Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information (such as user location, time of day, nearby people and devices, and user activity). Since it was proposed about a decade ago, many researchers have studied

We describe a platform for context-aware computing which enables applications to follow mobile users as they move around a building. The platform is particularly suitable for richly equipped, networked environments. The only item a user is required to carry is a small sensor tag, which identifies

are building prototypes of a mobile context-aware tour guide. Knowledge of the user's current location, as well as a history of past locations, are used to provide more of the kind of services that we come to expect from a real tour guide. We describe the architecture and features of a variety

. In this pap er, we present common architecture principles of context-aware systems and derive a layered conceptual design framework to explain the different elements common to most context-aware architectures. Based on these design principles, we introduce various existing context-aware systems

it of the context of its use. By context, we refer to any information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between humans, applications and the surrounding environment. Context-aware applications promise richer and easier interaction, but the current state of research in this field is still far

developed and installed a system for use by visitors to Lancaster. The system combines mobile computing technologies with a wireless infrastructure to present city visitors with information tailored to both their personal and environmental contexts. In this paper we present an evaluation of GUIDE, focusing

Ontologies are a key component for building open and dynamic distributed pervasive computing systems in which agents and devices share contextual information. We describe our use of the Web Ontology Language OWL and other tools for building the foundation ontology for the Context Broker

this paper we introduce a system called Crowds for protecting users' anonymity on the worldwide -web. Crowds, named for the notion of "blending into a crowd", operates by grouping users into a large and geographically diverse group (crowd) that collectively issues requests on behalf

The rapid growth of the World-Wide Web poses unprecedented scaling challenges for general-purpose crawlers and search engines. In this paper we describe a new hypertext resource discovery system called a Focused Crawler. The goal of a focused crawler is to selectively seek out pages

The state machine approach is a general method for implementing fault-tolerant services in distributed systems. This paper reviews the approach and describes protocols for two different failure models--Byzantine and fail-stop. System reconfiguration techniques for removing faulty components