FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING OF A DYNAMIC

USER COMMUNITY (EPH)

Sharing of Context-Aware, Public Interest Information or Knowledge

through Always-on Services

Monica Vlădoiu

Departament of Informatics, PG University of Ploieşti Romania, Bd. Bucureşti, Nr. 39, Ploieşti, Romania

Zoran Constantinescu

ZealSoft Ltd., Str. Tg. Neamţ, Nr. 60, Bucureşti, Romania

Keywords: User communities, social networks, social web, always-on services, context-aware information and

knowledge, location-based information and knowledge, information and knowledge sharing.

Abstract: ePH aims to be a framework around a user-centred digital library core that stores regional information and

knowledge and that boosts a self-developing community of transnational users around it. The digital

library's content will be accessible through always-on context-aware services (location-based included). The

users can get it or enhance it, according to their location: at home or office by using a computer, on road

with a specific GPS-based device in the car, or off-line, off-road via mobile phone. The digital library will

contain: public interest information (drugstores, hospitals, general stores, gas stations, entertainment places,

restaurants, travel/accommodation, weather, routes etc.), historical/touristic/cultural information and

knowledge, users' personal "war stories" (tracks, touristic tours, impressions, photos, short videos and so

on), and users’ additions, comments or updates to the content. This content will come alive to ePH users

based on their contextual interest (e.g. geo-location). Our plan is to develop (as open source) the ePH

system for our county of origin and to provide an easy-to-use how-to recipe to clone it for other regions.

1 INTRODUCTION

Our world is continually becoming more and more

complex. New information is added every day to the

overall body of existing knowledge. We may say

that knowledge is the new global asset – so people

have to be continually learning, crafting innovative

solutions to changing circumstances, staying

informed and responsive. Not only communications

change in this new millennium, but also our

perceptual response to the world in which we live,

our construct of reality, and the nature of

knowledge. Through the integration of satellite

navigation receivers in mobile phones and in other

means of communications, location-based services

and personal mobility can be supported.

User location is an important dimension in this new

data-service world – it has the potential to make

mobile services more relevant to users as

information is adjusted to the context (for example,

weather information is adjusted to the region

one is in) (Schiller and Voisard, 2004). Moreover,

the information presented to users should be tailored

to their context, being it personal or environmental.

In case of a context-aware tourist guide, personal

context can include the visitor's interests (e.g.

history, architecture), the visitor's current location,

attractions already visited and any refreshment

preferences one might have. Environmental context

could include: the time of day, or the opening times

of attractions (Cheverst et al, 2000).

Furthermore, wireless has the potential to

transform the e-services in three directions:

accessibility, alerting and averting, and updating

(Lemon et al, 2002). The increasing use of mobile

terminals and infrastructure is making possible to

communicate and access information from any

location at any time (Hirsch, 2006). The

convergence of mobile and web service technologies

adoiu M. and Constantinescu Z. (2008).

FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING OF A DYNAMIC USER COMMUNITY (EPH) - Sharing of Context-Aware, Public Interest Information or Knowledge

through Always-on Services.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - SAIC, pages 73-78

DOI: 10.5220/0001678600730078

 SciTePress

enables and accelerates the development of new

conceptual models for services (e.g. tracking

applications) (Schiller and Voisard, 2004).

In many circumstances, information and

knowledge are socially constructed. The IT mediated

communication has permitted complex social

networks to become a dominant form of social

organization (Wellman, 1999). That is why

emerging communities of users will play an

important role in construction of our evolving

Information and Knowledge Society.

We present here ePH, a framework for building

of a dynamic user community that share public

interest information and knowledge, which is

accessible through always-on context-aware services

(location-based included). The main objectives of

this project are to build a user-centred Digital

Library (DL) that stores regional information or

knowledge and to boost a self-developing

community of transnational users around it. The

DL's content will be accessible through contextual

services that are always available. In the first stage,

the digital library will contain public interest

information (drugstores, hospitals, general stores,

gas stations, entertainment places, restaurants, travel

and accommodation, weather, routes etc.), historical

or cultural knowledge, and touristic information

about a particular county. The ePH services will be

personalized and context-aware (geo-location,

around a situation, an idea or an entity etc.).

The core digital libray will be user-centred. The

users will be allowed to manipulate freely the

content for their personal interest. They can get

(access) it or enhance (contribute to) it, according to

their location: at home or office by using a

computer, on road by using a specific GPS-based

(Global Positioning System) device in the car, or

off-line/off-road via mobile phone.

