Middleware for Context Sensitive Mobile Applications

Contextual information such as spatial location can significantly enhance the utility of mobile applications. This paper introduces the concept of active preferences that represent a combination of user preference information and choices combined with spatial or temporal information. Active preferences set the policy on how a mobile application should customise its behaviour not just for a particular user but as that user moves to different locations and interact with other mobile users or with fixed location base stations. This paper discusses technical issues for establishing a middleware infrastructure to aid experimentation and describe the prototype testbed.