Author Description

This dissertation, "UNO: Enabling Person-centered and Person-based Computing" by Pan, Hui,, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled UNO: ENABLING PERSON-CENTERED AND PERSON-BASED UNO: ENABLING PERSON-CENTERED AND PERSON-BASED COMPUTING COMPUTING submitted by Hui Pan Hui Pan for the Degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in October 2004 It is becoming increasingly common for people to own more than one computing device, located at home, in the office, in different cities, or even in different countries. It will soon be commonplace for these different devices to cooperate with each other through the Internet to meet their owner's needs in a person-centered computing paradigm. This study proposes the concept of UNO which will enable users to effectively control and manipulate their devices. The self-organizing of each individual's multiple computer devices into a person-centered self-sustained network forms a UNO. Furthermore even if an individual owns many devices; communication is expected to be person-to-person rather than device-to-device. This is the so-called person-based communication paradigm. Inter-personal communication will be made between UNOs. In this study, we design the architecture and protocols for the UNO World Network. This peer-to-peer overlay architecture allows an individual's devices to self-organize. In addition, it allows appropriate message routing to his computer device during inter- personal communication with the introduction of the virtual node concept. A prototype is implemented using the JXTA