Computer persona: a user interaction architecture for mobile environments

We propose a user interaction architecture, which allows users to treat a set of computer-like devices as a single computer persona. The computer persona covers a static set of devices (called the permanent range) but it can also dynamically extend to or leave rented or disposable devices (the temporary range). We identify three major challenges in the implementation of a computer persona: (a) the control and coordination problem, (b) the state handoff problem, and (c) the data staging problem. We discuss these challenges in detail and propose several solutions for each of them. We also present a heuristic based algorithm for the data staging mechanism.