Ubiquitous Computing and Its Influence on MSE

Abstract

The vision of ubiquitous computing (UC) More than a decade after its invention, Mark Weiser's vision of ubiquitous computing finally seems to spark many research activities world wide. This article reviews the ideas behind ubiquitous computing and puts them into the context of the technical possibilities of today and to- morrow. The lack of appropriate software engineering approaches is identifed as a major obstacle on the route. Following the discussion of open sofnvare engineering issues in general, multimedia related issues are empha- sized. The five-step UbiMedia chain is proposed as a ref- erence model for the reconciliation of ubiquitous comput- ing and multimedia.