Re: American Airlines - Angy Birds

Does angry birds play itself?
:-)
We could split a hair here and say that there is a user agent hidden  in angry birds.

-- 
Jonnie Appleseed
With His
Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
touching the internet
Reducing Technology's disabilities
One Byte At a time

On Jun 20, 2013, at 3:40 AM, Simon Harper <simon.harper@manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

So after the CG meeting yesterday - for which I had a none functioning
mic - I was thinking more about our American Airlines - Angry Birds
example. In that we think AA App is a UA while AB Game isn't. In
reality, I think AB Game is an app but not a user agent. Now why is
this? Well a UA is created from two words:

A *user* of a system <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System> is a person
who interacts with the system, to enable its operation
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation>, or to utilize its function.


An *Agent* is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by
authority from him; one entrusted with the business of another.

In this case, it seems clear that the AA App is acting for a user, or in
the place of a user, by the users' authority. A user entrusts AA App
with their business.

The AB Game on the other hand does not posses these traits of being an
agent of the user.

I think we are having this problem due to the imprecise nature of the
definition of application software -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software

It seems to me that we are also thinking about Apps outside of our
definitions. So first of all is AA an UA - yes / is AB a UA - no
(according to the definitions above). Next, how does AA manifest - is it
a WebApp - yes as the UI is created by a UA rendering of HTML which
facilitates interactivity. Is it a mobile UA - will at this point I
don't know as I'm unsure as to the technology used in this case.

Cheers

-- 
Si.

PS I check my email at 08:00 and 17:00 GMT. If you require a faster response please include the word 'fast' in the subject line.

=======================
Simon Harper
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University of Manchester (UK)
Web Ergonomics Lab - Information Management Group
http://wel.cs.manchester.ac.uk