Position Paper to WWW 9 Workshop - Information Design for Mobile Web Services

Mari Korkea-aho, Ora Lassila (Nokia Research Center)
Frank Zillikens (Nokia Mobile Phones)

2000-03-01

The advent of World Wide Web- and Internet capable mobile devices opens possibilities for completely new classes of applications. For example, for applications that can exploit information about the geographical position of the mobile device, as well as the position of various services, events and phenomena. These new applications would not necessarily make much sense on traditional platforms used for accessing the World Wide Web. Examples of these new applications would include

position enhanced yellow page services
personalized weather and traffic advisories
navigational aids

and many others that we haven't necessarily even conceived yet.

The usage and needs of mobile services differ from those of traditional web services. In order to support different mobile web services, the interaction models and requirements for such services needs to be even more strongly taken into account in future W3C specification work. This includes

scalable data presentation and transfer protocols
formats to present and methods to transfer, e.g.

user preferences,
terminal capabilities,
position information,
other contextual information

methods to guarantee user privacy

Some work is already taking place in the W3C in this direction, e.g. CC/PP, P3P. In future, a co-operation with other standardization and similar organizations, such as WAP Forum, IETF, OpenGIS Consortium will play an increasingly important role.

A workshop like this is a vehicle of establishing and improving communication between organizations and companies who are interested in mobile web services. The workshop serves as a possibility to exchange ideas and discuss requirements mobile services impose on the World Wide Web and how this should be taken into account in future Web development work.

In general, it is our expectation that this workshop could bring valuable considerations on what kind of requirements and capabilities are required for mobile web services. Especially, regarding different data representation formats and protocols, enabling a convergence between the Web and the mobile world. The results of the workshop can be used as an input in future W3C work for defining infrastructure for e.g. mobile position and context dependent services.

Mari Korkea-aho 2000-03-01