Pers Ubiquit Comput (2009) 13:539–548 DOI 10.1007/s00779-009-0221-z
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Ubiquitous Personal Study: a framework for supporting information access and sharing Hong Chen Æ Qun Jin
Received: 15 May 2008 / Accepted: 14 January 2009 / Published online: 22 April 2009 Springer-Verlag London Limited 2009
Abstract The information resources on the Web are diversified, the amount of which is increasing rapidly. Demands for selecting useful information from the Internet, managing personal contents, and sharing contents under control have risen. In this study, we propose the Ubiquitous Personal Study, a framework of personalized virtual study to support accessing, managing, organizing, sharing and recommending information. In this paper, we focus on discussing the framework, and design and implementation issues on how to implement it with Web 2.0 mash-up technology and Open Source Software.
1 Introduction As the Internet Technology advances, information resources on the Internet have been increasing dramatically, and the volume of information that an individual has to deal with is greatly increasing. In recent years, the so-called Web 2.0 technology has received much attention and has been widely used in a variety of web services. With the basic concepts of Web 2.0, it is assumed that with the number of users growing, the amount of information offered increases as well. It has become more difficult to
H. Chen Q. Jin (&) Department of Human Informatics and Cognitive Sciences, Waseda University, Saitama, Japan e-mail:
[email protected] H. Chen e-mail:
[email protected]
select useful contents from the huge amount of information. Demands on selecting useful information from the Internet, managing personal contents, and sharing contents under control have risen by leaps and bounds. Many previous works have aimed at developing new approaches to recommend information by analyzing user’s preference based on information access history, and to share information through friends’ relationship networks. However, these services are generally all non-generic services within independent systems, which means that in order to use necessary services, the users have to log into a different site; it is impossible to bring information together and organize it. Web access histories are spreading across different sites, and it is hard to make recommendable information based on information behaviors that include all of the users’ activities and interactions. For instance, when using services in different environments such as a PC at school, a PC at home, and a mobile PDA, the user’s web access history and profiles are dispersed (Fig. 1). On the other hand, since personal activity is recorded, personalized services also cause potential privacy threats. The best way to protect a user’s privacy is to have the user to manage his/her information himself/herself. In this study, we propose a framework to organize individual information and to support information access collaboration for all kinds of users. In our proposed framework, Ubiquitous Personal Study (UPS) [1], a personalized virtual study, works as a personal information hub or portal. It is independent of service providers, which stores personal resources including profile, personal activity, and uses tags to classify and organize information. The owner of UPS can manage the access level of the resources which the UPS offers; s/he can modify and delete it freely. UPS links each other by Cross Social Network Service (XSNS), and the UPS environment may also lead to
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2 Related works
Schoolmate-related Behaviour Job-related Work Tasks Interests User Profile
Face Book
User Profile
Linkedin
Information Behaviour
Hobby Daily-life Behaviour
My Space
User Profile
MIXI iGoogle
User Profile
Private Interests
User Profile Hobby Daily-life Behaviour
Fig. 1 Dispersed users profiles
applications that attempt to establish relationships by exploring weak ties (friend matching) [2], share and recommend information. In addition, we examine how to make information recommendation on UPS using tags. In this study, user profile is used for personalized information recommendation; friendship attribute tags and web access history are used for collaborative filtering of information; and friend matching (tags matching) through XSNS is used to find weak ties between the users. For our prototyping implementation of UPS, we have tried to utilize many Web2.0 services, including Amazon,1 Google,2 Twitter,3 etc. to reduce the amount of work needed for the implementation. We design the system architecture to make it possible to interoperate between UPS and other Web2.0 services, which broadens the applicability of UPS and introduces new possibilities for Web 2.0 services as well. Moreover, UPS core system and component modules are constructed by fully applying OSS (Open Source Software). Most of OSS systems have been quickly developed based on new technologies including Web 2.0, so that the use of OSS can reduce a lot of work on the implementation of UPS. Some modules use OSS as it is; some modules use customized OSS—it is another advantage of using OSS. This paper is organized as follows. Starting with summarizing related works in Sect. 2, we then describe the UPS framework in Sect. 3. In Sect. 4, we introduce some key technologies used in this study, such as mash-up, tagging and RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification). After describing the design and implementation issues for each UPS module in Sect. 5, we further discuss scenarios for the utilizations of UPS in Sect. 6. Finally, in Sect. 7, we outline our conclusion and future works of our study.
