Link
A. Spriestersbach SAP AG
H. Vogler SAP Labs
F. Lehmann TU-Dresden
T. Ziegert TU-Dresden
International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking archive
Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on Mobile commerce table of contents
Rome, Italy
Pages: 55 - 59
Year of Publication: 2001
ISBN:1-58113-376-6
Abstract:
The integration of context information (especially location information) into mobile applications and services is one of the most crucial requirements to achieve a broader usability and hence acceptance of these. So far location information is used for typical business-to-consumer applications such as mobile-MapQuest or ATM-finder. The application of location awareness in typical enterprise or business applications, such as logistics or Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is currently addressed rather poor.
In this paper we discuss the enhancement of mobile enterprise applications by context information. Starting from a customer demand and for a mobile sales force scenario, our objective was the improvement of the usability of mobile enterprise applications by introducing context information to these.
My Discussion:
The paper makes the process they went through seem straightforward. Create a IR based location beacon for a shop, and then the shopper's handheld picks up a location ID and gets a customized form for that shop from the back-end. Add to that the knowledge of who the shopper is, and the user barely has to enter anything to make a purchase from the form. What I find interesting is how a 2001 paper already reads as old because they couldn't find the handhels they liked -- now Symbian phones with GPRS connections are all over the place.
The paper has a short but good discussion about how location is a subset of context, and useful refernces to context work at the time.
Zippering: managing intermittent connectivity in DIANA
A. Spriestersbach SAP AG
H. Vogler SAP Labs
F. Lehmann TU-Dresden
T. Ziegert TU-Dresden
International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking archive
Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on Mobile commerce table of contents
Rome, Italy
Pages: 55 - 59
Year of Publication: 2001
ISBN:1-58113-376-6
Abstract:
The integration of context information (especially location information) into mobile applications and services is one of the most crucial requirements to achieve a broader usability and hence acceptance of these. So far location information is used for typical business-to-consumer applications such as mobile-MapQuest or ATM-finder. The application of location awareness in typical enterprise or business applications, such as logistics or Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is currently addressed rather poor.
In this paper we discuss the enhancement of mobile enterprise applications by context information. Starting from a customer demand and for a mobile sales force scenario, our objective was the improvement of the usability of mobile enterprise applications by introducing context information to these.
My Discussion:
The paper makes the process they went through seem straightforward. Create a IR based location beacon for a shop, and then the shopper's handheld picks up a location ID and gets a customized form for that shop from the back-end. Add to that the knowledge of who the shopper is, and the user barely has to enter anything to make a purchase from the form. What I find interesting is how a 2001 paper already reads as old because they couldn't find the handhels they liked -- now Symbian phones with GPRS connections are all over the place.
The paper has a short but good discussion about how location is a subset of context, and useful refernces to context work at the time.
Link
Arthur M. Keller Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA
Owen Densmore Sun Microsystems
Wei Huang Sun Microsystems
Behfar Razavi Sun Microsystems
Mobile Networks and Applications archive
Volume 2 , Issue 4 (January 1998) table of contents
Special issue on personal communications services
Pages: 357 - 364
Year of Publication: 1997
ISSN:1383-469X
Abstract:
This paper describes an approach for handling intermittent connectivity between mobile clients and network-resident applications, which we call zippering. When the client connects with the application, communication between the client and the application is synchronous. When the client intermittently connects with the application, communication becomes asynchronous. The DIANA (Device-Independent, Asynchronous Network Access) approach allows the client to perform a variety of operations while disconnected. Finally, when the client reconnects with the application, the operations performed independently on the client are replayed to the application in the order they were originally done. Zippering allows the user at the client to fix errors detected during reconciliation and continues the transaction gracefully instead of aborting the whole transaction when errors are detected.
My Discussion:
Although pretty old, this paper caught my eye because it explicitely addresses the problem so many papers about mobile UIs ignore: walking into a connectivity dead spot. The paper describes the error-handling system called 'Zippering' for this disconnection problem built into DIANA, a method and implementation for information retrieval competing with HTML/HTTP and the agents based Telescript. (In fact, the paper is so old it discusses HTML/HTTP by the name of 'Mosaic', NCSAs name for its WWW browser.) Zippering works by having the application being accessed over the network also have a small surrogate available on the client. For example, a group calendaring application written with DIANA would also on the client have a calendaring surrogate that would approve all meetings requested. When the user, while using the remote application, gets disconnected, the surrogate takes over responding and approves every requests. When the mobile device then re-connects, the surrogate replays the information exchange between UI and surrogate to the remote application, and alerts the user when the remote application reacts differently (denies a meeting in this example) from the surrogate. The user gets a chance to change that request, after which the surrogate replays the other requests, and so on until the user is synchronised.
So is this paper now just a curiosity in a world where HTML/HTTP forms have become ubiquitous, and all infrastructure is based on web-servers, network caching, and Javascript? Not really, zippering is suddenly relevant again for mobile SOAP-based applications. When data access is being done by simple SOAP messages, writing a client that detects network breaks and then routes the SOAP messages to a surrogate becomes feasable, since the appliction developer is writing a custom SOAP client anyway. The SOAP surrogate on the client can the synchronise when the network is back, and catch up that way. Since SOAP has many interesting qualities for the mobile space, zippering may be necessary again just yet.
