text:
IS480 Information Systems and Innovation
Street Credibility
Group number: 11 Candidate Number 1: 73433 Candidate Number 2: 73873 Candidate Number 3: 76021 Candidate Number 4: 87684
Word Count: 12176
Information Systems and Innovation Group Department of Management
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Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge and extend our gratitude to the following persons, who have made the completion of this project possible: o Dr. Carsten Sorensen for his assistance and vital encouragement. o Dr. Will Venters for his understanding and support. o Niccolo Tempini for the help and inspiration he extended. o Our friends and families for providing relentless support and enduring passionate sleepless nights of work and laughter.
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Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... 3 Abbreviation Index .................................................................................................................... 5 1.
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 6
Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 7 2.1
Root Definition .......................................................................................................... 10
Identification of Requirements .................................................................................. 11
2.4.1 2.4.2 2.5 3.
The Six Affordances of Mobile Information Technology......................................... 20
System Design.................................................................................................................. 23 3.1
Design Personas ........................................................................................................ 23
3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.2
The typical Teenage Skater ................................................................................ 23 The casual Urban Sports Fan ............................................................................. 24 The professional Inline Skater ........................................................................... 25
UML Diagrams.......................................................................................................... 25
3.2.1 3.2.2 3.2.3 3.2.4 3.2.5
Functional Requirements ................................................................................... 12 Non-Functional Requirements ........................................................................... 18
Stakeholders ....................................................................................................... 26 User Features...................................................................................................... 27 Geo-Tagging ...................................................................................................... 27 Events ................................................................................................................. 28 Watch Videos and Challenge another Athlete ................................................... 29
Use Cases .................................................................................................................. 29
Architecture ...................................................................................................................... 38 4.1
Architecture Diagram ................................................................................................ 38
Choice of Technology ............................................................................................... 38
4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.4 4.2.5 4.2.6
Cloud Servers ..................................................................................................... 39 Database ............................................................................................................. 40 Services .............................................................................................................. 40 Mobile Application ............................................................................................ 41 Assisted GPS (A-GPS) and Location Based Services (LBS) ............................ 41 Twitter and Facebook......................................................................................... 43 [3]
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4.2.7 4.2.8 4.2.9 4.3 5.
YouTube API and Video.js ................................................................................ 43 Google Maps API............................................................................................... 44 File Hosting Services ......................................................................................... 45
Data Storage and Processing ..................................................................................... 45
Prototype & User Manual ................................................................................................ 47 5.1
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Guidelines for the proper demonstration of the Prototype ........................................ 47
Discussion & Outlook ...................................................................................................... 48 6.1
Future Outlook .......................................................................................................... 48
6.1.1 6.1.2 6.1.3 6.2
Website............................................................................................................... 48 Additional Features ............................................................................................ 49 Geographical Reach ........................................................................................... 50
Discussion & Conclusion .......................................................................................... 51
References ................................................................................................................................ 53 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 54
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Abbreviation Index A-GPS API App CATWOE DBMS GPS HTML JS LBS OS PICTURE UI UML
Assisted GPS Application Programming Interface Mobile Application Client Actor Transformation World view Owner Environment Database Management System Global Positioning System Hypertext Markup Language JavaScript Location Based Services Operating System Purpose Inspiration Context Technology Users Rationale Evolution User Interface Unified Modelling Language
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1. Introduction Street sports are an expression of the spontaneous and creative adaption of traditional sports to the urban environment. While street sports have increased in popularity over the last decade with athletes like Sébastien Foucan (parkour) staring in Casino Royale, they continue to generally be non-commercial and non-professional in nature. Often breaching the boundaries of legality, urban sports usually lack any overarching institution, confining knowledge and competition to small local communities; a restriction we believe can be overcome. Our vision is to create a mobile application, called 'Street Credibility', which enables urban sport athletes to geo-tag good "spots", instantly upload videos and pictures and rate tricks performed by other athletes. We want to become the one application users look to for identifying good places for performing their sport and for sharing self-produced videos and pictures. We are further hoping to facilitate the creation of a more transparent competitive ranking amongst peers and disseminate interaction between urban sports communities. This document will outline the conceptual design of the mobile application and provide a future outlook of the services we are aspiring to build around the mobile app.
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2. Analysis To ensure that our application fulfils user requirements, we engaged in an extensive analysis prior to the design of our system. We performed the following elements of analysis:
Root Definition
Functional Requirements
Affordances of Mobile Information Technology
2.1 PICTURE Purpose
Provide urban sport athletes with a mobile application to (1) geo-tag good locations for performing their sport, (2) upload multimedia information (i.e. videos, photos) of performed tricks, (3) rate the submitted content of other users, and (4) interact with other athletes by inviting them to an event, challenging them to a duel or forming a group. Overall, the application is supposed to give the urban sport athletes a tool for self-organising their sport to become more competitive and transparent as well as to help for its diffusion across locally confined communities.
Best Session Ever App Playground Red Bull App YouTube Success of Apps providing location based services and specifically of Apps integrating GoogleMaps as their main display. Extreme sports app for BlackBerry smartphones Personal experience regarding what urban athletes need
In the first iteration the system can be accessed through a smartphone and used in a variety of situations: 1. User checks out tagged places close to him and views some of the uploaded videos and pictures and rates them. User goes to one of [7]
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the places he has just inspected and performs a trick there, which one of his friends records using his phone. User instantly uploads the video to the app and links the content to his profile and the spot. 2. User wants to perform a specific trick (e.g. grind). Using the app he finds some good places to perform that trick and selects one or several he wants to visit throughout the day. User creates an event and invites some of his friends (even some who are not using the app yet). His friends receive an e-mail invite with the location details. They meet up and film each other's tricks, which they then upload to the app. 3. User wants to connect with other athletes performing his sport. He uses the application to search for other athletes and sends them a friend request in order to get connected. The user further has the opportunity to create a group (crew) and invite his friends to join the group. He can further apply to become a member of an already existent group. 4. User looks at some of the uploaded videos for a spot and decides that he can do better than the athlete with the highest rating. He challenges the "spot champion" to a duel. Both users now have 7 days to submit new content (new content for spot champion = optional), which the community than rates to determine the new location champion. In the future it is our intention to grow our service offering to also include a website. Potential usage could be as follows: 1. The user is at home with some of his friends. They browse the website to look at some of the highest rated videos. They rate the viewed content and leave comments for the performing athlete. They post some of the videos to their crew profile to share with the rest of the group. They use the afternoon to work on some of the video footage they collected in the morning and upload the final cut to their profiles and tag the locations where they performed the tricks. They check out the competitive rating to see who is currently the best athlete in their city. Technology
Cloud Servers (Amazon) [8]
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Creation of WebServer software for the deployment of services (Node. js) Google Maps API OR Google Earth API Youtube API Assisted-GPS HTML5 (integration in multiple platforms such as IOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS) MongoDB Users
Athletes (experienced or not/unofficial event creators) Sport Enthusiast (interested in seeing videos of urban sport athletes performing their sport) Owners of companies with a heightened interest in urban sport athletes such as o Skate shop owners o Skate park owners o Owners of shops offering sport apparel Event organizers Companies seeking to engage in targeted advertising and sponsoring
At the moment, there is no service providing urban sport athletes with contextualized information about where to find good locations for performing their sport. Further, there is no overarching organization compiling official rankings. Street Credibility will allow extreme athletes, who are unable to participate in highly commercialized events, to build a reputation amongst peers and compare themselves to other athletes. o User can find good spots for performing his sport o User can look at spot reviews to understand what tricks he can perform at the respective spot o User can look at content uploaded by other users o User can rate the content of other users o User can compare himself to other users and see how he is ranked within his community o User can challenge other users to a duel o User can connect with other athletes performing his sport o User can become part of a crew
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Identification of functional and non-functional requirements Design storyboarding (mock-ups) Implementation of a prototype Extensive user testing Collection of required changes Development of the application Launch of a beta version of the application Testing Formal launch
2.2 Root Definition 'Street Credibility' is a mobile application which provides urban athletes with contextualized information about locations, enables them to connect with one another and compete with each other by allowing them to geo-tag locations, offering them social networking features and allowing them to rate each other's' performances in order to promote new spots for users to discover, help them get organized into communities and allow users to get credit for their skills.
