WebBoard: a new display and browsing concept for Web content in public areas

We propose a novel concept for displaying and browsing Web content in public spaces via a ubiquitous network. This is a new form of the device cooperative content which we previously proposed (Kidawara, Y. et al., PACRIM, 2003). The original idea for this content was based on temporal synchronization. The new type of content is semantically synchronized and based on the concept of device cooperative browsing. This concept is an interactive method of browsing for content related to the content currently being viewed by a user. The operating mechanism is based on multiple devices connected via a peer-to-peer network. The mechanism operates cooperatively in order to find each user's particular interests and maintain information about them. Multiple devices sharing common information might thus have common topics of interest on various user devices. When new devices are connected in this environment, they detect the required information through filtering, and obtain it from other devices in the local ubiquitous network. In addition to describing this concept, we also discuss WebBoard, which is a successful implementation of our novel approach.