Research And Implementation Of Mobile Phone Whiteboard Based On J2ME

Whiteboard is one of important interactive tools based on graphics in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). It supports multiple users at different places interact by PCs. However, traditional whiteboard tools are difficult to be used directly for smart phones, since such tools needs higher bandwidth, more complex capabilities and user interfaces that can not be supported by current smart phones. Therefore, a multi-user whiteboard system, mobile whiteboard (mWB), is designed and implemented to facility the interaction based on graphics for smart phones.We first study the fundamental of CSCW and methods to design groupware;then compare and analyze several famous mobile application developing platforms, especially the methods and the flow of application developing on J2ME;finally, design and implement the mWB prototype. The key skills and difficulties of implementing the system are discussed in this paper. The system mWB comprise two parts: server and client sides. The server is implemented based on J2SE and runs on a PC. We use Java multi-thread technology to concurrently deal with the requests of different users, optimistic-lock mechanism to deal with conflicts introduced by multi-user and Polymorphism Pattern to dispatch messages. The clients are implemented based on J2ME and run on smart phones. Making use of XML and socket, the marshaling/un-marshaling and the transport of complex message objects are implemented. We use multi-thread technology to concurrently process messages sent by server and the inputs from users.We introduce CSCW into mobile application development. A whiteboard system, mWB, based on J2ME for mobile phones is designed and implemented. This system has been proved to be feasible and effective through an experiment in simulative circumstances. This study is practicable. It extends the capabilities of mobile phone applications and offers a basic tool for further development of mobile phone applications...