Mobile Computing and Social Networks Term Paper

Introduction

The evident rapid growth of the IT sector has prompted the emergence of a myriad of electronic applications, which have the ability to run on mobile devices. Mobile applications are “internet applications designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices” (Myers et al., 2006, p.36). Many of the mobile applications were initially designed to run as games on the mobile devices.

However, with the development of android, iphones, and ipad technology, the business world was interested in whether such technologies would help in transferring some of the applications running in their desktops to the mobile devices so that they could get an opportunity to persuade more people into their customer pools. Surprisingly, their dilemmas received a positive response.

For instance, applications have been developed to permit persons to take pictures of accident scenes ready to forward them to their respective insurers as part of the data required in the processing of compensation claims. A good example of such an application is the Nationwide® Mobile, an application developed by nationwide insurance company. This application runs on iphones.

It gives policy holders an opportunity to forward their insurance claims immediately an accident takes place. Fundamentally, the application is designed to give a room for the policy holders to take pictures of the scenes of accidents to be attached to the photos in the claim data.

When this is done, the application takes the information contained in the claims to the Nationwide’s server. This approach significantly reduces the time required to process the claims.

Based on the success of the nationwide application, other companies have also developed their own applications, which run on ipads, iphones, and various androids applications. Additionally, people served by these companies get an opportunity to receive massages regarding how far their claims have proceeded via social networks like Twitter and Facebook among others.

Apparently, the application of mobile devices in the business environment is not limited to the insurance industry. Applications also exist, which, while running on mobile devices, permit their users to pay their bills via credit cards. Other applications have the capability of reading and decoding bar codes. Yet, they run on mobile devices. Arguably, mobile computing has led to the revolution of the IT sector.

From this line of thought, this paper focuses on assessing the effectiveness of mobile applications, evaluating their benefits, examining of their challenges, discussing the approaches for increasing the availability of mobile devices, and methods of making mobiles devices more secure to hacking. The paper also describes methodologies, which can be deployed to make decisions on which platforms to support.

Effectiveness and efficiency of mobile-based applications

There is an ongoing concern that mobile-based applications would out power the desktop-based application systems due to the convenience provided by the former platform. Arguably, this may not be precisely true since mobile-based applications have their own challenges attributed to their design and the limitation of mobile device hardware such as screen resolution sizes.

However, mass manufacturing of mobile devices supporting a myriad of function-enhancing tools such as cameras coupled with programming languages, encoding, and decoding applications may prove the claim that mobile-based applications would contribute towards making mobile devices effective and efficient in capturing geo-location data and customer data.

Quickly, they would upload them to a processing server without the user having to make use of desktops. Since the technology for production of mobile devices has incredibly improved, it is likely that their costs will continue to decrease. This implies that a larger number of people will afford them.

These, combined with other advantages such as the weight of the mobile devices in comparison with gadgets such as cameras that are used to enhance the operation of desktop-based applications, have the consequences of making more organisations develop mobile-based applications to support and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their service delivery.

For desktop-based applications to be deployed in uploading customer data or to capture geo-location data, external devices that are built extrinsically from the desktops are required. Such devices would include cameras to capture, for example, accident scenes like in the case of an insurance company’s situation.

This means that data transfer between devices is required for a successful reporting and delivery of geo-location garnered data. While this process is time consuming, additional risks are encountered due to the danger of loss of accurateness of the means of transferring the data and the likelihoods of hardware incompatibilities.

Mobile devices mitigate these challenges since the necessary hardware is crystallised in a single hardware: the mobile device. Challenges of hardware and software incompatibilities are also reduced since, in the development of the applications, designing is done with particular effort being paid to provide a means of making all the crystallised hardware and the software compatible with one another.

The argument here is that mobile-based applications are effective in collecting and subsequent uploading of geo-location data. On the other hand, efficiency of such devices is a function of time required to upload the data. In this end, mobile-based applications encounter major challenges related to their processing speed and capacity.

However, even though desktop-based applications will send the geo-location data faster than the mobile-based applications, the time required for the inter-transfer of data between devices makes mobile-based applications efficient in overall in terms of processing and the uploading time.

Additionally, the current technologies have made it possible for an immense achievement in developing the capacity to manufacture a high-speed processing and large storage mobile devices through a much cheaper means of production. This success goes hardy in improving the efficiency of mobile devices.

Benefits realised by consumers because of the ability to gain access to their own data via mobile applications

Many organisations have recognised the benefits that may result from full exploitation of the new wave of mobile internet. This wave is making organisations benefit immensely in hiking their value-added services coupled with enhancing their competitive advantage.

From the contexts of the customers targeted by these organisations, mobile applications provide easy means of facilitating customers to access their information. This information is available right in their pockets being stored within applications that run from their smartphones.

With regard to Zhang and Adipat (2005), “mobile applications are everywhere in categories of games, social networking, productivity tools, infotainment, data management, and utilities” (p.293).

This availability of mobile applications in a variety of forms makes the consumers receive mobile-supported contents in a superior way compared to classical channels of mobiles among them being the short massage services and mobile browsing.

