PDAs and shared public displays: Making personal information public, and public information personal

We are investigating how people move from individual to group work through the use of both personal digital assistants (PDAs) and a shared public display. Our scenario of this work covers the following activities. First, mobile individuals can create personal notes on their PDAs. Second, when individuals meet in real time, they can selectively publicise notes by moving them to a shared public display. Third, the group can manipulate personal and public items in real time through both PDAs and the shared public display, where the notes contained on both PDAs and public display are automatically synchronised. Finally, people leave a meeting with a common record of their activity. We describe our SharedNotes system that illustrates how people move through this scenario. We also highlight a variety of problematic design issues that result from having different devices and from having the system enforce a rigid distinction between personal and public information.     

Supporting group collaboration with interpersonal awareness devices

An Interpersonal Awareness Device, or IPAD, is a hand-held or wearable device designed to support awareness and collaboration between people who are in the physical vicinity of each other. An IPAD is designed to supply constant awareness information to users in any location without relying on an underlying infrastructure. We have constructed one such device, the Hummingbird, which gives members of a group continuous aural and visual indications when other group members are close. We have used the Hummingbirds in several different situations to explore how they affect group awareness. These experiences indicated that the Hummingbird increased awareness between group members, and that it could complement other forms of communication, such as phone and email. In particular, we found the Hummingbird to be useful when a group of people were in an unfamiliar location, for instance during a trip, where no other communication support was available. We argue that IPADs such as the Hummingbird may fulfil important functions in modern work situations.     

Students' experiences with PDAs for reading course materials

 The availability of text reading and editing software for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) makes it timely to consider whether PDAs are useful tools for reading learning materials. This paper describes a study that evaluated the use of PDAs for reading by students on a Masters course run by the UK Open University. The evaluation consisted of pre- and post-questionnaires, and follow-up interviews. In addition, students discussed their experiences in a computer-based conference. Findings show that while the portability of the device was welcomed by students, and the electronic format was advantageous, limitations such as the small screen size, navigation difficulties, and slow and error-prone methods for entering text, made it difficult to read and interact with documents on the PDA. The paper recommends that further research consider the value of PDAs as reading devices in the context of other potential ways that PDAs can be used as learning tools. Received: 1 March 2002 / Accepted: 24 August 2002 Acknowledgements This evaluation project was funded through the award of an Open University Teaching Fellowship in 2001 to the course and presentation team, `for innovation and excellence in global online course delivery.' We would like to say a special thank you to colleagues in the Institute of Educational Technology who gave us vital technical and logistical support throughout this project: Will Woods, Phil Downs, Helen Cottrell and Liz Burton-Pye. Thanks are also due to Gill Kirkup for providing feedback on an earlier draft of this paper and to Eileen Scanlon and Ann Jones who provided helpful advice during the project.     

An investigation of handheld device use by older adults with age-related macular degeneration

This study investigates factors affecting handheld human - computer interaction (HCI) for older adults with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). This is largely an uncharted territory, as empirical investigations of HCI concerning users with visual dysfunction and/or older adults have focused primarily on desktop computers. For this study, participants with AMD and visually healthy controls used a handheld computer to search, select and manipulate familiar playing card icons under varied icon set sizes, inter-icon spacing and auditory feedback conditions. While all participants demonstrated a high rate of task completion, linear regression revealed several relationships between task efficiency and the interface, user characteristics and ocular factors. Two ocular measures, severity of AMD and contrast sensitivity, were found to be highly predictive of efficiency. The outcomes of this work reveal that users with visual impairments can effectively interact with graphical user interfaces on small displays in the presence of low-cost, easily implemented design interventions. Furthermore, results demonstrate that the detrimental influence of AMD and contrast sensitivity on handheld technology interaction can be offset by such interventions. This study presents a rich data set and is intended to inspire future work characterizing and modeling the interactions of individuals with visual impairments with non-traditional information technology platforms and contexts.     

Managing J. Pierrepont Finch: Should he be given a PC?

An unprecedented phenomenon is transforming some of the fundamental relationships of our society: the wide distribution of cheap, general purpose information processing capacity in the form of microcomputers or personal computers. Although general purpose productive capacity has been a major factor in the past (e.g. through the use of railroads and automobiles), the new revolution is aimed directly at the heart of hierarchical organizations such as corporations. One aspect of the potentially revolutionary impact of PCs, the wide and rapid distribution of this general information processing capacity to end-users, can affect manager-employee and employee-employee relationships. A model of “office politics” is presented which may partially explain both the rapid diffusion of personal computers to lower and middle management and the concurrent, and surprising decline in white collar productivity.     

