Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
No resolution services are needed, as the browser
available in the mobile phone can directly access
the URL transferred from the tag. In this chapter,
we explore the usage scenario where a URL is
transferred from the tag to the mobile phone. It is
important to note, however, that the tag can store
other formats of data too, such as phone numbers.
For example, Sony FeliCa has succeeded in
bringing electronic presence to objects in the
physical world. “FeliCa” is Sony's implementation
of NFC and thus fully compliable with the NFC
standard (NTT DoCoMo, 2010). Japan's mobile
operator NTT DoCoMo sells mobile phones that
have a built-in IC chip. This built-in chip is able
to emulate FeliCa contactless smart cards. Mobile
phones embedded with a FeliCa IC chip are known
as “Osaifu Keitai” (means of mobile wallet) by
NTT DoCoMo, and mobile phones equipped with
those chips can be used as electric money, train
tickets, identifications, door keys and so on. Today
those chips are embedded in 62 million mobile
phones, putting NFC-like capability into the
pockets of more than half of subscribers in Japan.
Sony recently showed an array of novel uses for
its FeliCa contactless technology (NFC Times,
2010), including for example FeliCa-enabled
television remote controls to pay for video on
demand, FeliCa-embedded glucose meters and
pedometers, and “data handover” applications
that would enable users to sync photos, music and
other big files among their phones, PCs, cameras
and other devices with FeliCa chips inside.
Reducing the number of key presses required
to access and use Mobile Internet content has been
found to be a one of the key principles in making
the Mobile Internet more usable (Buchanan et al.,
2001; Kamvar & Baluja 2006). The effort needed
to enter a word on a cell phone keypad is more
than double that required to enter the same word
on a full QWERTY keyboard (Kamvar & Baluja
2006). With touch-based Mobile Internet access,
the user does not necessarily need to use the keypad
at all. This makes Mobile Internet access easier
and faster for all users, and is especially valuable
for those who cannot use the small keypad of a
mobile phone because of limited vision or poor
hand-eye coordination (for example, the visually
impaired or elderly), or for reasons of illiteracy (for
example, very small children). NFC technology
can be used to implement Mobile Internet access
requiring no keypad use, or reading of the display.
This has proved especially valuable with elderly
users (Häikiö et al., 2007).
In a research paper by Rukzio et al., (2004) it
was established that finding services in a given
context is one of the central issues that needs
to be addressed in order to create useful mobile
services. A significant problem is that the discov-
ery process of location-based and context-aware
services is left to the user alone. In order to solve
this problem, the user needs to be made aware of
the availability of these services, for example by
means of different kinds of visual codes (Rukzio
et al., 2004).
Mobile Internet Access Challenges
RESEARCH METHODS
The expected main benefit of touch-based Mobile
Internet access is that the user does not need to
type or remember the URL needed to access the
Mobile Internet content. Other solutions to this
problem explored by previous studies include,
for example, context-sensitive search (Church &
Smyth, 2008) and adaptive content push (Beaver
et al., 2006).
The research question explored in this chapter
deals with existing technology (touch-based
interaction enabled by NFC technology) that is
commercially available, but not yet widely used
in the market. Therefore, to get access to user
experiences evoked in normal everyday use, we
chose to use field trials. In the trials, selected
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