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Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce Applications
Concepts and Technologies 1st Edition Wen Chen Hu
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Wen Chen Hu
ISBN(s): 9781615207619, 1615207619
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 10.70 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
Handheld Computing
for Mobile Commerce:
Applications, Concepts
and Technologies

Wen-Chen Hu
University of North Dakota, USA

Yanjun Zuo
University of North Dakota, USA

InformatIon scIence reference

Hershey • New York
Director of Editorial Content: Kristin Klinger
Director of Book Publications: Julia Mosemann
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Development Editor: Christine Bufton
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Published in the United States of America by

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Copyright © 2010 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in
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Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or
companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handheld computing for mobile commerce : applications, concepts and

technologies / Wen-Chen Hu and Yanjun Zuo, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: "This book looks at theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of handheld computing under four
themes: handheld computing for mobile commerce, handheld computing research and technologies, wireless networks and
handheld/mobile security, and handheld images and videos"--
Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-61520-761-9 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-61520-762-6 (ebook) 1. Mobile commerce. 2. Electronic
commerce--Technological innovations. 3. Business enterprises--Computer networks. 4. Mobile computing. I. Hu, Wen
Chen, 1960- II. Zuo, Yanjun, 1969-
HF5548.34.H364 2010
658.8'72--dc22
2009035778

British Cataloguing in Publication Data

A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the
authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.
Editorial Advisory Board
Sanjeev Baskiyar, Auburn University, USA
Lei Chen, Sam Houston State University, USA
Delaine E. Cochran, Indiana University Southeast, USA
Mario M. Freire, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
Lixin Fu, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Wilfred Huang, Alfred University, USA
Roland Hubsher, Bentley College, USA
Jhilmil Jain, HP Labs, USA
Naima Kaabouch, University of North Dakota, USA
I-Lung Kao, IBM Corp., USA
Stamatis Karnouskos, SAP Research, Germany
In Lee, Western Illinois University, USA
James Jinyoul Lee, Seattle University, USA
Wayne Wei-Chuan Lin, TakMing University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Jundong Liu, Ohio University, USA
Zongmin Ma, Northeastern University, China
Brajendra Panda, University of Arkansas, USA
Hongchi Shi, Texas State University-San Marcos, USA
Makoto Takizawa, Seikei University, Japan
Dale Thompson, University of Arkansas, USA
Alessandra Toninelli, University of Bologna, Italy
Chyuan-Huei ThomasYang, Hsuan Chuang University, Taiwan
Hung-Jen Yang, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan

List of Reviewers
Ashraf M. A. Ahmad, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan
Lei Chen, Sam Houston State University, USA
Tom Van Cutsem, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
John Qiang Fang, RMIT University, Australia
Christos Grecos, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Haibo Hu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Weihong Hu, Shandong Sport University, China
Wen-Chen Hu, University of North Dakota, USA
I-Horng Jeng, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan
Nan Jing, University of Southern California, USA
Naima Kaabouch, University of North Dakota, USA
Chung-wei Lee, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
Jundong Liu, Ohio University, USA
Phillip Olla, Madonna University, USA
Yanjun Zuo, University of North Dakota, USA
Fan Wu, Tuskegee University, USA
Chyuan-Huei Yang, Hsuan Chuang University, Taiwan
Hung-Jen Yang, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan
Lei Zhang, Frostburg State University, USA
Yapin Zhong, Shandong Sport University, China
Table of Contents

Foreword ..........................................................................................................................................xviii

Preface ................................................................................................................................................ xxi

Acknowledgment ............................................................................................................................... xxx

Section 1
Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce

Chapter 1
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web..................................................... 1
Nan Jing, University of Southern California, USA
Yong Yao, University of Southern California, USA
Yanbo Ru, University of Southern California, USA

Chapter 2
Plugging into the Online Database and Playing Secure Mobile Commerce ........................................ 16
I-Horng Jeng, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan

Chapter 3
Quality Evaluation of B2C M-Commerce Using the ISO9126 Quality Standard ................................ 32
John Garofalakis, University of Patras, Greece
Antonia Stefani, University of Patras, Greece
Vassilios Stefanis, University of Patras, Greece

Chapter 4
A Picture and a Thousand Words: Visual Scaffolding for Mobile Communication
in the Developing World ....................................................................................................................... 51
Robert Farrell, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Catalina Danis, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Thomas Erickson, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Jason Ellis, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Jim Christensen, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Mark Bailey, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Wendy A. Kellogg, IBM T J Watson Research Center, USA
Chapter 5
Web Applications on the Move: Opening up New Opportunities for Mobile Developers ................... 67
Anna Kress, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany
David Linner, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany
Stephan Steglich, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany

Chapter 6
A J2ME Mobile Application for Normal and Abnormal ECG Rhythm Analysis ................................. 86
Qiang Fang, RMIT University, Australia
Xiaoyun Wang, RMIT University, Australia
Shuenn-Yuh Lee, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

Chapter 7
Factors Facing Mobile Commerce Deployment in United Kingdom ................................................. 109
Ziad Hunaiti, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
Daniel Tairo, University of Greenwich, UK
Eliamani Sedoyeka, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
Sammi Elgazzar, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Section 2
Handheld Computing Research and Technologies

Chapter 9
Peer-to-Peer Service Sharing on Mobile Platforms ............................................................................ 180
Maria Chiara Laghi, University of Parma, Italy
Michele Amoretti, University of Parma, Italy
Gianni Conte, University of Parma, Italy

Chapter 10
Scripting Mobile Devices with AmbientTalk ..................................................................................... 202
Elisa Gonzalez Boix, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Christophe Scholliers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Andoni Lombide Carreton, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Tom Van Cutsem, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Stijn Mostinckx, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Wolfgang De Meuter, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Chapter 11
Interrupt Handling in Symbian and Linux Mobile Operating Systems .............................................. 225
Ashraf M.A. Ahmad, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan
Mariam M Biltawi, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan

Chapter 12
Web Page Adaptation and Presentation for Mobile Phones................................................................ 240
Yuki Arase, Osaka University, Japan
Takahiro Hara, Osaka University, Japan
Shojiro Nishio, Osaka University, Japan

Chapter 13
Technologies and Systems for Web Content Adaptation .................................................................... 263
Wen-Chen Hu, University of North Dakota, USA
Naima Kaabouch, University of North Dakota, USA
Hung-Jen Yang, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan
Weihong Hu, Shandong Sport University, China

Section 3
Wireless Networks and Handheld/Mobile Security

Chapter 14
Positioning and Privacy in Location-Based Services ......................................................................... 279
Haibo Hu, Hong Kong Baptist University, China
Junyang Zhou, Hong Kong Baptist University, China
Jianliang Xu, Hong Kong Baptist University, China
Joseph Kee-Yin Ng, Hong Kong Baptist University, China

Chapter 15
Survivability in RFID Systems ........................................................................................................... 300
Yanjun Zuo, University of North Dakota, USA

Chapter 16
Mobile and Handheld Security ........................................................................................................... 313
Lei Chen, Sam Houston State University, USA
Shaoen Wu, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
Yiming Ji, University of South Carolina Beaufort, USA
Ming Yang, Jacksonville State University, USA

Chapter 17
Design and Performance Evaluation of a Proactive Micro Mobility Protocol
for Mobile Networks ........................................................................................................................... 328
Dhananjay Singh, Dongseo University, South Korea
Hoon-Jae Lee, Dongseo University, South Korea
Chapter 18
A Comparative Review of Handheld Devices Internet Connectivity Revenue Models
to Support Mobile Learning ................................................................................................................ 343
Phillip Olla, Madonna University, USA

Section 4
Handheld Images and Videos

Chapter 20
Distributed Video Coding for Video Communication on Mobile Devices and Sensors ..................... 375
Peter Lambert, Ghent University, Belgium
Stefaan Mys, Ghent University, Belgium
Jozef Škorupa, Ghent University, Belgium
Jürgen Slowack, Ghent University, Belgium
Rik Van de Walle, Ghent University, Belgium
Christos Grecos, University of the West of Scotland, UK

Chapter 21
Fast Mode Decision in H.264/AVC .................................................................................................... 403
Peter Lambert, Ghent University, Belgium
Stefaan Mys, Ghent University, Belgium
Jozef Škorupa, Ghent University, Belgium
Jürgen Slowack, Ghent University, Belgium
Rik Van de Walle, Ghent University, Belgium
Ming Yuan Yang, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Christos Grecos, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Vassilios Argiriou, University of East London, UK

Chapter 22
Mobile Video Streaming ..................................................................................................................... 425
Chung-wei Lee, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
Joshua L. Smith, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA

Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 439

About the Contributors .................................................................................................................... 475

Index ................................................................................................................................................... 489

Detailed Table of Contents

Foreword ..........................................................................................................................................xviii

Preface ................................................................................................................................................ xxi

Acknowledgment ............................................................................................................................... xxx

Section 1
Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce

Handheld computing is the use of handheld devices like smart cellular phones to perform wireless,
mobile, handheld operations such as browsing the mobile Web and finding the nearest gas stations.
Mobile commerce is the most important application of handheld computing. This section discusses
some handheld-computing methods for mobile commerce.

This chapter identifies the aforementioned limitations of the existing works in context-aware advertising
when being applied for mobile platforms. The authors discuss the characteristics of the contexts that are
available on mobile devices and clearly describe the challenges of utilizing these contexts to optimize the
advertisement on mobile platforms. After then, a context-aware advertising framework is presented that
collects and integrates the user contexts to select, generate, and present advertising content. Finally, the
authors discuss the implementation aspects and one specific application of this framework and outline
the future plans.

Chapter 2
Plugging into the Online Database and Playing Secure Mobile Commerce ........................................ 16
I-Horng Jeng, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan

A mobile commerce project Gosport based on the open mobile platform of Android and the cloud service
of Google Calendar is introduced in this chapter. The authors compare this project with two well-known
related works by the issues of execution steps, interfaces, security, and propose a secure web 2.0 pro-
tocol for the information retrieval and reveal by a modified RSA digital signature scheme. The Google
Service and Android platform the authors choose to make the mobile commerce project based on are
the popular and free to access and might be an evidence for a proper application and technology for the
handheld computing for mobile commerce.

It explores m-commerce quality attributes using the external quality characteristics of the ISO9126
software quality standard. The goal is to provide a quality map of a B2C m-commerce system so as to
facilitate more accurate and in detail quality evaluation. The result is a new evaluation framework based
on decomposition of m-commerce services to three distinct user-software interaction patterns and map-
ping to ISO9126 quality characteristics.

This chapter describes Picture Talk, a smart-phone application framework designed to facilitate local
information sharing in regions with sparse Internet connectivity, low literacy rates and having users
with little prior experience with information technology. The authors argue that engaging citizens in
developing regions in information creation and information sharing leverages peoples’ existing social
networks to facilitate transmission of critical information, exchange of ideas, and distributed problem
solving, all of which can promote economic development.

Chapter 5
Web Applications on the Move: Opening up New Opportunities for Mobile Developers ................... 67
Anna Kress, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany
David Linner, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany
Stephan Steglich, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), Germany

The current state of those hybrid application platforms and their advantages is reflected in this chapter.
After deriving general requirements for future mobile application platforms, the authors discuss the
promises and limits of the Mobile Web platform and describe recent activities of public bodies address-
ing the discussed limits through “hybrid” extensions. Finally, the authors discuss the FOKUS Mobile
Widget Runtime as a prototype for a hybrid application platform, and propose future research directions
in this field.

It presents a recent development of a mobile phone based ECG real-time intelligent analysis system. By
fully employing the computational power of a mobile phone, the system provides local intelligence for
ECG R wave detection, PQRS signature identification and segmentation, and arrhythmia classification.
Because those processing can be performed on realtime, an early status warning can be issued promptly
to initiate further rescue procedures. As an application of e-commerce in healthcare, a telecaridiology
system like this is of great significance to support chronic cardiovascular disease patients.

The outcome of study conducted to identify the main factor/challenges behind the low penetration rate
of using mobile commerce in UK is presented in this chapter. It is clear from the outcome of this study
presented that unless a complete framework for Mobile commerce has been established the view of
tackling M-commerce has been established with the view of tackling M-commerce identified shortcom-
ings, the growth will remain slow and might not reach targeted bred, which will make it risky for future
investment of M-commerce industry.

Section 2
Handheld Computing Research and Technologies

Handheld computing involves different disciplines such as wireless networks and mobile platforms
and various technologies like Java and C/C++ handheld programming. This section discusses some
important handheld technologies including energy saving, mobile platforms, handheld programming,
and Web content adaptation.

Chapter 8
UbiWave: A Novel Energy-Efficient End-to-End Solution for Mobile 3D Graphics ......................... 124
Fan Wu, Tuskegee University, USA
Emmanuel Agu, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
Clifford Lindsay, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
Chung-han Chen, Tuskegee University, USA
It focuses on the improvement of rendering performance by reducing the impacts of these problems
with UbiWave, an end-to-end framework to enable real time mobile access to high resolution graphics
using wavelets. The framework tackles the issues including simplification, transmission, and resource
efficient rendering of graphics content on mobile device based on wavelets by utilizing (i) a Perceptual
Error Metric (PoI) for automatically computing the best resolution of graphics content for a given mobile
display to eliminate guesswork and save resources, (ii) Unequal Error Protection (UEP) to improve the
resilience to wireless errors, (iii) an Energy-efficient Adaptive Real-time Rendering (EARR) heuristic to
balance energy consumption, rendering speed and image quality, and (iv) an energy-efficient streaming
technique. The results facilitate a new class of mobile graphics application which can gracefully adapt
the lowest acceptable rendering resolution to the wireless network conditions and the availability of
resources and battery energy on mobile device adaptively.

