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 those 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 that requested the information. Funf 0.4 comes with 38 built-in probes!)
Most of the changes in this release are under the hood. If you are a developer and care about the specifics, head on over to the Funf blog for a more detailed look. 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.
Finally, as Funf was also just accepted to Google’s Summer of Code program, if you are a student (either undergraduate or graduate) 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!
Nadav Aharony is co-founder and CEO at Behavio. He completed his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab’s Human Dynamics group, where he investigated the use of mobile phones as social and behavioral sensors, conducted one of the largest mobile data experiments done in academia, and initiated the open source mobile sensing platform that became Funf.org. Aharony was a fellow for three years at the MIT Center for Civic Media, working on mobile and social activism topics. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the MIT Media Lab, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering cum laude from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Aharony holds patents in social mobile networking, machine learning, network algorithms and sensor technologies.