An adaptive viewing application for the web on personal digital assistants
Arthur M. Keller Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA
Owen Densmore Sun Microsystems
Wei Huang Sun Microsystems
Behfar Razavi Sun Microsystems
Mobile Networks and Applications archive
Volume 2 , Issue 4 (January 1998) table of contents
Special issue on personal communications services
Pages: 357 - 364
Year of Publication: 1997
ISSN:1383-469X
Abstract:
This paper describes an approach for handling intermittent connectivity between mobile clients and network-resident applications, which we call zippering. When the client connects with the application, communication between the client and the application is synchronous. When the client intermittently connects with the application, communication becomes asynchronous. The DIANA (Device-Independent, Asynchronous Network Access) approach allows the client to perform a variety of operations while disconnected. Finally, when the client reconnects with the application, the operations performed independently on the client are replayed to the application in the order they were originally done. Zippering allows the user at the client to fix errors detected during reconciliation and continues the transaction gracefully instead of aborting the whole transaction when errors are detected.
My Discussion:
Although pretty old, this paper caught my eye because it explicitely addresses the problem so many papers about mobile UIs ignore: walking into a connectivity dead spot. The paper describes the error-handling system called 'Zippering' for this disconnection problem built into DIANA, a method and implementation for information retrieval competing with HTML/HTTP and the agents based Telescript. (In fact, the paper is so old it discusses HTML/HTTP by the name of 'Mosaic', NCSAs name for its WWW browser.) Zippering works by having the application being accessed over the network also have a small surrogate available on the client. For example, a group calendaring application written with DIANA would also on the client have a calendaring surrogate that would approve all meetings requested. When the user, while using the remote application, gets disconnected, the surrogate takes over responding and approves every requests. When the mobile device then re-connects, the surrogate replays the information exchange between UI and surrogate to the remote application, and alerts the user when the remote application reacts differently (denies a meeting in this example) from the surrogate. The user gets a chance to change that request, after which the surrogate replays the other requests, and so on until the user is synchronised.
So is this paper now just a curiosity in a world where HTML/HTTP forms have become ubiquitous, and all infrastructure is based on web-servers, network caching, and Javascript? Not really, zippering is suddenly relevant again for mobile SOAP-based applications. When data access is being done by simple SOAP messages, writing a client that detects network breaks and then routes the SOAP messages to a surrogate becomes feasable, since the appliction developer is writing a custom SOAP client anyway. The SOAP surrogate on the client can the synchronise when the network is back, and catch up that way. Since SOAP has many interesting qualities for the mobile space, zippering may be necessary again just yet.
Link
Kwang Bok Lee Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Roger A. Grice Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
ACM Special Interest Group for Design of Communications archive
Proceedings of the 21st annual international conference on Documentation table of contents
San Francisco, CA, USA
PANEL SESSION: Getting and giving information table of contents
Pages: 125 - 132
Year of Publication: 2003
ISBN:1-58113-696-X
Abstract:
With the proliferation of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), people are using such small devices to access the web; however, the web is not accommodating such access. Here, for small devices' users, we present an efficient method for extracting readable documents from XML-based files, which will be used for information streams for mobile Internet access. We designed a selector for handling information streams to extract the customized information based on the user request for the small screen devices. The selector's attributes can be adapted from an XML document, and then used for translating information streams into the new file that will be displayed on the devices. Also, the selector has visual menu interfaces so that users can easily choose each attribute according to their preferences. This is developed to devise an efficient method for the small screen computers' problems. Furthermore, we prepared usability testing for the application in order to find usability problems, and then we offer further progress to improve the usability of working on devices. The prototype and implementation of this approach will be also provided in this paper.
My Discussion:
Technical paper demonstrating a system to hide or disclose more or less of an XML based document on a PDA. The user can manipulate the viewer on the PDA to select what level of elements to see, with choices like 'headlines on;y' or 'pictures as icons'. Sometimes a paper tries so hard to be clear about every step of a technological solution that the exposition ends up actually being a more confusing. This paper does not make clear why the XML needs to be loaded off a PC instead of being retreived directly over the internet by the PDA, and what transformation the PC is doing to the XML before the selector program in the PDA can handle the document. Seeing also that the corpus of (badly formatted) XML-related documents out there -- the WWW of which most is in HTML -- is never mentioned, the paper seems oddly abstract and ungrounded.
Kwang Bok Lee Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Roger A. Grice Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
ACM Special Interest Group for Design of Communications archive
Proceedings of the 21st annual international conference on Documentation table of contents
San Francisco, CA, USA
PANEL SESSION: Getting and giving information table of contents
Pages: 125 - 132
Year of Publication: 2003
ISBN:1-58113-696-X
Abstract:
With the proliferation of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), people are using such small devices to access the web; however, the web is not accommodating such access. Here, for small devices' users, we present an efficient method for extracting readable documents from XML-based files, which will be used for information streams for mobile Internet access. We designed a selector for handling information streams to extract the customized information based on the user request for the small screen devices. The selector's attributes can be adapted from an XML document, and then used for translating information streams into the new file that will be displayed on the devices. Also, the selector has visual menu interfaces so that users can easily choose each attribute according to their preferences. This is developed to devise an efficient method for the small screen computers' problems. Furthermore, we prepared usability testing for the application in order to find usability problems, and then we offer further progress to improve the usability of working on devices. The prototype and implementation of this approach will be also provided in this paper.
My Discussion:
Technical paper demonstrating a system to hide or disclose more or less of an XML based document on a PDA. The user can manipulate the viewer on the PDA to select what level of elements to see, with choices like 'headlines on;y' or 'pictures as icons'. Sometimes a paper tries so hard to be clear about every step of a technological solution that the exposition ends up actually being a more confusing. This paper does not make clear why the XML needs to be loaded off a PC instead of being retreived directly over the internet by the PDA, and what transformation the PC is doing to the XML before the selector program in the PDA can handle the document. Seeing also that the corpus of (badly formatted) XML-related documents out there -- the WWW of which most is in HTML -- is never mentioned, the paper seems oddly abstract and ungrounded.
