Presentation give on the Mobile Campus Assistant software and MyMobileBristol project at "Open Source Junction: cross-platform mobile apps", 30 March 2011, Trinity College, Oxford
2. Institute for Learning and Research
Technology (ILRT)
Established in 1996
~50 staff working in R&D,
consultancy, support and
services
Strong history of innovation
Expertise in web application development, semantic
web, linked data, mobile technologies, social software
and data visualisation
3. Background
JISC funded ‘Rapid Innovation’ project
6 Month project with 1.1 FTEs
Developed between August to November, 2009
Software available under a BSD-style license
10. RSS XML HTML
Harvest
Harvester(s)
Update
RDF Store
Harvesting data sources
11. RSS XML HTML
Harvest
JSON
HTML RDF
Harvester(s)
Restful Interface
Update
Query
RDF Store
Querying the data store
12. RSS XML HTML
Harvest
JSON
HTML RDF
Proxy
Harvester(s)
Restful Interface Proxy
Update
Query
RDF Store
If all else fails ... screen scrape
13. RSS XML HTML
Harvest
JSON
HTML RDF KML Proxy
Harvester(s)
SPARQL
Restful Interface Endpoint Proxy
Update
Query
RDF Store
SPARQL Endpoint and Geo support
14. RSS XML HTML
Harvest
JSON
HTML RDF KML Proxy
Harvester(s)
SPARQL
Restful Interface Endpoint Proxy
Update
Query Query
Library
LDAP System ? RDF Store
Extensible RESTful interface
29. MyMobileBristol
A collaborative platform composed of mailing lists,
wiki, blog and source code repository.
A demonstrator installed at the University of Bristol.
Stakeholder engagement and workshops.
30. MyMobileBristol
‘Open Innovation’ project funded by JISC under their
Business and Community Engagement
Running from July 2010 to August 2011
Collaboration with Bristol City Council
Council have released data under the B-Open initiative
Looking at releasing transport data
31. Some Feedback
Love this
application. thanks for
the work
Really good ... Great work!
Much needed.
32. “It’s the data, stupid”
The data is a web page
The data is incomplete
You can’t have the data
You can have the data if you pay
The data has a commercial license
33. Is it on the App store?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jima/3435396513/
We provide a traditional website, portal and web applications for traditional desktop browsers.\nPhones are very popular. Smart phones are getting more popular.\nFeature phones have better features. [STATS?]\nWhat kind of time and location sensitive application can we make for students?\n
What resources are open across the University?\n
... also, where can I find a wireless hotspot?\n
Information about transport. Where can I leave my bicycle?\n
Should we provide a mobile website or provide a native application that could be distributed via an app store. Both solutions possibles from an expertise point of view. Expertise in Java for Android or Blackberry. Objective-C for iPhone. HTML/CSS/JavaScript for PhoneGap and Titanium. Strong background in developing web applications.\n
We opted for a Mobile Web solution. Initial use cases showed that we needed geo-location information. \nThis was available via the browser. No need to access camera, contacts list, filesystem etc.\nLIVE DEMO?\n
We didn’t want to provide a new CMS. Harvest and aggregate information if possible.\nEasy data sources: RSS, Atom, XML, HTML - create a pipeline to convert to RDF.\nRDF makes it easy to be flexible with the data model.\n
First version: Provides a RESTful interface. Returns HTML for mobile browsers.\nJSON or RDF - could be used by other clients, such as native applications.\nQueries the RDF with SPARQL queries - pushes HTML views via a template language.\n
Some things we can’t harvest, like live bus departure times. We’d proxy and do live screen scraping.\n
Recent developments. Added better geo support. Geo data stored in the RDF store.\nQueries its own restful service to get the data as JSON and displayed in a map.\nCan also provide KML.\nAlso added a SPARQL endpoint to query the data store (not used in production)\n
JAX-RS provides a modular way to add support for other services.\nRecently added support for LDAP. Will soon add the Library Catalogue.\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
H2 - database used to store data. Can plugin other RDBMS.\nJena - provides framework for managing and encapsulating RDF\nJersey - REST. Handles content negotiation and data serialisation.\nFreeMarker - template language used in HTML creation\nMaven - used for build and dependency management\nCreates a ~23MB WAR file that can be deployed on a JEE servlet like Tomcat\n
A standards-based solution.\nCurrently output as XHTML. No reason not to move over to HTML 5.\n
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Greening events investigated approaches to minimise the environmental impact of academic events.\n
Greening events investigated approaches to minimise the environmental impact of academic events.\n
Greening events investigated approaches to minimise the environmental impact of academic events.\n
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2020 strategy. smart city. innovation as a driver / not silver bullet.\nintegrated transport data difficult in a de-regulated city.\n
Request for timetable access, access to library catalogue\n
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Students do ask if it is available as an app.\nWorries that there is no presence on the app store\n
