Information Sharing with Handheld Appliances

Handheld appliances such as PDAs, organisers or electronic pens are currently very popular. Handhelds are used to enter and retrieve useful information, e.g., dates, to do lists, memos and addresses. They are viewed as standalone devices and are usually not connected to other handhelds, thus sharing data between two handhelds is very difficult. Rudimentary infrastructures to exchange data between handhelds exist, but they are not designed for a seamless integration into handheld applications. The fundamental different nature of handheld devices to desktop computers leads to a number of issues. In this paper, we first analyse the specific characteristics of handheld devices, the corresponding applications and how users interact with handhelds. We identify three basic requirements for a successful realisation: privacy, awareness and usability. Based on these considerations, we present our own approach.