Textual passwords are the most common method used for authentication. But textual passwords are vulnerable to eves dropping, dictionary attacks, social engineering and shoulder surfing. Graphical passwords are introduced as alternative techniques to textual passwords. Most of the graphical schemes are vulnerable to shoulder surfing. To address this problem, text can be combined with images or c...

The iPhone was introduced only a decade ago in 2007, but has fundamentally changed the way we interact with online information. Mobile devices differ radically from classic command-based and point-and-click user interfaces, allowing for gesture-based interaction using fine-grained touch and swipe signals. Due to the rapid growth in the use of voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants on ...

Software agents, or softbots, are supposedly intelligent programs that assist the user in performing repetitive , boring, and time-consuming tasks. An overview of software agents, with special attention focused on the so-called personal assistants, is presented as an introduction. Following that, an in-depth look at one of the rst commercially available intelligent agents Open Sesame!, a person...

The shift towards highly personalised interfaces in which communication between user and computer is mediated by lifelike agents is currently one of the major steps in the evolution of the user interface technology. Anthropomorphizing the Personal Service Assistant, hence, constitutes an important aspect of current interface-agent research aiming towards highly personalised services. Our resear...

In almost every science fiction movie you’ll see people conversing with machines. Of course, the rise of intelligent personal assistants means you probably do this yourself already. This posting asks: what’s the difference? Also, recent news on Facebook acquisitions, spoken language translation, and sentiment analysis. Science fiction fascinates us because it paints a picture of a world that is...

A predominant concern in ubiquitous computing (UC) is the natural and effortless interaction of humans with a smart environment in order to carry out a certain task or simply to make life easier. Often, interaction is bootstrapped with a user’s personal, mobile device. Such a device may carry a digital representation in form of a user profile and a key pair that serves as a digital identity. Ex...

The AR-PDA project develops a framework that allows the use of mobile AR applications for the consumer market. Adapting existing technologies for PDAs (personal digital assistants), high speed wireless computing, computer graphics and computer vision, AR services will be provided at low costs. In this paper, we discuss the suitability of mobile devices for AR, address problems of wireless netwo...

Paper-based planners and calendar programs run on personal digital assistants are common methods to remind users of tasks and appointments. Both require a certain amount of time to record an entry. Is it worthwhile (or even possible) to try to create an appointment scheduling system which takes significantly less time and effort? We argue that it is and describe one such system currently being ...

In recent times, the way people access information from the web has undergone a transformation. The demand for information to be accessible from anywhere, anytime, has resulted in the introduction of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones that are able to browse the web and can be used to find information using wireless connections. However, the small display form factor of thes...