We did it! We submitted our first scientific paper to a conference. Our target conference is the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) which will take place at Hawaii (obviously a very nice location ) between May 21st and May 28th 2011. The competition is more than tough – we expect an acceptance rate around 10 per cent. Thus, we consider our paper more or less a “stunt”: high risk, but potentially high rewards.
So what is our paper about? Well, it is about the application of SOA principles on mobile operating systems like the iPhone OS and the implications of this approach. We investigated the role of Apps and App Stores with regard to the SOA triangle and discussed how to use our Apps (q·.:Launcher and q·.:Card) for this. Interested in more? I guess then you’ll have to wait, until we receive notification of the ICSE program committee, which is due on November 19th. In the meantime we will continue working on our new project with woodapples and write another scientific paper which is a joined effort with Distributed Systems Group of Vienna Technical University. This time, the topic is centered around crowd sourcing and how we do this at ikangai solutions.
Childhood in the Internet age is difficult. There are a zillions of things to discover on the Web and therefore it’s really easy to waste time online. While this development is nothing new and children have always done things which were generally considered useless by grown-ups (playing with computers, inspecting – i.e. destroying – a model train etc.), modern technologies like cell phones and the Internet itself have opened the door to another dimension. And this dimension is surveillance. These days, kids have their cell phones always on them and worried parents can call at any time to check if “everything is alright”. Which is perfectly fine – every caring parent wants to make sure that their kids are ok. However, if used excessively, this is the first step towards 24/7 parental control.
One might argue that as kids grow older, parents’ calls become fewer and kids become more independent from their parents as they reach adulthood. But, and that’s the point I’d like to make, as kids grow older they spend more time on the Internet; with social platforms like facebook (which recently exceeded google in terms of daily page views) being the most attractive platforms for young people.
A lot has already been written about facebook’s privacy policy and about the data that is being voluntarily made available on these platforms by the users. However, little attention had been paid to the fact that also parents can join such networks. So, what prevents overly caring parents from spying on their kids on facebook? Nothing. And what prevents kids from giving away all information about themselves? Nothing. After all, it has become good practice to be “yourself” in this kind of networks. So today it’s really simple for parents to know what is going on with their children: just become a member of a social network and become a friend of the kids. Which kid can say “no” to a parental friendship invitation? Probably no one.
So, what lesson can be learned from this? A very simple one: before uploading something about one’s personal life (party pictures with lots of half naked girls/boys ), you should ask yourself a simple question: Should my parents know about this? After all, the “should mom know” test is definitively the best privacy filter .
Your ikangai team
[UPDATE] – Yes, the ikangai team members also have facebook accounts. And no, their parents don’t. Maybe they change their mind, after reading this post .[/UPDATE]
Our last post described the current efforts by the development team of ikangai, i.e., updating the Web page and implementing the new iPhone Apps. But there are also the guys from the creative group who are busy making the new iSENDu commercial video and a teaser video for our next iPhone App. From what we’ve seen so far, both videos look very promising. The new iSENDu video is going to be much shorter than the original one:
Thus, it’s going to be a true commercial video – which is our answer to feedback we got from people regarding the first promotion video. The second video will be a very short teaser for our next App and will hopefully will make you curios enough to download our new iPhone App .
Programming for Apple is fun. The tools are great and it is really satisfying to see how an application slowly takes shape and is finally finished. There is only one thing that is a bit disturbing. It’s not so much programming with Apple tools, but rather programming for Apple. Why? Because of the way that Apple defines their terms of use in their iPhone development agreement. The Electronic Frontier Foundationpublished the license agreement today and revealed how Apple is treating their developers who are just programming applications. What is most striking is that Apple forbids developers to make public statements about the license agreement. In other words: you sign a contract, and you are not allowed to talk about it. It somewhat resembles the deal with the devil from Goethe’s Faust. Similar to Faust – who gives away his soul to get his wishes fulfilled – developers give away their independence in favor of the realization of their wishes. Different from Faust, though, who is conscious of what he is doing when he says:
Werd’ ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schön!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!
developers usually don’t think about the fine prints in license agreements. Why? Because reading 30 or more pages of such agreements is not really that thrilling – at least for developers. After all, these agreements are written by lawyers and, as we know from the movies, they work for the devil :
So, what lessons can we developers learn from this? Maybe that we should be more careful when signing license agreements; or that we should actively support organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation whose aim is to defend civil rights (and the rights of developers).
Having finally started to understand people from academia ourselves, we have now decided that it is time for ordinary people to do the same . We are currently in the process of writing an iPhone app for the so-called S-Cube Knowledge Model, which is a collection of definitions in the area of Web Services and Web Service related Technologies. There are – of course – some challenges for the representation of content on a small device like an iPhone, but we are very optimistic that we will master these and be able to provide a useful application with some interesting ideas concerning the user interface.
We did it! We submitted our first scientific paper to a conference. Our target conference is the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) which will take place at Hawaii (obviously a very nice location 
) between May 21st and May 28th 2011. The competition is more than tough – we expect an acceptance rate around 10 per cent. Thus, we consider our paper more or less a “stunt”: high risk, but potentially high rewards.
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