My current research approach is to develop ubiquitous computing applications in order to inform the design of infrastructure and services. The TeleWeb weakly connected web browser is one such application [1]. One lesson we learned developing TeleWeb was that the traditional systems approach of hiding information behind virtual interfaces is not always desirable. Our system carefully exposes some of the network state and communication costs and provides a much "less surprising" system as a result.

Another ubiquitous computing application I have been developing is Dynomite [2], a portable electronic notebook for the capture and retrieval of handwritten and audio notes. The goal of Dynomite is to merge the organization, search, and data acquisition capabilities of a computer with the benefits of a paper-based notebook. I often think of ubiquitous computing as putting computers into the woodwork around us; Dynomite puts computers into the paperwork!

The Windows platform now spans the range from small hand-held devices (CE), to portables and desktop systems (95), to servers (NT). Ubiquitous computing researchers have always been interested in exploring different scales of devices (the "inch, foot, yard" devices Mark Weiser describes [3]) and how they might inter-operate. Our usage of NT is first as a development platform for applications that will later run on smaller devices. My second use of NT is as a vehicle for developing network infrastructure supporting ubiquitous computing. Although shifting my work to Windows platforms has let me develop applications more easily, I've found that debugging and performance tuning is more time consuming on NT than on Unix systems with source code.

Bill Schilit is a member of the research staff at FX Palo Alto Laboratory in California where his research focuses on ubiquitous information access: recording, reviewing, retrieving, and reusing information anytime, anyplace. Previously, Bill was a Member of the technical staff at AT&T's Bell Labs where he led the TeleWeb project. In 1995 Bill received a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University for studies in location-dependent computing. His thesis research was performed at Xerox PARC where he worked on the Ubiquitous Computing initiative as a student intern and visiting scientist.

[1] TeleWeb: Loosely Connected Access to the World Wide Web, by Bill N. Schilit, Fred Douglis, David M. Kristol, Paul Krzyzanowski, James Sienicki, John A. Trotter. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 28 (1996) 1431-1444.
https://www5conf.inria.fr/fich_html/papers/P47/Overview.html

[2] Dynomite: A Dynamically Organized Ink and Audio Notebook. L. D. Wilcox, B. N. Schilit, and N. Sawhney. In CHI 97 Conference Proceedings, ACM Press, March 22-27 1997, pp. 186-193.
https://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi97/proceedings/paper/ldw.htm

[3] Mark Weiser. The computer for the 21^st century. Scientific American, 265(3):94--104, September 1991.
https://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html

Bill N. Schilit
FX Palo Alto Laboratory
3400 Hillview Avenue, Bldg 4
Palo Alto, CA 94304
415-813-7220