The authors define a theoretical model for autonomic and altruistic computational entities, and they use
it to build a framework for peer-to-peer service-oriented infrastructures, focusing on three key aspects:
overlay scheme, dynamic service composition and self-configuration of peers. Based on this framework,
JXTA-SOAP Mobile Edition is a software component that completes the Sun MicroSystem’s JXTA
platform, supporting peer-to-peer sharing of Web Services.

It is about programming mobile handheld devices with a scripting language called AmbientTalk. This
language has been designed with the goal of easily prototyping applications that run on mobile devices
interacting via a wireless network. Programming such applications traditionally involves interacting with
low-level APIs in order to perform basic tasks like service discovery and communicating with remote
services. The authors introduce the AmbientTalk scripting language, its implementation on top of the
Java Micro edition platform (J2ME) and finally introduce Urbiflock, a pervasive social application for
handheld devices developed entirely in AmbientTalk.

Chapter 11
Interrupt Handling in Symbian and Linux Mobile Operating Systems .............................................. 225
Ashraf M.A. Ahmad, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan
Mariam M Biltawi, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan
This chapter introduces the differences of interrupt handling in many different aspects to measure these
differences effect on mobile applications performance and throughput. The major contributions to this
chapter are first to introduce the interrupt handling mechanism in mobile system with through elaboration
on the types of interrupt handling that a Mobile OS may use. Then a deep analysis for both interrupt
handling mechanisms used by the Symbian and RT-Linux OS is presented. A comprehensive conclusion
is explained about the major differences in all aspects between Symbian and RT Linux mobile OS.

The authors present two systems for mobile phone users in order to provide comfortable Web browsing
experience. One system provide various presentation functions for Web browsing so that users can select
appropriate one based on their browsing situations. The other system provides functions to navigate
users within a Web page so that they can reach information of interest without getting lost in the page.
This chapter introduces designs of these systems and introduces results of user experiments, through
which the authors show that the browser can reduce users’ burden on mobile Web by enabling to select
appropriate presentation functions adapted to their situations and by navigating them on a large Web
page with the entertaining interface.

Traditional Web pages are mainly designed for desktop or notebook computers. They usually do not suit
the devices well because the pages, especially the large files, can not be properly, speedily displayed on
the microbrowsers due to the limitations of mobile handheld devices: (i) small screen size, (ii) narrow
network bandwidth, (iii) low memory capacity, and (iv) limited computing power and resources. There-
fore, loading and visualizing large documents on handheld devices become an arduous task. Various
methods are created for browsing the mobile Web efficiently and effectively. This chapter investigates
some of the methods: (i) page segmentation, which is used to segment Web pages, (ii) component ranking,
which is used to rank page components after segmentation, and (iii) other ad hoc methods, such as text
summarization, transcoding, and Web usage mining. Though each method employs a different strategy,
their goals are the same: conveying the meaning of Web pages by using minimum space. The major
problem of the current methods is that it is not easy to find the clear-cut components in a Web page.
Section 3
Wireless Networks and Handheld/Mobile Security

Wireless networks are an essential component of a mobile-commerce system and handheld security is
the must for the success of mobile commerce. This section including five chapters gives related issues
of wireless networks, handheld security, and location-based services.

In this chapter the authors present how to achieve location privacy during LBS without a centralized
and trusted middleware. First, they review the recent progress on location positioning technologies.
Second, they investigate how to perform location cloaking without users exposing their accurate loca-
tions to a trusted third party. They decompose the problem into two subproblems: proximity minimum
k-clustering and secure bounding. Third, the authors study how to perform nearest neighbor query with
guaranteed privacy. A framework called 2PASS is proposed that allows the client to control what objects
to request in order to minimize their number while not compromising location privacy of the user. The
core component of 2PASS is a lightweight WAG-tree index from which the client can compute out the
objects to request from the server.

Chapter 15
Survivability in RFID Systems ........................................................................................................... 300
Yanjun Zuo, University of North Dakota, USA

It discusses survivability issues related to RFID systems. For mission-critical systems empowered by the
RFID technology, any interruption of essential services, even for a short period of time, is not acceptable.
Hence, survivability must be provided to ensure that the critical services can be continuously delivered,
despite of malicious attacks and system failures. This chapter studies and survey survivability enhancing
techniques in face of the special challenges that limited computational capacities, high mobility, and
sensitive nature of RFID devices pose.

Mobile and handheld devices are becoming an integral part of people’s work, life and entertainment.
These lightweight pocket-sized devices offer great mobility, acceptable computation power and friendly
user interfaces. As people are making business transactions and managing their online bank accounts via
handheld devices, they are concerned with the security level that mobile devices and systems provide. In
this chapter the authors discuss whether these devices, equipped with very limited computation power
compared to full-sized computers, can make equivalent security services available to users. The focus
is on the security designs and technologies of hardware, operating systems and applications for mobile
handheld devices.

This chapter introduces the Proactive Micro Mobility (PMM) Protocol for the optimization of network
load. A novel approach is proposed to design and analyze IP micro-mobility protocols. The cellular
Micro Mobility Protocol provides passive connectivity in an intra domain. The PMM Protocol optimizes
miss-routed packet loss in Cellular IP under handoff conditions and during time delay. A comparison is
made between the PMM Protocol and the Cellular IP showing that they offer equivalent performance
in terms of higher bit rates and optimum value. A mathematical analysis shows that the PMM Protocol
performs better than the Cellular IP at 1 MHz clock speed and 128 kbps down link bit rate. The simu-
lation shows that a short route updating time is required in order to guarantee accuracy in mobile unit
tracking. The optimal rate of packet loss in the PMM Protocol in a Cellular IP are analyzes route update
time. The results show that no miss-routed packets are found during handoff.

Chapter 18
A Comparative Review of Handheld Devices Internet Connectivity Revenue Models
to Support Mobile Learning ................................................................................................................ 343
Phillip Olla, Madonna University, USA

A survey of mobile broadband revenue models deployed by mobile network operators in the UK, USA
and Canada is given in this chapter. The survey of exiting revenue models highlights the technology
adoption trends for handheld devices by consumers and identifies the future impact of these trends on
the network operators and content providers with respect to educational content.

Section 4
Handheld Images and Videos

Images and videos play an important part of mobile commerce. This section discusses various critical
issues of efficiently and effectively delivering images and videos to mobile handheld devices.

Chapter 19
Mobile Vision on Movement .............................................................................................................. 357
Lambert Spaanenburg, Lund University, Sweden
Suleyman Malki, Lund University, Sweden
It discusses mobile vision on movement. In the early days of photography, camera movement is a nuisance
that can blur a picture. Once movement becomes measurable by micro-mechanical means, the effects
can be compensated by optical, mechanical or digital technology to enhance picture quality. Alterna-
tively movement can be quantified by processing image streams. This opens up for new functionality
upon convergence of the camera and the mobile phone, for instance by ‘actively extending the hand’
for remote control and interactive signage.

This chapter provides a detailed overview of DVC by explaining the underlying principles and results
from information theory and introduces a number of application scenarios. It also discusses the most
important practical architectures that are currently available. One of these architectures is analyzed
step-by-step to provide further details of the functional building blocks, including an analysis of the
coding performance compared to traditional coding schemes. Next to this, it is demonstrated that the
computational complexity in a video coding scheme can be shifted dynamically from the encoder to the
decoder and vice versa by combining conventional and distributed video coding techniques. Lastly, this
chapter discusses some currently important research topics of which it is expected that they can further
enhance the performance of DVC, i.e., side information generation, virtual channel noise estimation,
and new coding modes.

An up-to-date critical survey of fast mode decision techniques for the H.264/AVC standard is provided
in this chapter. The motivation for this chapter is twofold: Firstly to provide an up-to-data review of
the existing techniques and secondly to offer some insights into the studies of fast mode decision tech-
niques.
Chapter 22
Mobile Video Streaming ..................................................................................................................... 425
Chung-wei Lee, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
Joshua L. Smith, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA

In Chapter 22, essential technical components for constructing mobile video streaming systems are
introduced. They include the latest development on broadband wireless technology and video-capable
mobile handheld devices. As many modern technologies are often driven by consumer demand, user
experience and expectation are discussed from the perspective of mobile video streaming. At the end,
several cutting-edge research and development breakthroughs are presented as they may change the
future of mobile video streaming systems.

Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 439

About the Contributors .................................................................................................................... 475

Index ................................................................................................................................................... 489

xviii

Foreword

Mobile handheld devices such as smartphones have become extremely popular and are now an integral
part of our daily activities. People carry them everywhere and expect to be able to access a wide range
of handheld applications whenever they wish. A major part of the applications is related to mobile com-
merce, which is defined as the exchange or buying and selling of commodities, services, or information
on the Internet through the use of mobile handheld devices. Mobile commerce includes various mobile
applications such as location-based services, mobile advertisements, mobile entertainments, mobile
inventory and tracking, mobile payments and banking, just to name a few. For about a decade, mobile
commerce has become the hottest new trend in business transactions.

• The future of mobile commerce is bright, as shown by the following predictions:

 Even with the economic downturn in 2008, the smartphone sales were still strong. In the
fourth quarter of 2008, worldwide sales of smartphones reached 38.1 million units, an increase
of 3.7 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2007 (Megna, 2009).
 The sales of mobile content and services will reach to $150 billion by 2011 according to
FierceMarkets, Inc. (2007). Among them:
 SMS (short message service) and related messaging applications will generate $93 billion
globally, accounting for more than half of projected mobile data revenues, multimedia services
including music, video games, TV and adult content will reach to about $38 billion, and user-
generated content such as social networking service will grow to a $13 billion market.
• Informa Telecoms & Media (Mobile Marketing Magazine, 2009) has the following forecasts:
 In 2013, almost 300 billion transactions, worth more than US $860 billion, will be conducted
using a smartphone. It is a twelve-fold increase in gross global transaction values in just five
years.
 By 2013, over 445 million mobile subscribers will use their smartphones to purchase physical
goods and services regularly.
 By 2013, there will be 977 million users of mobile banking services worldwide, a dramatic
increase from approximately 67 million at the end of 2008.
• 204 million mobile users will adopt mobile payments, which generate almost $22 billion of trans-
actions, by 2011 according to Glenbrook Partners, LLC (2008).

Although people perform mobile-commerce transactions all the time, most mobile users have no idea
how they work because mobile applications involve such a wide variety of disciplines and technologies
and new technologies are being created every day. For example, the handheld technologies include energy
xix

saving, handheld data management, handheld HCI (human computer interface), handheld peripherals,
mobile operating systems, Web content adaptation, and wireless networks. Researchers working on in-
novative mobile-commerce applications must therefore be familiar with new ideas and concepts from
many fields. For example, many of the popular mobile applications offered by the iPhone App Store are
location-based and involve activities such as finding the nearest gas station or a specific type of ethnic
restaurant. This kind of application does not rely solely on traditional computing approaches but also
requires the use of handheld computing techniques such as GPS (global positioning system) tracking
and map services.
To my surprise and knowledge, there is no journal or magazine dedicated to smartphone research
currently. (The inaugural issue of International Journal of Handheld Computing Research, edited by
the one of the editors of this book, will be published in the beginning of 2010—from the book editors.)
Two magazines, Handheld Computing and Smartphone & Pocket PC, are out of print now because of
lack of subscriptions. By the way, these two magazines were not really related to handheld research.
Introduction of smartphones and PDAs and their applications is the magazines’ major mission. Some
smartphone books are available in the bookstores now, but most of them are related to specific devices
such as iPhone or BlackBerry and they are application/development-oriented instead of research-
oriented. With the extreme popularity of cell phones and smartphones, I believe there is a knowledge
gap of handheld computing for mobile commerce needed to be filled. The book Handheld Computing
for Mobile Commerce: Applications, Concepts and Technologies is a long awaited book for readers
interested in handheld computing and mobile commerce. It covers a broad range of handheld topics for
mobile commerce, both in depth and breadth. It is a must-read book for IT personnel and students who
want to keep up with the fast-evolving IT.

Wenchang Fang, Professor and Dean

College of Business
National Taipei University
Taipei, Taiwan

Wenchang Fang received his PhD from the Northwestern University, USA in 1994. He is currently a professor and the dean
of the College of Business at the National Taipei University, Taiwan. He is the Editor-in-Chief of two journals: Electronic
Commerce Studies and Contemporary Management Research. His current research interests include inventory management,
electronic commerce, information management, and artificial intelligence.

REFERENCES

Fierce Markets, Inc. (2007). Forecast: Mobile Content and Services $150B by 2011. Retrieved March
14, 2009, from http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/forecast-mobile-content-and-services-150b-
by-2011/2007-02-02
Glenbrook Partners, LLC. (2008). Forecast: $22 Billion in Mobile Payments by 2011. Retrieved July
21, 2009, from http://www.paymentsnews.com/2008/01/forecast-22-bil.html
xx

Megna, M. (2009). Smartphone Sales: 2009 Forecast Calls for Pain. Retrieved May 02, 2009, from
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3810441/Smartphone+Sales+2009+Forecast+Calls+fo
r+Pain.htm
Mobile Marketing Magazine. (2009). Informa Bullish about Mobile Banking. Retrieved June 17, 2009,
from http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2009/02/informa-bullish-about-mobile-banking.
html
xxi

Preface

This book, Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce: Applications, Concepts and Technologies col-
lects high-quality research papers and industrial and practice articles in the areas of handheld computing
for mobile commerce from academics and industrialists. It includes research and development results of
lasting significance in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of handheld comput-
ing. Twenty-two excellent articles from 71 world-renowned scholars and IT professionals are included
in this book, which covers four themes: (i) handheld computing for mobile commerce, (ii) handheld
computing research and technologies, (iii) wireless networks and handheld/mobile security, and (iv)
handheld images and videos.

