Abstract. The use of context is important in interactive applications. It is particularly important for applications where the user’s context is changing rapidly, such as in both handheld and ubiquitous computing. In order to better understand how we can use context and facilitate the building of context-aware applications, we need to more fully understand what constitutes a contextaware application and what context is. Towards this goal, we have surveyed existing work in context-aware computing. In this paper, we provide an overview of the results of this survey and, in particular, definitions and categories of context and context-aware. We conclude with recommendations for how this better understanding of context inform a framework for the development of context-aware applications. 1

Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways that context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation, which we believe will provide additional support to application designers. 1. Introduction Humans are quite successful at conveying ideas to each other and reacting appropriately. This is due to many factors: the richness of the language they share, the common understanding of how the world works, and an implicit understanding of everyday situations. When humans talk with humans, they are able...

Item selection is a key problem in electronic guidebook design. Many systems do not apply so-called "context-awareness" technologies to infer user interest, placing the entire burden of selection on the user. Conversely, to make selection easier, many systems automatically eliminate information that they infer is not of interest to the user. However, such systems often eliminate too much information, preventing the user from finding what they want. To realize the full potential of electronic guidebooks, designers must strike the right balance between automatic context-based inference and manual selection. In this paper, we introduce a task-oriented model of item selection for electronic guidebooks to help designers explore this continuum. We argue that item selection contains three sub-tasks and that these sub-tasks should be considered explicitly in system design. We apply our model to existing systems, demonstrating pitfalls of combining sub-tasks, and discuss how our model has impr...

In this paper, we present a framework which allows adapted content delivery for different target contexts. This framework is based on a Universal Profiling Schema UPS for describing the environment characteristics and on an profile exchange protocol. In the server and the proxy side, we give a strategy for matching the different constraints (clients, servers, content, etc.) in order to find an agreement between the server adaptation capabilities and the client preferences and constraints. Usually such environments are subject to frequent changes. To tackle this difficulty, we propose a dynamic adaptation approach based on XSLT for structural transformation and resource aware transcoders for the media adaptation. 1.

The growing availability of wireless LAN technologies together with the pervasive use of mobile and embedded computing devices gives strong raise for internet services adapted to context, particularly the location of their use. In multi-user cooperation environments for closed area communities like learning and teaching teams in wireless university campus networks, location awareness is of substantial importance.