RECENT:

• Workshop: The What, Who, Where, When, Why and How of Context-Awareness
  Organised by a former member of the UKC mobile team, David Morse (Open University, UK), and Anind Dey (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) held at CHI2000 in the Hague, Netherlands, 3rd April, 2000.
• Workshop on Handheld Computing in the Field
  Held as part of the International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (HUC99) in Karlsruhe, Germany, 27-29th September, 1999.
• Some notes on ConteXtML, an XML-based protocol for exchanging contextual information. Note this document is continually evolving.
• The Computer Scientist and the... Rhino?!! Jason Pascoe's work on the MCFE project was selected for display at the House of Commons during SET (Science, Engineering and Technology) Week 1999.
• Ongoing software development details on the software pages.

Welcome to the homepage of this mobile & context-aware computing research project, a JTAP (JISC Technology Applications Programme) project funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) to promote the use of mobile computing technology in higher education settings.

In these pages you will find information on the ideas, issues and applications of mobile and context-aware computing. In particular, we describe our research into the use of hand-held computers, GPS receivers and other sensors in ecological and archaeological fieldwork, both areas in which the work is inherently mobile.

The emphasis of this research is on the development and application of data collection and fieldwork management tools. In this, we are following two complementary lines of development on two different platforms.

• The first is based directly on Stick-e notes, a kind of context-aware electronic tag. Here we concentrate on user interface issues and the development of applications for animal behaviour studies.
• The second introduces the MCFE FieldNote and builds on users' familiarity with the World Wide Web and the increasing availability of web browsers for hand-held computers. Here we exploit HTML forms for data recording and HTTP as a means of exchanging data with desktop computers.

Funded by

[JTAP]