1 2 3
http://amazon.com. http://www.google.com/. http://www.twittter.com/.
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Recently, collaboration and recommendation have become popular research topics. The approaches of system development by Web 2.0 mash-up [3] and OSS [4] have also been widely studied. Research works have aimed at managing and organizing information by CMS (Contents Management Systems). Moodle4 is a typical Open Source Software for e-learning, and there are a lot of applications using it to support e-learning activities. But since it is a closed system, and there is no cooperation with the learning activities in real life, its usage has been limited. Bookshelf Communication5 developed a new approach to organize information based on the concept of virtual bookshelves. However, its implementation was confined to the management of the books on Amazon web service, and it doesn’t consider cooperating with other services, which limits its possibilities. Research works have also been done for information recommendation by analyzing user’s preference according to information access history [4–7] or by applying social networking approaches [8–11]. iGoogle6 provides a personalized web search service. Some of the web portal sites and most SNS sites offer personalized collaboration services. It is possible to share information through friends’ relationship networks on many SNS sites. Other works have been sought to use the emerging mash-up technology and the so-called patchwork prototyping to develop web services with Web 2.0 and Open Source Software. PCT (Personal Chronicling Tools) has been proposed for enhancing information archives and collaboration in enterprises [12]. And a tagging system called Delicious Dynamics has been developed to analyze collaborative works [13]. In [11], the tagging approach has been utilized to discover social interests. To consummate modeling and capturing users’ feature and behavior, user profiling approaches have been widely applied [14–16]. In this study, we propose the UPS framework, attempting to create and manage user profiles in one place that is controlled by the user.
3 The framework of UPS The UPS framework collects user identity, activities and interactions with others. In addition, it provides personalized information organization, access management, and information sharing support. UPS is connected to each 4 5 6
http://www.moodle.org/. http://hondana.org/. http://www.google.co.jp/ig.
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other through XSNS (Cross Social Networking Service) which base on vCard [17] and XFN (XHTML Friends Network) [18], and the connection level is further subdivided according to the closeness of a user’s relationship with others, which is represented by XFN. 3.1 Ubiquitous Personal Study Ubiquitous Personal Study is a personalized digital virtual study, or a personal information hub/portal for information access, management, organization and sharing (Fig. 2). Major features of the proposed UPS are listed as follows. •
•
•
• •
Individual identity and personal information are organized in each UPS. Information that one wants to see or to be shown is brought together in one place. Individual activity, including UPS activity, web access history, and bookmarks are recorded by the time-line, and a part of the real world activities are also integrated by using RFID. Information attribution is described by Tags. Information recommendation and information cluster are also based on Tags. UPS works as a portal site of individual information to manage all public information. UPS can be used to provide interface not only to other web services, but also from other services that do mashup via web or cellular phone.
RFID: Identity, Profile RFID Reader
HTTP
HTTP User’s UPS
User User User User User Profile Profile Profile Profile Profile
UPS consists of two groups of functional mechanisms: personal information collections and private information behaviors. Personal information collections include V-Book, V-Bookshelf, V-Desktop, and V-Note. V-Book is a digital content that uses the book as a metaphor. Digital content and tag data of the content are stored in V-Book. It can be divided into V-Books one possesses, one wants to posses, and one borrows from others. Abstracts and keywords on the V-Books are referred to the network databases such as Amazon, imdb7 (The Internet Movie Database), and cddb8 (a database for software applications to look up audio CD information over the Internet). Information on V-Books can be described in RDF (Resource Description Framework). V-Bookshelf is an organized special bookmark, which stores all V-Books that a user arranges. Like a real bookshelf, it stores V-Books such as published books and papers, movie DVD and music CD. Users can create as many bookshelves as they like, and put related V-Books to the V-Bookshelf. A V-Bookshelf can be considered as a user’s interest field. A user’s interests may be obtained by inferring from the related tags and the order of bookshelves. The tag collection of V-Books will be the attribute of V-Bookshelf. The owner may select an outside profile linked to a group of V-Bookshelf, and then the profile is reflected in this group features. V-Bookshelf can also be used to manage V-Books borrowed. V-Desktop is a subset of UPS, as a working space, including V-Books that have been reading recently, UPS recommended V-Books, and a rich text viewer. It can be easily transferred to a laptop device with less memory, and Internet access through a slow network. V-Note is a note binder, as a mini-set of UPS, including recent change log, V-Books that have been read recently but saved as plain text, and a plain text viewer. It can be contained in a mobile phone or PDA with limited memory and narrow or even none network connection. Private information behaviors include V-Card, user Profile, and V-Log. V-Card is a metaphor for business card or one item of address book. It includes personal identity (e.g., vCard, OpenID [19]), and a Tag cloud (a set of tags with weight) to describe a user’s features. A friend’s or community’s information also uses V-Card as a metaphor. User profile saves a user’s features. It contains some groups of friends, communities who joined and some group of V-Bookshelf. User’s features are used for information recommendation and collaboration support. It can be
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Fig. 2 UPS: Ubiquitous Personal Study
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http://www.imdb.com/. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB.