INtRoduCtIoN

With the advent of the World Wide Web, electronic commerce has revolutionized traditional commerce,
boosting sales and facilitating exchanges of merchandise and information. The emergence of wireless
and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application
and research area: mobile commerce. In just a few years, mobile commerce has emerged from nowhere
to become the hottest new trend in business transactions. The success of mobile commerce relies on the
widespread adoption by consumers of more advanced handheld devices such as smartphones, which
include some data-processing capability and thus permit vital activities such as mobile Internet brows-
ing and location-based services. Table 1 gives the numbers of units of mobile phones, PCs and servers,
and handheld devices shipped in the years from 2002 to 2008 based on reports from market researchers
(BNET, 2004; Canalys, 2007; CNET, 2003, 2006a, & 2006b; Gartner, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006, 2007,
2008a, 2008b, & 2009; GsmServer, 2004; IDC, 2008). The table reveals that smartphones enjoyed the
highest rate of increase compared to the sales of mobile phones and PCs and servers and that by 2008
the number of PDAs sold had dwindled to almost nothing. It is expected that smartphones will overtake
the number of PCs shipped in the very near future. Handheld computing research is thus becoming a
critical area as mobile users ask for more and more functions from their smartphones.
Mobile commerce prevails and mobile phones have become ubiquitous in today’s society. However,
mobile users are no longer satisfied with simple phones, but instead expect ever more powerful func-
tions to be available from their mobile devices. Advanced phones, known as smartphones, allow mobile
users to perform a wide variety of advanced handheld functions such as browsing the mobile Internet or
finding a nearby theater showing a specific movie. The design and development of these new, improved
handheld functions require the help of handheld computing research. A timely book covering handheld
computing and mobile commerce is therefore needed.
xxii

Table 1. Mobile phones, PCs and servers, and handheld devices shipped from 2002 to 2008
Mobile PCs and Serv- PDAs (without phone
Smartphones
Phones ers capabilities)
Number of Units Shipped in 2002 (Million) 432 148 — 12.1
Number of Units Shipped in 2003 (Million) 520 169 — 11.5
Number of Units Shipped in 2004 (Million) 713 189 — 12.5
Number of Units Shipped in 2005 (Million) 991 209 — 14.9
Number of Units Shipped in 2006 (Million) 991 239 64 17.7
Number of Units Shipped in 2007 (Million) 1153 271 122 —
Number of Units Shipped in 2008 (Million) 1220 302 139 —

AIm oF thE Book ANd tARgEt AudIENCE

Mobile commerce is a trend of electronic commerce. Mobile handheld devices and computing are used
to realize and assist mobile commerce. The handheld industry has applied handheld computing for many
years. However, handheld devices and computing are diverse and there does not exist a formal approach
to mobile commerce implementation. Our book is one of the first few books which systematically covers
mobile handheld devices and computing and provides various approaches to mobile commerce imple-
mentation. It will help IT students, researchers, and professionals to better understand handheld devices
and concepts and therefore produce more useful, effective handheld applications and products. Various
handheld topics are covered in this book. Some of them are:

• Client-side mobile-commerce computing, applications, and programming

• Context/location-based services, computing, and applications
• Energy saving for handheld devices
• Handheld devices, architecture, and systems
• Handheld specifications, standards, guidelines, software, and tools
• Java ME systems, computing, applications, and programming
• Mobile advertising and sales
• Mobile and wireless networks
• Mobile commerce applications and systems
• Mobile Web 2.0 and plus
• Mobile Web and Internet
• Mobile/handheld algorithms and methodologies
• Mobile/handheld human computer interface and user interface design and implementation
• Mobile/handheld images and videos
• Mobile/handheld operating systems and platforms
• Mobile/handheld programming languages and environments
• Mobile/handheld security
• Web content adaptation for handheld devices

The target audience of this book will be composed of students, IT professionals, and researchers
working in the fields of handheld computing and mobile commerce. It especially benefits the IT person-
nel of corporations because companies are gradually setting up the mobile versions of their electronic
xxiii

commerce systems. This book will help IT workers smoothly build mobile commerce systems based
on their traditional IT knowledge. It could be used for a textbook of an advanced computer science (or
related disciplines) course and could be a reference book for IT professionals and students. Since this
book covers the handheld computing for mobile commerce systematically, it is also for people desiring
to learn the topics on their own. The benefits of this book include:

• Fill the gap of lack of handheld-computing books.

• Help IT students and professionals master the handheld technology.
• Provide a textbook for a course of handheld computing, mobile commerce, or mobile comput-
ing.
• Can be used as a reference book for IT workers and students.

oRgANIzAtIoN oF thE Book

Mobile commerce and handheld computing include such a wide variety of subjects and technologies
that it is almost impossible for a single book to adequately cover all the subjects involved. This book
therefore focuses on introducing the major topics concerning mobile commerce and handheld computing
and provides extensive references for readers interested in discovering more information. It is divided
into the following four sections, with a total of twenty-two chapters:

• Handheld computing for mobile commerce, which discusses how handheld computing supports
mobile commerce,
• Handheld computing research and technologies, which covers major handheld technologies,
methodologies, algorithms, and programming,
• Wireless networks and handheld/mobile security, which gives related issues of wireless networks
and handheld security, and
• Handheld images and videos, which covers images and videos used by mobile commerce.

Section 1: Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce

Handheld computing is the use of handheld devices like smart cellular phones to perform wireless,
mobile, handheld operations such as browsing the mobile Web and finding the nearest gas stations.
Mobile commerce is the most important application of handheld computing. This section discusses some
handheld-computing methods for mobile commerce.

• Chapter 1. A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web, which elaborates
over context-aware advertising on mobile web, discusses the benefits and challenges of adapting
user contexts to the mobile advertising process, and classifies user contexts into three categories
according to their characteristics and usage. The authors present a novel user context-aware adver-
tising framework for mobile web that integrates the user contexts into the process of generating,
selecting, matching, and presenting advertisements customized to mobile web pages.
• Chapter 2. Plugging into the Online Database and Playing Secure mobile Commerce, which dis-
cusses cloud computing, which is capable of appearing ubiquitously with mobile devices and intends
to outstretch its various applications by the devices. The next generation of mobile devices will
use wireless broadband access and human-computer interaction technologies which support cloud
services and interface designs respectively advances to allow remote plug-and-play with web 2.0
xxiv

applications that is suitable for mobile commerce in which this chapter emphasizes. Besides, for
sustainable development of a mobile commerce solution, workable but not securable is absolutely
not enough. Therefore, a secure information retrieval and reveal protocol for mobile commerce
based on modified RSA digital signature is also proposed and demonstrated.
• Chapter 3. Quality Evaluation of B2C M-Commerce Using the ISO9126 Quality Standard, in which
a new method has been introduced which measures the value of relevance for each m-commerce
system attribute. The theoretical framework for this metric is also presented. The validity of the
presented measures should further examine with different user groups in alternative evaluation cases
and it is included in future work. It should be mentioned that the values presented are not strictly
defined as numerical results but present the correlation among m-commerce systems attributes and
external quality characteristics.
• Chapter 4. A Picture and a Thousand Words: Visual Scaffolding for Mobile Communication in the
Developing World, which introduces Picture Talk, a software application that the authors designed
for use in environments with low literacy, limited Internet connectivity, and little familiarity with
information services. Because basic mobile phones are the most common devices used by BoP
populations, the authors have implemented Picture Talk on mobile phones. The authors are now
investigating ways of providing access to some Picture Talk features on less expensive mobile
phones using voice and text messaging. The limitations of using these devices to access rich struc-
tured content by users with limited literacy skills exposes human-computer interaction challenges
that are keys to enabling broad access to information by people in BoP populations.
• Chapter 5. Web Applications on the Move: Opening Up New Opportunities for Mobile Developers,
which shows that there are a number of activities on the way to extend the Mobile Web platform
towards a “hybrid” platform, which can compete with platforms for locally installed “fat” applica-
tions. The authors present a prototype of a hybrid platform, the FOKUS Mobile Widget Runtime
and sample applications to demonstrate how these future hybrid applications may look like.
• Chapter 6. A J2ME Mobile Application for Normal and Abnormal ECG Rhythm Analysis, which
presents a novel, but low cost and relatively equitable ECG signal analysis and alert system for
telecardiology. This system fully harnesses the computational power of a plain mobile phone to
perform real-time data mining tasks. The evaluation results not only prove it is a feasible approach
but also show its potential for future practical applications.
• Chapter 7. Factors Facing Mobile Commerce Deployment in United Kingdom, which discusses
the challenges facing mobile commerce deployment in United Kingdom. Although the number of
mobile phone users is increasing and the technology is available for successful implementation
of m-commerce, only a small number of users utilize m-commerce services. At the same time,
mobile phones are becoming smarter, and the most of latest phones are capable of connecting to
the Internet. The chapter looks at the background of m-commerce as well as the technological
development of mobile phone to the current stage. Also, technical and non technical issues which
hinder the adoption of m-commerce are discussed and solutions and recommendations given.

Section 2: Handheld Computing Research and Technologies

Handheld computing involves different disciplines such as wireless networks and mobile platforms
and various technologies like Java and C/C++ handheld programmig. This section gives some of the
major handheld technologies including energy saving, mobile platforms, handheld programming, and
Web content adaptation.
xxv

• Chapter 8. UbiWave: An Novel Energy-Efficient End-to-End Solution for Mobile 3D Graphics,

which presents UbiWave, an end-to-end framework using wavelets to transmit and render graph-
ics content at various resolutions on mobile devices. Ubiwave improves the performance of mo-
bile graphics applications by balancing energy consumption, rendering speed and image quality.
Ubiwave includes four parts: (i) a perceptual error metric to guide the scaling of mobile graphics
scenes to the lowest LoD at which users do not perceive distortion due to simplification (called
the PoI); (ii) a novel Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme based on the principles of Unequal
Error Protection (UEP); (iii) an Energy-efficient Adaptive Real-time Rendering (EARR) heuristic
to balance energy consumption, rendering speed and image quality and (iv) an energy-efficient 3D
streaming technique. By combining PoI, UEP, EARR and our streaming technique, the rendering
speed and image quality of mobile graphics applications in wireless networks can be maximized,
while minimizing energy consumption.
• Chapter 9. Peer-to-Peer Service Sharing on Mobile Platforms, which introduces the Networked
Service-oriented Autonomic Machine (NSAM), which is a theoretical model of a hardware/software
entity that is programmed to be altruistic in sharing its resources. The focus is on NSAMs whose
hardware resources can be classified as mobile devices, offering and consuming services. In this
context, the author present a framework for peer-to-peer service sharing, based on three key aspects:
overlay scheme, dynamic service composition and self-configuration of peers. This framework is
suitable to characterize many existing platforms and to define new ones.
• Chapter 10. Scripting Mobile Devices with AmbientTalk, which describes AmbientTalk, a distributed
object-oriented scripting language specifically designed to deal with the hardware characteristics
inherent to mobile ad hoc networks. What makes AmbienTalk a suitable scripting language for
the implementation of mobile computing applications are its event-driven application model, its
automatic buffering of messages to deal with intermittent connectivity and its built-in peer-to-peer
service discovery abstractions to discover nearby applications.
• Chapter 11. Interrupt Handling in Symbian and Linux Mobile Operating Systems, which introduces
a survey on differences among interrupts in the Linux and Symbian Mobile operating systems;
we concluded that both interrupt mechanisms are similar in some ways and different in another,
especially in organizational. In Symbian OS the pending interrupts are handled in a FIFO order
but in the RT-Linux they are handled in a prioritized order.
• Chapter 12. Web Page Adaptation and Presentation for Mobile Phones, which presents two systems
for mobile phone users in order to provide comfortable Web browsing experience. One system
provide various presentation functions for Web browsing so that users can select appropriate one
based on their browsing situations. The other system provides functions to navigate users within
a Web page so that they can reach information of interest without getting lost in the page. This
chapter introduces designs of these systems and introduces results of user experiments, through
which the authors show that the browser can reduce users’ burden on mobile Web by enabling to
select appropriate presentation functions adapted to their situations and by navigating them on a
large Web page with the entertaining interface.
• Chapter 13. Technologies and Systems for Web Content Adaptation, which investigates some of
the Web content adaptation methods: (i) page segmentation, which is used to segment Web pages,
(ii) component ranking, which is used to rank page components after segmentation, and (iii) other
ad hoc methods, such as text summarization, transcoding, and Web usage mining. Though each
method employs a different strategy, their goals are the same: conveying the meaning of Web pages
by using minimum space. The major problem of the current methods is that it is not easy to find
the clear-cut components in a Web page. Other related issues such as mobile handheld devices
and microbrowsers will also be discussed in this chapter.
xxvi

Section 3: Wireless Networks and Handheld/Mobile Security

Wireless networks are an essential component of a mobile-commerce system and handheld security is
mandatory for the success of mobile commerc. Related issues of LBS privacy, RFID system survivability,
mobile Internet connectivity, handheld security, and wireless networks are discussed in this section.

