Virtual Information Towers-A Metaphor for Intuitive, Location-Aware Information Access in a Mobile Environment

This paper introduces Virtual Information Towers (VITs) as a concept for presenting and accessing location-aware information with mobile clients. A VIT is a means of structuring location-aware information, which is assigned to a certain geographical position while having a certain area of visibility. A user equipped with a mobile, wearable computer has access to the VITs which are "visible" from his/her current location. The architecture and protocols of a system are described, which allows its users to create VITs and to access the information on them using Internet mechanisms. We have implemented a prototype of this system and a VIT client for a wearable computer and will present some aspects of this implementation.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ISWC
• Authors: Alexander Leonhardi, Uwe Kubach, Kurt Rothermel, Andreas Fritz
• Keywords: Certain Geographical Position, Human Computer Interaction, ISWC 1999, Location-aware Information, Virtual Information Towers