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designed in such a way that it will be influenced by the change of elements. V-Log is a Personal Chronicle, like a Change Log. It traces all activities, including UPS activities, Web access history and active tracer by RFID. We propose and develop a V-Log to support ubiquitous environment that can work offline. UPS connects the user’s device with a reasonable data set corresponding to the device and network capacity (Fig. 3). Since UPS may be used offline, we design working file architecture to fit a user’s different situations. If the UPS client is running on a Desktop PC or Workstation, it will hold the working copy of the whole files, including all V-Books, V-Bookshelves, a V-Desktop, and a V-Note. Laptop PCs or PDAs with less storage will hold only part of the working files for a V-Desktop and a V-Note. Handset device just holds a V-Note and User Profile for limited storage. When we read or write on a file that is not available on a V-Desktop, UPS will first move it from V-Bookshelf to V-Desktop. Old file on last V-Desktop queue will be sent back to the original V-Bookshelf automatically, if the user does not move it back. This mechanism ensures the users to make synchronization only before they go offline, so that they can hold all data on a V-Desktop and/or V-Note for offline work. 3.2 XSNS: Cross SNS As shown in Fig. 4, UPS connects to each other and exchange information flexibly by Cross Social Network Services (XSNS). It provides an environment for collaborative activity via the Internet. In UPS, friends’ information based on V-Card and the description of friendship based on XFN are preserved in the friend’s site by links. The connection level is subdivided to XFN description of both parties; information shown for visitors is dependent on XFN description in UPS. XFN is a simple way to represent
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Fig. 4 XSNS: cross-site SNS
human relationships using hyperlinks, e.g. \a href=‘‘ http://jeff.example.org’’ rel=‘‘friend met’’[… 3.3 UPS-XSNS architecture UPS-XSNS architecture is one in which UPS connects to each other through XSNS network, which makes it possible to control information access, to connect friends and groups across the Internet easily, and to share data across platforms for collaborative work flexibly. In addition, UPS can be implemented into different CMS as a Plugin. User can choose CMS and add-on Plugins as s/he wants. By using the UPS-XSNS architecture to connect the individual UPS through XSNS, it becomes possible to create a larger scale SNS with the diversified UPS service on different computer platforms. Because most of the UPS functions can be constructed by Web 2.0 services, it is simple to implement the modules by mash-up technologies and existing solutions of Open Source Software (such as Apache, PHP, MySQL). It not only reduces the workload on implementation, but also makes good use of other services. It has multiple effects because of increased interoperability between UPS and other services, and makes it feasible to use both user interfaces to fit different use cases.
4 Web 2.0 technologies for UPS implementation
Fig. 3 UPS: connects the user’s device with a reasonable data set
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Our implementation of UPS-XSNS architecture is based on OSS and mash-up of web services to take advantage of OSS and fully utilize the latest Web 2.0 mash-up technologies. OSS is a type of computer software whose source code is publicly available. Because the source code is open to the public, OSS components become the software foundation; a lot of engineers customize and add new functions to it, leading to a lot of excellent software developments. Moreover, it tends to be easier to cooperate between programs, and portability improved because most
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Fig. 5 Components of Web 2.0 services and user interface for UPS
Open Source Software is based on an open standard. Web 2.0 is a generic name for a web related technology and web services based on new ideas since 2004. APIs of Web 2.0 services are open to the public. Users can access their contents freely. It is possible to generate new contents and tools by web services mash-up. UPS is composed of a core module, several functional modules, and linkages between modules and outside parts glued by RSS/AJAX, an open standard. XSNS that connects to UPS provides Web 2.0 style services to mash-up each other as well, as shown in Fig. 5. It simplifies a component’s interface design, and makes it easy to modify or expand functions, and to use OSS Plugins that work for Web 2.0 services. 4.1 Implementing UPS with OSS Ubiquitous Personal Study core module uses existing AMP (Apache, MySQL, and PHP) solutions of OSS. OSS CMS is an efficient framework to integrate different web tools and services. There are many OSS Contents Management Systems for us to choose from (CMS Matrix)9. UPS can be implemented in any CMS system that we are familiar with.