• Chapter 14. Positioning and Privacy in Location-Based Services, in which the authors present how
to achieve location privacy during LBS without a centralized and trusted middleware. First, they
review the recent progress on location positioning technologies. Second, they investigate how to
perform location cloaking without users exposing their accurate locations to a trusted third party.
They decompose the problem into two sub-problems: proximity minimum k-clustering and secure
bounding. Third, the authors study how to perform nearest neighbor query with guaranteed privacy.
A framework called 2PASS is proposed that allows the client to control what objects to request
in order to minimize their number while not compromising location privacy of the user. The core
component of 2PASS is a lightweight WAG-tree index from which the client can compute out the
objects to request from the server.
• Chapter 15. Survivability in RFID Systems, which discusses survivability enhancing techniques
for RFID systems. Survivability is a relatively new research area. RFID survivability requires in-
novative techniques to address the limitations of low-cost RFID tags, highly mobile devices, and
challenging environment in which an RFID system operates. This chapter summaries the potential
survivability enhancing techniques in the literature and provides references for researchers and sys-
tem developers to develop technologies towards resilient, secure, and survivable RFID systems.
• Chapter 16. Mobile and Handheld Security, which discusses the security issues and possible solu-
tions of mobile security in three layers: mobile hardware, mobile operating system and mobile ap-
plications. In order to provide high level security and privacy good for business and daily life, it is
essential to strengthen security in all three layers. Robust and reliable security is built on hardware
that is initially designed and then implemented with security in mind. Mobile operating systems
are expected to have better capability designed and management, while mobile applications need
to be standardized and built with reliable quality. Mobile users need to gradually realize the im-
portance of security and privacy on mobile systems and start to learn to utilize secure applications
and secure features in the mobile OS to protect their mobile devices.
• Chapter 17. Design and Performance Evaluation of a Proactive Micro Mobility Protocol for Mobile
Networks, which introduces the Proactive Micro Mobility (PMM) Protocol for the optimization of
network load. A novel approach is proposed to design and analyze IP micro-mobility protocols.
The cellular Micro Mobility Protocol provides passive connectivity in an intra domain. The PMM
Protocol optimizes miss-routed packet loss in Cellular IP under handoff conditions and during time
delay. A comparison is made between the PMM Protocol and the Cellular IP showing that they offer
equivalent performance in terms of higher bit rates and optimum value. A mathematical analysis
shows that the PMM Protocol performs better than the Cellular IP at 1 MHz clock speed and 128
kbps down link bit rate. The simulation shows that a short route updating time is required in order
to guarantee accuracy in mobile unit tracking. The optimal rate of packet loss in the PMM Protocol
in a Cellular IP are analyzes route update time. The results show that no miss-routed packets are
found during handoff.
• Chapter 18. A Comparative Review of Handheld Devices Internet Connectivity Revenue Models to
Support Mobile Learning, which provides a survey of mobile broadband revenue models deployed
by mobile network operators in the UK, USA and Canada. The survey of exiting revenue models
xxvii

highlights the technology adoption trends for handheld devices by consumers and identifies the
future impact of these trends on the network operators and content providers with respect to edu-
cational content. The chapter focuses on innovations in consumer propositions that can support the
Mobile Learning phenomenon. The study reveals that the various operators aim to differentiate
their consumer propositions by branding, technology devices, and flexible pricing structures. From
the results of the study it is clear that the current continuous convergence of multimedia applica-
tions, information services, digital networks, and devices will likely lead to an increase in adoption
of mobile learning systems in the UK, Canada and the USA especially as the price per bandwidth
drops and new innovative connectivity options are deployed such as built in mobile broadband
processor in laptops and consumer devices.

Section 4: Handheld Images and Videos

Images and videos play an important role of mobile commerc. This section discusses critical issues of
delivering images and videos to mobile handheld devics. It includes four chapters on vision movement
(Spaanenburg and Malki), video coding (Lambert, et al.), fast mode decision techniques (Lambert, el
al.), and video streaming (Lee and Smith).

• Chapter 19. Mobile Vision on Movement, which discusses mobile vision on movement. In the
early days of photography, camera movement is a nuisance that can blur a picture. Once move-
ment becomes measurable by micro-mechanical means, the effects can be compensated by opti-
cal, mechanical or digital technology to enhance picture quality. Alternatively movement can be
quantified by processing image streams. This opens up for new functionality upon convergence of
the camera and the mobile phone, for instance by “actively extending the hand” for remote control
and interactive signage.
• Chapter 20. Distributed Video Coding for Video Communication on Mobile Devices and Sensors,
which addresses the concept of distributed video coding which is currently emerging as a new video
coding paradigm allowing the construction of ultra-low complex video encoder at the expense of
a more complex decoder. The theoretical foundations of DVC were discussed briefly after which
an overview was given of existing DVC solutions and architectures. One of these architectures
was used as reference for a more in-depth discussion of the functional building blocks of a DVC
system. As computational complexity plays an important role in the context of DVC, the latter DVC
system was extended with a number of coding modes allowing to dynamically shift the complex-
ity between encoder and decoder, facilitating the requirements of emerging video communication
applications. Finally, they provided an outlook to some future research directions for which it is
believed that advances in these domains will contribute to the overall coding performance of DVC
systems.
• Chapter 21. Fast Mode Decision in H.264/AVC, which provides an up-to-date critical survey of
fast mode decision techniques for the H.264/AVC standard. The motivation for this chapter is
twofold: Firstly to provide an up-to-data review of the existing techniques and secondly to offer
some insights into the studies of fast mode decision techniques.
• Chapter 22. Mobile Video Streaming, which introduces essential technical components for construct-
ing mobile video streaming systems. They include the latest development on broadband wireless
technology and video-capable mobile handheld devices. As many modern technologies are often
xxviii

driven by consumer demand, user experience and expectation are discussed from the perspective of
mobile video streaming. At the end, several cutting-edge research and development breakthroughs
are presented as they may change the future of mobile video streaming systems.

Wen-Chen Hu and Yanjun Zuo

August 15, 2009

REFERENCES

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ai_113888610/
Canalys. (2007). 64 Million Smart Phones Shipped Worldwide in 2006. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from
http://www.canalys.com/pr/2007/r2007024.htm
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CNET. (2006b). Mobile Phone Sales Pass 800 Million. Retrieved May 12, 2009, from http://news.cnet.
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Gartner. (2005a). Gartner Says Worldwide PDA Shipments Grew 7 Percent While Revenue Increased 17
Percent in 2004. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=492106
Gartner. (2005b). Gartner Says Strong Mobile Sales Lift Worldwide PC Shipments to 12 Percent Growth
in 2004. Retrieved February 09, 2009, from http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=492098
Gartner. (2005c). Gartner Says Mobile Phone Sales Will Exceed One Billion in 2009. Retrieved February
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Gartner. (2006). Gartner Says Worldwide PDA Shipments Reach Record Level in 2005. Retrieved Janu-
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Gartner. (2007). Gartner Says Worldwide PDA Shipments Top 17.7 Million in 2006. Retrieved March
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March 25, 2009, from http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=612207
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Per Cent Increase in Fourth Quarter of 2008. Retrieved March 18, 2009, from http://www.gartner.com/
it/page.jsp?id=910112
xxix

GsmServer. (2004). Mobile Phone Sales in 2003. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://gsmserver.
com/articles/sales2003.php
IDC. (2008). Handheld Devices Sink 53.2% During Fourth Quarter But Protracted Decline Ap-
pears to Be Slowing, Says IDC. Retrieved April 08, 2009, from http://www.idc.com/getdoc.
jsp?containerId=prUS21083408
xxx

Acknowledgment

Cell phones became popular more than ten years ago, but the popularity of smartphones just started a few
years ago. The editors believe a book of handheld computing for mobile commerce is needed. This book
project took exactly one year to finish. From August 14, 2008 of responding to the publisher’s request to
August 15, 2009 of submitting the final book. It is a large and hard, but also enjoyable, memorable, and
rewarding work. The editors spent a great deal of time of communicating with (potential) authors via
numerous emails and organizing and managing this book. The successful accomplishment of this book
is a credit to many people. It consists of 22 chapters of more than 200,000 words, which are contributed
by a total of 71 authors. The editors thank authors for their quality work and great effort of revising
their work based on the reviewers’ comments. The reviewers who provided such helpful feedback and
detailed comments are particularly appreciated. Special thanks go to the staff at IGI Global, especially
to Christine Bufton, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, and Jan Travers. Finally, the biggest thanks go to our family
members for their love and support throughout this project.

Wen-Chen Hu and Yanjun Zuo

Section 1
Handheld Computing for
Mobile Commerce
1

Chapter 1
A User Context-Aware
Advertising Framework
for the Mobile Web
Nan Jing
University of Southern California, USA

Yong Yao
University of Southern California, USA

Yanbo Ru
University of Southern California, USA

ABStRACt
Context-aware advertising is one of the most critical components in the Internet ecosystem today be-
cause most WWW publisher’s revenue highly depends on the relevance of the displayed advertisement
to the context of the user interaction. Existing research works in context-aware advertising mainly
focus on analyzing either the content of the web page (in which it is also called contextual advertising),
or the keywords of the user search. However, we have identified the limitations of these works when
being extended into mobile web, which has become a major platform for users to access Internet with
thanks to the new lightweight web technologies and the development of mobile devices. These mobile
devices are equipped with networking capabilities and sensors that provide versatile contexts including
physical environment, user internal and social community. These contexts, which are far beyond just
page content and search keywords, should be well organized and utilized for online advertising to gain
better user experience and reaction. In this chapter, we point out the aforementioned limitations of the
existing works in context-aware advertising when being applied for mobile platforms. We also discuss
the characteristics of the contexts that are available on mobile devices and clearly describe the chal-
lenges of utilizing these contexts to optimize the advertisement on mobile platforms. We then present a
context-aware advertising framework that collects and integrates the user contexts to select, generate,
and present advertising content. The purpose of this framework is to provide the mobile users with
targeted and purposeful advertisement. Finally, we discuss the implementation aspects and one specific
application of this framework and outline our future plans.

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-761-9.ch001

INtRoduCtIoN ANd motIVAtIoN about 3 billion cellular phone subscribers, which

is more than twice the number of PC users world-
Online advertising constitutes a large portion in wide. Furthermore, the cellular phone coverage is
the financial ecosystem of web sites nowadays, estimated to reach the 90% of the world’s 6 bil-
including search engines, commercials, blogs, lion population by the year of 2010. The statistics
news, reviews etc. Driven by recent Internet clearly indicates that mobile phones are already
revolution and the tremendous increases in on- the most pervasive information technology plat-
line traffic, a huge growth in spending on online form. In this regard, mobile information access is
advertising is seen in last few years. eMarketer gaining widespread prominence with improving
(2007) reports a total Internet advertising spending connection speed and access technologies leading
of nearly 20 billion US dollars just in 2007. This to richer content explosion and user experience.
number supports the World Wide Web (WWW) The addition of mobility has opened up new
to be amongst the top 3 advertisement medium, prospects as devices are expected to be with users
along with TV and print media. In these online at all time providing reliable information on user
advertisements, contextual advertising is a main intentions and contexts. The next generation of
category that we have identified in providing the mobile applications would be adaptive in that they
advertising content matching the keywords of leverage mobility with context awareness in order
the user searches or the content of the web pages to provide more customized information and, at
where the advertising content will be placed. The meantime, more targeted advertisement. Thus, it
main players in this domain are major search is becoming imperative that context awareness be
engines and yellow pages on WWW. How to seen as one critical norm in developing advertising
optimize the advertising content in this method is framework on mobile platforms.
always an important research topic with the dual Recent mobile computing research is investi-
goals of increasing revenue of both publisher and gating how to collect and analyze contexts of user
advertising business. activities in mobile environment (Bardram, 2004,
An optimized context-aware advertising web Couder & Kermarrec, 1999, Pascoe, 1998, Wenn-
should only provide ads that very match with the lund, 2003). Because of the lack of heterogeneous
content of the Web pages, which therefore provides context structures amongst different applications
the users with information to their interests and in this domain, the existing research works, how-
allow advertisers to reach their potential customers ever, have not identified and organized sufficient
in a non-intrusive way (Chartterjee & Hoffman & context resources from mobile user activities. In
Novak, 2003, Wang & Zhang & Eredita 2002). In addition, even provided a large amount of con-
order to find the matching ads, two issues have textual information, the existing works we have
to be carefully addressed: first is to identify and identified still cannot utilize this information to
organize the applicable contexts in a user activity. match and select advertising content. Considering
Second, matching and ranking ads must be based addressing these challenges in mobile platforms
on the identified and organized contexts. that has limited processing capacities, a new
Meanwhile, mobile computing technologies framework is needed to provide well designed
have profoundly transformed the way how people and illustrated solutions to these challenges.
communicate and receive information from vari- Therefore, this chapter has described a user
ous media including WWW. With mobile devices context-aware and processing framework ap-
becoming more powerful and affordable, the user plicable on mobile platforms. This framework
base has expanded from the early business elites defines context structure suitable for users’ activi-
to ordinary people. By the end of 2007, there are ties in mobile environment. This framework also

2
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

provides approaches to select advertising content any information available in the course of an
that matches with identified and organized con- interaction can be used as context information,
texts in the context structure. This chapter also such as time of the interaction, user identity, ap-
presents the architecture design and application plication status. In our research, the focus is the
examples of a prototype system, called Skyhelper, context information that is useful and critical to
which is implemented using the framework and determine the context-aware advertising content
the approach developed in this work. on mobile web.
In fact, context awareness is not a new topic. It
Context Awareness for mobile Web has been pioneered by Mark Weiser around fifteen
years ago who then focused on the context-aware
Definition of Context and computing area under the vision of ubiquitous
Context Awareness computing (a.k.a. pervasive computing or ambient
intelligence). Ubiquitous computing is a method
In general context means situational information. devised to make distributed computing available
One of its popular definitions (Dey, 2001) is “any by multiple computers throughout the physical
information that can be used to characterize the environment and make them transparent to the
situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place or stakeholders (Weiser 1991, 1994). Context aware-
object that is considered relevant to the interaction ness as a scientific term was first introduced by
between a user and an application, including the Schilit (Schilit & Adams & Want, 1994, Schilit &
user and applications themselves”. In the stud- Theimer, 1994) in ubiquitous computing. In his
ies we have reviewed relevant to using context research, context is divided into three categories:
information, there are mainly two ways in which computing context, user context, and physical con-
context is used in software applications. First, text. By these categories, Schmidt (1999) further
applications can optimize their outputs according defined context as knowledge of the user’s and IT
to the contexts. Major search engines using the device’s state, including surroundings, situation
keywords and web page content to provide more and locations. Other researchers have thoughts
targeted advertising content fall in this category. of dividing context into different categories.
Second, the context information can be used to Besides what we have discussed earlier about
create new types of applications, such as location physical and logical contexts, Prekop and Burnett
based applications. In these studies, context is often (2003) proposed the external and internal context,
separated into physical context representing the where the external refers to context that can be
environment of the activity and logical context measured by hardware, i.e., location, light, or air
representing more abstract information about the pressure, whereas the internal is mostly specified
stakeholder and the application. Physical context by the users or captured by monitoring user in-
properties are at a very low level of abstraction teractions, i.e., the users’ goals, tasks, and social
and are continuously updated to take into account interactions. In general, common points of context
the fact that the state of the stakeholder and the classification are generating the information on
application continuously changes, such as spa- the conditions and surroundings of the users,
tial and temporal information. Logical context monitoring the user activities continuously, and
information is needed to enrich the semantics of providing them with needed information in real
physical context information (e.g., stakeholder’s time. In addition, a context-aware model should
preferences) thus making it meaningful for high- be designed for recognizing contexts containing
level purposes (e.g., stakeholder’s visits to certain users’ needs accurately. Technologies required
locations) (Kappel et al., 2002). Theoretically for context awareness and processing include

