Presentation given at ICPCA 2008, 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Applications, Alexandria, Egypt, October 2008 ABSTRACT: We present a framework that supports the development of pervasive cross-media applications through a clean separation of interaction design and application programming. The approach is based on a novel concept of active components that provides a lightweight mechanism for linking physical and digital entities to services. We show how the development of cross-media applications can be simplified by adopting an authoring rather than a programming approach and how we achieved this by integrating the active component concept into an extensible hypermedia server.

1. A Framework for Developing Pervasive
Cross-Media Applications based on Physical
Hypermedia and Active Components
Beat Signer and Moira C. Norrie
Institute for Information Systems, ETH Zurich
8092 Zurich, Switzerland
ICPCA 2008, October 7

2. Pervasive Cross-Media Applications
EdFest The Lost Cosmonaut
iTable PaperPoint
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

3. Cross-Media Link Server
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

4. RSL Metamodel and iServer
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

5. iServer Resource Plug-ins
Medium Resource Selector
physical object RFID space RFID tag
web page XHTML document XPointer
paper document page shape
movie mpeg file, avi file etc. time span
movie mpeg file, avi file etc. shape
sound mp3 file, wav file etc. time span
image gif file, jpeg file etc. shape
... ... ...
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

6. Active Components
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> PAPERPOINT_CONTROL
<iserver>
<activeComponent id="s1a" creator="beat">
Show slide 1
<name>Show slide 1</name>
<properties>
command showSlide
<parameter>
<key>org.ximtec.iserver.ac:command</key>
<value>showSlide</value> slide 1
</parameter>
<parameter>
<key>org.ximtec.iserver.ac:slide</key>
<value>1</value>
</parameter>
</properties>
<identifier>PAPERPOINT_CONTROL</identifier>
</activeComponent>
...
</iserver>
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

7. Active Components ...
 Execute code (services) on the client and server side
AC Manager
Active Component
ACS Manager A
Active Component Active Component
Stub B B
Request Sender
Client Device
Active Component
AC Names HTTP
C
iServer AC Names
Client Server
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

8. Active Components ...
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

9. Active Components ...
package org.ximtec.iserver.activecomponent.logic;
public class CommandLine extends EmptyLogic {
}
package org.ximtec.iserver.activecomponent.stub;
import java.io.IOException;
...
public class CommandLineStub extends SingleEventStub {
public static final String PARAM_COMMAND = "command";
public void finish() {
try {
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(getParameter(PARAM_COMMAND));
}
catch (IOException e) {
LOGGER.log(Level.SEVERE, Constant.EMPTY_STRING, e);
}
} // finish
}
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

10. Active Components ...
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

11. Active Components ...
Button Image
Slider Sound
Slider2D Movie
DateSelector SQLClient
Browser XCMRequest
MapSelector ClientCtrlRequest
Capture PaperPointControl
CaptureAndOcr PaperPointAnnot
CaptureAndSpeak ...
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

12. Slider / Slider2D Active Component
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

13. Cross-Media Authoring Tool
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

14. Active Components Editor
PAPERPOINT_CONTROL
Show slide 1
command showSlide
slide 1
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

15. The Lost Cosmonaut
 Writing as a collaborative
act of memory and story-
telling
 Reading, writing and
narrative as an act of
making sense
 Handwriting as a tool for
human computer
interaction
In collaboration with Axel Vogelsang,
Artists in Labs Programme
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

16. Conclusions
 Separation of interaction design and application
programming
 Authoring rather than programming approach
 Extensible cross-media framework
 modular and extensible active components
 resource plug-ins
 Rapid prototyping
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch

17. Further Information
Prof. Moira Norrie Dr. Beat Signer Nadir Weibel Adriana Ispas
 http://vub.academia.edu/BeatSigner
 Fundamental Concepts for Interactive Paper
and Cross-Media Information Spaces, Beat
Signer, ISBN 978-3-8370-2713-6, May 2008
ICPCA 2008, October 7 Beat Signer, signer@inf.ethz.ch