Urban athletes
Urban athletes, skate park owners, store owners, firms, administrators
1. Unknown locations Spots become available to the wider audience + wider audience is provided with detailed information about the spots 2. Individual athletes Communities of athletes (social networking) 3. Unknown athletes Athletes receive credit (broader recognition) 4. Non-professional sport Application compiles rankings allowing athletes to compare themselves to other users
'Street Credibility' is an application for urban athletes enabling them to find new locations for performing their sport, connect and compete with other athletes and a means of entertainment that complements their occupation with their favourite [10]
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sport. O E
Administrators of Street Credibility
Competition (niche market with a very limited number of users, who will only be willing to subscribe to one service)
Location constraints (town/city may have few spots, spots may be inaccessible or too crowded or controlled regularly)
Funding (not sufficient funding will put barriers to the implementation of the application, especially considering the importance of user generated content and the necessity to attain a critical user mass – advertisement will be very important to successfully launch the application)
Sport constraints (typical language used in the respective sport and by the target users, classification of tricks, etc.)
Resource constraints (availability of developers skilled to program HTML5 applications to run on all available mobile operating systems)
Mobile Network (speed of mobile internet in target areas)
2.4 Identification of Requirements We applied the following steps in identifying the requirements for 'Street Credibility': (1) Identification of market opportunity (non-existence of an application solely targeted at urban sport athletes providing them with contextualized information about their sport and an easy platform for competition and communication) (2) Brainstorming sessions (based on our understanding of the market we developed a rough idea of what an ideal solution should encompass) (3) Identification of competitive products and analysis of strengths and weaknesses (Playground, Best Session Ever, Extreme sports app for BlackBerry smartphones, etc.) (4) Identification of services to enhance user experience to make our application superior to competition (geo-tagging, peer rating, peer challenges, event creation + invitation of other users) (5) Setting the scope of the project [11]
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(6) Storyboarding (7) Target group market testing (discuss application with target users to identify further requirements) (8) Deduction of functional and non-functional requirements
2.4.1 Functional Requirements Based on the limited scope of the project and available resources we decided to focus on the conceptual design of a mobile application. In the long run 'Street Credibility' will also encompass a website, which is important to provide user with a more convenient opportunity to view videos and upload edited content. We further agreed on a limited feature set to incorporate in the first release of the application, to engage in extensive market testing before integrating further functionalities.
Release 1
• Geo-tagging of locations
• Competitive Events (competitions can be
• Uploading of user generated content
arranged by official organisations includ-
• Video streaming
ing rules, awards, guidelines and sched-
• Search & filtered search
ule to be promoted through our applica-
• Rating of submitted content
• Competitions
• Mentoring (user can apply for a mentor-
• User/ Group/Company Profiles
ing relationship with an experienced
• Basic Community / Social Networking
• Promotions/Advertisement (allow com-
• News Feed
panies to create promotional offers as
• Weather Feed
part of their profile – e.g. 20% off all sport apparel products) • Marketplace for Equipment (enable users to sell and buy equipment amongst each other) • Sponsorships (allow companies to offer sponsorships and users to apply for the[12]
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se using the content they have submitted)
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Below, please find a detailed explanation of the functionalities we plan to incorporate in the first release of the application: Geo-Tagging
allow user to geo-tag good spots/locations for performing their sport
allow users to geo-tag sport apparel stores and other sport related locations (e.g. skate parks), etc.
allow users to look at geo-tags. These will include: o short location profile (name, rating, description, good for performing which sports and which kind of tricks) o an overview of locally performed tricks (content uploaded by athletes) sorted from best to worst according to ranking with newly uploaded tricks ranked at the very top for several days to allow users to rate new tricks in comparison to former tricks
Upload videos,
Geo-tagging of uploaded content
Categorizing of uploaded content (sport, trick category [aerial, flip,
descriptive text
etc.]) •
Tagging for search
Descriptive text
NOTE: user will have the opportunity to flag inappropriate content, which is immediately removed and then reviewed by the system administrator to decide whether the uploaded content in fact violates community guidelines. Users constantly violating community guidelines will receive a warning, followed by being banned from the application. Best Practice for community guidelines we intend to adapt to our application: http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines Video Streaming
allow users to view uploaded content by streaming directly within the application
allow user to mark up to 10 videos, which are made available for [14]
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offline viewing and stored within the app Search
Sport specific search (user can filter according to sport: skating, inlining, etc.)
Geo-search for specific locations (e.g Hyde Park)
Search for stores
Search for profiles (individuals and groups)
Search for a specific tag / trick
Filter search according to specific criteria (rating, location, sport, category, etc.)
Allow user to rate uploaded content on a peer to peer basis and leave comments with rating Rating criteria: (1) Style, (2) Height, (3) Location Challenge, (4) Difficulty
Ratings will be accumulated into a competitive ranking (Local XGames) amongst users. User needs to have the ability to filter ranking (World > Europe > UK > London > Soho)
NOTE: user will have the opportunity to flag inappropriate comments, which will be removed immediately and then reviewed by the system administrator to decide whether the uploaded content in fact violates community guidelines. Users constantly violating community guidelines will receive a warning, followed by being banned from the application. Best Practice for community guidelines we intend to adapt to our application: http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines Competitions
Allow users to challenge another user / allow groups to challenge other groups. A duel will be publicized to a wider audience for review and rating of the submitted content. Challenge criteria: o Trick category (aerial, flip, etc.) o Location [15]
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o Rating criteria
Organised competitions/open events – user can create an event page to challenge public to participate in a defined competition + upload videos to the event
USER PROFILE: Allow users to create their own profile with rele-
vant data concerning the sport and themselves
o Name o Profile Picture o Location (City, District) o Age (optional) o Sport(s) o Descriptive Text o Individualize background o The profile will further feature additional information, which is either automatically generated or posted by other users o History of uploaded content (videos, pictures) are automatically attached to the users profile and can be accessed from here o Competitive Ranking (overall ranking in district) o Comments
GROUP PROFILE: Allow users to create a group (crew) profile with relevant data concerning the group, group members and performed sports o Name o Profile Picture o Location (City, District) o Sport(s) o Descriptive Text o Individualize background [16]
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o The profile will further feature additional information, which is either automatically generated or posted by other users or group members: -
Uploaded content by group members (even on their personal profiles) will automatically be posted to the group profile to allow group members to easily share performed tricks
Competitive Ranking (overall ranking in district)
COMPANY PROFILE: Allow company owners to create a profile for their enterprise and post offers to promote their business. o Name o Profile Picture o Location (City, District, Street) – owner can geo-tag their company if this is relevant to their cause (e.g. skate park) o Offering (short descriptive text of products or services offered) o About (short descriptive text) o Individualize background o The profile will further feature additional information, which is either automatically generated or posted by other users:
Community /
Allow users to interact with one another by o Befriending other users
Social Networking
o Posting to other users profiles o Instant messaging o Creating events and inviting other user to events News Feed
Crawl internet for sport related news and post in a respective section of the app. User can open the original news element through a link.
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User can integrate his own RSS feeds into the app and subscribe to certain magazines and new items
Weather Feed
Provide user with an overview of the current and future weather conditions to allow them to plan for when it is best to perform their sport.
2.4.2 Non-Functional Requirements In addition to the functional requirements above we identified the following non-functional requirements to be key to a successful launch of 'Street Credibility'.
The value of our application lies in user generated content, specifically in the user's ability to identify good spots for performing his sport and look at tricks performed by other users as inspiration and challenge. It will therefore be crucial for us to pre-generate content so that even the first users of the application will draw value from its usage. We have devised the following strategy to generate a critical mass of content: o In the launch of 'Street Credibility' we plan to ONLY actively support London (users from other cities will be able to download the app, but cannot expect pre-generated content) o Pre-generate content by going out onto the streets and identifying good spots and tagging them in the application o Find freely available videos and pictures online and upload them into our application o Film active skaters and get their consent to upload the respective clips into the application o Incentivize first user by providing them with free premium accounts and/or merchandise
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With smartphone usage being highly diversified in our target group it will be key for us to cover as many different mobile application platforms as possible. We will therefore develop 'Street Credibility' in HTML5 to run on as many devices as possible. We are aware of the risk that user flow is different on every platform and plan to mitigate this risk by basing our fundamental design concept on the most widely used operating system: Android. Users from other platforms will have to adapt some of their behaviours to our application, but at least they will have the opportunity to profit from 'Street Credibility'. If we discover this strategy to not work during market testing we will revert to native application development.
