Legal Considerations

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Neil Amos

There is a veritable minefield of legal questions and factors around a project such as Small World. Legislation has evolved in the area of privacy and the legality of the collection of individual’s data online. The European Union has been at the forefront of legislating for the protection of users privacy, the 2002 Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive set the tone for the role of government in the balance between individual’s privacy and the needs of brands and other data collection bodies (Goldfarb, Tucker, 2010). Indeed the EU has become the global leader in the development of stringent legal constraints to advertising and on data collection that impinges on individual freedoms. The US has also introduced much legislation that could impact on Small World’s business model, the E-Government Act (2002) set the bar for protection of government data and this has been followed by legislation specific to the storage of individual data.
Small World is inevitably conceived within the parameters of such constraints as its business models requires the use of individual’s data to sell advertising and fund the growth of the network. As such any work in this area has to be carefully undertaken and must conform with legislation. The difference in regional approaches to data protection is an important consideration and could become very complicated in a potentially global network.
Small World has to be mindful of:
-Where Data is stored and the legal implications of this, e.g. the geographic location of servers and data vaults and the implications for data assurance.
-Regional or national differences in data protection, conformity to legal requirements and government policies on surveillance or freedom of information.
-The use of tracking cookies and other methods of collating data and the legal constraints on this.
-The rights of individuals to see the information held about them.
It is perhaps wise to conform to the strictest of legislative frameworks and then adapt them to local markets where appropriate. Small World should be an ethical custodian of data and work towards that development of policies that protect individuals and store data in a responsible way. In this environment trust is key and should be a big factor in the development of our brand and our corporate identity. Small World should commit to prioritising conformity with legislation and factor in the cost of compliance with any business strategy.

References
Goldfarb A, Tucker C (2010), Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising, Management Science, Vol.57, No.1, pp.57-71.

Architectural Design

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Awezan

For our project we proposed 3 tier MVC architecture. The reason for proposing MVC is that gives data the ability to change independently and allows presentation of the same data in different ways (Pressman, 2010). With 3-layered architecture gives more secure accessing to data and authentication can be enabled in each layer (Sommerville, 2010). We believe that merging MVC with 3 Layered architecture gives more secure and enhance reuse functionality.

References:

Sommerville, I. (2010) Software Engineering >INTERNATIONAL EDITION <. 9th edn. Harlow: Pearson Education (US)

Pressman (2000) Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach (McGraw-Hill International Editions: Compute… 5th edn. United States: McGraw Hill Higher Education

Requirements Gathering Survey

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Muna Al Abri

A study of what Small.World should include was planned using one of the fact finding techniques which is a questionnaire. Survey is the most common technique for gathering user requirements. Please find the survey the team designed for this purpose here.

The survey was planned to be distributed online using Google Forms and to a population sample of 50 people. Due to certain complications with Ergo which is the Ethical Committee in Southampton, the survey didn’t get the approval to be distributed. The team is recommending to use the survey as a future step to gather user requirements.

Project Process

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Miroslaw Jaroszak

This portfolio is a result of following certain process methodologies. As with more traditional approach, the team roles were clearly defined and most of the tasks were allocated at the start of the project. A project plan with milestones was also prepared.

The processes of developing the portfolio and designing our social network have had several elements of prototyping, one of the popular prescriptive (traditional) methods:

Going through multiple iterations in order to provide finished work
Discovering new stakeholder’s requirements with each iteration
Response to feedback from our mentor, who acted effectively as our Client

The Prototyping Paradigm (Pressman, R.S., 2010)

However, we have also incorporated some strong agile components to it, such as:

Frequent and regular meetings as a group (on weekly basis) plus extra meetings in subgroups (e.g. graphic designers) as appropriate but also informal Facebook conversations
Regular meetings with our mentor
Spare meeting times used for brainstorming and free circulation of ideas
Balancing workload, requirements and product features in order to meet the deadlines
Role flexibility: while everyone had their role assigned, team members were able to support each other in areas outside their core responsibilities

References

Pressman, R.S., 2010. Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach 7th ed., London: McGraw-Hill.

Task Allocation

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Muna Al Abri

The team worked on Small.World utilised the team different backgrounds and skills. the tasks were broken into:

1- system analysis and design: Miro, Muna, Awezan and Jean
2- Economic aspects: Neil
3-Legal aspects: Neil
4- Social aspects: Muna, Miro and Ed
5-Graphic design: Ed and Muna
6-Blog management: Muna, Miro and Jean

Here are some screenshots of the team discussions through Facebook and document management through Google Drive.

with these organisational tools and a clear plan the work was smooth and enjoyable.

