WIRE3: Driving Around the Information Super-Highway

Interactive voice browsers offer an alternative paradigm that affords ubiquitous mobile access to the WWW using a wide range of consumer devices. This technology can facilitate a safe, “hands-free” browsing environment that is of importance both to car drivers and various mobile and technical professionals. This paper describes the challenges of architecting an interactive voice browser that combines digital audio with the features of a speech synthesizer to make structural elements of the document explicit to the listener. The aesthetics of the audio rendition can simultaneously help reduce the monotony factor and enhance comprehension. The evolution of the voice browser gave rise to a new conceptual model of the HTML document structure and its mapping to a 3D audio space. A number of novel features are discussed for improving both the user’s comprehension of the HTML document structure and their orientation within it. These factors, in turn, can improve the effectiveness of the browsing experience.     

Customizing Graphics for Tiny Displays of Mobile Devices

Advances in mobile devices and wireless telecommunication infrastructure already provide mobile users with access to online information sources and services. Compared to the PC world, however, mobile access is still quite restricted, especially with regard to the display of graphical representations, such as images, drawings, diagrams, maps and logos. Since graphical representations are increasingly used in the World Wide Web for the purpose of information presentation, the adaptation of graphics for tiny displays is a challenge that should not be neglected. The current contribution discusses several transformation approaches which might be employed to accomplish this adaptation task.     

Composite Device Computing Environment: A Framework for Situated Interaction Using Small Screen Devices

Contemporary small screen devices are used as personal companion or communication devices. However, their physical dimensions constrain the processing, communication and user interface capabilities. Thus, rich content presentation and diverse service access via small screen appliances is limited accordingly. This paper introduces the Composite Device Computing Environment (CDCE) that provides a framework for dynamically detecting and utilising surrounding computing resources to overcome the small screen device limitations. CDCE includes the communication infrastructure in addition to supporting alternative models for interactivity between small screen clients and surrounding computing resources.     

Browsing functions in three-dimensional space for digital libraries

In order to get useful information from various kinds of information sources, we first apply a searching process with query statements to retrieve candidate data objects (called a hunting process in this paper) and then apply a browsing process to check the properties of each object in detail by visualizing candidates. In traditional information retrieval systems, the hunting process determines the quality of the result, since there are only a few candidates left for the browsing process. In order to retrieve data from widely distributed digital libraries, the browsing process becomes very important, since the properties of data sources are not known in advance. After getting data from various information sources, a user checks the properties of data in detail using the browsing process. The result can be used to improve the hunting process or for selecting more appropriate visualization parameters. Visualization relationships among data are very important, but will become too time-consuming if the amount of data in the candidate set is large, for example, over one hundred objects. One of the important problems in handling information retrieval from a digital library is to create efficient and powerful visualization mechanisms for the browsing process. One promising way to solve the visualization problem is to map each candidate data object into a location in three-dimensional (3D) space using a proper distance definition. In this paper, we will introduce the functions and organization of a system having a browsing navigator to achieve an efficient browsing process in 3D information search space. This browsing navigator has the following major functions: ?1. Selection of features which determine the distance for visualization, in order to generate a uniform distribution of candidate data objects in the resulting space. ?2. Calculation of the location of the data objects in 2D space using the selected features. ?3. Construction of 3D browsing space by combining 2D spaces, in order to find the required data objects easily. ?4. Generation of the oblique views of 3D browsing space and data objects by reducing the overlap of data objects in order to make navigation easy for the user in 3D space. ?Examples of this browsing navigator applied to book data are shown. Received: 15 December 1997 / Revised: June 1999     

Finding User’s Interest Blocks using Significant Implicit Evidence for Web Browsing on Small Screen Devices

Recent researches on improving the efficiency and user experience of Web browsing on handhelds are seeking to solve the problem by re-authoring Web pages or making adaptations and recommendations according to user preference. Their basis is a good understanding of the relationship between user behaviors and user preference. We propose a practical method to find user’s interest blocks by machine learning using the combination of significant implicit evidences, which is extracted from four aspects of user behaviors: display time, viewing information items, scrolling and link selection. We also develop a customized Web browser for small screen devices to collect user behaviors accurately. For evaluation, we conduct an on-line user study and make statistical analysis based on the dataset, which shows that most types of the suggested implicit evidences are significant, and viewing information items is the least indicative aspect of user behaviors. The dataset is then processed off-line to find user’s interest blocks using the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of finding user’s interest blocks by machine learning using the combination of significant implicit evidences. Further analysis reveals the great effect of users and moderate effect of Websites on the usefulness of significant implicit evidences.     

