pax

The trends towards increased mobility and global business connections force workers and managers alike to communicate faster using multiple new types of media. At the same time, the means of communication must become easier to use and more secure, because the statically localized workplace of today will dissolve in the near future into a distributed and highly mobile multi-media communication platform. As the need for - or the freedom of - mobility as part of altering life styles becomes more and more commonplace, new tools are required that support these new forms of life and work, also called Virtual Workplaces. A virtual workplace is a distributed wireless multi-media system that is aimed at mobile individuals and supports the organization of people working together in groups for a number of projects. The workplace is a virtual one because it provides for mobility in two senses: the mobile individuals and project members may be working at any place using a mobile tool and the individual project members may be distributed all over the world. Hence, there is no necessity for a permanent physical workplace that is owned or shared by any group of individuals. Furthermore, each individual member may be part of a large number of projects cooperating with sets of different people. The current trends in the working field - namely, the specialization and globalization of competence - enforce this new kind of work paradigm. The focus on the workplace is chosen here as an example for the use of the new means of mobility in general. The resulting techniques may be adapted for a wide range of application domains where the communication between mobile people and mobile information access play the central roles. The virtual workplace is designed to provide mobile members of distributed work groups with a multi-media platform that supports them in communicating with each other, and to retrieve and edit documents and information collaboratively wherever and whenever they need it. The individual project members are supported by a set of user interface, communication, and information retrieval agents. These mobile agents act for the user in the background in order to keep him undistracted from his work. The result of this thesis is to conceptualize and implement a Distributed Rapid Application Development Framework for the creation of Mobile Multi-Media applications that work on numerous current and future hardware devices. The virtual workplace is an example of such an application. The usability of mobile communication and information devices is facilitated by novel paradigms for computer-human interaction, such as pen-based user interfaces that mimic the behavior and ease-of-use of natural paper and speech recognition. In the combined employment of sophisticated mobile and agent technologies, virtual workplace scenarios leap far beyond the current state of research in the so-called field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work. The enormous potential of the framework architecture of virtual workplaces stems from new paradigms that are being developed in contrast to the mere extension and retro-fitting of old ones.

A rapid application development framework for distributed m...

A rapid application development framework for distributed mobile multi-media: a mobile multi-media architecture for the virtual workplace

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