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RunWithUs: a social sports application in the ubiquitous Oulu environment
Gil-Castiñeira F., Fernández-López A., Bravo C., Cid-Vieytes N., Conde-Lagoa D., Costa-Montenegro E., González-Castane;o F.  MUM 2011 (Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Beijing, China, Dec 7-9, 2011)195-204.2011.Type:Proceedings
Date Reviewed: Apr 24 2012

Ubiquitous environments allow for endless group communication tools. In this paper, a key concept--personal motivation through social well being--is stressed through the RunWithUs social fitness application, developed for the inhabitants of the Finnish city of Oulu. After presenting other state-of-the-art fitness applications that run in the browser or on mobile phones (for example, Endomondo, FitnessKeeper, and MapMyFitness), the authors focus on their main contribution: prototyping an emerging piece of technology in a ubiquitous environment that connects people who are motivated by running together.

The important differentiators are well marked, and the presentation of the application and Web site is very clear in terms of design and implementation. Moreover, by considering the numerous motivation opportunities, the paper includes transparent and measurable goals of the application such as fitness aims, direct and immediate feedback, personal control, sharing, and social awareness.

Another important aspect is the careful review of results concerning 77 joggers and 30 users. Despite the fact that many details of the architecture and structure of the RunWithUs application are included, the authors maintain an overview of the description and point out highly important characteristics such as communication among users in the ubiquitous environment, location determination, Wi-Fi access, hotspots, and real-time position of other runners.

The main contributions of the paper focus on: the use of technology to promote exercise activity, connecting people who practice the same activity, and enhancing community social awareness through sports. Readers can learn about the numerous challenges and solutions provided by a ubiquitous communication environment, which can be applied to other social applications: instant social connections; sports-oriented interest-based groups; and activity tracking.

By taking advantage of the ubiquitous Oulu environment, RunWithUs opens the path for sports applications to enhance social resources, allowing people inhabiting a common environment to share activities and attain common goals.

Reviewer:  George Popescu Review #: CR140084 (1209-0951)
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