The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Adaptive software -- a late bloomer
http://www.physorg.com/news201514020.html
August 20, 2010
Adaptive software is the largely unfulfilled promise of mobile
technology, but now a new platform developed by European researchers
promises to finally deliver software that reconfigures itself
depending on the context.
Adaptive software - software that can configure itself automatically
to deliver the maximum functionality for a given context - is finally
coming. One of the long-promised fruits of the mobile technology tree,
adaptation has proven a late bloomer, in large part due to the number
of extremely tough problems that dog the idea.
For starters, there are thousands of different potential devices, from
mobile phones to media players to computers. Added to that are the
even vaster number of applications.
"The MUSIC project wanted to create a platform for adaptive
applications that could work on any device and with any software,"
explains Geir Horn, researcher with SINTEF in Norway and coordinator
of the project. "[It's] because people often want software to work
differently in different contexts."
Faulty defaults
For example, most emailing software downloads each email with all
attachments in the order they were received. On a slow internet
connection, it can mean waiting an hour or more to retrieve all the
emails a user has received, and the connection could even drop out
before the important last mail has been downloaded.
But email clients have a 'slow connection' setting that lets users
download just the basic information: the subject, the sender and the
size of the file, and it can be very useful when roaming data feeds or
when the bandwidth is limited.
And it is not just download options that can be optimised for
particular contexts. Encryption, too, can be usefully adjusted for
office use or when on the move, with simple or even no encryption for
the office, but extremely strong encryption outside the office.
Functions like these are typically buried behind obscure menu items
and several dialogue boxes, and there are literally hundreds of
possible options for all the different software on one device, and
even more options for other devices. Users would quickly become
overwhelmed if they have to change settings manually.
"Of course, the email software developers could write their software
so that it adapts when the internet connection is slow, or when the
user is moving, or when the user is in a particular location, but
there are possibly hundreds of different situations that they would
need to think of, and it quickly gets prohibitively expensive,"
stresses Horn. "And that is just for one application."
MUSIC handles all these issues. It takes account of a user's location,
whether it is at home, the office, in a car or on public transport. It
notes the device in use, whether a mobile phone, netbook or desktop,
and it is aware of dozens of other variables, from the strength of the
internet connection to the time of day, from light levels to the
condition of the battery.
Good guesses
By combining all this information, the MUSIC middleware can make a
very good guess of the users' context, what the user will want to do
at a particular time, in a specific location with a given device.
The MUSIC platform does not need to be configured by the user, it
derives its possible settings from the high-level behaviour
descriptions that are part of most software developed today.
High-level behaviours describe functions such as displaying SMS
messages via text or using audio.
These descriptions tell the MUSIC software what settings can be
altered, and MUSIC then simply uses the most appropriate settings for
a given context. In the SMS example, it would render the message in
text when the user is in a restaurant, but render it in audio when he
or she is in a car.
"The biggest challenge that the MUSIC consortium faced was trying to
create software that would install on any device, whether it is a
mobile phone, PDA, netbook or server," Horn relates. "In the end, we
decided to use Java, which we thought was the most appropriate
cross-platform development language."
The developers also used a plugin paradigm so the software can be
extended in useful ways. For example, any software can take advantage
of MUSIC functionality simply by developing a plugin for the platform.
Similarly, the platform can expand its functionality via plugins too.
So while the base MUSIC configuration may take account of location via
GPS and time via the device clock, plugins could expand the base
configuration to take advantage of other sensors, such as a compass,
accelerometer or light meter.
Mission accomplished
The MUSIC project achieved all its design goals and has created a
robust prototype platform. The software is designated open source and
is freely available. There is a fledgling development community
coalescing around the platform and, while there is no formal
commercialisation plan as such, it is very likely that MUSIC will
slowly, almost surreptitiously, become part of the mobile landscape.
That is because the platform is tiny, just a few hundred kilobytes in
its base configuration. "So if a company wants to offer services that
depend on MUSIC, they can just bundle the software with the service,"
Horn remarks.
He offers the example of a tourist office in, say, Turin. The tourism
office can develop a package that will show users specific information
at a precise location - say the history of a famous church - when the
user is standing there.When the user subscribes to the service, the
software can be downloaded to their phone directly. That makes the
MUSIC functionality available to any other MUSIC-enabled software on
the user's phone.
By degrees and utility, then, MUSIC has a very strong chance of
becoming a very common platform and then, finally, mobile technology
will evolve to become truly 'adaptive'.
Check out the plugins repository on the MUSIC website.
More information: MUSIC project - http://developer.b … s/ist-music/
Provided by ICT Results
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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