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means of expression. As described in [
43
], gestures are used for everything from
pointing at a person to draw their attention to conveying information about space and
temporal characteristics. Current research on gesture ranges from the recognition of
human body motion (including facial expressions and hand movements) [
7
,
70
]to
pen- and mouse-based research [
57
] and sign language [
10
].
Recently, there have been several researches on applying tangible user interfaces
(TUIs) [
35
] in mobile phones. TUIs are one step ahead of gestures as they need an
interaction from users with real-world elements, which can be applied to several
mobile applications such as gaming [
38
,
48
], social interaction [
44
], and education
[
5
]. These kinds of interfaces allow users to set inputs to mobile applications in a
simple and natural way as they interact with their environment like they do when
they are not using any mobile device.
There exist several other direct inputs for mobile phones, including speech-
based ones [
24
,
34
,
51
,
54
], text-based [
12
,
13
,
20
], and several combinations of
methods.
Last generation mobile phones include a set of sensors that allow them to receive
indirect inputs from users. GPS, digital compass, accelerometer, and other sensors
can track the user's position and activities and can be used to make mobile phones
context-aware. Context-aware mobile phones have been used to demonstrate vari-
ous context-adaptive features. For instance, mobile device screen layout orienta-
tion, ring tone, and volume adaptation have been proposed [
25
,
27
]. Location-based
applications are a significant area of interest and have great potential for possible
commercial applications; this is particularly relevant with today's GPS-enabled
mobile devices that include mobile maps. There exist several location-awareness
applications such as tour guides of the city [
4
], campus or museum environments,
shopping assistants, messaging [
60
], and location-sensitive reminders [
21
].
All these input technologies developed for mobile phones allow them to be
converted into effective interfaces to community-built databases. We can upload
our location or the route taken to social networks such as FourSquare, Yelp,
Rummble, Google Buzz, or Runner+ and users can also interact with contents in
social networks in a more natural way and adapt to the mobile experience with
touchable and related interfaces. But all these technologies also empower aug-
mented reality applications, which are perfectly suited to mobile devices and social
contents.
11.5.1.2 Augmented Reality
Augmented reality-based technologies [
6
] are one of the technologies that have had
increased impact on innovative applications [
23
], including applications for mobile
devices [
29
,
31
] in recent years [
69
], since they make use of elements present on
most mobile phones (screen, camera, and sometimes other sensors such as inclin-
ometers and compass) to simplify the tasks related to information access. Hence,
there have emerged quite a number of applications and augmented reality browsers
that include layers of metadata about physical objects that have been geo-tagged,
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