Utilisation of mobile handheld devices for care management at an Australian aged care facility

This paper reports on research into the implementation and evaluation of a wireless hand-held clinical care management system at an Aged Care Facility in Launceston, Tasmania. This socio-technical trial involved the use of handheld computers connected to an 802.11 wireless network itself linked to an ADSL broadband connection and Oracle server. Following system implementation, research was conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the system for the collection of care management data. This evaluation was conducted through the use of qualitative techniques that analysed the impact of this wireless system holistically to produce insights from three perspectives: technical, organisational and end-user.More broadly, this trial generated insights for the development of ‘next generation’ mobile technologies to support health care. These developments are one of the foci of the Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre (www.smartinternet.com.au). At this broader level the paper indicates that potentially significant benefits may be generated by enabling ‘live’ two-way transmission of clinical information to the point of care. It is anticipated that a future trial will investigate the suitability and feasibility of using voice activation and other modalities to support patient care.     

Combating bioterrorism with personal computers

Using personal computers in a grid is permitting the in silico screening of millions of molecules to seek out potential inhibitors of agents that pose bioterror threats. Current projects are targeting anthrax and smallpox, but the approach has many attractions for investigating any known protein target and its inhibition.     

A survey of high school students with ubiquitous access to tablet PCs

This paper presents findings of a study of high school students participating in a tablet PC (TPC) programme. Primary areas of interest were students' experiences with and attitudes about the TPCs, physical discomfort associated with use of TPCs and temporal and task-driven patterns of TPC use. Data were collected via questionnaire and computer use-monitoring software. Results showed students' attitudes were generally quite positive towards the TPCs, although they did not tend to think TPCs had improved their grades, few disagreed that TPCs were a distraction in class, and visual and musculoskeletal discomfort was prevalent. Understanding how to use the TPC and recognizing its organizational capacity were associated with several positive attitudes towards the TPC, including making school more enjoyable. Children's exposure to computers will only increase, so study of the many dimensions of their impact is critical in order to understand what is effective, constructive and healthful for children.     

DaaS: Cloud-based mobile Web service discovery

The proliferation of smartphones and the recent advancement in ubiquitous wireless access have made mobile Web services more possible than ever before. However, finding relevant Web services that can match requests and fit user context remains a major concern. The challenges facing Web service discovery are further magnified by the stringent constraints of mobile devices and the inherit complexity of wireless heterogeneous networks. Cloud computing, with its flexible design and theoretically unlimited computing resources, is a viable approach to bootstrapping Web service discovery. The cloud can build bridges between mobile devices, as a convenient ubiquitous interface, and a backbone infrastructure with abundant computing resources. This paper introduces “Discovery as a service (Daas)”, a novel cloud-based discovery framework that addresses the core components of mobile Web service discovery. The DaaS framework lays the foundation of efficient mobile Web service discovery that takes into consideration user preferences and context. The experimental validation and performance evaluation demonstrate that DaaS can effectively rank relevant services according to the various user context and preferences, in addition to enhancing the precision of the discovered services. The prototype also shows that Web service clustering for discovery significantly improves the overall response time, while the cloud maintains scalability according to prespecified performance criteria.     

OmniStore: Automating data management in a personal system comprising several portable devices

The ever growing amount of data generated and consumed on the move using portable devices gives rise to serious data management issues. The fact that each person may own and is likely to carry several such devices further aggravates this problem. On the other hand, new opportunities for achieving cleverer device interaction emerge due to the increased wireless networking capabilities of wearable and portable devices. This paper introduces OmniStore, a system that combines portable devices and infrastructure-based services to relieve the user from explicit and time consuming file management tasks. Our approach is to let devices communicate with each other as well as with a repository service, in an opportunistic and asynchronous fashion, to perform a variety of file movement and copying actions behind the scenes, which would have typically required considerable explicit user interaction.     

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.     

基于PDA的GIS系统研究与开发

讨论了Windows CE环境下基于PDA的GIS软件开发原理和方法。简述了其开发基本理论,具体探讨了采用eMbedded VC 开发环境下基于PDA的GIS软件开发具体技术,同时指出了其与基于台式机的GIS软件开发的区别。介绍了笔者在Pocket PC中实现的一个地理信息系统软件。     

A flexible architecture for distributed knowledge based systems with nomadic access through handheld devices

Nowadays any Knowledge Based System (KBS) realization needs of intercommunication among distributed components and to use non-connected and distributed data sources, which poses several challenges to the classical Artificial Intelligence field of KBS.