Consistent with this line of argument, consumers may have three significant benefits accruing from having the ability to gain access to their data via mobile applications. These are volume, speed, and ease of accessibility to advertisements.

The modern-day consumers live in a world in which they anticipate getting anything at the time they want it. Therefore, the time within which consumers can access whatever they want is an immense concern that organisations need to address if at all they want to capture this population that is incredibly time cautious.

Indeed, while attempting to access one’s data through desktops and notebook computers, the patience of consumers is metered since they have to wait until booting is complete besides loading the internet via 3G networks or 4G network in case such consumers live in Japan after which they can then start the search process to receive their data.

Mobile applications save all these chores since information or data is essentially stored within applications. This implies that, when the application is loaded on the mobile device, the consumer will have access to all the information he or she needs within a minimal time. Surprisingly, in case some updating of information is required to be done, it is accomplished in the applications’ background.

Consequently, the consumers are given an opportunity to access other data while, in the mean time, waiting the application to finish loading. In the appreciation of this benefit, Myers et al. lament, “mobile apps are becoming so functional and popular among consumer especially by considering that nearly half of all corporate-issued devices will be mobile” (2006, p.39).

To the consumers, this means that their data will be available right in their pockets. In a nation served by a 3G network, consumers have limitations for storing large amounts of their information in the virtual memories of the internets. However, mobile applications have the capacity to keep magnificent volumes of data including catalogues and videos.

An additional benefit is also realised in that the data is kept within the mobile application prompting improvement of experiences of users who are largely the consumers.

Although the era of billboards advertising is not yet over, mobile advertising is rapidly catching up. Interestingly, this trend is not anticipated to stop any time soon. Opposed to the localised placement of billboards, mobile advertisements enable consumers to have a constant accessibility to advertisement any time they feel like doing it.

Challenges of developing applications that run on mobile devices because of the small screen size

Several challenges are encountered while developing mobile applications. In this extent, Huang (2009) reckons, “the current mobile computing devices such as palmtop computers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), and mobile phones have a problem in common of attempting to provide users with powerful computing services and resources through small interfaces” (p.2).

This problem is related to the fact that computing mobile devices have a small screen size, which makes it hard for their users to locate information easily.

While attempting to study the impacts of resolution of computing devices on the effectiveness of usability of mobile computing device interfaces, specifically while viewing web pages, Jones et al (1999) found out, “participants using the high resolution screens were able to answer twice the number of searching tasks correctly thereby spending less time scrolling than their low resolution counterparts” (p.1130).

This finding indicates that screen size is a major challenge when it comes to the precise location of information on web pages. This implies that, even though an application running on Smartphones may be a fast way of browsing through information, screen size introduces a disadvantage in relation to their counterparts running on desktops.

One of the ways of countering the above problem is to develop an application, which requires a user to conduct minimal scrolling. Unfortunately, due to the limitation of the display space, it is impossible to design an application, which would display all information on a single page fitting the screen of a Smartphone, for instance.

Huang (2009) supports this argument by further adding, “Limited screen size makes it difficult to efficiently present information and or help users to navigate to and from the information they want” (p.3).

Another solution to the changes of developing applications that run on mobile devices attributed to screen sizes is to make sure that the applications support a large number of searches so that, during each search, only the precise information is found. Arguably, this can help to incredibly reduce the amount of data required to be displayed.

Somewhat consistent with this requirement, many mobile device application developers are focusing on efforts to develop applications, which have the capability of arranging information in a manner that assumes an inverted pyramid format such that the information displayed starts from the most important before proceeding to the least important.

Other efforts to deal with challenges of screen sizes include putting in place means of limiting texts, which serve non-semantic functions.

Methods used to decide which platform to support

There exist a number of mobile applications platforms. Good examples of these platforms include iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, and Android. Each of the platforms is different from the other in terms of capability. Therefore, before the development of an application, organisations need to select the appropriate platform that meets their requirements.

Based on this insight, there are three approaches, which can be used in arriving at the right platform to support. These approaches are tied within three schools of thought for mobile applications development. These are vertical development, cross-platform, and web-based application developments.

Applications, which are cross-platform-based, permit organisations to reach for their targets maximally within the ecosystem of mobile software. Such platforms are widely compatible with many mobile operating systems.

On the other hand, web-based development school of thought claims that organisations need to select their requisite platform, which they would like to support based on the ease of use of the various browser components of the platforms. This means that the utmost concern is whether the consumers targeted by the application would be able to use the application developed without necessarily being trained on how to do it.

Nevertheless, choosing the platform to support this way introduces challenges since web-based platforms have a unique drawback in that there is the need to be “always on connectivity besides its requirement to reach the device functionalities from web-based applications” (Huang, 2009, p.5). Lastly, the decision on the platform to support may be made based on whether the platform supports vertical development.

Even in the event of limited resources, it is possible to develop applications operating on vertical platforms. However, it is crucial for the development team to ensure that it has analysed the market thoroughly based on the specialisation of an organisation seeking to develop applications from the contexts of vertical development.

