Social Serendipity: Proximity Sensing and Cueing - Human ...

Role-Based Access Control. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a technique used
to assign user permissions that correspond to functional roles in an organization [12].
By capturing extensive user behavior patterns over time, our system has the potential
to infer not only relationships between users, but also their permissions. For example,
if two students working in different labs begin Tuesday collaborations at a coffee
shop, they should be granted constrained entrance access to each other's lab.
Public Release of Serendipity. While Symbian Series 60 phones have become a
standard for Nokia's high-end handsets, they represent a small fraction of today's Bluetooth
devices. We are in the final stages of developing a MIDP (Java) version of the
BlueAware application that will run on a wider range of mobile phones. The final test
of Serendipity will be its public launch on www.mobule.net. We hope that not only
will the application prove to be robust, but also quite popular within the realms described
above, as well as those unanticipated.
8 Conclusions
Our society is more connected than ever before due to two parallel paradigm shifts in
computing: movement from desktop to mobile computing, and from individual to
social software. Mobile phones have become standard attire across the globe. In millions
of pockets and purses are wireless transceivers, microphones, and the computational
horsepower of a desktop computer of just a few years ago. Today the majority
of this processing power goes unused. However, once the emphasis of mobile applications
shift towards supporting the desire of individuals to affiliate with others to
achieve their personal goals, this will soon change. We are catching glimpses of introduction
services with the advent of online dating and knowledge management, yet the
real potential of these new applications will be realized by an infrastructure of socially
curious mobile devices, allowing us to untether social software from the desktop and
imbue it into everyday life. It is our belief that the mobile phone market is at a critical
tipping point where the functionality will shift from the traditional telephone paradigm
to a much broader social-centric perspective. We hope that this work represents a step
further in that direction.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to everyone who participated
throughout the development of the application including Pedro Yip, Steve Kannan,
Doochan Han, Greg Sterndale, Tony Pryor, Jon Gips, Mat Laibowitz, and Igor Sylvester.
Additionally, the authors would like to thank members of both Nokia and
Nokia Research, particularly Saku Hieta, Peter Wakim, Hari Pennanen, Suvi Hiltunen
and Timo Salomaki.