Sixth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA'04)
Instant Personalization and Temporary Ownership of Handheld Devices
Lake District National Park, United Kingdom
December 02-December 03
ISBN: 0-7695-2258-0
As we increasingly depend on inexpensive handheld devices at work and in daily living, ensuring the accessibility of those devices and the availability of the personalized services they provide becomes a major challenge. In this paper, we present a system for instant personalization and temporary ownership of mobile devices that addresses these issues. The system enables the user to make the transition from requiring a specific individual device to utilizing any device at hand. This significantly raises the degree of redundancy of devices accessible to the user from one to a potentially unlimited number of devices of a certain type. The system that we have prototypically implemented further provides support for periodic data backup, data recovery, and data confidentiality when devices are lost or stolen.