The Behavio Team is Now Part of Google!

One final piece of good news in a very eventful week: 

We are very excited to announce that the Behavio team is now part of Google!

First things first - we as individuals will continue to maintain and develop the Funf open source project, in case you were concerned.

Following is the full announcement posted on the Behavio site:

The Behavio Team is Now Part of Google!

We are very excited to announce that the Behavio team is now a part of Google! At Behavio, we have always been passionate about helping people better understand the world around them. We believe that our digital experiences should be better connected with the way we experience the world, and we couldn't be happier to be able to continue building out our vision within Google.

We would like to thank all of you who have followed and supported us and our work over the past few years -- from academia, through our open source project, and into our work at Behavio. In addition, we would like to express our appreciation to the Knight Foundation as well as the organizers and judges of the SXSW Accelerator, who believed in our vision and in us, and gave us the push that started the wild and amazing ride of the past year. Finally, thanks to all of you who have given us your advice, your support and, most valuably, your time.

In the comings days we will be shutting down our closed alpha program. Going forward, we will continue to maintain the Funf open source project, and look forward to working on exciting things within Google.

-The Behavio Team

Announcing Funf Version 0.4!

The Behavio team is very happy to announce a major version update to Funf, our open source mobile sensing framework, accompanied by respective updates to Funf’s two user-facing components (Funf Journal and Funf In A Box).

In the time since our last major version update (Funf 0.3) last year, we’ve had a chance to see how the framework has been used by developers and end users. In addition, we compiled our own “to do” list of features that didn’t make it into the 0.3 release.

Our high level goals for Funf 0.4 were to increase reliability and performance, as well as minimize effort for the developer. This last part includes both developers who are using the standard Funf API and Android library to build apps, as well as developers working on their own probes and extending the Funf framework at the lower levels (a “probe” is the basic component type in Funf which is responsible for sensing or detecting some type of data, and reporting it to software clients who requested the information. Funf 0.4 comes with 38 built-in probes!)

Most of the changes in this release are under the hood. It is a major release, and as such it breaks some compatibility with Funf 0.3 based apps.

The following diagram illustrates the high-level structure of the updated Funf architecture:

Funf phone-side architecture: high-level

Key updates:

• Funf now runs as a single service instead of a service per probe.
• Internal communication now implemented using internal function calls in the same JVM rather than inter-process communications. 
• Probes: Probe data exchange re-architected to use a GSON/JSON implementation.
• Pipelines: Generalized pipeline interface.
• Configuration: Extensive redesign of the configuration process
• Time normalization improvements. In particular, added ability to set configuration values of less than 1 second.
• Added dependency to modified Gson 2.1 library (see downloads page)
• Bug fixes.

For additional details see the detailed 0.4 release overview.

If you’re a user of Funf Journal, Funf In A Box, or any other Funf-based app that has been upgraded to version 0.4, you’ll enjoy higher stability and reliability out of the box.

           

Funf Journal: New version and updated look

We’ve also refreshed the look of Funf Journal to match the Android style guide, and tested it with devices running up to Android 4.2 Jellybean.

For all components, please let us know if you find any issues with this release.

Finally, as Funf was also just accepted to Google's Summer of Code program, if you are a student and interested in spending the summer contributing to Funf (and being paid by Google), you should consider applying.

We hope you enjoy Funf and find it useful!

Funf is officially launched!

Today is a double celebration for us: the official (and initial) release of the Funf Open Sensing Framework open sourced codebase, and at the same time, the launch of the Funf Journal app on on the Android market!

What is Funf?

The Funf Open Sensing Framework is an extensible sensing and data processing framework for mobile devices. The core concept is to provide an open source, reusable set of functionalities, enabling the collection, uploading, and configuration of a wide range of data types. This application is being developed by the Human Dynamics research group at the MIT Media Lab, and leverages our experience in developing and deploying social and behavioral sensing applications for mobile devices.

What is Funf Journal?

Funf Journal is an Android application for researchers, self-trackers, and anyone interested in collecting and exploring information related to the mobile device, its environment, and its user's behavior. It is built using the Funf framework and makes use of many of its built-in features.

Why Are We Doing This? (Read: Motivation)

As truly ubiquitous wearable computers, today’s mobile phones are quickly becoming the primary source for social, behavioral, and environmental sensing and data collection. Phone-based sensor data is used for enabling a broad range of research projects and application domains: research in areas of health and wellness, environmental sensing, sociological and psychological investigations, support for disaster and crisis response, as well as event triggers that can be used for building richer and more personalized mobile experiences, are just a few examples for uses of this kind of data.

Google’s Android platform has allowed researchers and developers to do more things with mobile devices than ever before. However, there is still a great gap between having API calls for accessing on-phone sensors and information, to having a "deployable" system or an end user application that fully utilizes this access. There are many additional components that need to exist for enabling this, which we had already built and deployed in the field during a 15 month long living laboratory deployment during 2010-11. Such additional components include, for example, specialized mechanisms for privacy preserving data collection (e.g. hashing human readable text so that its useful for scientific analysis but does not expose the original information), delay tolerant communication with a backend server (data collected locally when server not available, and uploaded in background whenever users connect to the network), “smart” data collection that maximizes battery life, ability to remotely configure the data collection settings, option to push software updates remotely, encrypting data files on the SD card for added protection, and so on.

Rather than having different developers and research teams re-invent the wheel, we are aiming to share the tools and experience we have already gained through our past deployments, and turn our system into an open source framework for researchers, developers, and end-users. We hope to foster a community around these ideas, where new development efforts would go towards extending a common platform rather than creating redundant functionality.

Looking Forward

Remember, this is just the first release of both the app and the framework. This means both are still in beta stage, and there are bound to be quirks and kinks - so  your feedback (and patience) are greatly appreciated. We also have a lot in store as far as features and capabilities, and you'll be seeing more of these in upcoming versions, so stay tuned. We are planning to release early and often, and we are looking forward to your comments and suggestions!