The design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems must be centered on users’ activity in order to bring computing systems closer to people. Adopting an activity-centered approach to the design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems leads us to seek to understand: a) how humans naturally accomplish an activity; and b) how computing artifacts from both the environmental and personal...

In this paper, we propose a mobile user interface named personal companion which enables selection and interaction of u-services based on context of user. Personal companion selects u-services from a list of discovered services, supports camera-based selection with embedded marker and personalizes UI of the selected service in ubiquitous computing environment. In order to verify its usefulness,...

W earable computers enhance personal computing with continuously worn, intelligent assistants that augment memory, intellect, creativity, communication, and physical senses.1–3 As wearable computing technology pervades our daily lives, we must ask how it influences social behavior. Will it merely make people “smarter” by providing seamless, context-aware access to information, or will it also e...

Based on experience in orchestrating collaborative learning scenarios with ubiquitous computing technology, three approaches for extending co-constructive modelling and discussion environments with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) connected through a wireless network are described. One application is an annotation tool, the second one replicates a modelling system on the PDA and the third one...

In line with the overall trend individuals’ personal affairs, too, are composed of digital records to an increasing amount. At about the same time, the era of local storage in end-user equipment is about to give way to remote computing where data resides on third party equipment (cloud computing). Once information, and even the most personal one, is no longer stored on personal equipment the re...

Cloud computing is a new delivery model for information technology services and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources over the Internet. However, cloud computing raises concerns on how cloud service providers, user organizations, and governments should handle such information and interactions. Personal health records represent an emerging pa...

OBJECTIVES Telehealth has an increasing role in future healthcare. This paper seeks to define and understand recent advances in provision of tele-healthcare through use of personal handheld computing devices, and suggests how such personalized solutions offer further opportunities for progress. METHODS We considered the current status of personal handheld computing devices for personalizing h...

With the proliferation of various types of computing and networking resources in ubiquitous computing environments, an architecture allowing mobile users to flexibly access these resources is desirable. We have focused our attention on the access link resources of devices surrounding users. Our framework named Personal Mesh allows personal devices to seamlessly access the Internet via appropria...