3
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

context extraction, context construction, database Characteristics of Contexts

management for persisting contexts, and informa- in Our Study
tion generation and selection based on relevant
contexts (Pascoe, 1998). Based on the understanding and recognition we
We acknowledge that context has no standard have discussed in the previous section, the contexts
definition, since every school of study can give in our research, in a high level view, should be
their understanding about context to a valid pur- divided into three categories: physical, user in-
pose. However, in a particular area such as mobile ternal, and social. Physical context represents the
web platform, the target of using context is to bet- environment of the user, such as time, locations,
ter serve users by providing needed information devices, etc. User internal context refers to the
to these users on mobile devices. Classifying of information that can be constructed by the user
context should embody mobile-user-centric es- herself, such as user objectives, preferences, and
sence and, particularly, in our research, it should activity history. Social context relates to the user’s
be directly helpful for us to generate and select social communities, i.e. the information that can
more targeted and purposeful advertising content be co-constructed by the user’s social connections.
for the users. Imagine the preferences and activity history of the
In our study, we also recognize that in mobile user’s friends for this purpose. Table 1 gives more
and ubiquitous computing, the notion of context details of these three categories of contexts. With
is often equated simply with key words and these contexts, various heuristics and rules can
contents in PC web or just location information be defined for different situations and purposes.
in mobile web. Actually the mobile context is Examples are like such: location information helps
more complex than that. Mobile application us- the mobile web site provide the user with the ads
age can vary continuously because of changing of the exact business nearby. The time of a user
circumstances and differing user needs. To fit request should match with business hours. In a
into these circumstances and satisfying these warm day (temperature), cold drinks may better
needs, manufacturers and developers have built attract users than hot coffee, unless the user has
numerous devices, databases, and communities to an important business meeting in one hour (user
model these circumstances and capture the needs calendar). The user who walks in a big mall may
in order to better serve the users. The informa- favor an advertising coupon from Macy’s inside
tion that they have modeled and captured, which (nearby business) than a restaurant which is two
is usually open to the public, is very helpful and miles way. On a multimedia-powered phone
cannot be ignored in generating and selecting the user will be likely amazed at a deliberately-
context-aware advertising content. designed multi-media ads that may look annoy-
ing elsewhere, such as to a user who uses a basic
phone and looks at the ‘not available’ warning.

Table 1. Mobile context categories

Context Category Context Details

Physical Location, time, temperature, weather, traffic, building, nearby business, etc.
User Internal User profile, user calendar, user contacts, device, device resources (manufacturer, model, touchscreen, resolution,
keyboard, portrait/landscape, memory, stylus, multimedia, Bluetooth, etc.), provided services, history of service
uses, service recommendation, service failure, user’s physical condition, etc.
Social Nearby friends, friends’ recommendations, friends’ history of service uses, friends’ locations, etc.

4
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

When a user cannot make up her mind about information retrieval, query optimization, and
which restaurant, the ads from one with the rec- database management, to study various topics.
ommendations of her friends will surely help her Dean and Ghemawat (2004) presented their ap-
out. These example heuristics can go on and on, proach of extracting keywords from web pages to
refined by observing and analyzing user practices, match with advertising contents. Andrei Broder
while undoubtedly well utilizing these contexts is et al. (2007) proposed a framework for match-
critical in the success of providing more targeted ing ads using a large taxonomy including both
and purposeful advertising content. semantic and syntactic feature. Ribeiro-Neto
et al. (2005) tried to use additional pages using
Summary a Bayesian model to overcome the difference
between the vocabularies of Web pages and ads.
To better utilize contexts for mobile web, a context- Yih et al (2006) presented an original approach
aware software framework has to be designed to for context-aware advertising in reducing it to
generate and select advertising content based on the problem of sponsored search advertising by
these contexts. To illustrate such as a framework extracting phrases from the page and matching
developed in our work, the rest of this chapter them with the bid phrase of the ads. They used vari-
structures as follows: Section 3 reviews a few ous features to determine the importance of page
school of study which are relevant to this work. phrases for advertising purposes. Another school
The new context-aware advertising framework for of study tries to estimate the click through rate of
mobile web is proposed in Section 4. Section 5 ads using data analysis tools such as clustering
discusses the implementation aspects of this frame- analysis for keyword matching and classification
work. Finally section 6 concludes this chapter and (Regelson & Fain, 2006). In this work, the ads are
outlines the open issues that are to be addressed clustered by their bid phrases. The click through
to extend and improve this framework. rate is averaged over each cluster.
In a summary of all the reviewed works, they
Literature Review have provided valuable references and solid
grounds for building the frameworks and ap-
Online Context-Aware Advertising proaches to match online context information with
the advertising content. However, most of them
As an emerging research topic, online advertising have only associated online context with either
has very few publications, even less for context- the content of web pages or the keywords of user
aware advertising. Wang et al in their work searches and therefore, even with solid-grounded
(Wang, Zhang, Choi & Eredita, 2002) stated that matching approaches, their works cannot be extend
the advertising contents must be relevant to the to the context-aware advertising challenges on
user’s interest to match with the user’s experience mobile platforms. A new framework is needed to
and promote the chances of later interactions. utilize the contexts on mobile platforms to gener-
Ribeiro-Neto et. al. (2005) worked on a ground- ate and select targeted and purposeful advertising
breaking report from the information retrieval content for mobile users.
perspective in which they examined a number of
strategies to match pages to ads based on search Context Awareness
keywords. More recently, the fast-growing popu-
larity of sponsored search in online advertising, Recently researchers have paid long due attention
such as major search engines, has motivated more to context acquisition and utilization in various
researchers from multiple disciplines, such as mobile platforms. Khedr et al (2005) apply agent-

5
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

Figure 1. Context-aware advertising framework for the mobile web

based approaches for building mobile context- developers to identify device characteristics us-
aware platform using the network-level context. ing a pre-defined vocabulary over RDF. WURFL
Biegel and Cahill (2004) described a framework (Passini & Trassati, 2009) is another popular re-
of utilizing environmental observance for context source description mechanism used by the mobile
aware application development in ubiquitous platform. One limitation of this mechanism is in
computing. Gu et al. (2004) described context that it needs the developers to constantly solicit
models using ontology in mobile intelligent information from client devices and update the
environments. database that holds all the resource information.
Major mobile organizations such as Open More importantly, there is no well-established
Mobile Alliance (OMA), W3C and IETF (In- approach or procedure to apply the device re-
ternet Engineering Task Force) have worked on source information described by WURFL or
standardization that has greatly influenced the such mechanism for optimizing the information
research on mobile platforms. However, there is provided to the users, not to mention effectively
still lack of effective ways to utilize contexts for utilizing this information to generate and select
delivering more targeted and purposeful content. advertising content on mobile web.
W3C’s Cascading Style Sheet (Bos et. al., 2009)
media queries determine a specific style sheet Context-Aware Advertising
based on the type of media that is accessing the Framework
web page, such as PC, PDA, etc. Another standard,
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language Figure 1 shows the high-level view of our
(SMIL) (Bulterman et al., 2005) also supports context-aware advertising framework for the
checking the characteristics of the system whose mobile web.
dynamics are governed by the runtime mobile As shown in the figure, the user sends a mobile
environment. The User Agent Profile (UAProf) web request to the web server from the mobile
(WAP User Agent Specification, 1999) by OMA device. After receiving the user’s request, the
is commonly used by mobile researchers and web server first constructs a static or dynamic

6
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

web page. The web page is not returned to the tion, and the Mobile Ad Design components in
user immediately but passed to the Mobile Ad details.
Evaluation component to check for potential
advertising opportunity. The component takes User Context Integration
the content and the context of the web page into
account to decide whether it is appropriate to Section 2 describes the characteristics and clas-
add advertisements to the page. The component sification of user context for mobile advertising.
also determines the type and the optimal number In fact, the Mobile Context Integration component
of advertisements to be added to the page. If it is a repository that combines such contexts includ-
is a good practice to insert advertisements to the ing physical contexts (such as the mobile device)
current page, then the web page, as well as the and user contexts (such as the user profile, user
type and the number of potential advertisements, session, and the content of the currently viewed
is passed to the next component, the Mobile Ad web page). It is our future work to extend the
Selection, to select and rank advertisements from framework to integrate social context. The mobile
the database. The advertisements are selected device context includes capabilities of the user’s
according to relevancy, quality, and user context. mobile device, which differs greatly from device
Next, the Mobile Ad Design component chooses to device. To acquire the mobile device context,
the format, resolution, page position, and other the web server first extracts a signature from the
presentation details of the selected advertisements request header, which is unique to the brand and
and inserts them into the web page. The web page the model of the mobile device. The server then
is customized by the device context. Finally, the uses the signature as a key to retrieve the com-
ad-extended web page is delivered to and displayed plete device context, including screen resolution,
on the user’s mobile device. supported input method, browser type, and other
The mobile advertising framework has a dual capabilities from the mobile device database.
goal of improving mobile advertising relevance The user profile context may include basic user
without sacrificing the user’s overall experience information, such as address, email, and phone-
while browsing the mobile web. The resources number, and the user’s behavior or preference,
taken by downloading and showing mobile such as favorite restaurant types. Since mobile
advertisements must be carefully evaluated for devices are very personal, the user profile context
mobile devices which have very limited resources can be constructed directly from a user’s inputs
compared to Desktop computers. The framework on web pages, or inferred indirectly by tracking
accomplishes this goal by considering the user the browsing history of requests initiated from the
context in each step. Explicitly, the three Mobile same device. Such information is stored in the user
Ad components interact with the Mobile Context profile database. The server can detect the user
Integration component to acquire user context identity by checking the login authority, cookie
information to decide whether or not to enable values, or a previously assigned special link to
advertisements, which advertisements to add, the user. Once the user identity is determined, the
and how to present the advertisements, etc. The web server can retrieve the user profile context
Mobile Context Integration component serves as from the database.
a central point of the user context and provides a For a new web request session, a user session
unique interface to access it. context object is constructed to keep the context
In the following, we first describe the Mobile information of the current session. The session
Context Integration component and then discuss context object is updated and maintained continu-
the Mobile Ad Evaluation, the Mobile Ad Selec- ously during the session. The session context is

7
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

similar to the user profile context but more ac- at the first time when the user opens the page.
curate and relevant to the current web page, and In another example, if the user is searching for
will be written back to the user profile database information on the mobile device, each mobile
when the session is over. The session context may web page usually shows a small number of results
include the user’s current location. For example, in order to reduce the page size and not forcing
a user specifies his/her location before searching the user to scroll the page a lot. The component
for nearby restaurants. The user’s location is then can decide to display advertisements only on the
added to the session context object reused by first result page.
the following-up searching requests. In certain The Mobile Advertising Evaluation compo-
scenarios, it is even possible to infer environment nent also settles down the type and the number
and physical context of the user from the context of advertisements proper to the web page. The
of the web pages being browsed by the user in most popular online advertising types include
the current session. sponsored search advertising and contextual ad-
vertising (Andrei & Marcus & Vanja & Lance,
Mobile Advertising Evaluation 2007). Depending on the content of the web
page, either sponsored search advertisements or
The circumstances under which mobile webs are contextual advertisements is more appropriate. If
browsed are generally very different than those for the user is browsing a category of restaurants or
Internet webs, and less comfortable. A user may searching for the closest gas station, a Sponsored
be on his/her way to the airport to pick up some Search advertisement is more relevant to the user
friend and trying to find out the arrival time of context. Similarly, if the user is reading blogs on
the flight. The amount of attention that the user his mobile device, then a contextual advertisement
can give to the mobile web also varies, as other selected according to the content of the blog is
elements in the environment may compete for the more likely to be relevant to the user.
user’s attention (Sidnal & Manvi, 2006). Mobile The capabilities of mobile devices vary signifi-
devices have limited screen size and capabilities. cantly. The new generation of mobile devices is
Thus, it is a general best practice to keep the size usually equipped with a big touch screen, and thus
of a mobile web page small with a simple lay-out. can show more advertisements on the same page
Irrelevant advertisements can be intrusive to the without interrupting the user. This is compared to
user, so it is crucial to understand the context of old devices with a smaller screen, and the user
the mobile user: why, where and when the user is can only scroll the page by repeatedly pressing
accessing the mobile web, the content of the web navigational keys. In particular, it is acceptable to
page, and the mobile device capabilities, before show several advertisements on a mobile phone
adding advertisements to the web page. The user’s with a screen size of 480*320, but it would take
web browsing and ad-click history also shows almost half of the screen displaying the same
the user’s attitude towards the advertisements on number of advertisements on an old phone with a
mobile web pages. Mobile web sites are usually resolution of only 160*128. The device context is
structured to have multiple levels of navigational a key factor to consider how many advertisements
pages to balance between having too many links can be added to the web page.
on a page and asking the user to follow too many
links to reach what the user is looking for. The Mobile Advertising Selection
user may return to the same navigational page
frequently while browsing the mobile web site. Online advertisements are generally implemented
Advertisements can be added to the page only as a quality-based bidding scheme. For instance,