Video streaming
and uploading
With most user content intended to resemble video footage it will be key for us to identify meaningful ways to compress submitted footage before uploading the content to the application, to keep bandwidth requirements as low as possible and mitigate the risk of limited mobile internet connectivity.
We are further intending on providing the user with uploading options allowing him to tell the application to postpone the upload until the device has connected to wireless internet.
Internet connectivity and speed
Given that we cannot assume that our user will always be connected to the internet, we are planning on providing offline functionalities enabling for a constricted usage of the application: o Offline Maps – user can download seconds of the integrated map for offline usage in accordance with GoogleMaps offline capabilities. User can zoom, filter location by sport and look at basic spot data in offline mode. o Offline Video Streaming – user can select up to 10 videos, which will be downloaded to the application and which can be viewed when the user is offline. These will be stored in a separate repository the user can easily access through
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'Street Credibility'
In addition, we are planning on addressing the following non-functional requirements by identifying best practices in the development of mobile application and adapting these to our own needs. Currently, we are primarily looking at Youtube for guidance. o Availability o Backup o Deployment o Efficiency (resource consumption for given load) o Failure management o Privacy o Response time o Stability o Feedback loop
2.5 The Six Affordances of Mobile Information Technology According to Sorensen (2011) there are six affordance of mobile information technology key to the utility of a mobile application: (1) connectivity, (2) portability, (3) memory, (4) pervasiveness, (5) intimacy, and (6) priority. As outlined by Meyer (2013), we have tried to capitalize on the affordances of mobile phones to maximize the utility of 'Street Credibility'.
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Figure: Overview of enterprise mobility services Source: Sorensen, C. 2011. Enterprise Mobility. Tiny Technology with Global Impact on Work. Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK, p.37.
Embracing the affordance of connectivity, we tried to provide our users with an opportunity to disseminate communication across local boundaries to expand communication beyond small, relatively isolated groups.
Geographical mobility of mobile phones is fundamental to our value proposition, specifically, to allowing users to identify good locations for performing their sport´, while they are out on the streets.
It is our intention to leverage the affordance of memory to store behavioural data and provide users with content filtered to suit their personal interest, hopefully increasing the utility of our application.
Given that 'Street Credibility' is an application intended for outdoor usage, it is our objective to relate our application to the surrounding environment in several ways: o using assisted-GPS, the application will relate the location of the user to the depicted map segment [21]
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o using the integrated camera, the screen's contrast and colours will automatically adapt to light intensity o in the future, we further intend to use the sensors integrated into mobile phones to collect movement data to provide the user with additional statistics about his performed tricks (e.g. height of a jump) Intimacy
It is our objective to build on the affordance of intimacy by providing the user with customizable settings and screen design (e.g. user can adapt the background of the application)
To reduce information overload we will use the affordance of memory to prioritize suggested content of interest based on user preferences and past behaviour.
Note: the above comments are in accordance with the individual essay written by Meyer (2013).
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3. System Design This chapter includes a short description of our target users, an outline of the most important UML (Unified Modelling Language) diagrams for our application and a list of the use cases our application will incorporate.
3.1 Design Personas The design personas that will be presented in this section constitute the vast majority of our application's target group. The application is designed with these personas in mind. We are taking their needs into account and will attempt to satisfy these needs. Our core design persona and (as perceived) the most common user of our application is "the typical teenage skater". Two alternative important design personas are presented to illustrate the needs of casual urban sports fans and professional athletes.
Note and Disclaimer: We have randomly chosen three different names for our design personas, as we wished to perceive them as real persons. With that said, the three following characters are fictitious; any resemblance to real persons, such as Hollywood actors, top fashion models or LSE teachers, is purely coincidental.
3.1.1 The typical Teenage Skater Meet Niccolo. Niccolo is a 17 years old High School student who lives in the UK and loves skateboarding. Niccolo uses his skateboard to transport himself to school in the morning and then back again in the afternoon. He also likes to perform some tricks and he is always looking for places to practice; he would like to participate in a competition in the coming summer and he really wants to make an impression. He knows a couple of good spots – and quite a few bad ones – around his neighbourhood and he visits them throughout the week. He also has some friends who like skateboarding. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult for Niccolo to find new spots; most of the time, he hears from a friend of friend about a new location that often turns out to be not that good for skateboarding after all.
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Like most European teenagers, Niccolo is a Facebook user. He has been trying to promote himself as a skater via his Facebook page. However, Niccolo does not think he is going to become a professional skater; he is skating for fun and he just wants to show off his tricks and receive some recognition as an urban athlete. He has realized that he cannot achieve that through Facebook. He often says to himself: "What the heck? This chick got 96 likes for making a duckface in her profile pic, and she's not even beautiful! I can't get more than 30 with a mid-flight photo or a kickflip video". Niccolo fails to receive credit for his skills as a skater. He has recently joined a skateboarding group on Facebook hoping that this could be a good way to promote himself and get some skateboarding advice. Once again, he was mistaken; the group is one of those that mainly follow international competitions and professional skaters. Also, it is almost impossible for Niccolo to find and meet fellow athletes who live close to him through this group, as it is massive.
Niccolo wants a credible source that can lead him to new skateboarding spots on a local level. He wants to be part of a community that has the capacity to appreciate skateboarding as an urban sport, give him credit and help him improve his skills.
3.1.2 The casual Urban Sports Fan Meet Carsten. Carsten is a 19 years old University student who lives in the UK and likes urban sports. Carsten has been skateboarding and inlining as a High School student and is now BMXing from time to time with some of his friends. Carsten is following many professional urban athletes on Twitter and/or Facebook and watches extreme and urban sports channels regularly.
Carsten feels that the television programmes have a few constrains; there is no interaction, there is less variety than on websites available on the Internet and the subscriptions costs are a significant source of dismay. Even though Facebook and Twitter are free and have the potential to offer Carsten the variety and interaction that he is looking for, the two social networks are very generic and commercialized and provide an online environment that cannot satisfy a knowledgeable urban sports fan.
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Carsten would like to see an authentic community of urban athletes and urban sports fans in a social networking structure. He would like to be able to follow his favourite pro athletes and join relevant discussions through suitable forums. Moreover, he wants to have rich media at his fingertips, organised in categories, according to specific urban sports and content.
3.1.3 The professional Inline Skater Meet Will. Will is a 25 year old professional inline skater, who lives in the UK. At the moment he is a member of several skating teams, which are sponsored by multi-national companies focused on the skating sector (i.e. Vans, Emerica, Exkate, etc.). His major income source are marketing revenues from promoting the above mentioned companies in official competitions. These competitions take place both on an international and local level. Since earnings from international competitions are much higher, he chooses to travel a lot and spends a great amount of time exploring the streets of new cities. To capitalize these explorative trips he films his adventures to be included on DVDs produced by his sponsoring companies.
Will feels that street skating is respected more than traditional park skating. The freedom and sensations of street skating are thrilling to him, however, he his highly disappointed that it is almost impossible for him to monetize his street skating beyond being included on the above mentioned company DVDs.
Will would like to see a community of inline skaters and urban sports fans on the internet with a local focus and an international reach. He would like to promote himself and prove his dominance over other athletes in many well known skating spots in the UK. He wants to be able to find sponsors more easily and he aspires to create his own crew to recruit and train young talent.
