Location-dependent services for mobile users

Abstract

Abstract-One of the main issues in mobile services' research (M-service) is supporting M-service availability, regardless of the user's context (physical location, device employed, etc.). However, most scenarios also require the enforcement of context-awareness, to dynamically adapt M-services depending on the context in which they are requested. In this paper, we focus on the problem of adapting M-services depending on the users' location, whether physical (in space) or logical (within a specific distributed group/application). To this end, we propose a framework to model users' location via a multiplicity of local and active service contexts. First, service contexts represent the mean to access to M-services available within a physical locality. This leads to an intrinsic dependency of M-service on the users' physical location. Second, the execution of service contexts can be tuned depending on who is requesting what M-service. This enables adapting M-services to the logical location of users (e.g., a request can lead to different executions for users belonging to different groups/applications). The paper firstly describes the framework in general terms, showing how it can facilitate the design of distributed applications involving mobile users as well as mobile agents. Then, it shows how the MARS coordination middleware, implementing service contexts in terms of programmable tuple spaces, can be used to develop and deploy applications and M-services coherently with the above framework. A case study is introduced and discussed through the paper to clarify our approach and to show its effectiveness.

AMBIT: Semantic Engine Foundations for Knowledge Management in Context-dependent Applications

“…browsed from an ad-hoc AMBIT app), past actions performed on some partner's website (e.g. about typical Modena products), and so on 4 . The intuition is that the documents from the user history can be analyzed in a similar way to the scenario documents, therefore exploiting all the power of the Semantic analyzer and categorizer in order to associate meaningful terms and classes to users (and thus enriching the user profile DB with information analogous to the one discussed for document analysis and shown in Figure 2).…”

“…However, the availability of a large number of services can turn out to be confusing rather than useful, since the users are often overwhelmed by the large number of "proposals" which they are generally not able to consider thoroughly to find what they really need. To overcome this problem, many researchers have proposed to develop new applications with (or to incorporate in existing applications) contextawareness capabilities ( [2,4]). A context-aware application is one that "knows" the context in which the client is operating and possibly also the profile/characteristics of the user who is enjoying the corresponding service(s).…”

Using Description Logics for the Provision of Context-Driven Content Adaptation Services

“…Bellavista et al (Bellavista, Corradi et al 2003) adopt metadata for representing context characteristics at a high level of abstraction. Cabri et al (Cabri, Leonardi et al 2003) propose a two-dimensional model to describe the location information in a mobile context: a physical location in space and a logical location within a distributed group or application. Nam et al (Nam, Ro et al 2005) propose to consider both user preferences and perceptual characteristics as a basis for effective visual content adaptation.…”

A Context-Driven Content Adaptation Planner for Improving Mobile Internet Accessibility

“…Bellavista et al [24] adopt metadata for representing context characteristics at a high level of abstraction. Cabri et al [25] propose a two-dimensional model to describe the location information in mobile context: a physical location in space and a logical location within a distributed group or application. Nam et al [8], ferences and perceptual characteristics as basis for effective visual content adaptation.…”