8
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

Google and Yahoo! search marketing rank spon- image banners on mobile web sites, many don’t
sored search advertisement by the bid price on realize the image banners can be navigated to
matching key words plus a quality score evalu- and clicked on, and a Text Tagline can be added
ated by the advertisement’s click-through-rate, to generate a higher click rates (Mobile Market
keyword relevancy with landing page, and site Association, 2008). If the integrated User Context
quality (Bernard & Tracy, 2008). For mobile ad- suggests that the user is familiar to image banners,
vertising, the matching process can be extended then the Text Tagline can be removed to improve
by considering the user context. user browsing experience.
As described in section 2, the user’s location
is usually available and most relevant to mobile Exemplary Application
advertising. Research shows that in most eco- and Case Study
nomic transactions, the location of the buying
and the selling parties are relevant (Sidnal & In order to provide an exemplary application and
Manvi, 2006). For example, the advertisement conduct appropriate case studies to validate our
of a nearby pizza restaurant is probably more approach, we have implemented a prototype sys-
attractive than a discount issued by a restaurant tem, namely Skyhelper, based on the framework
twenty miles away. User profile context can be and approaches described in previous sections.
explored to select the most relevant advertise- Skyhelper is a mobile web site that allows users
ments to the user by matching the user context to to search for information about theatre locations,
candidate advertisements. One example is that the movie show time, gas price, restaurants and menus
server can use the user’s favorite restaurant type from their mobile devices. The web site returns
from the user profile context to select restaurant search results with appropriate advertisements
advertisements. accurately selected based on the users’ search
criteria and contexts including their location and
Mobile Advertising Design profiles. The site consists of three layers as shown
in Figure 2.
Mobile advertisements can be displayed in alter- Client: The client can be any browser-equipped
native formats on a mobile device as simple text mobile devices, from the out-of-date cell phones
links, colorful images, or animated images. The to the state-of-the-art high end PDAs such as
size of a mobile web page is much smaller com- Blackberry, iPhone and Google phone.
pared to an Internet web page in order to reduce Web Server: We use a Tomcat web server
the download time and to fit the page to the small as the container for search and advertising ser-
screen of mobile devices. An image advertisement vices. The web server consists of three modules:
is more eye-catching than a text link, but also takes 1) Information Retrieval Module accepts HTTP
longer to download and occupies a bigger part of requests from the client, searches from the data-
the screen. An image/animated image advertise- base, constructs the results in terms of web pages,
ment can be more intrusive to some mobile users and sends these web pages to the Advertising
than a simple text link advertisement. Module for further processing. 2) Advertising
Mobile Web Banner Ad is a popular type Module accepts search results from the Informa-
of advertisements on mobile web pages, which tion Retrieval Module, adds advertisements if
composes a still or animated image and optional applicable and returns the final web pages to the
text Taglines. The aspect ratio and the size of the client. 3) Database Access Module works as the
banner image need to be adjusted to the user’s interface between the Information Retrieval and
mobile device. If the users are unfamiliar with Advertising modules and the database server. The

9
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

Figure 2. Architecture of skyhelper prototype

Detecting the Capability of
system
the User’s Mobile Device

The capability of the user’s mobile device differs

greatly from device to device. While many high-
end mobile devices have featured full function
web browsers, browsing the Web on most mid-
and low-end mobile devices has not become as
convenient as expected. Mobile devices are quite
restrictive on the format and length of the received
content. There can be some information loss or
malfunction if the web page is presented in some
mode that the mobile device does not support.
For example, Javascript, AJAX and Google map
can provide an excellent use experience for the
newest iPhone 3G users, but they may not work
well on an out-of-date cell phone. To produce web
pages that adapt to all kinds of mobile browsers,
we must first detect the capability of the user’s
mobile device.
We built a Mobile Device Database which
contains the information about the capabilities and
features of more than ten thousand mobile devices.
advantages of having a Database Access Mod- Capability information were collected from the
ule are to separate the functionality of the web WURFL project, which is an open source project
server and the database server, and to balance the that stores the information of many mobile devices
workload between these modules. So Information and provides functionalities to use its information
Retrieval and Advertising modules can focus on to identify a specific device (WURFL, 2009). Once
search and advertisement processing and do not the web server receives a request from a client,
need to worry about the implementation details a signature is extracted from the request header,
of the database server. which is unique to the brand and the model of the
Database Server: We use MySQL 5.0 to store mobile device. The server then uses the signature
user profiles, mobile device, and advertisement as a key to retrieve the complete device context,
information. Current implementation hosts all including screen resolution, supported input
databases on one server. In future, we suggest method, browser type, and other capabilities from
distributing the databases onto multiple servers the mobile device database. This device capability
running different DBMS systems to achieve better information will be used for better selection and
scalability and short response time. presentation of the advertisements.
The user context-aware advertising framework
we have presented in this chapter focuses on Advertisement Evaluation
supporting the design and implementation of the
Advertising Module. In the rest of this section, The Advertisement Evaluation component decides
we will discuss the details of this module. if it is applicable to add some advertisement on
a webpage. It also determines the number of ad-

10
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

Figure 3. Browsing restaurants on iPhone Figure 4. Browsing restaurants on Nokia N70

ries, by the textual similarity and semantic-based

matching between the queries and the keywords
vertisements to be added. In the example shown associated with these categories. Only the adver-
in Figure 3 and 4, we display tree advertisements tisements belongs to the matched categories will
on iPhone but only one advertisement on Nokia be selected to display on the web pages.
N70, by taking device context into account, since Advertisements in the categories are ranked
iPhone has a big screen of 480 * 320 pixels while according to a score calculated using a set of
the Nokia N70 has a much smaller screen resolu- heuristic rules. Top ranked advertisements are
tion of 172 *208. considered most relevant to user context and
We implement the advertisement evaluation more interested to the user. To ensure freshness
component as a C4.5 decision tree. The tree was and diversity of the advertisement and create a
built using Weka 3 data mining software (WEKA better use experience, we keep an advertising
2009). Weka contains a Java implementation of the log for each user session. No advertisement is
C4.5 algorithm and a collection of visualization allowed to be displayed on more than five pages
tools for data analysis and predictive modeling, in the whole session or on a sequence of more
together with graphical user interfaces for easy than three continuous pages.
access to this functionality. We extended the
functionality of Weka to output the decision tree Advertisement Presentation
as a Java class, which can be easily integrate into
our Java based advertising module. Having the advertisements evaluated and selected,
the final step is to present them in an appreciate
Advertisement Selection format and layout. Typical mid- and low-end
cell phones display less than twenty lines of text
Advertisements in the database are classified into on the screen. High-end mobile services, such
categories. Each category is associated with fifteen as Blackberry and iPhone, have bigger screens
keywords. User queries are classified to catego- with higher resolution, but it is still aesthetically

11
A User Context-Aware Advertising Framework for the Mobile Web

Figure 5. Clicks of users who use context-aware advertising framework or not

unpleasant to directly browse web pages originally for the devices with different capabilities (screen
designed for a desktop computer. resolution, Javascript support, and GPS enabled,
To adapt the advertisements to various mobile etc) and various profiles from a small group of
devices, we keep four different versions for each users we have gathered for this study. Second,
advertisement – a text string and three images we tested a set of queries provided by the users
in different sizes and resolutions. Some adver- for common information such as show times and
tisements (about 15%) also have an animated restaurants on both versions of the mobile site.
banner version. Mobile devices are classified Third, we provided the users with the results of
to low, medium and high levels based on their both tests and let the users determine whether they
capabilities and features, based on which the ap- will click the top (ten) links in both sets of the
propriate version of the advertisement is chosen results which helps us make a comparison. After
and displayed. finishing these works, the comparison between
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Case Study and Proof of Concept the search results is compared with the average
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without. First, we configured a few emulators aware framework improves the mobile web search

12
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
They agreed that the proper thing to do was not to refer to the
past again, and meet as seldom as possible. But such resolutions,
wherever they were recorded, were soon broken; and now that it
was necessary that there should be restraint, the old passion revived
with redoubled force. The husband originally intended to accompany
his wife to the theatre on that eventful evening, but was prevented,
owing to a sharp attack of gout. The piece—it was "Othello"—did not
have much of their attention, their conversation was to them of far
deeper interest. Graham told Mrs. Murray of his desperate
circumstances, and that in a day or two he would be off to Australia.
There were tears shed, as is usual on such occasions, and the
lady never expected to see her lover again, when such a vast waste
of waters lay between them. As many of my readers probably
remember, when the fire did break out, the theatre was consumed in
an incredibly short space of time. Graham saw his opportunity—I
told you he was good at getting out of scrapes—and when his
startling proposal was whispered into the ear of his fair companion, I
am afraid there was not much resistance. In the confusion they got
to the Waverley Station unobserved, and took the first train going
south.
In Australia Graham soon recovered his position, and when the
death of Mr. Murray was announced he immediately married the
partner of his flight. He was now arranging with his solicitor to pay
his creditors in full, and settle down in the neighbourhood of
London. I spent a gay and pleasant evening with my two "defunct"
friends, and rated them soundly for not letting me into their secret.
On rising to depart, at a very late hour, Graham said, with all the old
mischief beaming in his eyes—
"We have often laughed over your evidence in the Scotsman.
We are deeply indebted to you. You settled us both in the most
conclusive manner. By the way, I owe you some recompense."
"What for?"
"I kept the programme, but sacrificed your glasses."
CHAPTER XII.
THE ATTEMPTED MURDER IN THE AIR.

The proposal to go up in a balloon accepted— Green's young and

pretty wife— A very strange conversation—An unpleasant
looking knife— Jealously—Madness and attempted murder.
People may have thought differently, but there was really no
occasion for his jealousy; the man was mad. Knowing his eccentric
habits, you ask me how I could have been so foolish as to
accompany him alone in that terrible balloon ascent, and I reply that
it never occurred to me that he believed that I was in love with his
wife. He had gone up in balloons fifty times without meeting with
any accident, and when he pressed me to join him in that midnight
voyage I had but little hesitation in accepting the invitation.
As you are aware, I have done a few things in my time, and the
idea of a new sensation was agreeable to me. It may come with the
infirmities of old age, but as yet fear has not entered into my
composition. It appeared to me that my nerves were quite as good
as his.
It was a scientific experiment to test certain air currents, and
you no doubt recollect that the result was watched with considerable
interest. But few people know the dreadful scene that was enacted
in mid-air in an unusually dark night. Unmistakable signs of insanity
showed themselves a few days afterwards, and he had to be taken
to Hanwell. I went to see him the other day, and he told me in the
greatest confidence that he was the Devil, and that he had sat to
Martin for his famous painting of "Satan in Council" from him. It was
a sad case; he was a man of infinite talent, and the doctors gave but
little hope of his recovery.
Yes, his wife is to be pitied. She is not more than twenty-five,
and there are no two opinions about her beauty, and I can testify
that her mind is quite in keeping with her person. A more fascinating
woman I never met, and it may be strange to say that I have only
admired her as a sister. I have known her since she was two years of
age, and she has never taken any important step in life without
consulting me. She was early left an orphan, and there never was a
brother nor a sister. Green first met her at Harrogate, and was soon
over head and ears in love.
I never saw a man so deeply influenced with the tender
passion. His position and wealth there could be no mistake about,
and when Lizzie Norton asked me whether she should accept his
offer of marriage, I thought it a good chance for the friendless girl.
It was her frequent consultations with me about her husband's daily
increasing eccentricities which created the scandal, and the state of
his health may have to some extent influenced me to ascend with
him into the clouds.
Light a cigar and I will endeavour to bring back to my memory
what took place. The balloon was a new one, called the Sunbeam.
We went up from the Crystal Palace.
It was a beastly night, raining in torrents, and nearly dark. The
lamp which was lighted at starting went out from some cause or
other (he may have extinguished it on purpose before we had
ascended many hundred feet), and an attempt made to kindle it did
not succeed.
The sensations of the ascent were certainly novel, if not
pleasant. We hung over London for some time, and then, after rising
to a considerable height, drifted towards Brighton, where I was
fortunate enough to be landed safely. But when you hear the
particulars of the trip you will say that it was long odds against my
ever reaching the earth alive.
It was an anonymous letter that first aroused his mad and
groundless jealousy, and he had watched my interviews with his wife
—arranged for his good—and believed that we were deceiving him. I
repeat that we were both innocent of any such intention, although
appearances may have been against us.
The man or woman who penned that ill-natured epistle was as
near as possible being the cause of a murder. Green had provided
himself with a cook's knife, a nasty weapon to look at, and it was by
the merest chance he did not thrust it in my heart. Scientific
experiments are all very well in their way, but I prefer not pursuing
such studies in mid-air in the company of a maniac.
One of the first things he said to me was—
"Life is not worth much up here."
I agreed with him that we were running some extra risk, and
added that I hoped the construction of the balloon was not deficient.
"The balloon is right enough," he hissed in my ear, as we rushed
through the air at the rate of forty miles an hour; "there are other
things to dread."
There was a peculiarity about the tone of his reply which I did
not like. I enquired what was the nature of the other risks, but he
gave me no answer, and busied himself for a few minutes with the
mechanism of our ærial car.
"You have faced death before?" he asked abruptly.
I told him that such was the case; that over ladies fair I had
been obliged to fight a duel or two in different parts of Europe.
This answer seemed to enrage him, for at once exclaimed in a
passionate voice—
"Toujours les dames. Is it true you are so fortunate?"
"Report credits me with more than my due. Like other men
roving about Europe, I have had my adventures."
His next question startled me, and I began to suspect that there
was something wrong.
"What do you think of my wife?" was what he asked.
"That you are a man to be envied."
"But that it not the answer. Do you think her pretty?"
"There can be no doubt of that."
I endeavoured to change the subject by drawing his attention to
a bank of clouds we were about to pierce in our upward career, but
it was in vain.
"You admire her very much?"
"No one can help admiring her," I answered.
"I never could understand why you did not marry her."
"The truth, is that it never occurred to me to ask her. Our
friendship was that of brother and sister. Although no more beautiful
object could be found, old fellow, it seems a little out of place to
discuss your wife."
"What did I bring you here for?"
"Then your purpose in getting me to ascend with you was to
talk about Mrs. Green? It strikes me that a more convenient and
comfortable place could have been found somewhere on the earth.
You are a funny fellow," I said.
"What I have to say is better without witnesses. Here I can be
judge and executioner."
This extraordinary answer put me on my guard, and I watched
his movements as well as I could in the uncertain light which was
beginning to appear in the heavens. Contrary winds had carried us
rapidly in different directions, and until we had a little more light it
was impossible to tell where we were. It was not a very pleasant
position to be cooped up in such close quarters with a jealous
husband, whose mind was evidently unhinged, and I thought that
the sooner our voyage was finished the better. So far as strength
went I was the stronger of the two, but a struggle in a balloon
floating a few miles above the earth was to be avoided. I tried what
silence would do.
"She would have married you. She thinks nobody like you," he
began again.
"I tell you I never thought of her as my wife. What possesses
you, Green, to speak to me in this absurd fashion?"
"Jealousy—revenge," he hissed, and I could just perceive him
playing with something which looked disagreeably like a knife.
This was serious, and unseen by him—he seemed absorbed in
thought—I took measures to descend as rapidly as possible. There
was no disguising the fact that I was in a balloon alone with a
madman!
"We will make for the sea," he muttered to himself. "One thrust,
and over he goes."
"Not if I know it," I thought. "There will be a little discussion
before that undesirable end is attained."
"Was woman ever loved so much before?" he began, speaking
to himself. "For her I was ready to sacrifice my present, my future,
my hereafter, my life; nothing that a man could do would have been
left undone for one approving smile, one kiss from her pouting lips.
"Ah! to think that other lips have pressed hers, that other arms
have encircled that matchless form, drives me mad—mad! Yet she
looks an angel of purity. How often have I stayed awake to watch
the childlike sleep. No impure thought was haunting the quiet mind.
If she had but whispered the name of a rival she would never have
risen from the couch again. But that letter—ah! that letter. I have it
here; it speaks of secret meetings, and calls me—the fiend—the
duped, or complaisant husband. And the letter was not wrong. I
watched them meet secretly myself. Oh! Lizzie, was such a love as
mine to be thrown away like a used glove? Would to God we had
never met. No, I won't say that. I cannot forget the days of rapture I
spent with you, my darling. It is not you I blame; it is he, the
husband's friend, I must destroy. Time for action. This good knife
will revenge my lost honour. No man shall boast that he has kissed
those lips and live. Now we will make for the sea, and then one
thrust and over he goes!"
He was right in saying it was the moment for action. He had
worked himself into such a mad fury I expected every moment to be
attacked. All the time he was raving the balloon was—unknown to
him—rapidly descending, and we were close to the earth, so close
that by throwing out the grappling irons I made certain of stopping
our further progress, and it was not a bit too soon.
To throw out the irons and knock that dangerous knife out of his
hand as he rose to attack me was the work of a second. The next
minute I pinned him down in the bottom of the car, and prevented
any further unpleasantness.
With the dawn of morning workpeople came over the Brighton
Downs and assisted me to secure the Sunbeam and her poor
demented owner.
His ascents into the air had finished, and the next occasion that
I go up in a balloon with a friend I shall previously put him through
a series of searching questions about love and jealousy, if he should
happen to possess that much desirable acquisition—a young and
pretty wife!
CHAPTER XIII.
MY TWO MATCHES, OR WATERLOO AVENGED.

