What Is Adaptive Behaviour?
Adaptive behavior arises due to a significant mismatch between supply and demand for resources. The mismatch often occurs in a low-level system resource such as bandwidth, battery power, or memory. It may also relate to interaction such as display size or input modality. As a mobile user moves, services and resources may become available or disappear. As this happens, the mobile system needs to adapt to what is available in its environment.
The mismatch may occur even if the user is static. Available bandwidth varies not only because coverage is non-uniform over an area, but also due to the actions of neighboring users. For example, as more users move into a cell and compete for a resource, the perceived QoS may decrease. As this happens, the system has to handle the variation in a way that minimizes inconvenience to the users and does not abruptly interfere with the task the user is trying to accomplish.
Categories: Context Awareness Tags: adaptive application, adaptive behaviour
Mobile Applications Not
Many of what people consider mobile applications are nothing more than applications that run on mobile devices. They’re not mobile applications in the true sense of its definition.
Many software engineers/developers are stuck with the desktop mindset. They fail to understand that developing mobile applications are significantly different from developing desktop applications.
Categories: Context Awareness Tags: Context Awareness, context-aware applications
I Know Where You Are!
In my previous posting, I mentioned that location often plays an important role in determining how to deliver relevant and timely information and services to users. This brings us to quite an interesting topic – location tracking.
How do you track a user’s location? There are a number of techniques, one of which is triangulation. Triangulation is divided into lateration and angulation. Lateration involves using distance measurement.
Categories: Context Awareness Tags: GPS, location tracking
Context-Awareness 101
So how does the next generation computer is one that disappears into the background and delivers relevant, timely information to users? A vital element of to provide this support is context-awareness. The system has the ability to sense its surrounding and use that information to deliver relevant and timely information to the user.
Here’s a simple way to illustrate context-awareness. Let’s say your live in Kuala Lumpur. You use your PDA to book a movie ticket. The system is able to detect your current location and suggest cinemas within 3 km radius of where you are that is showing the movie. In this case, your current location is your context.
Categories: Context Awareness Tags: next generation computer
Pervasive Computing 101
What is pervasive computing? It all started in 1991 when Mark Weiser envisioned the next generation computer that weaves themselves into their environment. The next generation computers make themselves invisible and intuitive to use. Computers disappear into the background. If you’re a Star Trek fan, think of the computers in this science fiction series, and you’ll get the idea.
The term coined by Weiser is ubiquitous computing, which is now synonymous to pervasive computing.
Computers as they exist today do not integrate themselves into our environment. You’re aware of the fact that you’re using a computer. The PC sits on top of your desk. You carry a laptop or pocket PC around. You need to acquire certain skills in order to use them, e.g. if you want to use a spreadsheet, you have to learn to use it.
Categories: Context Awareness Tags: mark weiser, next generation computer, ubiquitous computing