TIBM：一种基于瘦客户机计算的无线浏览器模型

提出了一种基于瘦客户机计算模式的无线浏览器模型,利用显示逻辑与处理过程分离的机制,使得浏览器客户端能够获得服务器计算能力的支援,以降低客户端负载。为控制网络流量,研究了模型中的计算任务划分策略,采用了半集中计算的模式,使网页在客户端渲染,实现了一个基于该模型的无线浏览器系统原型。实验结果表明,该模型能够同时降低客户端计算负载和网络传输负载,减少页面内延时,可提供无缝的网络浏览体验。     

基于Android系统移动终端嵌入式浏览器的设计与实现

传统的Android系统浏览器功能简单,缺乏智能快捷的功能。针对Android系统移动终端的特点,设计一种基于Android系统移动终端嵌入式浏览器,能够帮助用户更加方便地浏览互联网,获取相关的资讯、信息,并进行如电子商务等各类服务。     

Overcoming the Lack of Screen Space on Mobile Computers

One difficulty for interface design on mobile computers is lack of screen space caused by their small size. This paper describes a small pilot study and two formal experiments that investigate the usability of sonically-enhanced buttons of different sizes. The underlying hypothesis being that presenting information about the buttons in sound would increase their usability and allow their size to be reduced. An experimental interface was created that ran on a 3Com Palm III mobile computer and used a simple calculator-style interface to enter data. The buttons of the calculator were changed in size between 4×4, 8×8 and 16×16 pixels and used a range of different types of sound from basic to complex. Results showed that sounds significantly improved usability for both standard and small button sizes – more data could be entered with sonically-enhanced buttons and subjective workload reduced. More sophisticated sounds that presented more information about the state of the buttons were shown to be more effective than the standard Palm III sounds. The results showed that if sound was added to buttons then they could be reduced in size from 16×16 to 8×8 pixels without much loss in quantitative performance. This reduction in size, however, caused a significant increase in subjective workload. Results also showed that when a mobile device was used in a more realistic situation (whilst walking outside) usability was significantly reduced (with increased workload and less data entered) than when used in a usability laboratory. These studies show that sound can be beneficial for usability and that care must be taken to do testing in realistic environments to get a good measure of mobile device usability.     

Searching and editing MPEG-compressed video in a distributed online environment

WebClip (on-line demo at http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/webclip) is a compressed video searching and editing system operating over the World Wide Web. WebClip uses a distributed client-server model including a server engine for content analysis/editing, and clients for interactive controls of video browsing/editing. It specializes several unique features, including compressed-domain video feature extraction and manipulation, multi-resolution video access, content based video browsing/retrieval, and a distributed network architecture.     

Personalized, interactive news on the Web

We present Krakatoa Chronicle, an interactive, personalized newspaper on the World Wide Web implemented as a Java applet. The newspaper is similar in appearance to newspapers in the real world, with a multi-column layout and justified text. At the same time, it provides various interaction techniques for browsing the content of articles, giving relevance feedback, and dynamically changing layout. As users interact with the system, individual ‘user profiles’ are built up at the webserver site. These are used to tailor the newspaper's content and layout to each user's declared and inferred preferences. The system allows for a balancing of personal and community interests, allowing the user to navigate through a space of newspapers corresponding to a range of viewpoints.     

Locating and accessing data repositories with WebSemantics

Many collections of scientific data in particular disciplines are available today on the World Wide Web. Most of these data sources are compliant with some standard for interoperable access. In addition, sources may support a common semantics, i.e., a shared meaning for the data types and their domains. However, sharing data among a global community of users is still difficult because of the following reasons: (i) data providers need a mechanism for describing and publishing available sources of data; (ii) data administrators need a mechanism for discovering the location of published sources and obtaining metadata from these sources; and (iii) users need a mechanism for browsing and selecting sources. This paper describes a system, WebSemantics, that accomplishes the above tasks. We describe an architecture for the publication and discovery of scientific data sources, which is an extension of the World Wide Web architecture and protocols. We support catalogs containing metadata about data sources for some application domain. We define a language for discovering sources and querying their metadata. We then describe the WebSemantics prototype. Edited by H. Korth. Received: 15 July 1999 / Accepted: 13 September 2000 Published online: 16 April 2002     

A Location Model for Communicating and Processing of Context

Location is one of the most important elements of context in ubiquitous computing. In this paper we describe a location model, a spatial-aware communication model and an implementation of the models that exploit location for processing and communicating context. The location model presented describes a location tree, which contains human-readable semantic and geometric information about an organisation and a structure to describe the current location of an object or a context. The proposed system is dedicated to work not only on more powerful devices like handhelds, but also on small computer systems that are embedded into everyday artefact (making them a digital artefact). Model and design decisions were made on the basis of experiences from three prototype setups with several applications, which we built from 1998 to 2002. While running these prototypes we collected experiences from designers, implementers and users and formulated them as guidelines in this paper. All the prototype applications heavily use location information for providing their functionality. We found that location is not only of use as information for the application but also important for communicating context. In this paper we introduce the concept of spatial-aware communication where data is communicated based on the relative location of digital artefacts rather than on their identity. Correspondence to: Michael Biegl, Telecooperation Office (TecO), University of Karlsruhe, Vincenz-Prieβritz-Str. 1 D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany. Email: michael@teco.edu     

What are a Location’s “File” and “Edit” Menus?

