H79.2502 Lecture 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Crowley
The world gets more interesting as the devices that we carry in our pockets get smarter. What happens when my phone is smart enough to know where I am and what's happening around me? This class is designed to experiment with using different contextual triggers (who? what? when? where?) to build applications that can change the way people experience the world around them. The class introduces students to what is needed behind the scenes in order to create "ping-me-and-I'llping- you-back" style text-messaging applications. Class discussion revolves around the future of emerging mobile technology (passive location tracking, proximity detection, etc) in the context of gaming, social software, etc. using examples that can be found both here in the US and abroad. Techniques covered in the class will be geared towards social and location-aware applications, though we'll experiment with parsing incoming photo messages, translating semacodes, using geocoders and proximity algorithms, and more. The class focuses heavily on building applications that work on "lowest-common denominator" phones, though students are encouraged to find examples of applications that use emerging technologies (Java and Bluetooth), and discover ways to retrofit these apps to work with the phones we carry in our pockets today. This is not a class on Java/J2ME or Bluetooth development. Students are expected to build at least two working applications during the semester (midterm + final). Prior experience in dynamic web development (PHP / Perl + MySQL) is encouraged as we start building on Week 2.