3.2 UML Diagrams This section includes the most important UML (Unified Modelling Language) diagrams for our application. After presenting the stakeholders and the main user features, we will focus on three of the most important functions of our application: (1) geo-Tagging, (2) event creation and participation, and (3) challenging another user to a duel. [25]
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3.2.1 Stakeholders
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3.2.2 User Features
3.2.3 Geo-Tagging
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3.2.4 Events
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3.2.5 Watch Videos and Challenge another Athlete
3.3 Use Cases The table below outlines all the use cases we are intending to include in the first release of the application. More details on the use cases can be deduced from the application storyboards included in the report's appendix. Please note that the prototype we are submitting with this report does not yet include all the use cases outlines below. # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Use Cases Login & Logout Sign-up Create Profile Edit Profile View Profile Search User Connect with other Users View Connections Create Team Invite Users to a Team/Event View Team Profile
Storyboard X X X X X X X X X X X [29]
Included in Prototype X X
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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
View Weather/News Create a new geo-tag Add Information to a tagged Location Upload Rich Media Search for Spot Filter Spot by Multiple Criteria Select a Spot Rate Spot Share Spot Add Spot Review View Spot Reviews Create Event View Event Share Event Join Event Add Event Comment View Event Comments View Video Search/Filter Videos by Multiple Criteria Rate Video Follow a User Add Video Comment View Video Comments Challenge Another Athlete Challenge Voting Respond to a Challenge
Login & Logout
X X X Partial X X
X Partial
A user opens the mobile application and enters his/her username and password in order to receive access to the application. If his/her login credentials are wrong, the system informs the user with an error message and asks him/her to re-enter his personal details. In case the user is not registered, he/she can click on the sign-up link (Use case 2), which will redirected him/her to the register page so that he/she can create a personal account. A user, who is logged in, presses the sign-out button to log-off and exit the application. The user is redirected to the 'Login Page'.
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Sign-Up A non-registered user can click on the sign-up link. He/she will be redirected to a page allowing him/her to register himself/herself by creating an account. The use is asked to enter some personal details (name, surname, username, email address, age) and click on the Sign-up button to complete his/her registration. Finally, the registered user is then redirected to the 'Create Profile Page' (Use Case 3) to create his/her full profile (add more details to his/her account).
Create Profile A user can create his/her personal profile page. He/she can upload a personal picture and some additional information about him/her as well as manage his/her personal connections (Use Case 8).
Edit Profile A user can edit his/her personal profile page. He/she can modify all his/her personal details, personal picture and videos.
View Profile A user can view his/her personal information. Furthermore, he/she can view all his/her previously uploaded content (Use Case 29), his/her personal ranking, comments made by other users (Use Case 34). Additionally, he/she can create a team (Use Case 9), connect with other users (Use Case 7) and view his/her personal connections (Use Case 8).
Search User A user can search other users through the search bar. The user can make an advanced search using multiple search criteria (e.g specific sport, age group, expertise).
Connect with other Users A user can find other users and send them a friend request. The other users can accept or decline these requests.
View Connections A user can click on his/her personal connections icon. He/she will be redirected to the 'Connections Page' where he/she can see the complete list of his/her friends. On the 'Connections Page' the user has the opportunity to search for specific friends by name or filter his/her contacts by multiple criteria (e.g. location, age, sport, etc.).
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Create Team A user can click on the Create Team button. He/she is redirected to a page allowing him to create a new team/crew. On this page the user can give provide a basic description of the team, upload a profile picture and upload pictures/videos (Use Case 15). Additionally, he/she can invite other users to become members of the team (Use Case 10).
(10) Invite Users to a Team/Event After the creation of a team or of an event, the user can send multiple invitations to different users in order to join his/her team or attend the event. (11) View Team Profile A user, even if he/she is not member of a team yet, can view a list of existing teams and look at the profile page with all available information. (12) View Weather/News A user can open the weather/news feature by using the main menu at the top left hand corner of the application. The weather feature provides the user with information regarding the current weather conditions for a town or a specific district of a town based on his/her current location. Additionally, the user can view recent news published online by selected sites and companies pulled into the application (i.e. various skate firms, new skate parks, trick guidelines, interviews of popular athletes, etc.). (13) Create a new Geo-Tag A user can navigate through the GoogleMaps screen. When he/she finds a spot, a skate park or store he/she would like to share with the rest of the community he/she can create a new tag on the GoogleMaps component of our application. Firstly, He/she clicks on the geo-tag creation button located at the top left hand corner of the map component. Secondly, he/she chooses a suitable icon (i.e there is a unique icon for each specific category that exists: (1) spot, (2) skate park and (3) store). After choosing the appropriate icon the user will be directed to a new page allowing him to enter all the required information for the respective location he/she wants to tag (i.e. required information for spots differs from stores). After creating the spot the user can rate the spot (Use Case 19) and upload rich media to it (Use Case 15).
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(14) Add Information to a tagged Location The user can add a description for the location, add information about which sports can be performed at the location and when the best time is to access the location (in terms of non-existing surveillance from security guards or an off-peak hour if the place is in the center of the town and is very crowded daily). Additionally, he/she can complement the tag with relevant links and videos/pictures (Use Case 17). If the user is trying to tag a spot or skate park he/she will further be asked to provide information regarding opening hours and what service offering the store or skate park are providing. (15) Upload Rich Media A user can selects the video icon at the top right hand corner of the screen in order to upload a video or a picture. A pop-up window opens and the user can select what kind of content he/she wishes to upload (video or picture content). After a video has been uploaded, the system will extract its metadata (i.e. resolution, frame rate, bit rate etc.). After a picture has been uploaded, the system will extract all the metadata that are encapsulated into the file (i.e. location coordinates, date, size etc.). (16) Search Spot A user can search for various spots, skate parks and stores. He/she types his/her query into the search bar and is then provided with the results. Results can be further filtered (Use Case 17). (17) Filter Spot by Multiple Criteria A user can filter the results of his/her search. He/she can do this by selecting or deselecting different criteria (i.e. districts, category of tricks, location suitable for a specific sport) from the sidebar that is located on the left hand-side of the user interface. (18) Select a Spot A user surfs through the GoogleMaps screen where all tags are visible. He/she can select one of these in order to view more detailed information about it. The user is redirected to a new screen providing all detailed information. (19) Rate Spot Once a user has opened a 'Spot Page', he/she can rate the respective spot. The user will be redirected to a rating page, allowing him/her to rate the spot according to a set of specific rating criteria; these rating criteria a dependent on the type of location (i.e. rating criteria for a store differ from those of a spot). To rate each category the use will [33]
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have to hold and slide each rating bar to adjust it to the desired rating. Finally, he/she submits the ratings and the overall rating of the spot will be automatically updated. (20) Share Spot After a user has opened a spot page, he/she can select the share icon so that he/she can share the location with friends through the application itself, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, E-Mail and other services to be determined. The user can further post the location to a group profile to share with all the members of that group. (21) Add Spot Review After a user has opened a spot page, he/she can leave a review. He/she presses the specific icon, writes a comment in the available text area and submits it. The review gets stored in the list of reviews that is shown at the bottom of a location information page. (22) View Spot Reviews After a user has opened a spot page, he/she can scroll down to the bottom of the page to view all reviews submitted by users to date. (23) Create Event After a user has opened a spot page, he/she can create an event. He/she presses the specific event button. He/she is moved to the next screen where he/she fills out the event form. He/she adds details to the event, the date, a time and invites other users to this event. Finally, he/she presses the create button and the event is stored to the system. (24) View Event A user can select the event option from the menu drop-down list or can firstly select a spot and then, choose among the events that are connected to this spot. The event page opens up. This page contains a calendar and/or a list view of all events the user has been invited to or which he/she has created. The user can select an event in order to view the event's details. (25) Share Event After a user has opened a specific event page he/she can select the share icon so that he/she can share this event with friends through the application itself, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, E-Mail and other services to be determined. The user can further post the location to a group profile to share with all the members of that group. [34]
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(26) Join Event The user will receive a notification if he/she is invited to an event. This notification will be depicted in the notification bar of the mobile device he/she is using. Events the user is invited to will further be shown on the 'Event Page'. Opening the event allows the user to select the button 'Join the Event' adding the user to the list of users attending the event and automatically setting a reminder for 2 hours prior to the event. (27) Add Event Comment After a user has opened a specific event page, he/she can add a comment to this event. He/she selects the respective icon and a pop-up window opens. He/she writes his/her comment in the text area and submits it. The comment gets stored in the list of comments that is shown at the bottom of the 'Event Page'. (28) View Event Comments After a user has opened a specific event page, he/she can scroll down to the bottom of the page to view all comments submitted by users to date. (29) View Video After a user has opened a spot page and navigated to the video tab or selects the video option from the drop-down menu list, he/she can click on the available videos and play them. In vertical screen orientation details relating to the video (i.e name of the video, rating, etc.) are displayed under the video screen. (30) Search/Filter Video by Multiple Criteria A user can search for various videos using the search bar. The user can enter his/her query into the search bar and will be provided with a list of respective results. The user can filter these results according to additional criteria (i.e. districts, category of tricks, specific sport). These criteria can be selected and deselected in a sidebar that is located on the left hand-side of the user interface. (31) Rate Video After a user has opened a video page, he/she can rate the displayed video content. The user will be redirected to a rating page, allowing him/her to rate the video according to a set of specific rating criteria (style, height, difficulty, location challenge). To rate each category the use will have to hold and slide each rating bar to adjust it to the desired rating. Finally, he/she submit the ratings and the overall rating of the viedo will be automatically updated. [35]
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(32) Follow a User After a user has opened a video page, he/she can subscribe to the content uploaded by another user by pressing the subscribe button on the user's profile or on a 'Video Page'. (33) Add Video Comment After a user has opened a specific video page, he/she can add a comment to the video. He/she selects the respective icon and a pop-up window opens. He/she writes his/her comment in the text area and submits it. The comment gets stored in the list of comments that is shown at the bottom of the 'Video Page'. (34) View Video Comments After a user has opened a specific video page, he/she can scroll down to the bottom of the page to view all comments submitted by users to date. (35) Challenge another Athlete A user can challenge another user in multiple ways: (1) Location Challenge – using the 'challenge' button provided on a 'Spot Page' (2) Individual Challenge – using the 'challenge' button provided on a 'Video Page' (3) Team Challenge – using the 'challenge' button provided on a 'Group Profile' The challenger is asked to upload his/her content (Use Case 15). The user challenged receives a notification and is provided with an opportunity to submit new content within 48 hours (Use Case 37), if he/she feels that he/she wants to provide better/other content to counter the challenger's content. After the deadline of 48 hours has expired the challenge will be publicized to rest of the user and opened to voting (Use Case 36). Whoever receives the highest percentage of votes within 7 days wins the challenge and receives a street point / become champions of the spot. (36) Challenge Voting A user can view all recent challenges through the specific challenge tab that each spot page has. He/she can select one and the system transfers him to a voting page. The voter selects one of the two competitors and submits his/her vote. (37) Respond to a Challenge A user challenged to a duel receives a notification and is provided with an opportunity to submit new content within 48 hours (Use Case 15), if he/she feels that he/she wants to provide better/other content to counter the challenger's content. After the deadline [36]
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of 48 hours has expired the challenge will be publicized to rest of the user and opened to voting (Use Case 36).