Project Schedule-Gantt Chart

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Awezan

We made use of Gantt Chart to manage the requirements of the project. Besides we met weekly to assure the progress of the plan. Also, between the weekly meetings we used facebook group to communicate and support each other. Lastly, Google Drive was used for the tasks that was developed by more than one memeber of the team so that they can work on it in parallel. The reason of using the mentioned tools and techniques was the familiarity of the team with them. So that to work on the tasks immediately without wasting time to learn new tools to communicate.

Version Control and Development Languages

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Jingyuan Li

Version Control

We opted to use Git for our version control. This decision was made because Git is by
far the most widely-used and documented option.

We used SourceTree to manage our Git repositories. It has an extremely helpful
graphical user interface, and excellent GitFlow functionality.

Development Languages

There were various options for programming languages that could be used in the
project such as ASP.NET, PHP and JAVA EE. Even though each framework is
well-developed and has a wide range objects and libraries, PHP was chosen. This is
because PHP easily integrates with HTML and CSS and it is easy to host. (DuBois,2015)
MySQL was chosen over an Oracle relational database management system because
it is open source and has a very good support.

Moreover, it was decided that the JSON format will be used to transmit the structured
data between the server and web application. It was decided that the UML will be used
to visualize and therefore understand better, the relationships between different
components of the system.

References:
DuBois, MB 2015, ‘Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5: a step-by-step guide to creating dynamic Websites. 3rd ed’, Choice: Current Reviews For Academic Libraries, 52, 5, p. 845, Supplemental Index, EBSCOhost, viewed 29 April 2015.

Let’s Get Rid of All That Noise

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Miroslaw Jaroszak

Everybody using any of the large social network services has probably experienced the following problem on many occasions: browsing tons of posts filled in with “funny” cat memes, short videos of “hilarious” fails and other social media garbage just to read one or two really interesting posts written in your friend’s own words and view that one photo from their last week’s wedding.

Social network noise is becoming a phenomenon that drags many users towards niche services. In fact, there is a strong trend towards filtering the content circulating within social networks.

Here are two articles published this year:

Jynx: A social network that nixes everyone you disagree with written by Anthony Domanico refers to a fictional social network envisioned by comedians. While in the real world no one wants to go as far as to create a network only for those who we totally agree with on everything (we’d probably end up having many 1-member social networks), the issue pointed out is clear: we need more personalised and accurate content.
Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network by Natasha Loams is in turn an article about the real attempt to create a garbage-free social network called Nattch. Its members are encouraged to post only the content that’s directly related to their life. It is more a good practice that Nattch members shall not post any random stuff. However, this is not a form of censorship but rather the community rule to keep the user input high quality and relevant.

Small.World is built with simplicity and relevance in mind from the start so it follows this trend in a way, making it an outstanding experience comparing to major social networks. It allows members to share only content that’s relevant to them, their friends and the places they are, i.e. only the photos taken and videos recorded right on their devices, no more random YouTube videos.

References

Domanico, A., 2015. Jynx: A Social Network that Nixes Everyone You Disagree with. CBS Interactive Inc. Available at: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/jynx-is-a-social-network-that-removes-everyone-you-disagree-with/ [Accessed April 22, 2015].
Lomas, N., 2015. Nattch Wants To Sell A Distraction-Free Social Network. AOL Inc. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/11/nattch/ [Accessed April 27, 2015].

Location Determining via SMS

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Miroslaw Jaroszak

Imagine two still not so unusual situations:

Your friend on Small.World has our mobile app open and wants to contact you but has no Internet access for the time being. You may be in the same position.
Your friend has the app open but no Internet access. They want to know where you are at the moment. Luckily, you do have web connection and they have offline maps. But again, what about your exact location they need to know right now?

Well, Small.World has a solution for such cases: the good old Short Message Service (SMS) protocol. Sending text messages is built in Small.World (subject to network provider fees) so you don’t have to leave our app, go to your phonebook and find the right person in order to send a text. You just send straight from our app.Below we show how it works from the technical viewpoint:

SMS can also be used to share your location with someone who’s offline at the moment. In Small.World you can choose an option to share your location via text. This will send an SMS with geocoordinates to your friend. And those long decimal numbers will be automatically converted by Small.World into a map location.

References

Brown, J., Shipman, B. & Vetter, R., 2007. SMS: The Short Message Service. Computer, 40(12).
Jensen, K., 2011. How to Send Text Messages with PHP. Envato Pty Ltd. Available at: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-send-text-messages-with-php–net-17693 [Accessed April 27, 2015].