It is more efficient to use CMS and to compose some modules that use web 2.0 mash-up technologies. It speeds up the implementation and expands the number of UPS users by sharing services with each other. We have examined some software such as the wellknown WordPress,10 XOOPS11 and Zope/Plone12 that are based on AMP solutions, concerning the number of Plugins to use new Web 2.0 services, easiness to expand and customize, choices on design, and the number of users, etc. WordPress is one that is based on the AMP solution. We choose WordPress for UPS core development because it has a lot of functions suitable for UPS, with an active development team that maintains its packages and chases the new trends for it. It has been equipped with abundant Plugins to add on new functions, plentiful themes (design) to fit the user’s taste, with features that are easy to be customized. Therefore, an enormous number of users like to use and support it. In UPS prototype, WordPress user management framework is that the users manage UPS user information. As a personal information portal site, the owner can not only 10 11
9
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix.
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http://wordpress.org/. http://www.xoops.org/. http://plone.org/.
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add his favorite services by Plugin, but also change the portal design freely because it is very easy to add functions by Plugin. Most of UPS’ functions are implemented by one or the combination of several WordPress Plugins. 4.2 Mash-up technology Mash-up is a web application that combines contents and web services from more than one source. The following are some examples of our system: •
•
•
•
Web access history: Using Google Tool Bar and Google Web History to monitor and store user’s access to the Internet, and using RSS to pull daily history and store it into UPS. Personal study activity: It is based on Twitter’s service to record user’s personal activities and mixed with the RFID location information, an approach of connection with the real world. Bookmark: We mash-up the service of del.icio.us,13 which merges Bookmark and Tag, to provide Social Bookmark Service. SNS: As other web 2.0 services, we mash-up friends’ information via XSNS interface, and acquire information from friends’ UPS through necessary authentication procedure.
4.4 Integration of UPS and Information behavior in real world by using RFID Web access is just a part of user’s information behavior. We apply a new approach to collect user activity by using RFID and GPS to get user’s location and location-related information and mash-up with other web services that may collect user activity. Recently, micro-blogging, Twitter, is getting progressively popular. Twitter is a real time communication service like Instant Messenger, and it also has functions to write a short article, or to find and communicate with friends in a similar way as SNS and Blog. But microblogging is only a text message, from which friends can not know user’s location. UPS has been designed to mash-up and enhance Twitter’s service, which try to integrate user’s actions, involving real world activities, as shown in Fig. 6. RFID is used for personal identification. RFID also keeps personal profile in Tag Cloud, and tags used with high frequency. RFID and RFID Reader collect activity information of users from the real world. Simultaneously, RFID Reader may provide information about the location, and send the information to Twitter service. The activity is also recorded on UPS by its
Mash-up for each function module will be explained in the next section. 4.3 Tagging In our proposed UPS, the user attribute and the information attribute are described by one or more tags. Information classification and recommendation also use attributes which are based on Tag and a collection of tags (Tag Cloud). For efficient use of our UPS tagging feature, we implement UPS with some techniques to assist users with the tagging quickly and properly. UPS always records tags used by users, and changes tag’s order and display in Tag Cloud style. Tags used in high frequency will have upper ranks, and are displayed in big font. When tagging a URL on the web, UPS will grab tags that are related to the same URL in del.icio.us service. Also we have Moods Tags ((^_^); (^o^); (*_*); (T_T)) which can be selected by users easily. In another way, we try to use RFID for tagging(See Sect. 4.4). When the user appears in a science museum, UPS may add the user’s activity to UPS and tag the log with ‘‘science, museum’’.
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http://del.icio.us.
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Fig. 6 Integration of real world information to UPS using RFID and Twitter
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mash-up with Twitter web service. With RFID Reader set in the library, dining hall, and classroom, time and location information of the user can be recorded.