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4. Architecture This chapter will present the basic architecture of our application.
4.1 Architecture Diagram
4.2 Choice of Technology Street Credibility consists of the following components: (1) Cloud Servers (2) Database (3) Services (4) Mobile Application (5) Assisted GPS and Location Based Services (6) Twitter and Facebook (7) YouTube API (8) Google Maps API (9) File Hosting Services
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4.2.1 Cloud Servers Cloud computing is the main technological trend of our era because it provides innovative and unique features. Hence, the main reasons for choosing cloud servers as our main storage system, database and services provider are the following:
Cost: The overall cost can be significantly low. There is no need to invest in the development of infrastructure and the avoided capital expenditure can be converted to operational expenditure. Additionally, there is no need to spend an additional amount of money in the maintenance of the infrastructure in terms of hiring suitable engineers and purchasing additional components.
Scalability and elasticity in the need of extra resources: There is no need to design an extensive provisioning plan of peak and off-peak capacity loads. Cloud servers adjust to system needs dynamically.
Performance: The cloud vendor will utilise the experience and expertise that it has at its disposal in order to provide us with stability and speed which is vital for the overall performance of our service.
Speed and agility in developing and deploying the application. We can make new experiments in developing new features or improving the existing ones. As a result, this enables rapid innovation, which is crucial for differentiating our services from the competition.
Time: We are not going to waste time in selecting, establishing and maintaining the required infrastructure, but instead this amount of time will be spent in the analysis, design, development, testing and release of a stable version of the application.
Fast market penetration and international expansion: We do not have to focus on a specific and rather small geographic region because of infrastructure limitations, but instead we can reach many potential customers internationally very fast and at no extra cost. This enables us to expand globally very easily.
For all the reasons described above we have selected Amazon's AWS as the cloud services which we are going to use. AWS has been proven, throughout many case studies published on their website, to be one of the most reliable and cost effective choices for start-ups (Amazon Web Sevices, 2013).
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4.2.2 Database Regarding the creation of the Database (DB henceforth), it was decided that MongoDB (MongoDB, 2013) would be the most suitable choice. This project strives to be entirely web centralized so it is only natural to pick a tool which will allow us to implement all the database functionalities in JS and follow web standards.
Figure: MongoDB Features Source: mongoDB.org, 2013.
4.2.3 Services All the services needed for and provided by our application will be handled by a web server. NodeJs (NodeJs, 2013) provides a very simple and quick way of setting up web servers which are written in JS. Nowadays, the use of MongoDB and NodeJs together is considered to be a standard for most start-up companies. Simultaneously, this technology interacts very effectively with AWS and it is used by many well-known organisations such as Linkedin, Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo. Some of the features of NodeJs are: 
Mobile Apps are simple and easy to create due to the use of event-driven model and JavaScript for services composition (NodeJs, 2013).
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Uses only JavaScript front to back. Thus, developers and users can write, run, and debug code at the same time without causing any clashes (NodeJs, 2013).
Many client connections can be controlled and handled simultaneously (NodeJs, 2013).
4.2.4 Mobile Application Our main aim for the mobile application has been to make it as widely accessible as possible at minimum cost. This means that it is crucial that both iOS and Android users can get access to the app and hopefully as many other mobile OS users. In order to achieve thise, the mobile app will have its own unique and intuitive interface design without following any vendor oriented UI standards. From the programming perspective, the application will be written in HTML5, as a website and not as a native application. In addition, a tool called Phonegap will be used to package the HTML code in the various native application bundles which will then be uploaded to their respective stores. This will greatly reduce the number of developers required and, since JS has been in the core of all the above technologies, the implementation and integration between them will be achieved seamlessly.
4.2.5 Assisted GPS (A-GPS) and Location Based Services (LBS) One of the most important features of 'Street Credibility' is the Geo-tagging. Users can tag and store a new location (spot, skate park, store, event) to the system using the geographic coordinates given by a GPS system together with specific functions provided by the Google Maps API. The exact position of a user is computed with a standalone GPS receiver that communicates with the 31 satellites of the GPS that are currently in orbit around the Earth (Wikipedia, 2013). A GPS receiver communicates with four satellites that send to it precisely timed radiosignals that include, among others, their orbital parameters. After the reception of these signals, the GPS receiver can calculate its exact position based on the known positions of the satellites and the time interval between the signals' transmission and reception (Sony Ericsson's White Paper on GPS and A-GPS, 2007). Unfortunately, the use of standalone GPS receiver demonstrates some drawbacks that make its use in mobile services rather inefficient. These drawbacks are:
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Every time the GPS receiver is turned on, it seeks to communicate with the GPS satellites to get the information needed for positioning. Occasionally, the GPS receiver is not able to communicate with the GPS satellites due to bad weather conditions or because the mobile user is close to extremely high buildings in big cities or in high and dense forests. In these cases, the GPS receiver cannot specify its location. As a result, the GPS receiver makes recurring attempts to communicate with the satellites, which incurs additional delay in the positioning process. In case of a mobile user, the delay can be more severe, because the communication between the GPS receiver and the satellites is very difficult to maintain. To quantify the extent of this delay, the whole positioning process can last more than 12.5 minutes (Wikipedia, 2013).
A standalone GPS receiver consumes a large amount of energy, since the mobile station has to communicate with four satellites, and exhausts the CPU of the mobile device.
