The whole world is our laboratory! Tens of thousands of real people just like you are using experimental mobile applications designed by faculty and student researchers in the the GVSU Mobile Applications and Services Lab. By installing and using our apps on your smartphone, you are helping MASL researchers better understand how mobile technology can be responsibly applied to improve the quality of our daily lives. Currently deployed apps are listed and described below. Click on the launch icons for more information. There are a number of additional applications currently under development at the moment, so please check back frequently!
Art at GVSU
“Art at GVSU” is a free mobile application for the iPhone that provides access to the more than 10,000 pieces of art in the university’s collection. Development of applications for the iPad, Android and other mobile devices are underway. Features include geo-location for artworks makes it easy to browse and find art on campus, bookmark your favorites, and full social-media integration. You can also take a number of virtual tours, featuring favorite art works on various GVSU campuses. The app is a free download on the Apple App Store for iOS devices and in the Google Play Store for Android devices.
ParabolaX
ParabolaX is an educational math game designed to help middle and high school students learn about quadratic equations. There is a study mode to help you understand how the product of two linear lines forms a parabola. Once you have understood this there are three fun mini-games that help reinforce the concepts. One of the games uses gestures as input, so you need to wave the device to guess the orientation of the parabola. The other two games use the touch screen to enable you to draw an approximate solution to the presented problem. This app was a joint effort involving the GVSU School of Computing and the GVSU Department of Mathematics. You can download it from the Apple App Store.
Shop Social
Shop Social is an experimental just-in-time retail shopping application that makes it easier for shoppers to share and elicit product feedback from their Facebook friends. Simply scan a product’s UPC code using your smart phone and Shop Social will intelligently locate a variety of informative rich media (videos, photos, etc) relevant to the product scanned. By providing this information to just in time, via smartphones, shoppers are able to form a better opinion about the product’s suitability and potential for them. Shop Social also supports QR codes, making it one of the most comprehensive and useful barcode scanning apps available for your smartphone. Shop Social is available for free download on the Apple AppStore as well as on the Android Market. Read more.
GVSU Laker Mobile
Join 15,000 other Lakers in the GVSU community currently using GVSU’s official mobile app, designed specifically for our community on campus and beyond. Browse the latest GVSU news, sports events. Scan the campus twitter zeitgeist to find out what’s happening, and navigate your way around campus using interactive maps on your mobile. Watch live campus webcams. Use the campus directory to look up your friends email/phone information and dial with a single touch. The application is available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It is also available on the Google Google Play Store for Android phones and on the Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone devices. Read more.
Forest Hills Foods Mobile
The official Forest Hills Foods Mobile app. Be the first to find out about great deals at Forest Hills Foods, share coupons with your friends, get help quickly locating products in the store. Do all this and more, from your Android smart phone! This app is the result of a year long collaboration between MASL researchers and FHF staff. The collaboration has given our lab a much deeper understanding of how bricks and mortar retailing really works and how mobile technology can be applied to address common user pain points in the typical grocery retail situation. In particular, the FHF mobile app is helping us better understand the impact on asynchronous alerts on user engagement, and also the problem of locating products in-store. Get it from the Android Market.
The Gilmore Collection Mobile App
The official Gilmore Collection mobile app. The Gilmore Collection restaurants are among the finest in the West Michigan area, with fresh seasonal menu items from local purveyors, farms and the like. The app will help you and explore the many restaurants across the collection. You can browse menus, share your favorite restaurant with your friends on Facebook, and checkin via FourSquare to take advantage of the various specials each restaurant offers. MASL researchers have worked closely with the Gilmore’s creative team on the application experience and are interested in your feedback. The Gilmore app is providing MASL the opportunity to study the impact of mobile proximity checkin services on user engagement. Get it from the Apple iTunes AppStore.
