database

6. Client Layer - View • Geocoding – Google Gears • Maps and Markers – Google Maps • Latitude and Longitude conversion • Cache Cotrol • Opening new window • Hidden frame to receive chat messages

7. Middleware - Controller • User authentication and conditional forwarding • Maintaining user information between page refreshes • Distance Updates and Distance Bound Search and Update Propagation • Reopening the Window after Closing

8. Model - DATA LAYER

9. Model (cont’d) Shared Application-wide Information • each user’s latitude and longitude information in a hashmap(as float[]) • hashmap having all the user’s logged in (with emptystringobject as value) • userstofromhashmap of hashmap (for two way lookup) • the thread for checking the user’s online status (and monitoring closing of application window) • shared message buffer, hashmap of hashmap

10. Model (cont’d) Per User information • latitude and longitude information. • username. • email. • boolean variables indicating change in one of the input values on the main application page (fahad.jsp), to update the data in the database. • abilities hashmap. • friends online hashmap. • friends for help hashmap. • chat window closed counter, integer variable. • chat window closed three times in succession (indicating that the user has closed chat window), boolean variable

11. User Study • Where do you rate the application w.r.t the concept • Where do you rate the application w.r.t the interface • Where do you rate the application w.r.t the functionality • Rate your experience with the application • Would you like to use the application in future

12. User Study (cont’d) Box Plot

13. User Study (cont’d) • ability to delete the abilities/friends. • ability to import contacts from social apps (like facebook). • a mobile friendly interface (besides a browser interface). • support for non-exact match for the abilities and the one requested by a user. • support for pictures of the users. • visual/sound indication for a user logging in/out

14. Conclusion • Great potential exists for location aware social networking • Get help in real-time from near-by users for small physical tasks – novel idea • Extend the social circle to include friend-of-friends – yet to be exploited • Opens door to several possibilities – recommendation of places, context based tagging, collaborative content…..

15. Future Work • predict next destination from the logged user traces. • Data mining and Machine Learning, in suggesting places to visit. Previous works such as [1] have demontratedthat learning collaboratively in a social setting is possible and improves performance. • Host on Google Apps. • Some higher constructs like Natural Language processing for performing non-exact match on the abilities and help item. • Have the application run in off-line mode via Google Gears. • Develop an iPhone App, that would allow insight into more user-experience

16. Demo • Thanks, for your attention • Any questions….