The users can make additions, comments, or

updates to the DL’s content. The user-generated

content will be personalized, as users can upload

their personal "war stories" (tracks, touristic tours,

impressions, geo-tagged photos, short videos/audios,

impressions etc.). More, the whole ePH system will

subscribe to the users’ needs, goals and abilities.

Our challenging goal is to ensure the continuity

of the service after the project work will be finished.

This is feasible by creating a vivant community that

will “survive” to project development ending time.

Moreover, the developers aim to start their own

community, as they will provide both a quick how-to

recipe for building similar “alive” frameworks and

all related software as open source.

2 STATE OF THE ART AND EPH

The existent wireless devices (mobile phone, GPS,

PDA etc.) give their users access to some public

interest information, but that information is static

and sparse, and the updates to it are rare, if any.

The commercial off-the-shelf navigation systems

(GARMIN GPS Navigator or similar) allow the

browsing of some public interest information that is

uploaded prior to the selling. Therefore the user is

by no means always connected to a comprehensive,

evolving repository of such information. On the

contrast, the ePH digital library will be continuously

growing with content from both developers and

users. Therefore the content will be far richer and

dynamic than in commercial wireless devices.

Moreover, those systems keep their user isolated

from other users that utilize the same kind of device,

and there is no communication thread between them

whatsoever. With ePH, the users will be always able

to communicate with others connected to the system,

and to exchange general or private information with

each other, so they will have a sense of being part of

something alive. Further, the information and

knowledge that ePH offer to its users can also be

gathered and seamlessly provided from other

publicly available sources. With ePH, the user can

be continuously on- (in car, office, home, mobile

phone), so the service will be always available.

As for other folksonomic undertakings, like

Flickr or YouTube, they have as their main goal the

users’ entertainment, ePH aims to more than that, as

the content of the core DL intends to be useful to its

users in various directions: access to general or

particular information and knowledge, instruction,

education, traffic safety, entertainment, selection of

the best service in several domains (e.g. in tourism,

hospitals and clinics, schools, restaurants, flights and

so on), etc. Compared to other websites that use

folksonomic tagging, such as del.icio.us, which is a

social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing,

and discovering web bookmarks, ePH has the

advantage of being supported by a digital library.

This is a focused collection of digital objects, along

with methods for manipulation of the collection. The

ePH’s digital library accords equal weight to user,

for access, retrieval and modification, and to

developer, playing a librarian role, for organization,

selection, and maintenance of the collection.

Metadata management will play an important role on

increasing the searching and browsing facilities

offered by the ePH’s core digital library.

As it has been shown in The Strategic Agenda

for Research in the Area of ICT for Mobility within

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

the FP7 programme, “there is a strong need to

develop harmonized, interoperable, pan-European

mobility services, context-aware, with wide

availability to users and their interfaces”. Moreover,

“seamless integration of Nomadic Devices into

vehicle’s Human Machine Interface provide for high

customer value, if data can be exchanged between

home, car and portable use”. Our work tries to

subscribe to these objectives and challenges.

3 EPH STRUCTURE AND

OBJECTIVES

The ePH framework consists mainly from the core

digital library, called ePHLib, and the communities

that gravitate around it, i.e. the developers and the

users, as it can be seen from Figure 1. The

communications server provides the support for the

always-on kind of service, regardless of the place

where the user is when s/he needs that service (at

home or office, on road, or elsewhere). The location

server makes available the right service according to

the location. The project benefits significantly from

using http://www.unde.ro, a geo-spatial search

engine we have developed (using Google Maps).

According to the brief description of the ePH

framework, the operational objectives we pursue are:

⇒ development of a working model for always-on

services in the context of digital content use and

user communities. This model will take into

account the challenges and opportunities that all

actors involved in services have to face

nowadays. The model will subscribe to novel

models of social and blended networking that

support the formation of sustainable cooperative

communities. What is of major importance here

is to understand the psychology of users in such

systems, what influences them to join and

support a particular community or to behave

altruistically or cooperatively;

⇒ setting up a methodology for implementation of

this model so that it can become viable in

real-world experiences, as the ePH system will

have to respond to day-to-day problems.

