Developing a Context Sensitive Tourist Guide
Nigel Davies, Keith Cheverst, Gordon S. Blair, Keith B. Mitchell · 1998
all of the information they require pre-installed as typified by, for example, the Cyberguide project [Long,96]. This approach is likely to have performance benefits since it does not rely on wireless networking. However, we believe this approach is limited and unlikely to be adopted in the long-term for two reasons. Firstly, our requirements study has highlighted the need for interactive services which require a communications link to the portable end-systems (see section 2). Secondly, investment by companies such as Sun in developing low-cost specialised web-clients (which are expected to retail for less than $500) makes it possible to envisage that in the medium term portable versions of these machines will be widely available. These will make ideal GUIDE units by being both cheaper and consuming less power than stand-alone PCs. Based on their location and user preferences the end-systems receive information tailored to their current context. Information for a given geographic area