T-106.5820 Seminar on Distributed Systems, Spring 2008 (3-10 cr) VL

PAMP My Phone

 

Seminar topic

PAMP, Personal AMP, is the recent port of the widely used LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) to the mobile phone environment. PAMP allows the development of web sites that are hosted on mobile phones. PAMP allows application development with the mainstream web site development tools, such as with the Drupal content management system.

 

With PAMP the development of novel web based applications for mobile phones should be easy. The possibility to run mobile web site on the mobile phone makes new innovative applications possible. The web site at phone can, for instance, take advantage of the context of the web site or trigger the web site owner into some action. Conventional web sites do not have such possibilities.

 

The target of the seminar is that participants are able to develop innovative PAMP applications.

 

The working language of the seminar (English/Finnish) depends on the participants.

 

The seminar is divided into three phases:

  1. Introductory lectures on PAMP and on the needed skills (PHP programming, CMS application development).
  2. Student projects where participants working independently or in small groups (1-3) will build a demo system, which utilizes the unique characteristics of a website on a personal mobile device. Part of the learning experience is that the students should by themselves find interesting and relevant topics for their demos. Sources for ideas can be hobbies, work, or research interests and the demo can be biased either to the technical direction (e.g. PAMP extensions) or to the application direction. Besides the working demo students should create supporting material for the demo and a short description of the lessons learned in the development.
  3. Demo day where each person/group presents their demo.

 

The intention is to publish the best demos in demo events of technical conferences, for example, in Forum Nokia events. Since PAMP is a brand new platform there is exceptionally high possibility that the results will attract interest in the technical community. Open sourcing the results as well as creating publications based on the work is a possible next step.

 

The number of credits will depend on the scope of the demo.

 

Requirements

No major preliminary requirements. Familiarity with web site development, MySQL, PHP, and content management systems are useful but not mandatory.

 

Background material

PAMP web site http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/PAMP (will be opened after PAMP official launch 10.1.2008)

Mobile web server, http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/mobile-web-server/                  

Rasmus Lerdorf; Kevin Tatroe, ÓProgramming PHPÓ

Seyed M.M. "Saied" Tahaghoghi, Hugh E. Williams, ÒLearning MySQLÓ

 (Electronic versions of these books should be available at TKK library)

 

Enrollment

Students should enroll to the seminar by coming to the first session. The number of students in the course limited to 30

 

Lecturers

Dos. Jukka K. Nurminen (jukka.k.nurminen (at) nokia.com)

Johan Wikman (johan.wikman (at) nokia.com)

 

Schedule

Wed  23.01.2008 16:00 - 18:00, Room T3

Introduction to seminar

Overview and demo of PAMP

Why PAMP is different

 

Wed 30.01.2008 16:00 - 18:00, Room T3 

Tools for PAMP development

PHP programming

Drupal development

 

Wed 06.02.2008 16:00 - 18:00, Room T3

Selection of topics for student projects

 

Weeks 6-16 independent work on student projects. During this phase project workshops will be arranged where students can discuss the problem encountered and get help from their peers and from the instructors as well as test their demos with phone hardware.

 

Wed 20.02.2008 16-18, Room T3

Project workshop

 

Wed 05.03.2008, Room T3

Project workshop

 

Wed 12.03.2008 13:00 - 18:00, Room T3  Intermediate report session

 

Wed 02.04.2008, Room T3

Project workshop

 

Wed 16.04.2008, Room T3

Project workshop

Wed 23.04.2008 14:00 - 19:00, Room T4 Demo session