Course Projects
The following Android apps were written by GVSU students who have taken Dr. Engelsma’s Mobile Application Development course:
Hat-trick
By Andres Solano. Hat-trick is a simple Math game, where you are going to look for a number inside the matrix of numbers with square shape. The user must select 3 consecutive numbers vertical, horizontal or diagonally to find the number, the first 2 numbers will be multiplied and the last one added or subtracted from the result of the first 2. If all the operations gives the value of the number you were looking for you will receive points. The game ends once you finish the whole list of numbers to search and the time is up. Have fun. Get the app.
Movie Manager
By Zak Kubicek. Movie Manager is a movie inventory app. It allows users to add movies from their personal movie collection to the app. Users can view information about those movies without the need of storing all of that movie data on the device. Movie Manager is currently in a beta period with further enhancements soon to follow. Get the app.
AQ Mobile
By Victoria Fleenor. This application is designed for Aquinas students, staff, faculty, alumni, and any other parties interested in news and events regarding Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. Check out campus maps, the bus schedule, campus tweets, watch videos, etc.
Get the app.
Next Best Song
By Jace Browning. You’ve heard an artist’s singles… now listen to their NextBestSong. This app will help you discover any songs on your device that you may have overlooked or help you navigate through an artist’s unheard songs. Using Last.fm data, this app will align the most popular songs by an artist with the songs on your device. When listening to music in the Android music player, simply launch this app to jump to the “next best song” by the current artist. When it’s done, your music will resume playing right where it left off. Get the app.
PrayerCard
By Keith Chappelow. This Android application will help you keep track of prayer concerns and assist you during your prayer time. Use this application while you are praying to help you remember concerns and things to pray about. Using this app can help you fulfill your promise to “pray for you”. Get the app.
SunBlocker
By Jeff DeWitt. Keep a good day in the sun a good day! SunBlocker is designed to help busy people prevent sunburn and heat illness while playing in the sun. All you have to do is enter a username and pick a skin type. Locations can be manually entered or retrieved via GPS. SunBlocker then gets the UV forecast for that location and will tell you the maximum safe time you have in the sun before getting sunburned. Then set an alarm to remind you to re-apply sunblock based on the manufacturers recommendation and you’re all set. SunBlocker also gets current weather from your closest National Weather Service Weather Station and calculates the current heat index. It then recommends a maximum interval between water breaks while playing hard. Set reminders to take breaks to hydrate to help prevent heat stress and dehydration. Get the app.
RepoMan
By Kevin Formsma. RepoMan is a free code repository manager for Bitbucket and Github. RepoMan allows you to keep up-to-date with code changes for your favorite projects. Search for public repositories or track your own private repos all in one interface. Get the app.
Movie Madness
By Ramya Gunda. Movie Madness app is everything you want to know about movies and more. This app lets you search for movies and view all the details of that movie, including trailers, cast, runtime, story, rating and suggests similar movies. It is even voice activated that recognizes words and gives the search details for the movie specified or recognizes other options such as box office, my favorites, upcoming, opening this week, and in theaters. These can also be selected through main screen menu. You can add movies to your favorites list and email that list to a friend. You can share your opinion on a movie through facebook, twitter, sms, or email. You can also create a widget that shows the top box office movie currently.
Get the app.
ReciPal
By Kevin Guyot. ReciPal allows you to create, share, rate, search and store recipes locally on your device. Storing the recipes locally allows access to your recipes even without being connected to the Internet.
You can share recipes by bumping your devices together via the integrated Bump API. Recipes are currently searchable by the name of the recipe. If you ever are at a lost for what to cook, when viewing all your recipes you can shake the device and it will randomly choose a recipe for you. Get the app.
AirYarde
By Matt Shirilla. WifiYarde tracks the strength of your Wi-Fi signal over time, helping you compare your Wi-Fi experience at different places and networks. Click the start button on the main screen to start recording changes in signal strength. Check your surf the web or use your favorite app while WifiYarde is working. Switch back to WifiYarde when you want to check the stats. You will see what your signal is like today compared to other Wi-Fi connections, places and times. Get the app.