A man with a history—Was it murder?— Clotilde avenges Waterloo—

The winner of the Two Thousand makes a good hack.
It was difficult to say to what nationality Monsieur H——
belonged, as he spoke as many different languages as a Pole or a
Russian, but probably Switzerland had the honour of producing the
keen-eyed, wiry little man. He was not, even in his most friendly
moments, very communicative about his antecedents, and, if that
jade rumour did not belie him, he had good reasons for his
reticence.
The gossips of the place, envious of his prosperity, alleged
amongst other things against him, that he had been a waiter at a
notorious night-house in Panton Street, Haymarket, and that on the
occurrence of a drunken brawl he and a disreputable man about
town called B—— threw a gentleman of good position either out of
the window or down the stairs and killed him.
Murder was never meant, and death was, no doubt, the result
of an accident. The police could not get to the bottom of the affair—
as the people who were present kept out of the way—and the
friends of the deceased did all they could to hush the matter up.
It was more than likely that Monsieur H—— was mixed up in
this disturbance, as he disappeared from England about that time,
and although he annually makes a holiday visit to Paris or Berlin,
Geneva or Vienna, he never favours London with his presence.
The land he could see on a clear day without the aid of glasses
appeared to be forbidden ground to him. That he had mingled in the
fast life of the metropolis in his younger days you would be
thoroughly convinced by a few minutes' conversation with him.
One tangible fact connected with the little man is to be obtained
from the journals of the period; his wife was successful in getting a
divorce from him. The lady who found him too wayward in his
affection and a little too ready with his hands, was not frightened at
her unfortunate matrimonial experiences, for when that troublesome
individual, the Queen's Proctor, could no longer interfere, she was
led a second time to the altar, on this occasion by Mr. R——, who
recently had a favourite for one of the largest races of the year.
This Monsieur H——, with a history in the background, kept a
small hotel at a French watering place.
The autumn of life seemed to give him a great amount of
pleasure in a temperate manner. His early youth, however mild it
might have been, had evidently not clogged his sense of enjoyment.
In addition to his hotel—which was well managed—he had two
other possessions on which he prided himself, and I put them in the
order in which he judged them; first, was a long-tailed half-bred
hack, and the second a big, strapping black-eyed wife, for he had
also sought connubial bliss once again.
If it had not been for this horse this narrative would not have
been written.
It was a rough-coated, badly-groomed mare of a chestnut
colour, with a blaze face and two white heels, a little doubtful about
the forelegs, standing as near as possible sixteen hands high. Good
fun was often to be got out of the series of tremendous efforts the
diminutive landlord had to make before he could mount his tall
steed. Once in the pigskin, however, he seemed comfortable
enough, and did not appear as if even buck-jumping would dislodge
him.
In his private bar and round the billiard table at night the
prowess of Clotilde—that was the hack's name—was often the
subject of much animated talk. Her early life was shrouded in
mystery like her owner's, but taking into account her formation, the
white marks and chestnut colour, the astute Monsieur H—— was
inclined to admit Blair Athol to the dignity of having been her male
progenitor.
Dreams of breeding winners of the Derby flitted across the little
man's mind, but he could never fix upon a suitable sire, and for
aught I know he may be still cogitating on that important subject.
When I made Monsieur H—— 's acquaintance, I had with me a
pony I picked up a bargain at Newmarket, and when I met the jovial
little man out riding we used to have a canter together.
It was one night at a supper the match between our nags was
first mooted.
Somebody had caught a splendid basket of trout, and wished
his friends to share the finny delicacy. When the speckled beauties
had been done justice to, and grog and cigars was the order of the
evening, the proposition about the match, previously mentioned as a
joke, was brought forward in real earnest.
The landlord was willing to run his Clotilde against my pony Jack
over a mile for any reasonable sum—owners to ride. After the usual
amount of desultory talk the match was at last arranged, the stakes
to be £25 a side, and an early day was fixed for its decision.
The advantages were to all appearances not with me. I was
nearly a stone heavier than my opponent, and the long stride of his
mare would tell against Jack. My only chance of success lay in the
fact that the mare was entirely out of condition, and could not be
got ready in the time, whereas my pony had not an ounce of
superfluous flesh about him. I knew also that Jack could go a rattling
pace, and that he would be quicker on his legs than the mare.
The wily landlord was not ignorant of his mare's weak point,
and no time was lost in putting her into hard work and practising her
to jump off quickly at the word "Go" given by his billiard-marker.
The latter part of the business was the source of much
amusement to the onlookers, and puts one in mind of Jennings'
teaching Gladiateur similar lessons before a certain Cambridgeshire.
On the important day Jack was very troublesome at the post, he
was too eager to begin, while Clotilde stood watchful, but quiet as a
sheep. Her schooling had apparently not been wasted. When the
flag fell—we had an example—the mare was as ready to commence
as the pony, and ere half the distance had been covered her long
stride began to tell, and I could see that only an accident would save
the race. I nursed my impetuous little brute as much as I could for a
final rush, but my opponent was up to every movement and was not
going to be caught napping.
Nothing I could do disturbed him, and he kept on the even
tenor of his way, winning without difficulty by a couple of lengths.
The mare showed more speed than I had given her credit for, and
her owner rode like a Trojan.
The victory rested with the foreigner, and there was nothing for
it but to pay and look pleasant. I omitted to say that the loser was
bound to give a supper for the benefit of the hotel, and altogether I
found, on including some sundry bets I had made; I was to the bad
over the transaction nearly £100.
If the matter had ended with the transfer of the money and the
supper I would not have cared, but it did not. It was excessively
galling to be condoled with on every side, and to read a sensational
but thoroughly incorrect account of the match in the columns of the
local newspaper, the Journal du Nord.
On perusing a lengthy description of the race and accompanying
remarks, a stranger would have come to the conclusion that we had
been engaged in nothing less than a great international struggle,
and that the disgrace of Waterloo had at last been wiped out.
They managed to ruffle my temper to a considerable extent,
and I impatiently waited an opportunity to be revenged.
"Why don't you have a proper hack and not a weed, they cost
the same to keep," was the remark continually dinned into my ears
by the triumphant Monsieur H——. I meekly submitted that he was
in the right, and that I was on the look out for a better animal.
He was anxious to assist me with his judgment, but the horses
he recommended did not suit, and I wrote to a friend in England
explaining my dilemma, and asked him to send me something
decent. He was not long in complying with my wishes.
One morning about ten days after the dispatch of my letter a
telegram from Clarence intimated that he had been successful.
"Have sent what you want by to-day's tidal train, particulars by
post," he said.
When my new hack stepped on shore and his clothes were
taken off, Monsieur H—— and his allies—who had heard of the
expected arrival and were in waiting—pronounced him not good
enough to draw a voiture, and said if I had given more than £10 for
the ugly brute I had been swindled.
The new comer was, it must be confessed, not a beauty to look
at, and before he had been many minutes on French soil he
displayed unmistakable signs of a disagreeable temper, but the old
adage says "handsome is that handsome does." He was certainly not
an easy horse to ride, and you required to know his little
peculiarities. A dead set was made against him in the town, and I
was about the only person who thought him anything but the
unmanageable animal he appeared to be. Of course I had good
grounds for a contrary belief.
Trotting on the sands one day soon after the arrival of my new
purchase I encountered Monsieur H—— on Clotilde. Since his victory
the little man had taken to patronizing me; before, he rather valued
my opinion, but now my most sagacious remarks passed unheeded,
and wore not worth the breath spent upon them.
"So sorry you have been imposed upon with that brute," he
remarked. "I wanted to give you your revenge."
"Nevermind my horse's appearance," I replied. "If you really
wish another contest, we are ready."
"You mean that? At double the stakes if you like."
The cunning landlord was sanguine of the result because his
mare had undergone a regular course of training, and looked at least
10 lbs. better than she did on the last occasion.
This was well known to me, but I was not in the least afraid. So
anxious was he of settling the match there and then that to equalize
the chances, as he said, he offered to give me a two lengths start,
but this kind proposal I, much to his astonishment, declined. I
consented, however, to the other terms, and later in the day a
regular agreement was signed at the hotel.
Although by my desire this second match was fixed for an early
hour of the morning to keep away loafers, the affair had got wind,
and to my intense annoyance there were hundreds of spectators.
The English colony was present to a man, that officious ass the
reporter of the Journal du Nord was there, busy with his pencil, an
expatriated bookmaker was fully occupied in taking the odds—they
laid 2 to 1 on Clotilde—and Monsieur H—— 's friends mustered in
great force. An even start was effected at the first time of asking; for
three parts of the journey I contented myself with racing side by
side with my opponent, but when the last quarter of a mile was
reached, I gave my horse his head. He instantly took advantage of
his freedom, and carried me past the judge about ten lengths in
front of Clotilde. The only trouble I had in the race was to hold back
my horse, who almost pulled my arms out of their sockets.
Perfidious Albion had regained her prestige, and my winnings were
not to be despised.
"What the deuce have you got there?" asked an English officer,
after the race.
"Only a winner of the Two Thousand," was my somewhat
astonishing but truthful answer.
My friend Clarence offered me for choice two horses, the second
in the Cesarewitch and a winner of the Two Thousand Guineas, and
I selected the latter.
CHAPTER XIV.
UNFORTUNATE POSTAGE-STAMP.

