Problems and Opportunities in Context−Based Personalization

In a world of global networking, the increasing amount of heterogeneous information, available through a variety of channels, has made it difficult for users to find the information they need in the current situation, at the right level of detail. This is true not only when accessing information from mobile devices, characterized by limited – although growing – resources and by high connection costs, but also when using powerful systems, since the amount of “out-of-context” answers to a given user request may be overwhelming. The knowledge of the context in which the data are going to be used can support the process of focussing on currently useful, personalized information. The activity needed for contextaware information personalization provides material for stimulating research, briefly illustrated in this paper.