5 Prototyping implementation of UPS modules In this section, we describe how to implement the core module and each function module of UPS. 5.1 Prototyping Implementation of UPS Ubiquitous Personal Study prototype is implemented based on WordPress, an open source blog tool. Figure 7 shows a snapshot of the interface for the prototype system. Each function module is made by one or a combination of WordPress’s Plugin. V-Book: User’s content is stored in V-Book. This prototype system mainly mashes up Amazon Web Service,
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which uses Amazon Web-API to get book’s cover and review information. V-Bookshelf: We created a wp-dl (WordPress Digital Library) Plugin for V-Bookshelf. V-Desktop: The wp-dl Plugin also works for V-Desktop. V-Note: We created a wp-note Plugin for V-Note. User profile: It is customized from BaddyPress Plugin, a WordPress social network platform. V-Card: It includes contact information by V-Card, and some network identification like OpenID. It is customized from wp-opened Plugin. V-Log: It is mixed with some Plugins to store individual UPS activity, web access history, and personal active tracer, which are implemented as follows. •
UPS activity All UPS changes will be saved to V-Log. It includes Data, Revision, Change Set and Comment. Change Set records all differences between revisions. When a user uses or connects to UPS, it will update all changed files since last synchronization to the user’s
Fig. 7 A snapshot of the interface for the UPS prototype system
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•
•
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device. When a user disconnects from UPS, it will commit all changes to UPS. Users can commit their working files anytime while working with UPS. Web access history This prototype uses ‘‘Google web history service’’ to get user’s web access history. All web access history will be stored in Google web history server. UPS gets web history from Google server once a day by RSS. The user can browse his web history and add tags to mark it. Personal active tracer We use Twitter service for personal activity trace. Additionally, some real world activities are traced by RFID. The Twitter community has already proposed a lot of solutions such as web and phone to trace user activities. UPS can use them for data entry too. In our prototype implementation, instead of sending RFID data into UPS directly, we send it to Twitter’s server and then use UPS to pull it out from Twitter server. It will be easier to use Twitter API to write a RFID data collection program, and the third party can use the same API to develop a variety of RFID data collection programs for different uses. Because we store data to Twitter’s services, it creates a powerful new way for tracing data entry. The range of data that Twitter can cover will expand.
5.2 UPS support for ubiquitous environment Ubiquitous Personal Study support for ubiquitous environment includes offline work, PDA, and phone support. It uses RFID as an input device, and mash-ups with other Web 2.0 service. Offline work support: We can get Internet access almost anywhere, but it still happens that we get offline occasionally. UPS is designed to work offline. We try to get Google GEAR14 build-in for UPS to support offline work. And we design our system to use Subversion to manage content and keep it synchronized. RFID integration: RFID is another solution to support ubiquitous access. It can be used to trace personal activities in other ways (see Sects. 4.4, 5.1). Besides, it can bring user profile including tag data to another offline UPS. Here we show the way of synchronization between Twitter and RFID. For example, when a user enters the library, RFID Reader receives the RFID information, and sends its information to Twitter Server. Twitter’s Friends and Followers find this user’s active information. Therefore, friends can send location-related message to each other. RFID can also record book rental in the library, lunch menu in the dining hall, and attendance in the classroom. 14
http://gears.google.com/.
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Recorded information will be sent from RFID Reader to database servers. Additionally, if there is a database on the web, everyone can access it from Web browser of PDA or Mobile terminal. It is possible for UPS to get location information with Personal ID, Tags and time stamp, when information provided by a user carried RFID is received by RFID reader with UPS support. If a user describes his/her hobbies and tastes in the RFID, there is the additional benefit that even those who are not Friends or Followers can find people with the similar features effortlessly by this information. ‘‘What book did you read?’’ ‘‘How long did you study in the laboratory?’’ UPS integrates user activities with mass information of the real world activities. It is useful for Web search or friend relationship networks in SNS. 5.3 Prototyping implementation of XSNS We implement XSNS Plugin by a patchwork of some WordPress Plugins which uses XFN and use customized WordPress link (Blogroll) to define XFN interface. In UPS, user identification is managed by V-Card. Friends’ relationship also starts from V-Card exchange. Friend’s account is necessary for UPS to manage the access level from the friend. When the first time accessing to a friend’s UPS, V-card is exchanged. The friend account will be created automatically based on V-card. After that, when the friend login to the account, contents can be shown depending on access limitation level defined by XFN. Moreover, it connects with friend’s UPS by using the account information in the XSNS tunnel and RSS information, etc. with limitations that can be read.