This is done to ensure that priorities are set cutely coupled with the areas that the organisation wants to give services through the application.

Ways of providing high availability for mobile applications

Mobile applications require a high availability because end users need to have uninterrupted access to IT and IS systems. Unfortunately, the current networks that are wireless are prone to network disruptions. Hence, they are not reliable to provide uninterrupted connectivity. To the mobile commerce, this implies that consumers are deprived of their right to have access to information during any time they would want it.

Many mobile-based applications developed by organisations are dependent on wireless networks for their operation. Due to unreliability of these wireless networks, a query emerges on how a high availability can be provided. While responding to this query, it is important to note that any of the methodologies proposed to provide the higher availability should appreciate and consider that wireless networks are prone to disruption.

Hence, the focus should be to ensure that consumers have access to the networks even during offline operations. Consistent with this condition, one of the mechanisms of ensuring high availability is through the provision of mobile data storages, which are advanced coupled with provisions of appropriate management tools.

For a mobile device to operate in an offline mode, it should have the ability to have its own means of data storage. However, according to Juntao (2012), “…the profiles of the standard J2ME will provide only limited data storage and management capabilities” (Para. 2).

In case of phones, which are MDP or ‘mobile information device profiles’, they only have record stores, which are linear and available through the support of RMS, while personal java supports only random files.

Developing an application to work under these environments means that the developer “reorganises data using those generic facilities, which can prove tedious, inefficient, and error prone for large applications” (Juntao, 2012, Para.2). Another approach for enhancing the availability of applications is by building redundant networks, which, while the normal network fails, the redundant network switches on without interfering with the performance and running of the mobile devices’ application.

To ensure a high availability of mobile-based applications, developers may also consider techniques such as server clustering, server virtualisation, trucking, and storage virtualisation among others.

Methods of making mobile devices more secure to hacking

In any situation that involves inter-network interactions, hacking is almost inevitable unless appropriate measures are deployed to protect organisations’ information assets. For the case of mobile devices interacting in inter-network environments, the degree of risks associated with hacking are higher since mobile devices are subjected to hacking at a higher rate than non-mobile devices.

Therefore, advanced methods of protecting mobile device from hacking are necessary if applications running from these devices are to be highly available. Methods for enhancing protection of mobile devices from hackers are dependent on the nature of vulnerabilities. Bluetooth is one of the functionalities of smartphones, which makes it easy for users to share data with other users.

However, it may provide an easy means of enabling hackers to steal confidential information such as credit card numbers and other passwords often stored by users for their ease of memorisation. These risks can be mitigated by ensuring that a mobile device’s Bluetooth is always switched off whenever the device’s owner is not intentionally searching for other trusted connections with whom to share data.

Ideally, this approach of enhancing mobile devices’ security is a device user-oriented approach. Other methodologies also exist such as screen locks. This technique is used to ensure that people who steal mobile devices do not steal information contained in the stolen device. Locking is accomplished through cryptographic software. Hackers seek interaction with the targets by disguising their evil intents.

For this reason, many mobile devices manufacturers are producing devices with higher authentication requests. This provides users with an opportunity to scrutinise the trustworthiness of the network connections before establishing connections. Unfortunately, this approach of enhancing security of mobile devices faces an incredible drawback since most of the users do not pay incredible attention to security threats.

Proprietary approaches can also be applied to enhance the security of Smartphone. However, proprietary software fails to work between various devices that run on different platforms. Additionally, security software can be deployed to counter the malwares utilised by hackers to access data stored in the mobile devices.

The only challenge for this method is that constant updating is necessary since hackers are innovative, as they keep on looking for new methodologies of attacks that would escape the filters of the antivirus software. However, when users of the device constantly buy and update the antivirus software, it is possible for them to remain secure from attacks by various newly innovated malwares, viruses, and spywares by hackers.

Conclusion

The rapid evolution of mobile computing has prompted the emergence of several applications, which are used by organisations to reach their consumers much easily as opposed to desktop-based applications.

The paper has argued that, apart from benefiting the consumers, such applications have also made hackers focus their attention on the applications that run on mobile devices with the intention of stealing people’s information that is necessary for executing fraudulent acts.

The paper has also argued that mobile devices depend largely on wireless networks, which are prone to disruptions, a case that introduces a challenge on their availability.

Reference List

Huang, C. (2009). Challenges in Human-Computer Interaction Design for Mobile Devices. Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science. San Francisco, USA: WCECS.

Jones, M., Marsdens, G., Mohd-Nsir, N., Boone, K., & Buchanan, G. (1999). Improving web interaction on small displays. Computer Networks, 31(2), 1129-1137.

Juntao, M. (2012). High-Availability Mobile Application. Retrieved from https://www.javaworld.com/article/2073485/mobile-java-high-availability-mobile-applications.html

Myers, A., Nichols, J., Wobbrock, O., & Miller, R. (2006). Taking handheld devices to the next level. IEEE Computer Journal, 37(12), 36−43.

Zhang, D., & Adipat, B. (2005). Challenges, methodologies, and issues in the usability of testing mobile applications. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 18(3), 293-308.