Wiki-based mobile services: Master's Thesis

Wikis are widely used nowadays, both in private and in public, with personal computers and web browsers. However, many web-based wikis are not accessible by a mobile browser as such, as this experimental research implies. Both wikis and blogs are considered to be Web 2.0 services, which are briefly presented. Mobile Web 2.0 is presented as a derivative of the term Web 2.0 in addition to unique features, such as only a mobile device can have. This research studies wiki technology in mobile terminals. The purpose of this research is to examine how suitable the existing wiki technology is for use in mobile devices such as mobile phones. The strengths and weaknesses of wiki technology are also examined, especially from a mobile device’s perspective. In addition, the integrated use of wiki technology and Near Field Communication, NFC, is discussed in this research. This study also presents the implementation of an example service based on wiki and NFC technologies. The wiki in question is based on an existing wiki engine, but its graphical design has been modified to serve the requirements of mobile browsers. The resulting wiki is called MyMoWiki, which stands for My Mobile Wiki. In this study the wiki is used in a restaurant scenario, where user of a NFC-enabled mobile Internet device can make a table reservation, order food, give feedback, read a restaurant’s blog and check contact information. The functionality of the resulting wiki was tested with various web browsers in different mobile devices. The result of this research is that a wiki engine could be modified for information sharing purposes in mobile phones, although current mobile web browsers have several functional limitations compared to browsers of the desktop-PC environment. Thus for actual use the MyMoWiki needs further development.