Information Valets: Adaptivity for Multi-Platform Access to Heterogeneous Information

This paper introduces the concept of an Information Valet (“iValet”), an approach for combining multi-platform access to heterogeneous information with adaption to user preferences. The goal of an iValet is to support access to a range of information sources from a range of wired and wireless client devices with some degree of uniformity. An iValet should be aware of its user and user devices, learning from a user’s past interactions where and how to send new incoming information. Our metaphor is that of a valet that sits between a user’s client devices and the information services that the user may want to access. This paper describes a prototype iValet that interacts with its user through both the Palm VII “Web-clippings” service and the RIM 950 two-way email-capable pager, providing access to email, Web pages, and personal files. We discuss general issues raised by our work concerning the more general design of an iValet, and present initial results concerning the ability of machine learning techniques to successfully inject adaptability into our iValet system.