Profs Debut Android Measurement App

Two Assistant Professors, based in the US and Japan, have developed an app which collects information anonymously from Android users using a daily pop-up survey.

Assistant Professor Jeffrey Boase (right) of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and his research colleague Tetsuro Kobayashi (left) from Tokyo's National Institute for Informatics from Japan have named their app 'Communication Explorer'. The tool works by recording users' answers to one initial survey and then from a daily pop-up survey. After this, the app records times, dates, and types of communication, as well as details of who the users are contacting using anonymous identifiers.

All the data is completely encrypted, and the two developers say that the tool will not only be helpful for researchers, but may also be of interest to any early adopter or person who is intrigued by their own communication habits and the behaviors of smart phone users at large.

'You won't be able to know who has used the app but you will be able to know that, say, on average users sent 10 texts per day while you send 20,' Boase explains. 'You'll have a sense of how your habits compare with people generally.'

Kobayashi adds: 'We are pretty sure that this app will expand the methodological possibilities.' The app is downloadable here.

Web sites: www.rutgers.edu and www.nii.ac.jp .