These can be in a large range from virtual tours

in a selected region with instructional or

educational purposes, as well as with

entertainment or informational goals, to issues

of e-safety in transport (let us imagine a

scenario taking place in a remote mountain

region, in which the fuel is going down rapidly -

the ePH could display on user’s car device

where the nearest gas station is);

⇒ construction of the core user-centred digital

library that will contain public interest, regional

information and knowledge, and make it always

available to its possible users (general public,

tourists, business persons, students, etc.) by its

support for always-on services, according to the

proposed working model. Its content must be

reliable, accurate, relevant, comprehensive, and

free to personal use. The most appropriate

architecture and functionality for this digital

library will be pursued. Furthermore, users'

personal "war stories" can be uploaded, so

ePHLib will have a personalized “face”;

⇒ creation of an architecture for connecting

various systems together in a multi-service

overlay network - here connectivity and data

exchange issues between car, home/office and

mobile phone have to be solved;

⇒ development or adaptation of a specific GPS

car device to provide the ePH’s specific

functionality, which, in a nutshell, is, to support

geo-location information providing and

acquisition. For example, the car device can

simultaneously show the road map and

highlight different points of interest

(information about the closest gas station,

pharmacy, hospital, accommodation etc.,

historical sites or touristic sights), or provide

access to other users' stories about that geo-

location. The user can also record his/her own

impressions, or geo-tagged photos, etc. to be

uploaded at a later time to the ePHLib (when

the bandwidth will allow it). S/he may also get

in touch with other on-line ePH users who are,

at that moment, in the same geographic region

(in a vehicle-to-vehicle way). More, the ePH

system will be able to select and present the

user with various points of interest within a

given area (for instance, the drugstores or the

general stores). The development of this device

will be very challenging, as it will be

innovative. More, the research has to determine

the best ways to transmit information to the

driver, so s/he will not get disturbed, while s/he

is driving. In order to help the spreading of

ePHLib’ use, the research and development

have been tailored so that the device is low cost;

⇒ subscribing this work to the evolution of

GALILEO, which will be Europe’s global

navigation satellite system, and will provide a

FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING OF A DYNAMIC USER COMMUNITY (EPH) - Sharing of Context-Aware, Public

Interest Information or Knowledge through Always-on Services

Figure 1: The ePH framework.

highly accurate, guaranteed GPS service, under

civilian control. Thus, the project work can be a

significant step to use technology (GPS in this

case) to return value to the society;

⇒ project progress will consider at any stage its

potential for future maintenance and

development, and will have the work evolving

under this requirement, so each stage will be

documented properly. More, it is our intention

to provide an easy-to-use recipe to clone it for

other regions (including future work ideas and

implementation hints). Perfective maintenance

and evolution of this work is envisaged to be in

direction of (1) processing the users’ feedback

and improving both the working model for

always-on services and the DL’s content

accordingly, and of (2) consolidation of a

community of enthusiastic users that will

contribute to extend the core DL to a

comprehensive public interest DL and to clone

it for other regions;

⇒ making of the significant partial/final project

results available to their potential users - this

will be done by pursuing a consistent

dissemination strategy through specific means:

ePH’s portal, advertisements in active specific

mailing lists, papers, presentations, or

demonstrations to conferences, symposiums, or

workshops, or in journals. Direct presentations

in interested communities are also envisaged.

In addition, a tree-like dissemination structure is

envisaged through the users from the

community, in a “words of mouth” manner (on-

line with ePH or off-line). Moreover, the user

on road

users

Communication server

ePH

Location server

home

users

develo

ers

ePHLib

public interest

information and knowledge

users’ content

mobile

users

office

users

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

support will be constant and consistent, both

from the portal developers and other users, in

order to favour the enrolling within the ePH

community and to feel the benefits of it.

Our research and development methodology is

focused on doing a work, which results will be

sound, with respect to viable theories and best

practice in each of the field involved. As the work

from the project is multi- and inter-disciplinary, it is

expected to promote cross-fertilization of models

and specific methods from the fields involved. This

can foster synergies and generate new ideas in all the

concerned areas.

4 CONCLUSIONS

There is a need for always-on services that offer

personalised information and knowledge to users,

which should provide a seamless user experience,

irrespective of the terminal or communication

network. More and more information about our

environment is available with real-time updates.

High added value for user is expected if information

can be exchanged between home, car and portable

use. There is a strong need to develop harmonised,

interoperable, pan-European mobility services,

context aware, with reliable contents and wide

availability to users and their interfaces (European

Commission, 2006).

The combination of various services make up a

service-oriented architecture (Barry, 2003).

Location-dependent services form an important

group of mobile information services to be included

in this architecture. There are two kind of such

services: user requested and triggered. Former are

typically information services, while later include

emergency services, fleet tracking, tracing

containers and so on (Hjelm, 2002). ePH is devised

to offer both kind of such services.

