Ïnfinïty: A generic platform for application development and information sharing on mobile devices

Abstract

Personal mobile devices, such as cell phones and PDAs, are undergoing continual improvements in computing power, storage, and connectivity. This trend presents many opportunities for information sharing and collaboration among massively distributed data sources. However, the current mobile environment, which consists of incompatible operating systems, development models, and communication options, has hindered application development and data sharing over ad hoc networks of mobile devices. In this paper, we present a middleware framework, called nfnty, that unifies techniques for local (and remote) device data access, automatic communication channel selection, and application deployment across heterogeneous platforms. nfnty enables information sharing and collaboration among mobile devices in a privacy-preserving manner. We describe the prototype implementation of nfnty and demonstrate how it eases application development and supports a wide variety of application scenarios. Copyright 2007 ACM.