Exploring the application domain and middleware issues for a phone-centric information monitoring environment

The convergence of pervasive wired and wireless infrastructures, sophisticated sensor and location technologies and mobile devices has started to change the way in which computing technology is viewed. Though many other mobile devices, such as motes (WSN), handheld and wearable computers, PDAs, digital cameras, satellite navigators, have become more and more pervasive in public spaces and the personal fabric of everyday life, mobile phones are probably still the most common and widely-used mobile devices nowadays. It is our hypothesis that building a location-aware monitoring environment with mobile phones would be of wide interest. In addition to the academic, technical and engineering advances, social models and public awareness and acceptance of ubiquitous computing technologies could also be effectively studied within this environment. While placed in the specific context of the parallel running of three correlated research projects here on ubiquitous computing and information monitoring, we, in this paper, examine the current and potential application domain and middleware issues for a phone-centric monitoring environment.