Focused Web Searching with PDAs

Abstract

The Stanford Power Browser project addresses the problems of interacting with the World-Wide Web through wirelessly connected Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). These problems include bandwidth limitations, screen real-estate shortage, battery capacity, and the time costs of pen-based search keyword input. As a way to address bandwidth and battery life limitations, we provide local site search facilities for all sites. We incrementally index Web sites in real time as the PDA user visits them. These indexes have narrow scope at first, and improve as the user dwells on the site, or as more users visit the site over time. We address the keyword input problem by providing site specific keyword completion, and indications of keyword selectivity within sites. The system is implemented on the Palm Pilot platform, using a Metricom radio link. We describe the user level experience, and then present the analyses that informed our technical decisions.