Situation-dependent metaphor for personal multimedia information

Recently available low-cost personal computers and mechanisms to produce digital data haw caused a staggering increase in the amount of multimedia data acquired by the user. Hence, the user's personal information space that consists of a large collection of files, may distribute over a number of computers. Situation-dependent metaphor methodology described in this paper, provides a novel approach to managing such a collection with respect to the context of user's interactions with data. By considering the mobile computing environment, the physical location, time periods and activities are primarily used in modeling the situation metaphor. Sensors and software agents are used in capturing contextual factors automatically. Situation Space describes the theoretical foundation for the situation metaphor based information organization. We also presents our prototype engineered model, Situated Information Filing and Filtering (SIFF), to demonstrate the situation-dependent data management, The SIFF provides the framework for organizing the personal information and developing applications that require contextual information.