Smart Instant Messenger in Pervasive Computing Environments.pdf

Smart Instant Messenger in Pervasive Computing Environments1 Chun-Fai Law, Xiaolei Zhang, Sung-Ming Chan, Cho-Li Wang Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong Abstract. In this paper, we explore the potential of extrapolating the instant messaging paradigm into pervasive computing environments. Un- der this vision, an instant messenger is regarded as a unified interface for all communications among human, software services and various devices. To meet the demands, we introduce a novel instant messenger system i.e., Smart Instant Messenger, with original features of context-aware presence management, dynamic grouping, and resource buddy services. This system is built atop a context-aware supporting middleware, which adopts an ontology-based context model and handles the chore of re- trieving and managing context information. Jabber protocol is exploited as the underlying message exchange format for extensibility. The system prototype is implemented and evaluated with respect to the responsive- ness of queries and memory usage of the middleware. 1 Introduction Instant messaging (IM) has been booming since its birth and gradually becoming the most popular communication tool [15]. IM is characteristic of instantaneous message delivery and presence awareness. In particular, presence awareness dif- ferentiates IM from other communication paradigms. We believe such features fit naturally into pervasive computing environments, where communication and awareness are essential. Under this vision, “chat” would no longer be the priv- ilege of human; rather, interactions between human-software, software-device and device-device could freely take place. We envision the potential of extrapo- lating IM paradigm as a unified interface for all communications. Aiming this, we have identified several new design concepts including context-aware presence management, resource buddy services and dynamic grouping. Presence information shows a user