This paper describes the wearable Remembrance Agent, a continuously running proactive memory aid that uses the physical context of a wearable computer to provide notes that might be relevant in that context. A currently running prototype is described, along with future directions for research inspired by using the prototype. 1 Introduction With computer chips getting smaller and cheaper the day will soon come when the desk-top, lap-top, and palm-top computer will all disappear into a vest pocket, wallet, shoe, or anywhere else a spare centimeter or two are available. As the price continues to plummet, these devices will enable all kinds of applications, from consumer electronics to personal communicators to field-operations support. Given that the primary use of today's palm-top computers is as day-planners, address books, and notebooks, one can expect memory aids will be an important application for wearable computers as well. Current computer-based memory aids are written to make l...

The Galaxy of News system embodies an approach to visualizing large quantities of independently authored pieces of information, in this case news stories. At the heart of this system is a powerful relationship construction engine that constructs an associative relation network to automatically build implicit links between related articles. To visualize these relationships, and hence the news information space, the Galaxy of News uses pyramidal structuring and visual presentation, semantic zooming and panning, animated visual cues that are dynamically constructed to illustrate relationships between articles, and fluid interaction in a three dimensional information space to browse and search through large databases of news articles. The result is a tool that allows people to quickly gain a broad understanding of a news base by providing an abstracted presentation that covers the entire information base, and through interaction, progressively refines the details of the information space. ...