Multiuser Mobile Multimedia Daniel C. Doolan, Sabin Tabirca Department of Computer Science University College Cork Ireland {d.doolan, s.tabirca}@cs.ucc.ie Laurence T. Yang Department of Computer Science St. Francis Xavier University Antigonish, NS B2G 2W5, Canada lyang@stfx.ca Abstract Mobility especially the flexibility given to us by the mo- bile phone is the future of computing as we know it. No longer are we restricted to sitting at a desk in front of a pow- erful desktop machine. Mobile technology of today allows users to work, learn and play no matter where they may be. Wireless technology is becoming more and more a standard feature of computing, so much so that it is expected that ap- proximately two billion Bluetooth enabled devices will have been produced by the end of 2007. This paper examines how Bluetooth application development may be simplified for the programmer by use of the Mobile Message Passing Interface (MMPI). It explores a selection of application ar- eas that can benefit from this simplified means of wireless inter-device communication, including: compute intensive tasks, Mobile Learning and Multi-player gaming. 1. Introduction The demand for mobile technology is phenomenal. In 2005 world wide mobile phone sales outstripped personal computers by a ratio of approximately 4:1, with in excess of 800 million phones shipped [14]. The current demand in the world today puts the annual sales of mobile phones at approximately one billion devices per year. The major- ity of medium to high end phones come Bluetooth enabled as standard. People are no longer happy with owning just one mobile phone, this is clearly represented with Europe having an average market penetration level of 111% for the year ending 2006 [7]. Luxembourg has been the European leader in the demand for mobile technology for some years now, featuring a record high of 156% penetration in 2005, surprisingly this figure dropped to 138% in 2006. These av- erages are greater than the European average for personal computers, standing at just 59%. Just a few short years ago the mobile phone was a device designed solely for the purposes of voice communication, and has evolved to include additional dimensions such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, and integrated cam- eras. Mobile phones are no longer just simple communica- tion tools but complex devices that have significant compu- tational potential. More and more do we see mobile phones used for entertainment (gaming), while the introduction of digital television has opened up new avenues of usage. Such developments are reliant on the continual improve- ment of the processing and power usage attributes of the mobiles of today. Many off the shelve phones run with pro- cessor speeds of 100 to 220Mhz (Nokia 6630, 6680) [13] [17]. October 2005 saw the announcement of the Cortex- A8 [3][4] running at 1Ghz, such is the potential tomorrow’s mobile devices. The release of the Apple iPhone (June 2007) [2] has her- alded a new era in mobile computing. A key feature is the removal of the traditional button based keyboard in favor for a touch sensitive onscreen keyboard. It also sports the Mac OS/X operating system. New ways of interacting with the devices are becoming ever more popular, thanks to the ad- dition of additional sensor technology. Phones such as the Nokia 5500 Sport include an accelerometer allowing fitness buffs to monitor their progress. Similar devices also feature in the iPhone to allow the screen to display in portrait or landscape mode based on the devices orientation. Much of present day research on mobile interaction is focused on the new means of data input by the addition of additional sensors [19] [18] [22] from accelerometers and gyroscopes to compass and temperature sensors. The inte- gration of GPS chips allow for far more accurate tracking of user positions over cell network triangulation. The mo- bile of tomorrow could very well be more akin to the “Tri- corders” of Star Trek that appeared on screen as science fic- tion not too long ago. Very soon one will be unable to tell the difference between phone, PDA and personal computer, as they will all have similar capabilities in terms of the array of applications that may be executed on them. On several Star Trek episodes when the main computers weren’t functioning it has been said that “we could always