CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Interactive Posters
AnchoredDisplays: The Web on Walls
Manish Tuteja
MIT Media Laboratory
E15-489
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
manish@media.mit.edu
ABSTRACT
With the World Wide Web, mountains of information
are suddenly within easy reach. Unfortunately, accessing this
information still requires a computer screen, a keyboard and a
mouse. This paper describes AnchoredDisplays, a new metaphor for
exploiting physical location to help display and organize
dynamically changing information. AnchoredDisplays are inexpensive
battery operated display screens that can be affixed on walls,
doors and desks. The displays can be configured to present information
such as weather, traffic, stock quotes and sports scores extracted
from the web. Once configured, users can place these displays
wherever they feel relevant. Suddenly, dynamic information becomes
much easier to find and assimilate; a user might place tomorrow's
weather near the light switch and sports scores near the phone.
Hardware and software implementations of a prototype AnchoredDisplay
system are described.
Keywords
information organization, displays, world wide web
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
INTRODUCTION
The AnchoredDisplay system offers a new metaphor for displaying dynamically
changing information. As humans we are accustomed to looking in
particular places for particular pieces of information: the placard
on the door tells us the room number and the name of the occupant;
the clock on the wall tells us the time. We know where to look
for these things and we know what they will tell us. Anchoring
information to concrete physical locations is a natural act and
should be extended to dynamic information.
With the advent of network computing technology and particularly
the web, a vast array of new information resources have become
available. News, weather, traffic and sports highlights are all
online. Unfortunately, accessing this information usually requires
intent in the form of mouse and key clicks, currently in front of a
conventional computer screen.
AnchoredDisplays make it easy to physically anchor and display
dynamic information. For example, one AnchoredDisplay may be configured
to always display traffic conditions on the local highway. The
owner might hang this Display on a wall near a coat rack. Suddenly
traffic conditions become easy to find; they are always
near the user's coat rack and they are always accurate.
Another display may be configured to show news headlines and placed
near the phone.
In assigning content to an AnchoredDisplay and placing it in a
location, the user and Display enters a contract identical to contracts
with objects like clocks; the Display will always present the
information assigned to it and it will stay put. When we look
at our clocks, we expect them to display the accurate time and
still be where we left them!
BACKGROUND
Three other systems for displaying information to users are described
below.
ParcTab
Want et al.[1] at Xerox Parc describes Parctab, as
part of Xerox's Ubiquitous Computing[2] initiative. Parctabs are
small mobile computers for office environments. The AnchoredDisplay
project differs from Parctab in that AnchoredDisplay were designed
for fixing to physical locations, whereas Parctabs are fundamentally
mobile. Furthermore, unlike Parctabs, AnchoredDisplays have no
input capability, they are only used for displaying information.
Server Push Technology
Server push technology eliminates the need for user
intervention. A user with particular interest in Intel Corporation's
stock price can visit any number of web sites implementing server-push.
Once the user's web browser is pointed at this site, the page
will automatically update, the remote web server will push
new data to the web browser. Though push technology eliminates
user intervention, the information is still tied to a conventional computer
screen.
Pointcast Incorporated
Pointcast Incorporated has a product that uses the
idle time of screensavers to present personalized information[3].
A user in Boston might request local Boston news and weather along
with scores of the New England Patriots football team. Pointcast
starts presenting when a user's computer is idle, for example
while the user takes a phone call or walks around the office.
Though Pointcast efficiently uses the computer screen when it
would otherwise be idle, once the user gets back to the computer,
Pointcast shuts down, hiding its store of information.
AnchoredDisplay SYSTEM DIAGRAM
The prototype AnchoredDisplay system is built around
a host server attached to the Internet. BitGatherers running on
the server collect information like news and sports from web sites
which they pass on to the BitBeacon.
The BitBeacon encodes this information into AnchoredDisplay
Infrared Protocol (ADIP) and broadcasts the messages to all listening
Displays via infrared modulation.
AnchoredDisplays listen to the broadcast ADIP and
display all messages directed to them.
.
System Diagram
AnchoredDisplay SOFTWARE
BitGatherer
Information like weather and traffic is harvested
from the web by BitGatherer clients running on the server. After
collecting information, the BitGatherer clients perform remote
procedure calls to the BitBeacon application with their information.
BitBeacon
BitBeacon performs two tasks. First it serves as
the target of all BitGatherer clients. Second, it encodes information
received from BitGatherers into ADIP and broadcasts it using the
BitBeacon hardware attached via a serial port.
AnchoredDisplay
Each AnchoredDisplay is assigned a unique hardware
ID and filters broadcasts from the local BitBeacon using ADIP.
Upon receiving a message destined for it, the AnchoredDisplay
software promptly displays the information.
AnchoredDisplay Infrared Protocol(ADIP)
ADIP is a synchronous protocol for delivering messages
to AnchoredDisplays. A fixed packet length of 8 bytes packet composed
of a header, data and checksum is used.
AnchoredDisplay HARDWARE
BitBeacon
A BitBeacon is an iRX interface board designed by
Poor[4] running an implementation of ADIP. The iRX board has a
Microchip PIC microcontroller, a IR receiver/transmitter pair,
and a serial port.
AnchoredDisplays
An AnchoredDisplay is composed of a 80x4 Liquid Crystal
Display(LCD) panel, a 9 volt-battery, an iRX interface board and
PIC instructions implementing ADIP along with LCD panel drivers.
CONCLUSIONS
Anchoring information to physical locations is a
natural and useful action. AnchoredDisplays make it easy to fix
information from the web to a physical point in space. With AnchoredDisplays,
all manner of dynamic information can have a home, making it easier
to find and consume.
FUTURE WORK
Interfaces for connecting BitGatherers with AnchoredDisplays
were not explored in the prototype system. Currently, a BitGatherer
is started with the unique ID of its target Display. A more natural
interface would allow the user to connect a Display to live information
on a computer screen with a simple command or gesture.
With respect to hardware, ADIP should be expanded
to serve more displays with graphics and greater speeds.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Professor Michael Hawley of the Personal Information
Architecture research group at the MIT Media Laboratory created
the environment that fostered this work. Robert Poor is thanked
for his creative and efficient design of the iRX prototype board
and for his hardware debugging skills. Thanks go to Jennifer Glos
and Robert Poor for advice on this paper. Undergraduates Peter
Finch, and Neelima Yeddanapudi wrote some of the BitGatherers
for the prototype. This work was sponsored by the Things That
Think research consortium at the MIT Media Laboratory and the
Motorola Fellows program.
REFERENCES
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Late-Breaking/Interactive Posters