In order to surpass the standalone GPS receiver disadvantages, the Assisted GPS (A-GPS henceforth) receiver is used in mobile phone applications. In contrast to the standalone GPS receiver, the A-GPS receiver cooperates with an assistance server and takes advantage of the data that are available in the mobile telecommunications network (Sony Ericsson's White Paper on GPS and A-GPS, 2007). The A-GPS receiver can send to the assistance server parts of the received satellite signals, which the assistance server then processes in order to calculate the position of the user. The calculated position is then send back to the mobile user. The assistance server has high computational power and precise information concerning the position of the satellites. As a result, the positioning of the user is significantly quicker and more precise compared to the one of a standalone GPS receiver. Because this process requires the data from the network, extra fees may be incurred (Wikipedia, 2013). However, every mobile network operator nowadays offers bundled mobile packages that include mobile data usage. In addition, there are numerous free Wi-Fi hotspots provided by the state or by individual organizations such as cafeterias and restaurants. Subsequently, the operation of an A-GPS receiver is very cost-efficient and can be used in a great extend by almost every mobile user. The use of the A-GPS receiver makes the efficient operation of Location Based Services possible, which are connected with the functionalities of the Google Maps API in our application. Location Based Services know the position of the user and deliver services depending on this [42]
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knowledge. Such services could suggest to the user nearby places, events or facilities that he/she may be interested in (Wikipedia, 2013). Those services are vital to our application, because urban athletes may want to check all the facilities that are close to them, such as events to attend, spots to practice their tricks at or stores to purchase any required equipment. The main benefits that the use of the A-GPS receiver provides to the users of our application are:
Quick and precise positioning of the mobile user, due to the cooperation of the AGPS receiver with the assistance server.
Lower CPU and battery usage, since almost all the computational load of the positioning process is conducted at the assistance server.
Efficient use of Local Based Services, which are very helpful to our users.
4.2.6 Twitter and Facebook Our application will integrate Twitter and Facebook features. Using the Facebook SDK and Twitter API, we will develop and leverage many of their functions. Thus, the user will be able to sign in through their Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as link bookmarks, comments, requests, news feed and timeline stories from Facebook, and tweets from Twitter. Additionally, our application through specific functions can request user data and regain user details in order to fill fields in the user profile from both social networks, for instance if the user has signed in through Facebook, the system will have access to his profile details, will fetch them and fill all the user's information. Lastly, a user can share a video, a location, a picture or an event though these two social networks or invite his friends to the application (Twitter, 2013, Facebook, 2013).
4.2.7 YouTube API and Video.js Our application will integrate and be aligned with YouTube API, given that videos are uploaded through it and the user inserts a YouTube reference link for his video. On the other hand, if videos are uploaded and stored to our database, then Video.js – which is an open source Html5 video media player – will be responsible to play those videos. Going forward, regarding YouTube, we will use YouTube's Player API so that the integration of all its utilities and features is seamless. We will customize its controls so that they fit within the user inter[43]
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face of our application and parameterize some small functions so that the quality of the video will depend on the quality of the internet connection; auto play will be used, player size will fit the resolution of each mobile screen and, finally, statistics about a specific video will be displayed. At the same time, we will include YouTube's Basic API which will enable users to upload, manage their videos and playlists though our application (YouTube, 2013). In addition, regarding Video.js, we will integrate it in order to play videos that are not connected with YouTube. Video.js supports all the video formats (mp4, h.264, WebM, Ogg, and even HTTP Live Streaming), all mobile OS (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry OS among others) and provides a lightweight flash player. We will again create a specific skin in order to fit within our application's user interface. The API will be parameterized similarly to the YouTube Play API in order to fulfill the rationale of video quality and network connection efficiency. The player software accomplished will be easy to use – like YouTube – and will stay up-to-date, because maintenance and release of new devices and features is provided (Video.js, 2013).
4.2.8 Google Maps API Google Maps API is the most popular web mapping service application. It is integrated in, virtually, every smartphone and it is used by many mobile applications. We will try to align our application with the principles of this API because Google Maps is the core component of our application. The user will have access to its main and basic actions such as tilt, rotation and zoom. At the same time, we will integrate specific functions of the API that will enable the creation of new tags on the top of Google Maps by retrieving geographical coordinates (latitude, longitude, altitude) by the GPS system. Each tag will have a different icon, which will be designed by us according to the resemblance of a location, and if a user selects a spot, then a balloon will appear containing all the details that characterize that specific spot. The application will add some filters, via which the user can select what kind of spots are displayed on the map. Google Maps is connected to LBS so it can provide the user with lots of information about facilities and spots which are near him/her. The API contains a powerful database with many places and distances between different locations in all over the world (Google Maps, 2013). As a result, Google Maps API is a powerful tool, has a lot of support in terms of maintenance and upgrades and, lastly, it is evident that our whole application will be built around it in its first stages. [44]
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4.2.9 File Hosting Services Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive and many other web-based file hosting services are the main trend of this technological era. Our application will support the upload and storage services from and towards those hosting services. We will align their use in our user interface; however we will not alter their basic functions, since people using mobile devices are used to them being integrated in this form in several other mobile applications. There will be specific options in upload, sharing, and storing menus that will enable the user to use, store or share files, videos or pictures via those online file hosting providers.
4.3 Data Storage and Processing There are several data types that will be supported and stored to our system.
Text: Many entities (user profile, spot, events, challenges, videos etc.) include the use of text data so that vital information can be demonstrated. This text data can be either descriptions or comments.
Videos: They will be stored in the database either as YouTube reference links or as actual video files. All the well-known video formats will be supported (i.e. .mp4, .flv, .avi etc.) After a video has been uploaded, the system extracts its metadata (e.g. resolution, frame rate, bit rate etc.). To achieve an acceptable quality of service the system will decide the video quality that will be displayed according to the user's connection speed taking into account the type of connection (Wi-Fi broadband access, 2G, 3G etc.).
Pictures: They will be stored in the database as actual picture files. Our system will support every picture file type (i.e. .jpeg, .gif, .png, .bmp etc.). Pictures will be uploaded either from the physical mobile storage or from any web-based file hosting service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive etc. The system will then extract all the metadata that are encapsulated into the file, such as location coordinates, date, size etc. and all those pictures will be used in many aspects of the application (i.e. user profile pictures, pictures of tricks, pictures regarding locations etc.).
GPS coordinates: In order to specify the location of spots, skate parks, stores and events the use of GPS coordinates (latitude, longitude and altitude) is necessary.
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News feeds: The system will collect data from various sites, blogs and forums regarding extreme sports, equipment, famous athletes, guidelines, tricks, suggestions etc. All this information will be stored as rich text so that all metadata (images, videos, authors, dates etc.) which is interconnected with a specific piece of information will be easily extracted and republished.
Weather Information: Our application will contain a widget which will be connected with a well-known weather forecast website. Hence, weather conditions and data will be presented in a formal way and there will be no need in keeping records of this kind of data. Our application provides information about weather conditions in different areas so that urban athletes will get prepared and be ready for any possible weather change. On the other hand, our mobile application is not a weather application and, also, the spectrum of our knowledge in terms of meteorological forecasts is limited, thus keeping records of this kind of data – and not just reproducing them – will be a waste of resources.
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5. Prototype & User Manual We have designed a digital prototype (using Proto.io, "http://proto.io/") and produced a video tutorial explaining and demonstrating part of the application's functionality (using Camtasia Studio, "http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html"), based on the aforementioned prototype. Both the prototype and the video tutorial can be found on the supplemental CD we have submitted together with the report.
5.1 Guidelines for the proper demonstration of the Prototype (1) Open the folder named as "_Prototype". (2) Select and open the file titled as "index.html" (preferably with Google Chrome). (3) Adjust browser's size to fit the dimensions of the mobile screen.
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6. Discussion & Outlook In the final chapter of our documentation we are going to take a look at our future steps towards improving the quality and availability of our service. Additionally, we are going to evaluate our application's potential and comment on its viability at launch.
6.1 Future Outlook We have split this section into three parts, presenting our thoughts on the creation of a website, the addition of new features and the expansion of our geographical coverage.
6.1.1 Website As it was mentioned in Chapter 2, it is our intention to provide all the Street Credibility services, of which the function is not limited to a mobile device, through a website. We understand that one of the main attractions of our application is the Geo-tagging feature, which, although available by pinpointing the desired location through a desktop computer, may not be as intuitive and precise to use on a desktop site; nevertheless, we believe that a welldesigned website is necessary to ensure the long term success of Street Credibility. Our main argument is twofold.
Firstly, there many are potential users that do not use mobile Internet on their smartphones – or, in some cases, do not have a smartphone at all. Those users are, by definition, unable to take full advantage of the features of our application, since there is very limited functionality provided in offline mode – users always need to be online and logged in to fully use the application. A Street Credibility website will enable those users to enjoy almost all the features of our service without the need to pay for mobile internet access – or purchase a smartphone.
