Personal Predictive Internet Content Pre-Caching for Mobile Devices
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University of Strathclyde Department of Computer and Information Science Personal Predictive Internet Content Pre-caching for Mobile Devices Andreas Komninos A thesis presented for the fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 Declaration of Author's Rights The copyright of this thesis belongs to the author under the terms of the United Kingdom Copyright Acts as qualified by University of Strathclyde Regulation 3.49. Due acknowledgement must always be made of the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis. 1 Acknowledgements “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well” Alexander the Great There is One, who I believe in, who is the provider of everything in my life, and who has blessed me with wonderful parents and wonderful teachers, and with all the persons and means that made this work possible. To Him I extend the greatest gratitude, not only for this work, but for everything. My beloved parents, without your support I would be nothing. I can not repay you in any way for all you have endured for me, other than with a promise that I will always aspire to offer my own children the same you have offered me, My teachers, from the first to the last, but now especially you, Mark, who has guided me with patience and genuine interest to continue and to finish this work, who has greeted me always with a smile and believed in me, as a colleague and as a friend, My closest friends, Andreas, Sakis, Andreas, Manos, my cousins, Costas and Nikos and my dear sister, Margarita, through good times and through bad, who were always there when I needed them and for who I will always be there if they need me, Those who have helped, in any way, small or large, those who have supported and believed in me from the beginning of this work, those that we’ve drank from the same wine and ate from the same food, all my friends from the Greek community in Glasgow and my friends from countries close or far away, those who waited for me, the bright sun and the infinite blue of the land I was born, and finally you, sweet Alexia, I thank you. 2 Abstract Motivated by the disparity of desktop and mobile Internet access, both in terms of available bandwidth and in terms of cost, this thesis presents research into an alternative method of making Internet content available for mobile users. This method is based on the extraction of information regarding the user’s activities and interests from their electronic calendar, and pre-loading their mobile device with Internet content, using a land-based connection. The main aim of the thesis is to investigate whether calendars can indeed provide information that can be used to pre-fetch useful Internet content for mobile users. While it is expected that such an approach cannot fulfil the entirety of Internet content needs for a user, the thesis aims to investigate the extent to which a mobile cache can be populated with relevant documents that the user could find of interest. Further to this, the thesis is concerned with the potential of calendar entries to be used as sources for web query generation, independently of the entry brevity and without the direct involvement of the user. This is an essential step for the investigation of the original aim of the thesis, given that an appropriately formulated web query would have a better chance of retrieving relevant documents and thus populate the mobile cache with more appropriate results. Finally, an attempt is made to show that such a predictive pre-caching system is able to adjust itself to the preferences and circumstances of the user as an individual, in order to obtain optimal retrieval performance. In the following chapters, this thesis presents evidence that supports these main hypotheses, while presenting further research outcomes which concern the usability and interaction patterns within electronic calendars, the document reading behaviour on mobile devices and the suitability of implicit interest indicators for information retrieval on mobile devices. 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 12 1.1 Current options in Internet Access............................................................. 12 1.1.1 Desktop-based Internet Access .......................................................... 13 1.1.1.1 Broadband vs. Modem Technology ............................................... 13 1.1.1.2 Costs............................................................................................... 15 1.1.2 Mobile Internet Access ...................................................................... 16 1.1.2.1 WAP & GSM ................................................................................. 17 1.1.2.2 GPRS and other 2.5G solutions ..................................................... 18 1.1.2.3 3G Networks.................................................................................. 20 1.1.2.4 Wi-Fi .............................................................................................. 22 1.1.2.5 Mobile Access Costs...................................................................... 24 1.2 Mobile Device Support for Internet Access............................................... 25 1.2.1 Device Characteristics........................................................................ 25 1.2.2 Device Limitations............................................................................. 25 1.2.2.1 Device Screens............................................................................... 25 1.2.2.2 Input Methods ................................................................................ 27 1.2.2.3 Internet Connection........................................................................ 28 1.3 Internet content Pre-Caching as an alternative approach........................... 30 1.3.1 Summary of the current state in Mobile Internet Access................... 30 1.3.2 Internet Content Pre-Caching: An alternative approach .................... 31 1.3.3 Hypotheses ......................................................................................... 32 1.4 Structure of the thesis................................................................................. 33 2 A review of existing research............................................................................. 35 2.1 Electronic and paper-based Calendar usage............................................... 35 2.2 Pre-fetching on large scale for internet content providers ......................... 39 2.2.1 What is caching?................................................................................ 39 2.2.2 Caching strategies .............................................................................. 40 2.2.3 What is pre-fetching........................................................................... 42 2.2.4 Research in Large scale (server-side) Pre-fetching............................ 44 2.2.5 Implemented systems......................................................................... 49 2.3 Pre-fetching on a more personal level (client and proxy side)................... 50 4 2.3.1 The application of pre-fetching techniques on or near the client....... 50 2.3.2 Research in personalised pre-fetching ............................................... 51 2.4 Anticipating users needs ............................................................................ 59 2.4.1 Acquiring user context and learning user preferences ....................... 59 2.4.1.1 The new user problem.................................................................... 59 2.4.1.2 Solving the new user problem with filtering techniques................ 60 2.4.2 Long term acquisition of individual user preferences........................ 64 2.4.2.1 The concept of Relevance Feedback.............................................. 64 2.4.2.2 Using Implicit Relevance Feedback for the acquisition of user preferences ..................................................................................................... 65 2.5 Query formulation...................................................................................... 70 2.5.1 Manual and Automatic Query formulation........................................ 70 2.5.2 Enhancing queries (query expansion). ............................................... 71 2.5.2.1 Automatic and Manual Thesauri.................................................... 73 2.6 Summary .................................................................................................... 81 3 Personal predictive Internet content precaching for mobile devices ................. 83 3.1 Introduction................................................................................................ 83 3.2 Choosing a programming language and system environment ................... 85 3.3 Data exchange mechanism......................................................................... 86 3.4 Obtaining Calendar data (Calendar Exporter)............................................ 86 3.4.1 Theoretical Design ............................................................................. 86 3.4.2 Implementation .................................................................................. 87 3.5 Identifying candidate keywords (Keyword Generator).............................. 88 3.5.1 Theoretical Design ............................................................................. 88 3.5.2 Implementation .................................................................................