Abstract: Location-based applications are one of the most anticipated new
segments of the mobile industry. These new applications are enabled by
GPS-equipped phones (e.g., emergency applications, buddy finders, games,
location-based advertising, etc.). These services are designed to give
consumers instant access to personalized, local content of their immediate
location. Some applications couple LBS with notification services,
automatically alerting users when they are close to a pre-selected destination.
With the advances in the Internet and communications/mobile technology, it
became vital to analyze the effect of such technologies on human
communications. This work studies how humans can construct social networks as a
method for group communications using the available technologies. We
constructed and analyzed a friends network using different parameters. The
parameters that were calculated to analyze the network are the distribution
sequence, characteristic path length, clustering coefficient and centrality
measures. In addition, we built a PDA application that implements the concept
of LBS using two system modules. In the first module, we have developed an
application for entertainment purpose; an application program which enables end
users to send their birth year and get their horoscope in return. The second
part of the project was, to build an application, which helps people to stay in
touch with their friends and family members (Find Friend). It helps users to
find which of their buddies are within the same area they are in.
Keywords: Virtual communities, ubiquitous computing, small world, scale-free network, social networks, GIS system
