Duc Phuong Nguyen

  I studied Bachelor of Computer Science in Vietnam. I obtained my M.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Freiburg, Germany. I am currently a PhD student in the research group of Prof. Burkhart. My research interests include web technologies, mobile computing, mobile learning, and software development. phuong nguyen

  Contact
  Address Computer Science Department, University of Basel
Klingelbergstr 50
CH - 4056 Basel, Switzerland
  Phone + 41 61 267 1472
  Fax + 41 61 267 1461
  Email Phuong.Nguyen@unibas.ch

  Publications
    Duc Phuong Nguyen , Martin Guggisberg, Helmar Burkhart,
"Multimedia Information and Mobile-Learning"
The IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Technologies for E-Learning (MTEL)
held in conjunction with IEEE International Symposium of Multimedia (ISM2006) in San Diego, December, 2006.
  2006 Duc Phuong Nguyen , Martin Guggisberg, Helmar Burkhart,
"CoMobile: Collaborative Learning with Mobile Devices"
The 6th IEEE International Conference on
Advanced Learning Technologies, Kerkrade, The Netherlands, July 2006
    Christian Wattinger, Duc Phuong Nguyen , Peter Fornaro, Martin Guggisberg, Tibor Gyalog, Helmar Burkhart,
"Problem-Based Learning Using Mobile Devices"
The 6th IEEE International Conference on
Advanced Learning Technologies, Kerkrade, The Netherlands, July 2006
  2005 Duc Phuong Nguyen , Christian Kern, Christian Wattinger, Martin Guggisberg, Helmar Burkhart, Peter Maier,
"Software development issues of a distributed M-commerce system"
The 17th IASTED International Conference on
PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING AND SYSTEMS, AZ, Phoenix, November 2005
    Technical report, University of Basel, 2005
"Introduction to Grid computing"
(260KB)
  2004 Master thesis, University of Freiburg, February 2004
"Replay lecture recordings on handheld devices with LARA"
(5.8MB)
  Awards
  [1] "Endress and Hauser scholarship 2002"
(135KB)
  [2] Microsoft Imagine Cup 2004, 4th place
(3.2MB)
  Projects
  [1] easyHotel

easyHotel allows a tourist to search for a hotel and to book a room using a mobile phone. The system works by sending an SMS to a special mobile number with a pre-defined keyword and/or some additional information (e.g.: city name, zip code, etc). In addition, easyHotel can also be accessed through web interface as a standard online booking system. Platform independent, widely accepted and standard technologies, open source software are important criteria that we considered in the system design phase.
  [2] TelComGallery

We build a multimedia system that provides new kinds of interaction in public situations. The system is suitable for both outdoor and indoor places. Specifically, video scenes are shown on large screens in urban places such as airports, train stations, or exhibition halls. Visitors can activate the scenes via mobile phones by dialing a special number. The phone is used to control the system in a convenient and unobtrusive way. The user interacts with the video scenes in several ways, for example pressing the phone's keys, speaking to the phone, or simply holding the call (temporal factor). We demonstrate the benefit of the system with an interactive video-art installation, so called TelcomGallery. This application brings new experiences to the visitors. For example, the visitor's voice can affect the audio-visual parameters of the digital artworks in real-time. TelcomGallery, therefore, would let the visitors apprehend the digital artworks in newly excited ways.
  Activities
  Teaching assistant

  • Web Technologies
  • Hypermedia Engineering
  • IT Project Management
    •   Supervised (Student projects):

  • iQuizMobile (by L.Meier):
    A classroom's quiz system using mobile phones and Bluetooth. Using the question's format of the Tetrodo E-Learning system. Technologies: J2ME, Java servlet.
  • LifeReminder (by F.Preiswerk):
    A generic reminder (birthday, meeting,etc) via several communication's channels (email, SMS). Technologies: PHP, MySQL
  • BlueChat (by E.Baier and C.Horisberger):
    A chat application via bluetooth. Technologies: J2ME
  • CellTracker (by M.Keller):
    Tracking smartphone client using CellID. Technologies: Visual Sudio .NET (C#, ASP .NET), SQL Server.
  • RestCast (RSS extension) (by B. Uytun)
    Extension of the RSS specification in order to support learning activities (automatically download electronic materials such as lectures, excersices, etc)
    Technologies: PHP, XSLT, Java
    •   Software
        Here are some software that I wrote during my study and in my freetime. They are all free, open source and released under the GPL license.
      [1] LARA (Learn Anywhere Anytime)

