name
 
teaching > specialization training
Developing Context-Aware Mashups with Ubiquity
subject
Take a look at the following video about the Ubiquity project at Mozilla labs:

Ubiquity enables end users to dynamically define mashups. It extends the Firefox browser with a natural-language parser by means of which users can compose web services "on the fly". The current version of Ubiquity provides a number of commands to map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc. Additionally, Ubiquity can be further extended with new commands.

In this work, we propose the student to exploit the extensibility of Ubiquity to define context-aware mashups: services that can be dynamically composed according to the users' context.

objectives of the work

The goal of this work is to develop a number of context-aware mashups using Ubiquity. We are particularly interested in the development of the following commands:

  • Define a command that displays a map of the user's current location.
  • Define a command that displays a map indicating the user's nearby places offering certain service such as restaurants or public transport stops. The user should also be able to call this command indicating his preferences (as parameters) in order to reduce the amount of information in the map (e.g. vegetarian restaurants).
  • Following the example of the public transport, define a command that displays a list of the buses, trams, etc. arriving to the user's closest stops in the next X minutes (write a small API providing the public transport's schedule information if it does not exist yet).

The previous commands are small yet representative examples of what we call context-dependent composition. In the case of Ubiquity, the possibilities of composition are limited to the web services available on the internet. Our ultimate goal, however, is to enable users to define context-dependent composition of services in a new computing field called the Internet of Things. In this field, services can also be provided by everyday devices equipped with processing and communication capacity, like cell phones, smart TVs, vending machines, etc. [1]. We believe that the work on Ubiquity can give the student important insights on dynamic service composition which can be later rendered into the field of the Internet of Things.

environment
The programming environment selected for this work is Ubiquity.
contact
Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information.
Jorge Vallejos - jvallejo@vub.ac.be
Pascal Costanza - pascal.costanza@vub.ac.be
references

[1] The Internet of The Internet of Things. ITU technical report 2005.
[2] Ubiquity
[3] Tutorial on Ubiquity.
[4] Ubiquity 0.1 Author Tutorial.

 
2010 © Jorge Vallejos