The promise of mobile devices lies not in their capacity to duplicate the capabilities of desktop machines, but rather in their promise of enabling location-specific tasks. One of the challenges that must be addressed if they are to be used in this way is how intuitive interfaces for mobile devices can be designed that enable access to location-specific services usable across locations. We are developing a prototype mobile valet application that presents location-specific services organised around the tasks associated with a location. The basic elements of the interface exploits commonalties in the way we address tasks at various locations just as the familiar “file” and “edit” menus in various software applications exploit regularities in software tasks.     

Evaluating Interface Design Choices on WAP Phones: Navigation and Selection

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones are a growing relevant part of the mobile market, and the number of WAP services offered is rapidly increasing. Usability is crucial for these services, which must be easily operated on small screens and keyboards. Unfortunately, there are very few published studies on the evaluation of WAP devices and services on users. This paper presents a user study that evaluates two important interface design choices for WAP services (implementation of single-choice selection, and navigation among the different cards of a WAP site), neither of which has been investigated thoroughly in the literature or in design practice.     

The Design of Human–Machine Interface for Accident Support in Nuclear Power Plants

As feedback from Three Mile Island No. 2, a large amount of human–machine interface (HMI) design has been proposed to support operators during accidents by presenting information on plant status, some of which is implemented in commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, it has not yet been discussed what role HMI should play under conditions where operators must take action as instructed under emergency operating procedure. Regarding this principal issue, an HMI design is proposed together with specific screen images. The advantage of this design is based on the involvement of an ex-operator in NPP in this paper. The participation of users in the design of HMI has been rare. Accordingly the proposed HMI is comprehensive for average operators and is expected to be acceptable for future implementation in commercial NPPs. The effectiveness of the proposed HMI has been examined in a small experiment.     

Using RSS feeds for effective mobile web browsing

While mobile phones are becoming more popular, wireless communication vendors and device manufacturers are seeking new applications for their products. Access to the large corpus of Internet information is a very prominent field. However, the technical limitations of mobile devices pose many challenges. Browsing the Internet using a mobile phone is a large scientific and cultural challenge. Web content must be adapted before it can be accessed by a mobile browser. This work presents a new methodology that uses Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds for the adaptation of web content for use in mobile phones. This methodology is based on concrete design guidelines and supports different viewing modes. The mobile tool provided using the RSS feeds is evaluated based on user-centered evaluation and the results are presented.     

基于内容模块化的网页快速浏览技术

在万维网(WorldWideWeb)庞大的信息海洋中,如何提高信息检索和浏览效率,一直是重要的研究内容之一。文章中提出了将一复杂网页的内容按照模块化方式进行组织和使用的新思想,通过对HTML语言的简单扩充和对浏览器与Web服务器的相应改进,新浏览器可使用户有效避免对无关网页的浏览和减少网页中无关信息的传输,明显提高了网页浏览速度,尤其是对拨号上网用户,其效果更为明显。     

Mobile Devices as Props in Daily Role Playing

Mobile devices such as cameras or mobile phones can be used as props; actively to convey a specific impression to people in the vicinity and to feel better when interacting with them. Based on field studies and interviews, three aspects of users acting with mobile devices are described: warm versus cold devices; how a mobile device conveys a specific impression by association to similar devices and specific situations of use; and how the characteristics of a mobile device may open or restrict the body language of the user.     

On fast microscopic browsing of MPEG-compressed video

MPEG has been established as a compression standard for efficient storage and transmission of digital video. However, users are limited to VCR-like (and tedious) functionalities when viewing MPEG video. The usefulness of MPEG video is presently limited by the lack of tools available for fast browsing, manipulation and processing of MPEG video. In this paper, we first address the problem of rapid access to individual shots and frames in MPEG video. We build upon the compressed-video-processing framework proposed in [1, 8], and propose new and fast algorithms based on an adaptive mixture of approximation techniques for extracting spatially reduced image sequence of uniform quality from MPEG video across different frame types and also under different motion activities in the scenes. The algorithms execute faster than real time on a Pentium personal computer. We demonstrate how the reduced images facilitate fast and convenient shot- and frame-level video browsing and access, shot-level editing and annotation, without the need for frequent decompression of MPEG video. We further propose methods for reducing the auxiliary data size associated with the reduced images through exploitation of spatial and temporal redundancy. We also address how the reduced images lead to computationally efficient algorithms for video analysis based on intra- and inter-shot processing for video database and browsing applications. The algorithms, tools for browsing and techniques for video processing presented in this paper have been used by many in IBM Research on more than 30 h of MPEG-1 video for video browsing and analysis.