A context management system is a distributed system that enables applications to obtain context information about (mobile) users and forms a key component of any pervasive computing environment. Context management systems are however very environment-specific (e.g., specific for home environments) and therefore do not interoperate very well. This limits the operation of context-aware applications because they cannot get context information on users that reside in an environment served by a context management system that is of a different type than the one used by the application. This is particularly important for mobile users, whose context information is typically available through different types of context management systems as they move across different environments. In this paper, we address this interoperability problem by placing bridges between different types of context management systems, in particular systems for home, mobile, and ad-hoc environments. The novelty of our bridges is that they focus on resolving functional differences between context management systems, whereas prior work in this area concentrates on resolving differences in data models. We discuss our bridging architecture and zoom in on a few selected bridges, focusing on their context discovery and exchange functions. We also outline how we implemented these bridges.
In this paper we present a web services-based platform that facilitates and speeds up the development and deployment of context-aware, integrated mobile speech and data applications. The platform is capable of handling different types of context and offers sophisticated personalization mechanisms. To illustrate the usefulness of the platform and to validate the claim that cross-platform application development, in particular mobile, context-aware applications, is easier and faster with web services technologies, we present a demonstration application. It serves tourists with interesting information and services in their specific context, and contributes to the achievement of their current goals. Finally, we present a number of problems that we experienced in the implementation process as well as the feedback that we received from real users who tested our application.
We present IYOUIT, a prototype service to pioneer a context-aware mobile digital lifestyle and its reflection on the Web. The application is based on a distributed infrastructure that incorporates Semantic Web technologies in several places to derive qualitative interpretations of a user's digital traces in the real world. Networked components map quantitative sensor data to qualitative abstractions represented in formal ontologies. Subsequent classification processes combine these with formalized domain knowledge to derive meaningful interpretations and to recognize exceptional events in context histories. The application is made available on Nokia Series-60 phones and designed to seamlessly run 24/7.
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