While we, as developers, try to provide users

with the best services, we must remember to move

beyond structure and topology and start focusing on

the dynamics that take place along the network links.

To describe society we must dress the links of the

social network with actual dynamical interactions

between people (Barabasi, 2002).

Research in a number of academic fields has

shown that social networks operate on many levels,

from families up to the level of nations, and play a

critical role in determining the way problems are

solved, organizations are run, and the degree to

which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

Online social networks for communities of people

who share interests and activities, or who are

interested in exploring the interests and activities of

others are primarily web based and provide a

collection of various ways for users to interact, such

as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file

sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.

Users can benefit significantly by interacting

with a like-minded community and finding a channel

for their energy and giving. The main types of social

networking services are those that contain

directories of some categories (such as former

classmates), are meant to connect with friends

(usually with self-description pages), and

recommended systems linked to trust. Popular

methods now combine many of these, with MySpace

and Facebook being the most widely used in the

anglosphere (comScore, 2007). By July of 2006,

over 140 different social networking sites were

available on the web, with an estimated 200 million

user profiles – even considering that many people

with multiple personas, there remain tens of millions

of people who are connecting daily with true or

e-acquaintances and strangers (Anklam, 2005).

The most visible change from entering the

Connected Age is that we suddenly have access to

our peers, our friends, our colleagues and family

members. Our communities now become ever

present, so modern people are able to draw on the

communities for assistance, information and support.

One learns to search, share, and interact in a new

way (Ahonen and Moore, 2005). Therefore, the

social networks work as pools of heterogeneous

information sources that are sometimes useful and

influential for decision making, job changes, and so

on (Haythornthwaite and Wellman, 2002).

More, given that social networks connect people

at low cost, this can be also beneficial for

entrepreneurs and businesses looking to expand their

contact base. These networks often act as a customer

relationship management tool for companies selling

products and services. Companies can also use

social networks for advertising in the form of

banners and text ads. Since businesses operate

globally, social networks can make it easier to keep

in touch with contacts around the world.

Learning to market to the social web requires

that marketers, instead of continuing as broadcasters,

to become aggregators of customer communities.

They should participate in, organize, and encourage

social networks to which people want to belong. The

social web is the online place where people with

common interest can gather to share thoughts,

comments, and opinions (Weber, 2007).

FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING OF A DYNAMIC USER COMMUNITY (EPH) - Sharing of Context-Aware, Public

Interest Information or Knowledge through Always-on Services

The research and development of the ePH

framework is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary

and tightly combines models and methods from

various fields: Social and Blended Networking of

User Communities, Digital Libraries, Context-aware

Services, Intelligent Vehicles Systems, Geographical

Information Systems, User and Human Interfaces,

Virtual Reality, Electronics, Networks, Data

Acquisition, Software Engineering, Instruction and

Education. During this work, new, practical ways,

for boosting a vivant user community have to be

devised in order to improve the dissemination

process and to make real use of the ePH’s content.

The current stage of this project is as follows: the

geospatial engine unde.ro provides the basic

functionality that is needed for ePH, the GPS car

device, called gipix-102, is in prototype testing

phase, and the vital cores of both the communication

server and location server are functional as well.

In parallel with these technical achievements, the

working model for always-on services, in the

context of digital content use and user communities,

is under development. The dissemination process

has already begun through making the site unde.ro

known to various kinds of potential users.

This work can prove the potential to achieve

wide deployment of public interest services and to

provide for higher mobility of people and increased

quality of life, through the provision of accessible

and reliable information services. Users can benefit

from utilizing the ePH framework facilities in

various ways:

• easy-access to useful information or knowledge

for anyone, at anytime, from anywhere, by

using several at hand means;

• easier, safer, quicker, more informed and

increased quality services (medical, schools,

tourism, stores, gas stations, entertainment

places, restaurants, travel and accommodation

and so on);

• bringing historical, geographical and cultural

information or knowledge to people in a more

attractive and appealing way, given the interest

and energy that people spend using PCs and

gadgets;

• potential to boost a virtual community in which

people who are interested in some particular

topic can share information, impressions, hints,

photos etc;

• make people more aware of the advantages of

using IT for everyday life;

The ePH project integrates the advanced Information

Society Technologies in everyday environments,

focuses on both individuals and communities,

aspires to have a high social and educational impact,

and, hopefully, to be a small step forward to the

construction of e-Europe.

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