Title: "But I'm on my PDA: Cross Platform Collaboration"

Abstract: Users of small screen devices agree that accessing significant amounts of data is a problem. In the Small Screen Access Group we are exploring the use of small screen devices in collaborations where participants are either using different devices or may migrate during a session from one device to another. In these scenarios it may be important that the view of the data be consistent. For example, a table of data would not have columns removed on some devices but not on others.

The goal of this research is to provide automatic transformations of data for individual devices on the fly based on what we know about the use of data in the target context. To do this we first concentrate on understanding of use characteristics in these contexts.

In this talk, we will examine transformations of text, lists, tables, and forms as well as current work on peer-to-peer collaboration for the creation of virtual view spaces for the display of larger data objects including graphical displays.

Bio: Carolyn Watters is a Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. She is co-director of the Web Information Filtering Lab where she and her students explore issues related to designing and using systems for use over the web. Within that lab the Small Screen Access Group explores transformations of data for collaborative and innovative access to data on the web using small screen devices.

For the past year she has been Director of the Electronic Commerce at Dalhousie. Earlier research into models of interactive mathematics has been used to form a successful spin-off company that develops interactive mathematical tools for children.