ERCIM News is a quarterly publication from the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. The July 2003 issue is dedicated to research about applications and service platforms for the mobile user. All of the 30 articles are available online.
Before going further, please visit "New Applications For Mobile Users" which contains a selection of stories, including abstracts and illustrations.
Here is the cover of this issue: Even if this guy is working with a tablet, he hasn't forgotten the muffins.
Now, here are some excerpts from the introduction to this special issue.
The most recent wave in information systems development is the introduction of networked palmtop computers, made possible by the continued miniaturisation of electronic circuits and the enormous resources spent by industrialised countries on deploying a ubiquitously available broadband wireless communication infrastructure.
Because of the mobility of users of these devices and the characteristics of wireless communication, the operating environment for any accompanying services will be much more dynamic than is typical for traditional distributed systems. In order to retain system quality and usability under such circumstances, R&D problems within a number of areas must be solved.
[For example, user interfaces] cannot assume a prior acquaintance with computers, and input and output facilities may be severely restricted (no keyboard, small screen-size etc) or based on new modalities (speech recognition and synthesis etc).
Another important thing to take into consideration is that mobile devices are less powerful and have less memory and networking capabilities that regular computers.
Performance considerations therefore become increasingly important in the first design steps. Analytical predictive methods are necessary in order to assess a large number of alternatives during the design of mobile information systems.
Finally, it is important to focus on the interoperability of services and the ability to roam across heterogeneous networks and service environments.
Source: ERCIM News No. 54, July 2003
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