The multiagent paradigm and the use of ontologies are considered to be suitable tools to face the problems of designing and developing today KBS. On the other hand, using such networked KBS through handheld devices makes more efficient exploitation and interaction with the system.

This paper presents an open and flexible architecture for a distributed KBS and an application of it to construct a system for Psychological Disorders consulting, the so called PDA² (Psychological Disorder Assistant through PDA). We analyze the main features of the architecture as well as the agent tools we may use to construct it. Additionally, we present a support ontology for Psychological Disorders.     

基于PDA的装备维修辅助系统研究与开发

针对装备野外作业时维修保障系统需要解决的快速诊断、实时查询和资源共享等问题，研究开发了一类基于PDA的装备维修辅助系统。该中详细介绍了系统的组成结构、功能模块以及设计开发过程中涉及的关键技术。     

东软移动医疗解决方案特点详解

随着各医院网络的普及和网络医疗管理系统的完善,利用计算机管理系统进行医生查房、病人监护、药剂师配药和分发、设备的管理和实时监控,以及药品库存管理,病人档案、病历管理,医疗装置控制,已成为各医院工作人员日常工作必不可缺的重要工具。目前,很多医院的计算机管理系统中,计算机都是放置在各个部门的固定位置,如挂号部门、结算部门、药品发放部门、护士站、医生站、行政办公室等,甚至在病房中架设计算机,然后通过计算机综合布线联网。但是,如何利用计算机网络来更有效地提高管理人员、医生、护士及相关部门的协调运作,仍旧是各医院在     

Mobile contact synchronous with cloud server

Mobile industry promotes new products every recent year. It is reported that consumers in high-income countries typically replace their mobile phones at intervals of between 12 and 18 months. How to transfer data from one mobile to another and how to share data between different mobile apps are taken into consideration. We build a cloud service to combine contacts from different mobiles and synchronize contacts in different mobiles. Some algorithms and data structures are designed to meet the needs of data combination and synchronization. The result shows that our method can provide more efficient result than other solutions.     

Design of a teaching pendant program for a mobile shipbuilding welding robot using a PDA

Teaching pendant is a handheld device by which a human can control a robot. The main functions of a teaching pendant are moving the robot, teaching it about the locations, running robot programs, and jogging the axes. A teaching pendant is usually connected to the robot by a cable. The cable connection and the size of the teaching pendant generally do not pose a problem when the robot controller is separate from the robot. However, a large teaching pendant connected by a cable is not suitable for a self-propelled mobile robot with an internal controller. This paper describes the communication network of a personal data assistant (PDA) as a wireless teaching pendant for a mobile shipbuilding welding robot with embedded controller system that welds and moves autonomously inside the double hull structure of a ship. A double hull is a closed structure that has only a few access holes. It is very difficult and dangerous to weld components inside a double hull structure because of fumes, poisonous gas, and high temperatures. Using a wireless teaching pendant has the following advantages: (1) there are no limits to the welding activities that can take place, (2) the safety level increases because no workers are in close proximity to the robot, (3) workers are far away from the dangerous environmental conditions, (4) it is possible to reduce the weight of the cable connected to the robot, and (5) it is possible to reduce the weight of the robot because of the reduced load of the teaching pendant and the cable. We demonstrate the functionality and performance capabilities of our wireless teaching pendant through field-testing experiments.     

现代通信新技术

本文从卫星通信、移动通信、计算机数据通信、光缆通信、个人通信五个方面,论述了现代通信中的新技术及其发展特点。     

基于GPRS网络的强一致性两级缓存系统框架

无线移动环境中缓存的主要目的是减少对无线带宽资源的占用和节省电池能量,然而移动无线终端的漫游与经常断开连接又给缓存内容的一致性带来了一系列新的问题。本文针对目前运行的GPRS网络,提出了在用户端（移动终端）和GPRS骨干网中添加验证服务器VS（Validation Server）对数据进行两级缓存的系统框架和缓存强一致性策略。该框架简化了无线移动环境下维护缓存一致性的复杂性,有效地降低了对无线带宽的占用和数据库服务器的负载,支持移动终端断开连接的时间任意和在一个公众陆地移动通信网PLMN网内的漫游,具有很强的实用性。     

一种移动Agent与Web应用框架的整合模型

提出一种移动Agent与Web应用框架的整合模型,并给出详细的实现方法。模型首先将Agent的上下文环境和对Web应用提供业务服务的Agent由Spring框架的控制反转容器统一管理,然后利用远程方法调用机制实现Agent与Web应用的互操作,具有良好的解耦性和应用前景。