    Recorded lectures can be used for skimming the lecture's content before a class meeting, for reviewing the lectures and also for preparing exercises and examinations. We use the format of the tool mlb which has been used in several Universities in Germany. The advantages of this data format over other data formats (e.g.: video format-MPEG, AVI, etc; screen capturing- GIF, JPEG, etc; and Macromedia Flash) are: easy to extend (XML-based); editable; reasonable size; able to search text. Recorded lectures include several data streams such as audio (voice of lecturers), and graphics stream (e.g.: text, handwritten annotations, and pointers). LARA allows users to replay the recorded lectures and provides convenient navigation mechanisms, for example: table of contents, thumbnails, scrolling by slider, scrolling by stylus (moving on touch-sensitive screen), and go forward and backward one slide. In addition, slides can be displayed in normal mode and full screen mode (without slider, toolbar, etc. in order to maximize the screen's area for displaying text). The software is implemented using Embedded Visual C++ 4.0 SP2 and the fmod sound library
    smart note taking
        Download:
    Source: Lara-src.zip (412KB)
    Binary (Pocket PC 2003): Lara-bin.zip (38KB); Demo lecture (8,8MB)
    Documentation: Lara-UserManual.pdf (1.26MB); Developer guide (txt)
    [2] Smart Note taking

    A joint project with my friend Bui Quang Minh
    Tapping letters on a PDA's touch-sensitive screen (software input keyboard) is not easy and handwriting recognized software lack in speed and accuracy. The software works as follow: every time when a user types in some characters, the client will call 2 Web Service (Spelling and Ranking) from the Notes Taking Server to get back 2 lists of hint keywords.
    Minimal requirements for installing the system
    Client: Pocket PC 2003 with .NET CF.
    Server: Windows XP with .NET Framework 1.1, IIS 5.0 or higher, MS-SQL Server 2000.
    smart note taking
        Download:
    Source: Server(Web Service) SmartNote-Server.zip (18KB)
    Source: Client (Pocket PC 2003): SmartNote-Client.zip (64KB)
    Source: SQL query SmartNote-Sql.zip (1.34MB)
    Documentation: Design SmartNote-design.pdf (61KB)
    [3] Visitor Map

    It is quite interesting to see where the visitors of your site come from. This can be done by combining an IP to Location mapping and Google Map. There exist already such service however they provides only limited feature(log size = 20 entries). So why donīt we write our own service? If you have a web server that can host PHP application, then you can use this small application.
    visitor map
        Download:
    Source: Visitor Map.zip (4KB)
    Documentation:Developer guide (txt)
    Demonstration:     Visitor Map Demo
    [4] BlueJas

    A Java code skeleton for remote control via bluetooth using mobile phone. When use presses a key on the mobile phone (e.g.: left, right, number key), the keycode will be sent to the server program which run on PC. There are two options:
    - The server will forward the keycode by making an HTTP request (in this way, programs written in other languages can also process the keycode from mobile phone).
    - Reuse the GeneralAction class or extend it in order to process the keycode, useful for java programmers.
    Example applications are:
    - Music player: setting up a streaming server (e.g.: http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html), open any player (Windows media player, Real player, Quictime) and play the streaming music. The streaming server will be controled by sending HTTP requests (changing playlist, stop, pause, etc). BlusJas makes this step doable via mobile phone and bluetooth!
    - Use mobile phone to play game on PC.
    BlueJas BlueJas
        Download:
    Source: Server BlueJas-server.zip (65KB)
    Source: Client BlueJas Midlet : BlueJas-J2ME.zip (19KB)
    Binary files BlueJas-bin.zip (62KB)
    Documentation: BlueJas-readme.txt (2KB)