Auto-personalization from user needs and preferences in cloud computing: A mobile application paradigm

The rapidly growth of mobile computing in combination with the advances of the internet has changed the computing world in a drastic way. It has traveled from the concept of parallel computing to distributed computing to grid computing and recently to cloud computing. Cloud computing is the computing that provides IT resources like services and applications with the use of Internet. Access to these resources for everyone and anywhere has become a necessity. However, the user interfaces so far are not conforming to the needs of people with disabilities or elderly. Additionally, the rise of mobile devices and ubiquitous computing results in services and applications with automatic personalization regarding user needs and preferences. The paper introduces a mobile application that participates in automatic personalization implementation in cloud computing environment. The application is accessible from elderly, people with disabilities and the general population.

I. Introduction

The market of mobile recently has been evolving rapidly and cloud computing is spreading into mobile as well. Cloud computing [1], [2] is a recent trend in IT that moves computing and data away from desktop and portable PCs into large data centers. It refers to applications delivered as services by using Internet technology. Especially, the cloud computing environment distributes IT resources - namely the hardware and software and allocates according to user's request. Thus, computing is becoming more and more mobile and ubiquitous [3], [4], [5]. In order to fulfill the vision of ubiquitous computing [6], [7], [8] we have to support automatic personalized services and applications. Personalized services and applications aim to assist the user in his/her daily life and make life more pleasurable for them. In order to increase user acceptance of those services and applications, the personalization technologies have to consider the user needs and preferences.