6 Scenarios to utilize UPS In this section, we describe scenarios using UPS for group work in a university laboratory, and an enterprise research center. We examine how to apply UPS for group works, and discuss how to use UPS for personalized information recommendation as well. It is necessary to share knowledge and information and communicate with group members. Because they can not communicate in real space all the time, Internet communication assistance becomes important in these cases. But communication services of such information sharing and exchange are limited to one system, and it is also difficult to add new Plugins. In our UPS system, it is simple to add Plugin for each group needs. In UPS, personal web history, tags that reflect personal interests are stored locally. It is easy to use this information to analyze personal interests and recommend information that the owner may need.
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6.1 Group work Using UPS, boosting communication between members, exceeds the usual web services. ‘‘Personal Active Tracer’’ of UPS that mash-up with Twitter service enhances it with RFID support. Group members can check progress with each other and find the mutual locations such as a classroom, laboratory or somewhere else available with RFID Reader. When a member logs into Twitter, his ID and location are sent to the Twitter Server. This is especially useful for e-learning students who usually do not study in the same classroom. They can simply communicate with ‘‘Personal Active Tracer’’, which will help them to get better communication with classmates. Also we can build an environment for UPS’s offline usage. Users not only use UPS at the university campus or at home, but also use it when they are on the way to school or back home, such as waiting for the train in the station where Internet connection may be interrupted. UPS’ Web Search History records all web sites one has searched and visited. Users can look back into them to check the history when they need some information they found before. UPS’ bookmark and web history can help share knowledge and information, and recommend them to other members. Furthermore, information access level to UPS is determined by XSNS module. It is significant to share information, but the user can make a decision to keep it private or publish it publicly. Using USP with Web2.0 service, it is possible to share daily active information among group members and to communicate smoothly. 6.2 Personalized information recommendation Personalized information recommendation is an approach to recommend information that may be of interest to a user. In UPS, all objects’ attributes are described by tags. UPS collects V-BOOK that has been stored in one’s UPS or a friend’s UPS by mashing-up friend’s XSNS. If V-BOOK attributes are highly conformed to users attributes by comparing both Tag Clouds, it may be useful information for the users. User Profile may present a user’s long-term interests, and V-Desktop may present a user’s short-term ones. UPS includes web history with tagging information that presents users’ interests, and mashing-up friend’s UPS by XSNS. It is possible to use collaborative filtering for recommendations. Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering is the recommendation algorithm used by amazon.com. The algorithm produces recommendations in real-time, scales of massive data sets, and generates high quality recommendations [20]. In our proposed UPS system, because personal web
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history is distributed to each UPS, it is difficult to make Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering as that in the centralized system. But it is still possible to use it with friends through XSNS. In UPS FARM, many users share a system; therefore, it is possible to use such kind of algorithm. Weak Ties have been investigated in [2], in which it is assumed that the value of information and the knowledge transmitted by the weak ties are of high value for the receiver. In UPS, through XSNS network, it is possible to make a friend matching by comparing with both Tag Clouds, and therefore it can be used to explore the so-called weak ties between various users.
7 Conclusions In this paper, we have presented a framework for a personalized digital visualized study, which is conceived for an integrated environment that supports accessing, managing, organizing, sharing and recommending information, in terms of UPS. We have discussed many issues concerning the design and prototyping implementation of the proposed UPS, including the emerging Web 2.0 mash-up technology. Major part of the proposed UPS framework has been implemented as a web-based system for the purpose of test running, while some of the implementation works are still in progress. However, as discussed in this paper, approaches using mash-up of a variety of web services and Open Source Software have many advantages over conventional methods, especially in the aspects of the system scalability and the cost of development and real world deployment. With our proposed UPS framework, user profiling that is controlled and managed by users enhances the privacy. As for future work, we shall refine the design, and have a complete implementation of our proposed UPS system. We shall conduct a long-term experiment on the usage of the system in some typical scenarios to evaluate the proposed framework, and users’ satisfaction on the proposed UPS as well. Acknowledgments The work has been partly supported by 2007/ 2008 Waseda University Grants for Special Research Projects No. 2007B-223, No. 2007B-224 and No. 2008B-228, 2007–2009 Waseda University Advanced Research Center for Human Sciences Project (Seeds-Type) ‘‘Learning Sciences,’’ and 2007–2009 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) No. 19200055.
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