Secondly, there are certain functions of our application that would be better performed by a personal computer instead of a mobile device. Those functions include, but are not limited to, extensive typing, high bitrate video upload and playback, and browsing through high resolution images. It is a fact that a physical keyboard still provides a more comfortable and [48]
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faster input method than a touchscreen keyboard. Additionally, even an outdated personal computer with an average fixed broadband connection can stream faster and handle the processing tasks significantly better than a mid-range smartphone or tablet with a 3G Internet connection, in most cases. Especially for users such as companies or professional athletes that are mainly concerned with self-promotion, it is crucial that they will be able to modify their profiles and their content in the most convenient way, which is always performed through a personal computer – as is the case with Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube or eBay.
Overall, a Street Credibility website will increase our potential user population and provide our various user categories with more flexibility and even better functionality.
6.1.2 Additional Features The addition of new features, as well as the improvement of existing ones, proves valuable for most IT based services. In our case, we believe that there are features – some of which have already been identified in the functional requirements section of Chapter 2 – that should be progressively added to Street Credibility. Additionally, we make the assumption that there will be ideas for new features or changes on the existing ones coming straight from the Street Credibility community.
Features such as "Competitive Events" or "Sponsorships" will make for exciting additions in Street Credibility; this is a way of expanding our service and making our application a "must" for all urban athletes. Also, some of the future features – namely, the ones involving private companies – were conceived in order to positively contribute to our revenue model.
We expect a very strong feedback from the community that we are attempting to build. We designed an application with the intention to satisfy the needs and wishes of a narrow group of people; the high specificity of our application's functionality has the potential to attract ideas and requests from the community that will be characterized by the same level of specificity. We believe that addressing those emerging needs is a key factor of our long term success; given that one of our arguments for building such an application is that many of our potential users will have an application that feels "like home" – in contrast with what we [49]
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believe is the case for those users with regards to existing services, such as Facebook – it is natural to assume that by satisfying the community's requests we will be able to earn our users' long term loyalty.
6.1.3 Geographical Reach Our application will launch in the UK and will only provide full functionality in the metropolitan area of London; we perceive that as a pilot phase. Our current focus is to attract urban athletes, mainly through our Geo-tagging feature, and develop the community with London as our starting point. Currently, our application's home screen is the Google Maps view; however, after establishing a strong community in London, we will be able to transform our application's interface and give more weight towards some of the social networking features and at the same time expand to the rest of the UK.
We have chosen London for two main reasons. Firstly, to prepare a successful market launch we believe it is absolutely crucial to pre-populate our application with content to provide value to our users from day one. As we are all based in London and can thus generate content for our application at no extra direct costs, starting in London is by far the most rational decision. Secondly, we believe that London, being the largest city of the European Union by population, makes for a great starting point of our application. It not only provides us with a wide market, but also with a great variety of locations and high demographic diversity; it is possible for the application's administrators and other stakeholders to learn through the process of the pilot phase and improve the handling of various aspects of Street Credibility before it expands to a national level.
As long as the application has a successful run on a national level, we intend to immediately begin expanding to other countries. We understand that this will require us to expand our developer and administrator base to be able to alter our application (e.g. providing functionality in other languages) and integrated all its aspects on an international level. Also, this may immediately affect some of the choices we have already made until this point (e.g. using a different cloud provider).
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6.2 Discussion & Conclusion At this point we would like to discuss the potential of Street Credibility as a service and the viability of the first version of the mobile application that we have designed. Our goal from the beginning of this project was to design an information technology based service that would not only be innovative and useful, but expandable and customer-centric as well.
Street Credibility was designed to satisfy a demand which we believe was previously unmet by any form of recognizable – or at least marginally detectable – competing service. The latest widely available technology has been implemented in the design of our service; we attempted to take advantage of today's offerings in information technology to optimize our application's functionality and facilitate the use and handling of this service from the user's as well as the administrator's point of view.
A user interface, which will appear familiar to many potential users, has been designed by borrowing elements from well-known interfaces: we followed the example of widely used and successful social networks – such as Facebook or LinkedIn – in the networking and user2user interaction features of our service; the widely recognizable Google Maps have been used to provide our service with its Geo-tagging functionality and as a home screen – for the first stages of the application. Finally, the design of the video collection pages has been inspired by the interface of YouTube and other video streaming services. The above choices were made in order to minimize the user's learning curve and maximize the feeling of familiarity the user will develop towards our service.
We have made significant alterations and additions to the above interfaces to make sure that the available features and the user interface are tailored to fit our target group's needs. For example, we have used a 5-star video rating system with a further breakdown in specific subcategories of rating as we believe that a Like-Dislike rating system would be insufficient and too generic for this kind of urban sports focused community. Our design was heavily based on our design personas, who we believe represent the vast majority of our potential users. We consider this very important, since we have achieved to illustrate the needs and
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wishes of our potential users and have developed a better understanding of the possible ways in which those could be satisfied.
One of the key strengths of Street Credibility is that it is a self-improving service, which means that it becomes better over time as the community using the service grows. The service that a user will enjoy right after the application's launch will be vastly different to the service one will be enjoying after a few months. This is an obvious observation if we take into account that most of the content that will be offered will be user-generated. One could exaggerate by saying that we are creating and administering a "digital-platform" which will constitute the ground on which urban athletes will have the opportunity to build their community in the long run. Over time, the number of Geo-tagged spots will grow higher and their ratings will be more reliable, and the number, variety and quality of videos will be higher as well.
A self-improving service such as Street Credibility has great potential as long as it starts on the right foot. We believe that our application is a viable product; it offers a service that is innovative and very useful for urban athletes. It is a complete package with the potential to survive through a pilot phase and avoid the most common initial shortcomings that other applications suffer from. In conjunction with another project group from the course MG 428 [Enterprise Development] we have developed a business plan providing us with a revenue stream and potential investment scenarios. We are therefore very much looking forward to taking this idea forward and hope that we will succeed in listening to our users and providing them with the service they are looking for.
London School of Economics
IS 480 – Group Project
References Amazon Web Services. 2013. http://aws.amazon.com/ (accessed 18 March 2013). Facebook. 2013. Facebook SDK. https://developers.facebook.com/ (accessed 18 March 2013). Google Maps. 2013, March 14. Build location-based apps https://developers.google.com/maps/location-based-apps (accessed 19 March 2013). MongoDB. 2013. MongoDB features. http://www.mongodb.org/ (accessed 18 March 2013). NodeJs. 2013. NodeJs features. http://nodejs.org/ (accessed 18 March 2013). Sorensen, C. 2011. Enterprise Mobility. Tiny Technology with Global Impact on Work. Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK. Sony Ericsson's White Paper http://dl-developer.sonymobile.com/documentation/100314-wp_gps_agps_1.pdf Twitter. 2013, March 13. Twitter API. https://dev.twitter.com/ (accessed 18 March 2013). Video.js. 2013. Video. Js API. http://videojs.com/ (accessed 18 March 2013). Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 2013, March 17. Global Positioning System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS (accessed 18 March 2013). Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 2013, March 17. Assisted GPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS (accessed 18 March 2013). Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia. 2013, March 15. Location-based service. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS (accessed 18 March 2013). YouTube. 2013, January 9. API overview guide https://developers.google.com/youtube/getting_started (accessed 18 March 2013).
London School of Economics
IS 480 – Group Project
Appendix The appendix includes the following: (1) Detailed storyboards outlining the full functionality the application is supposed to provide
Published on May 6, 2013
Our vision is to create a mobile application, called 'Street Credibility', which enables urban sport athletes to geo-tag good "spots", insta...


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The 2017 AMIS Day event recognized the accomplishments of Naoko "Jo" Yoshimura on Sunday, February 26th at St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church. Congratulations Jo on being the first AMIS International Spirit Award recipient!
International visitors, including undergraduate, graduate and postdoc students; visiting faculty
Posted by amisstaff on October 3, 2016

subset: commoncrawl


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Smoking and women: beauty before age?BMJ 1999; 318 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.318.7186.818 (Published 20 March 1999) Cite this as: BMJ 1999;318:818
- Simon Chapman, editor of "Tobacco Control," Department of Public Health and Community Medicine.
