PlaceAware: A Tool for Enhancing Social Interactions in Urban Places

The pervasiveness of mobile devices and short-range wireless networks deployed in urban areas have brought Weiser´s vision of ubiquitous or pervasive computing into reality. The mobile devices weave themselves into urban dwellers´ lives as an undetachable part. In urban places, there are not only people but also their devices´ presence. Interestingly, devices can communicate wirelessly with each other in order to improve people´s interactions. We call this phenomenon place-based virtual community (PBVC), which includes people, devices, and their activities/interactions at the place in time. This paper introduces the PlaceAware application that can be used to enhance people´s social interactions in urban areas. PlaceAware was built on top of the PBVC architecture.