Abstract-A key use for mobile devices is to search and view online information while on the go. As a result, many mobile applications serve as front ends for online databases. While there are many thousands of data sources that provide web service APIs giving access to their databases, creating mobile applications to use those sources requires significant mobile programming knowledge and a significant amount of time. We introduce Spinel, a plug-in architecture for Android, and a set of web-based configuration tools that together enable users to connect mobile applications to new data sources without programming. Spinel also provides APIs that make it easy for developers to create new applications that use those data sources. We provide three demonstration Android applications that use such data: Listpad for entering personal lists, Listviewer for viewing results of data queries, and Mapviewer for displaying query results on a map. An informal usability study showed that users could successfully attach new data sources to those applications.
Most text entry research focuses on unrestricted text entry. However, a significant amount of use of mobile devices is for personal information management (PIM), where data is highly structured. Listpad is a new application that investigates how the structure inherent in PIM apps can facilitate and even reduce the text entry required. To increase flexibility, Listpad allows users to create custom structures while entering the data and uses data detectors to automate structure definition. Listpad takes advantages of the structure information, along with local and on-line data sources, to provide typing suggestions that are more relevant to what users might enter. A preliminary user study showed that Listpad reduces text entry times by 24%.
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