Paul Cotter

A personalized television listings service

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM August 2000/Vol. 43, No. 8 107 The ClixSmart content personalization engine has been developed in the Department of Computer Science at University College Dublin. Its engine performs two essential tasks: It monitors the online activity of users (for a given Web site) and automatically constructs profiles for these users to capture their domain and behavioral preferences. (This task is carried out by the profile manager [5, 6]). The actions of individual users are stored as they select (click), browse, and read content assets, and this information is used to infer interest in specific content assets stored in the content database. Also, it uses this user profile information to personalize a target Web site by filtering information content for the target user, eliminating irrelevant content items and highlighting relevant ones [1–3, 7, 8, 10]. A Personalized TELEVISION LISTINGS SERVICE Barry Smyth and Paul Cotter

Mobile information access: A study of emerging search behavior on the mobile Internet

It is likely that mobile phones will soon come to rival more traditional devices as the primary platform for information access. Consequently, it is important to understand the emerging information access behavior of mobile Internet (MI) users especially in relation to their use of mobile handsets for information browsing and query-based search. In this article, we describe the results of a recent analysis of the MI habits of more than 600,000 European MI users, with a particular emphasis on the emerging interest in mobile search. We consider a range of factors including whether there are key differences between browsing and search behavior on the MI compared to the Web. We highlight how browsing continues to dominate mobile information access, but go on to show how search is becoming an increasingly popular information access alternative especially in relation to certain types of mobile handsets and information needs. Moreover, we show that sessions involving search tend to be longer and more data-rich than those that do not involve search. We also look at the type of queries used during mobile search and the way that these queries tend to be modified during the course of a mobile search session. Finally we examine the overlap among mobile search queries and the different topics mobile users are interested in.

A personalised TV listings service for the digital TV age

The Internet has brought unprecedented access to vast quantities of information. However, in recent times, the problem of information overload has become more and more marked, and we are now reaching a point where it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate the right information at the right time. One avenue of research that is set to improve information access, and relieve the information overload problem, is to develop technologies for automatically personalising information, both in terms of its content and mode of presentation. In this paper we describe the development of the PTV (Personalised Television Listings—http://www.ptv.ie) system which tackles the information overload associated with modern TV listings data, by providing an Internet-based personalised listings service. PTV is capable of automatically compiling personalised guides to match the likes and dislikes of individual users.

A large scale study of European mobile search behaviour

Recent evidence suggests that mobile search is becoming an increasingly important way for mobile users to gain access to online information, especially as off-portal content continues to grow rapidly. In this paper we study the characteristics of mobile search by analysing approximately 6 million individual search requests generated by over 260,000 individual mobile searchers over a 7-day period during 2006. We analyse the patterns of queries used by mobile searchers and focus on key characteristics such as the clickthru rates of mobile searches in order to understand, for the first time, just how well mobile search engines are responding to user queries. Moreover, we compare our results to a number of recent mobile studies and highlight some of the key differences between mobile search and traditional Web search behaviours.

The Plight of the Navigator: Solving the Navigation Problem for Wireless Portals

The wireless Internet, as epitomized by the first generation of WAP-enabled phones and portals, has failed to meet user expectations, resulting in limited take-up, and poor revenue growth for mobile operators. A combination of factors has been responsible: unreliable early handsets; poor content; slow connections; and portals that were difficult to use and navigate. Today, the first 3 of these issues have been solved (or are about to be) by improved handsets, high-quality content and high-speed infrastructure such as GPRS. However, portal usability remains a key problem limiting the ease with which users can locate and benefit from wireless content services. In this paper we describe how personalized navigation techniques can greatly enhance the usability of information services in general, and WAP portals in particular, by personalizing the navigation structure of a portal to the learned preferences of individual users, and how this has resulted in increased WAP usage in live user trials.

Personalized Electronic Program Guides for Digital TV

Although todays world offers us unprecedented access to greater and greater amounts of electronic information, we are faced with significant problems when it comes to finding the right information at the right time -- the essence of the information-overload problem. One of the proposed solutions to this problem is to develop technologies for automatically learning about the implicit and explicit preferences of individual users to customize and personalize the search for relevant information. In this article, we describe the development of the personalized television listings system (PTV),1 which tackles the information-overload problem associated with modern TV listings data by providing an Internet-based personalized TV listings service so that each registered user receives a daily TV guide that has been specially compiled to suit his/her particular viewing preferences.

Surfing the Digital Wave

In the future digital TV will offer an unprecedented level of programme choice. We are told that this will lead to dramatic increases in viewer satisfaction as all viewing tastes are catered for all of the time. However, the reality may be somewhat different. We have not yet developed the tools to deal with this increased level of choice (for example, conventional TV guides will be virtually useless), and viewers will face a significant and frustrating information overload problem. This paper describes a solution in the form of the PTV system. PTV employs user profiling and information filtering techniques to generate web-based TV viewing guides that are personalised for the viewing preferences of individual users. The paper explains how PTV constructs graded user profiles to drive a hybrid recommendation technique, combining case-based and collaborative information filtering methods. The results of an extensive empirical study to evaluate the quality of PTVs casebased and collaborative filtering strategies are also described

WAP ing the Web: Content Personalisation for WAP-Enabled Devices

Content personalisation technologies may hold the key to solving the information overload problem associated with the Internet, by facilitating the development of information services that are customised for the needs of individual users. For example, PTV is an award-winning, Web-based personalised television listings service capable of learning about the viewing habits of individual users and of generating personalised TV guides for these users. This paper describes how PTV has been recently adapted for use on the newgen eration of WAP-enabled Internet devices such as mobile phones - the need for content personalisation is even more acute on WAP devices due to their restricted presentation capabilities.

Case-Studies on the Evolution of the Personalized Electronic Program Guide

The Digital TV revolution promises unprecedented access to programming content across hundreds of channels. Early indications are that this leads to a new information overload problem for DTV viewers and although the current generation of electronic program guides provides viewers with on-screen access to schedule information, their usefulness is compromised by the sheer volume of information that exists. Personalized guides that learn about the viewing habits of individual users have been proposed as a solution to this problem and in this paper we examine recent developments in this area of research and chart the progress of the PTV family of personalized online TV guides. Three different case-studies are examined as we look at how personalized guides can be deployed across a variety of devices and the implications this may have on their functionality and interface design.

MP 3 - Mobile Portals, Profiles and Personalization.

The mobile Internet promises a new era of access to information anytime, anywhere. This has been made possible by a variety of technology and business developments, with mobile operators and device manufacturers at center-stage. However, to date the reality of the mobile Internet has not lived up to the promises made, and consumer take-up has been slow. This is especially true in the context of mobile (WAP — wireless application protocol) portals, which attempt to replicate the success of traditional Internet portals on Internet-enabled mobile handsets and personal digital assistants (PDAs). In this article we examine mobile portals in detail and argue that the current problems are symptomatic of serious usability issues that make it difficult for users to efficiently access available information and services. In turn, we describe how recent advances in so-called `personalization technologies’ may hold the key for mobile operators by allowing their portals to automatically adapt to the needs of individual users.