TTA category Mobile

The number of entries in the category Mobile is growing. There were 32 entries from 11 countries. Mobile is slowly penetrating in universities and junior colleges as a subject. There are not too many professors and lecturers who know something about mobiles in general and content for mobiles in particular. On the other hand the mobile companies notr the mobile content have not been out too these institutes to propagate the basic knowledge. It would of course be smart of the mobile telecom companies to set up a Mobile teaching institute together. However some universities in the UK and Austria (FH Johanneum) have already established a tradition and are delivering entries every year now.

In this category 3 nominations were bestowed:
- APCompass – David Wiltshire, University of Plymouth (UK)- iCoach – Andrew Devlin, Bournemouth University (UK)- RealReplay – GPS racing on your mobile phone - Andreas Jakl, FH Hagenberg (AUT)

All three projects use PDA and smart phones. APCompass contains a map of wireless network access points in a particular location. This map can be annotated with description of services and tagged by anyone, so that the next person can download the opdated map with services.

iCoach is a program to assist football coaches and players to plan and save match tactics, training sessions and post-match video analyses. This Mobile sport assistance is a favourite with students. In the TTA 2004 ther was a UK student who had developed a GPS driven electronic golf assistant. It was well researched and executed, but it was hard to sell to mobile companies, as they want to claim straight away the copyright.

In the same vein is the project Real Play. The application enables people to compete against each other in a time-trial, regardless of the presence. So you can race someone skipping time: running, cyccling, sailing or hiking.

Of these three APCompass was the winner.
I also like to draw the attention to one of the nominees of the Thesis Award. Louise Gumbrell of Staffordshire University (GB). She wrote the thesis Txt2Tug. It investigates the feasibility and development of an interactive SMS game for fans at live music events such as concerts and festvals. It is a kind of entre act when the stage is changed by which the audience is kept happy and can participate in a game of Tug of War.People in the audience can also win prizes and see their name displayed on the wide screens. The idea has been well worked out and tested in practice.

Tags: Europrix, EADiM