- University of Sydney, Australia
In 1986 I worked on a World Health Organisation assignment in Papua New Guinea. My task was to interview health workers about local prospects for tobacco control. In Goroka, in the eastern highlands, a local doctor told me: "The problem here will be that if you try to tell local people that smoking will make them sick, they will want you to show them which cigarette in the pack is the bad one they should discard. They won't understand the idea of chronic use being the problem."
Over the years I've come to see that the challenges facing health educators in allegedly more sophisticated nations are little different. Smoking affects organ systems like lungs and blood vessels, which we can't see in the mirror and which typically take years to "bagarap" (as they would put it in Pidgin). With young people feeling invincible about their health, the reality of smoking affecting hidden viscera and shaving several years off the end of life has always been …
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Category: Locksmiths
32 Edmundsbury Road
Landline: 07748 1...
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AP Higgs Locksmiths is an experienced lock specialist for all situations. Whether you are locked out or are looking to make your home more secure, we are a reliable trustworthy company that is available anytime of day.
We are qualified to the highest standard and are proud that our work reflects that standard. We take great pride in the quality of our services we provide and the dedication and professionalism with which our Locksmiths conduct themselves at all times. We also use the highest quality tools, lock fixtures and latest technology in all of our operations, to give you the piece of mind that your home is safe and secure.
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The FDA has added a new "black box" warning to the HIV drug Aptivus after reports of brain bleeding.
Aptivus is a type of drug called a protease inhibitor. It blocks HIV protease, an enzyme which HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) needs to make more copies of itself. Protease inhibitors are antiretroviral drugs.
When the FDA approved Aptivus in June 2005, it gave the drug a "black box" warning of possible serious liver problems, especially in patients with liver disease. Aptivus' new "black box" warning states that patients taking Aptivus with another protease inhibitor, Norvir, may develop potentially fatal bleeding in the brain (intracranial hemorrhage).
The FDA uses "black box" warnings to highlight special concerns about a drug and to provide information about potential medical complications associated with the drug's use.
Fourteen Reported Cases Include 8 Deaths
In a letter sent to doctors and posted on the FDA's web site, the drug company Boehringer Ingelheim, which makes Aptivus, states that it has gotten 14 reports of brain bleeding -- eight of which were fatal -- out of 6,840 HIV patients taking Aptivus capsules as part of antiretroviral therapy in clinical trials.
The drug company notes that "many" of the Aptivus patients who experienced brain bleeding during clinical trials also had other medical conditions, including lesions in the central nervous system, head trauma, recent brain surgery, problems with blood clotting, high blood pressure, or alcohol abuse.
Those conditions may have caused or contributed to the patients' brain bleeding. "Further investigations are ongoing to assess the role of Aptivus in intracranial hemorrhage," states an FDA news release.
Meanwhile, Aptivus' new labeling warns that the combination of Aptivus and Norvir "should be used with caution in patients who may be at risk for increased bleeding from trauma, surgery, or other medical conditions, or who are receiving medications known to increase the risk of bleeding, such as antiplatelet agents or anticoagulants."
By Miranda Hitti, reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
SOURCES: News release, FDA. WebMD Medical News: "FDA Approves New HIV Drug." Boehringer Ingelheim: "Dear Healthcare Professional," June 30, 2006.


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Locals Get Another Look at Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child Tonight
One of the most popular documentaries at April's Newport Beach Film Festival was Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which is about the late artist and Andy Warhol collaborator who became the first international art star of African-American descent.
You can catch Tamra Davis' film in Newport Beach again—and get a tour of Orange County Museum of Art's "18 Minutes of Fame: Portraits From Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol" exhibit thrown in for good measure—if you attend tonight's Cinema Orange screening.
Davis, a noted music-video director who is married to Mike D of the Beastie Boys, previously directed Adam Sandler in Billy Madison, Chris Rock in CB4, Dave Chappelle in Half Baked, Jason Lee in TV's My Name Is Earl and Britney Spears in Crossroads.
The author of a cookbook titled Make Me Something Good to Eat also hosts the web program The Tamra Davis Cooking Show.
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After Warhold's death in 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his drug use and depression increased. He died of a heroin overdose the next year at age 27.
Here is the Cinema Orange poster on tonight's screening:
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The world's first moving images were filmed by Leeds pioneer Louis Le Prince in the late 1880s, including three historic short films in 1888 lasting just a few frames each. To celebrate the roles of Le Prince and Leeds in film history, and to share the worldwide wonders of the short film form with a wider audience, Leeds International Film Festival is expanding its Short Film City section into an exciting year-round programme of regular screenings and events.
The launch event for the new year-round programme will take place on Monday 27th April from 6.30pm at The Adelphi Hotel, just a few metres away from Leeds Bridge where Louis le Prince filmed his most famous sequence of moving images. The event will include an introduction to the story of the unsung Leeds pioneer himself – who mysteriously disappeared in 1890 – and there will be screenings of some of the best shorts from our Oscar and Academy Award Qualifying Competitions. Tickets for the launch event are free but we recommend reserving them here.
The photo above features a recreation of Le Prince's Leeds Bridge scene organised by Leeds International Film Festival in 1988, the film's centenary anniversary. 'Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge' can be seen online here.
Information about year-round Short Film City screenings and events will appear here soon. There will also be Short Film City partnerships in other cities, including with Hull Independent Cinema Project from July.
Short Film City is supported by Film Hub North and the BFI Film Audience Network.


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Can I Convert my Garage into an extra Bedroom?Paul R
A well-thought out garage to bedroom conversion can add as much as 15 percent extra on to the value of your house, and next to loft-conversions, is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve the resale value of your home. Even if you don't plan on selling your home, you will benefit from the increased living space without incurring the costs and inconveniences of moving house.
Great! So I just paint the walls, add a bit of carpet and put a bed in?
The change of use from a car garage to a habitable room for a human being will mean compliance with many building regulations, and require sending a building notice to your council. Building regulations that may apply include:
- ventilation
- moisture proofing
- insulation
- fireproofing
- escape routes
- structural soundness
As a result, almost any design decision you take must take those things into account. Some other things to take note of should be:
- If the building is listed
- If the conversion increases your home beyond the permitted development rights
- You are converting the space for business or commercial use
- Whether any council restrictions on reducing parking are in place.
An important thing to take note of is you will find the internal space of most garages is much longer but thinner than most people people are used to having their bedrooms. One thing we have found to get a more natural shape and feel is converting your garage into two rooms. The second room is often used as a small bathroom, or for homes with limited storage, shelving can be added.
Remember, a place to park your children is usually more important than a place to park your cars.


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Relativity, Inc., JonesboroBack to section
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Relativity is fully committed to the success of the DoD's move toward a minimum-paper/minimum-handling environment. We will continue to develop and enhance our products to support these initiatives. For organizations actively pursuing LEAN efforts, Team Relativity can provide support and assistance from the capture of the "as is" model through the "future state" to the the implementation of the "ideal state" (automation). We offer a full suite of knowledge management solutions that will assist you in increasing efficiency and production. Our systems give you the ability to track and manage: equipment maintenance property.
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Exene Cervenka Cancels Tour Due to Illness
Christopher Victorio/OC Weekly
Sadly, the LA Times blog reported Thursday that legendary punk songstress Exene Cervenka was forced to cancel her current tour due to health problems. In a lengthy statement published on the blog, Cervenka cited her struggles with MS as the driving force behind the decision. "I am not an invincible road warrior anymore," Cervenka wrote. "The easiest part of touring is the hour onstage. The driving and staying with friends and finding hotels and advancing the shows and hauling around merch and guitars is the hard part."
She added the intense heat she encountered during her performance at Austin music festival South By Southwest may have triggered her disease to flare. Cervenka, who fronted seminal Los Angeles punk band X, has been touring in support of her latest solo album, The Excitment of Maybe, a collection of folk and country-hued songs that, though voiced by a punk veteran, feature stories of love that seem to come from the unguarded soul of a teenage girl.
Cervenka played some of these songs at Big's Bar & Grill a few weeks back before hitting the road. The quality of the work and her dedication to the craft of songrwriting were ever-present. We hope she feels better soon.
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