A street acquaintance— The fascinating widow—Fatal marriage—

Marrying another man's wife—A question of damages—Lucky hit
at Ascot.
"Do you know that you have married my wife?"
This somewhat extraordinary piece of intelligence was
communicated to my friend Alfred Drummond in his own home
about three months after he was married. The person who claimed a
prior right to the lady had scamp plainly written on his bloated
features, and he looked all over a man who lived by his wits. I
thought it an ill-advised union from the first, but when I ventured on
a word of warning, I was immediately put down as an old croaker, so
I determined to let the wilful man have his own way. The lady was
certainly beautiful in that voluptuous sense so much admired by
painters of the Dutch school, but I was not taken with her. There
was a shiftiness about her glance not pleasant to see either in horse
or human being. Although I drank to their happiness in Irroy on that
fatal wedding day, I was never sanguine of the result, but by the
utmost stretch of my imagination I could not have foreseen the
deplorable consequences. The marriage totally wrecked my friend's
life, and all but ruined me.
If men will pick up their wives in such an irregular manner, they
must not be astonished at the surprises the future has in store for
them. It will be learned from this narrative that acquaintances made
in the street are never any good. My friend met the girl he married
in a post-office; she was sending a telegram, and his business was
confined to the purchase of a penny stamp. As it turned out, the
buying of that stamp was the most unfortunate thing Drummond
ever done. I have often thought that if he had by any chance only
seen the contents of the lady's message, his eyes would have been
opened and he would have been saved much money. They spoke—I
never knew exactly how that came about, but it is easy to guess. A
look would be sufficient, for Alfred Drummond, who was one of the
most susceptible of men, but I rather think that the ill-fated intimacy
began with the restoration of a dropped handkerchief. At all events,
the meeting in the post-office ended by the lady's address being
obtained, and permission to visit her being granted. A quiet, well-
appointed brougham was waiting the fair siren outside the post-
office, and my friend came rushing to me full of the adventure, and,
so to speak, treading on air.
When you find a man is in love don't trouble to reason with him.
Labour lost. And for your own sake don't attempt to say one word
against his mistress if you want to avoid a duel to the death. Any
aspersions cast upon the whiteness of the charmer's teeth, the
colour of her hair, the smallness of her foot, or the levity of her
conduct, will never be forgiven. Mr. Alfred Drummond had had to my
knowledge many previous attacks of this love fever, but none of
them so sudden, severe, and lasting a nature as the present one. He
was perfectly infatuated, and his ravings about the lady's perfections
disgusted his more sober-minded companions. There is no doubt
Mrs. Selby—he told us that was the name—gave him great
encouragement from the commencement. It seems that on
presenting himself at the lady's villa, which was situated at West
Brompton, the door was opened by a man servant, and he was
shown into an exquisitely decorated drawing-room. He was received
most graciously, and his visits became of almost daily occurrence,
and letters were continually passing between them. On the occasion
of a carpet dance, I was introduced to my friend's enslaver, but her
shifty look created doubts about her integrity in my mind, and I did
not like the people I met at her house. If they did not belong to
Bohemia proper, they lived within hailing distance of that mystic
land. No one enjoys a "lark" more than the writer of this "ower true
tale," but when it becomes a question of marriage, too much caution
cannot be used. There would be fewer cases in the Divorce Court if
men would be ruled by their judgments instead of their passions. All
my efforts to control my friend in this matter were fruitless. I could
see things were approaching a climax, so I was not surprised at the
announcement Drummond made to me one morning, about two
months after their first interview.
"Congratulate me, old fellow," he said, bouncing into my office,
with an open note in his hand; "I have won the prize."
"I am very glad; how much is it." I knew well enough what he
meant, and was sorry to hear the news.
"It is not a prize in the French lottery; something immeasurably
superior to money."
"A castle on the Rhine, with the title of Baron attached to it?"
"No, stupid; you are extra dull this morning; the incomparable
prize is Mrs. Selby."
"Oh, the widow," I remarked; "so all mysteries have been
explained."
"I don't know what you mean; the mysteries, as you call them
originated in your own suspicious mind."
"Then tell me who is she after all. As you are going to marry
her, of course you know everything?"
"Who should she be but herself, Mrs. Selby, the widow of a City
merchant who was killed by the natives three years ago when on a
business visit to the Cape?"
"Then you have been introduced to her relations?"
"What are you driving at? I know her friends."
"I said relations."
"She has not got any; so much the better for me."
"Perhaps; but if I stood in your shoes I should like to be posted
up a little more about my wife's antecedents."
"I am satisfied, and that is everything."
"Certainly; no offence, you know. You will be a rich man now, I
suppose."
"What do you mean?"
"I presume the expensive establishment at Brompton is not kept
up on nothing—your widow must have lots of money."
"I don't know and I don't care. I love the darling for herself. You
have always had an unpleasant word to say about Caroline; I shall
be sorry if my marriage is going to break up our friendship."
"What I said was intended for your good, Alfred, but if the die is
cast I have finished. Shake hands, wed Mrs. Selby as soon as you
like, and I wish you much happiness."
When you have a serious regard for a man, as I had for
Drummond, it grieves you to the heart to see him commit an
irreparable act of folly. I was quite confident that the widow was not
all she represented herself to be, and that her present mode of life
was to some extent enveloped in mystery. When there is so much
secrecy, there is always something objectionable to hide. But you
might as well try to turn the tide as endeavour to convince a lover
that there are any imperfections in his sweetheart. The day for the
marriage was at hand, and I was anything but reconciled to it. What
business was it of mine? You see we were like brothers. Our
friendship began at college, and became cemented when we both
secured Government appointments in the same office. Although our
natures were entirely different, Drummond's wayward, mine
consistent, no two individuals could repose greater confidence in
each other. It was not because his marriage would to some extent
separate us that I objected to it. I may have many faults, but
selfishness is not one of them. I made certain that my friend would
be one of those rash individuals who "marry in haste to repent at
leisure," and my surmises turned out to be only too correct.
He had reason to have dark forebodings himself. A letter she hid
on his appearance and refused to show him caused him considerable
uneasiness, and once he came suddenly upon her close to her house
in deep conversation with a man, to whom she did not proffer to
introduce him. He was so much under her influence at the time, she
no doubt managed to explain these trifling matters to his entire
satisfaction. The letter was probably a bill from her dressmaker, and
the stranger her solicitor's clerk. When she was reported to be ill and
confined to her room, I saw her in a box at the Haymarket Theatre,
but this fact I kept to myself. They were married, and went to the
Continent for the honeymoon, and on their return they took up their
residence at the villa. His stay in this fool's paradise was but of short
duration. They had only been settled down about three months,
when he made the unpleasant discovery that he had married a living
man's wife.
In his terrible trouble he came to me for advice. The man who
represented himself as the real husband had threatened all manner
of actions at law, but agreed to do nothing until twelve o'clock the
following day. His story, plausible enough, was that, on going into
the interior of the country at the Cape to trade, he had been
captured by the natives, and been kept a prisoner for over two
years. A friend who was with him—who succeeded in escaping—left
him on the field for dead, and reported the decease of her husband
to Mrs. Selby. On one condition I agreed to assist Drummond out of
his difficulty, and that was, that he must separate at once from the
lady. As he loved the woman to distraction, this was a hard blow;
but he at once saw the propriety of complying with the stipulation,
and the next day I kept the appointment with Mr. Selby instead of
my friend.
The meeting was to take place at the villa. On arriving there a
few minutes before the time arranged, I was met by Mrs. Selby, with
her attire in disorder and dishevelled hair.
"Where is he? He has not been here since yesterday," she
exclaimed, clutching hold of me and bursting into a flood of tears.
I tried to calm her, but it was of no use; she became quite
hysterical and threw herself face downwards on the sofa. If that is
not real, I thought, what a magnificent actress she would have
made. On ringing the bell for her maid her real husband made his
appearance. On seeing the condition of his wife he went up to the
sofa and spoke kindly to her.
"Don't take it so much to heart, Caroline," he said, feelingly,
"you had reasons to think me dead. I do not blame you." Turning to
me he remarked, "I hope I have not kept you waiting. You are from
Mr. Drummond, I presume; if you will step into another room we will
talk over matters."
Before sitting down I had a good look at Mr. Selby, and I neither
liked his manner nor appearance. I saw that I had an unscrupulous,
perhaps clever rogue to deal with, and I became doubly cautious.
I began by saying what a strange affair it was, and asking him
where he and Mrs. Selby were married. He was prepared for the
question; he not only produced the marriage certificate, but also
furnished me with the names and present abodes of the witnesses.
When I made enquiry about the business in the City he at once gave
me a card of the address; he was an exporter of fancy goods,
whatever that may mean. Alluding incidentally to his altered
appearance, he asked whether two years in the bush was not
enough to pull any one down. Then we got to closer quarters.
"Well, Mr. Selby, it is a great misfortune to all parties. What do
you propose to do?" I asked.
"I doated on my wife, and should like to take her back," he
replied; "to prevent exposure, which I suppose would not suit your
friend, I am willing to come to terms."
"As you are the lawful husband, I will undertake that Mr.
Drummond relinquishes all his claims."
"But that will not be sufficient; he has done me a great injury
and must compensate me for it."
"Your captivity has not bettered your fortunes, Mr. Selby."
"On the contrary, ruined me."
I saw that the whole affair resolved itself into a question of
money, and it was imperative for my friend's sake that the matter
should be hushed up. I wondered how it was that his wife was
enabled to live in such good style in his absence, but said nothing. It
was no good studying delicacy with a man like that. I said—
"How much do you want? You must remember that my friend is
a comparatively poor man."
"A thousand pounds," was the startling answer.
"Quite preposterous", I replied; "my friend is not in a position to
pay anything like this sum, and if he took my advice he would keep
his money in his pocket. He, at all events, acted in good faith."
"I have not said a word against Mr. Drummond, but he has
mortally injured me. He can think over my proposition, but to-
morrow at the same hour I must have a decided answer," Mr. Selby
remarked. "There is the address of my hotel. You can tell him that to
clear myself I may have to prosecute my wife for bigamy, and that I
can take the case into the Divorce Court."
When I got back I told Drummond what had taken place. I
thought he would have gone mad when he heard that there was no
doubt about Mr. Selby's identity. My poor infatuated friend had good
prospects, and for certain reasons, very serviceable now, his
marriage was only known to a few people. The difficulty we had to
encounter was how to get rid of the demands of the injured
husband. There was not much time to deliberate, Selby took care of
that, and when once the peculiar case got wind it would fly to all
parts of the town. A certain amount of money must be paid I could
see, and at length we agreed to offer five hundred pounds. But how
to get the sum; Drummond had not five hundred pence. His journey
to Paris, the expenses at Brompton, to say nothing of the
innumerable rich presents he had given Mrs. Selby, had swallowed
up all his ready money. I had relations to look after, and was at no
time flush of cash. But by the aid of an all-potent bill stamp we
solved the problem, and I wended my way next morning to the
appointment with five one hundred pound notes in my pocket.
"Look here, Mr. Selby," I said when I got to his hotel, "let us
understand each other. I have come on behalf of my friend to make
you a first and last offer; if you accept, the money is ready; if you
refuse, you may institute what proceedings you please."
"What is the proposal?"
"That on your signing that paper, agreeing to take back your
wife and cease all action against Mr. Drummond, I will pay you five
hundred pounds."
A slight noise in the rokenbedroom adjoining the room we were
sitting in attracted my attention at this moment. There was some
one listening to our conversation, and now that the full particulars of
the conspiracy are known, I have no doubt it was Mrs. Selby. The
movement of the fire-irons was most likely a pre-concerted signal.
He strongly objected to the smallness of the sum, and dwelt on the
great wrong than had been done him, which was bound to embitter
his whole life.
"Well, Mr. Selby," I said, rising and taking up my hat, "I can
make no addition to my offer."
"It is so little; think of my awkward position. Mr. Drummond, a
perfect stranger, parts me from my friends, banishes me from places
where I am known, and compels me to change my name. And,
worst of all, after what has passed, my wife can never be the same
to me that she once was. Put yourself in my place and you would
think yourself utterly ruined."
"It is certainly a dreadfully unfortunate occurrence, but my
friend can do nothing more; the fact is that he had the greatest
difficulty to procure this sum."
"No compensation will ever heal the wound, but for my wife's
sake I will take the money."
To satisfy my curiosity, and oblige Drummond, I made a few
enquiries at West Brompton later in the week, and learned that on
the same day I paid the money the furniture of the villa was sold
privately, and it was reported in the neighbourhood that, on account
of ill-health, Mrs. Selby had gone abroad.
Poor Drummond kept his word—what acute suffering it cost him
was known only to himself—and did not attempt to see his wife of
three months again, but his separation from her was killing him.
To the great grief of all his friends he became careless in his
habits, and took to drink. He was expostulated with time after time,
but in vain. Nothing I could say would rouse him, and to all intents
and purposes he seemed a lost man—a ship at sea without a rudder.
The bill on which I figured as the drawer had nearly run its
course, and how it was to be met I had not the vaguest notion.
There was no chance of a renewal. A proposition to that effect which
I made the holder was rejected at once. Rumours as to my
unfortunate friend's dissipated habits had got about, and people had
no longer any confidence in him. It was well known that I had no
private sources of income. With ruin staring me in the face you may
rest assured I was not inclined to bless Mrs. Selby.
Brought up in a district where innumerable racehorses are
reared and trained, it was natural that I should take an interest in
the turf, but when I wanted them most to be fortunate my
speculations all at once ceased to be remunerative. The Derby had
upset all my calculations—a second-class animal found the course to
his liking, and beat all the favourites—and I looked forward to Ascot
to get back my money with interest. Still as my investments were
necessarily of a trifling amount I had no idea of winning sufficient to
take up the obnoxious bill which was due immediately after Ascot. It
so happened that my annual holidays fell at Ascot time, and I made
up my mind to a week's racing if the funds held out. If at all lucky I
might get a hundred, and I thought that this sum would tempt the
Jew to renew the bill. In another three months there was no telling
what would happen. I saw that it was no good relying on Drummond
to find the five hundred, or any portion of it, and he had made
unsuccessful applications to all his relations. I was very sorry for
him, but his friendship was likely to prove rather costly. The poor
follow was a pitiful sight to see. Every hope of his life and his pride
had been blasted by that woman, and inattention to his duties at last
compelled him to resign his post.
I see him regularly once a year, but there is no improvement in
his condition. On the contrary, the wreck is beginning to break up,
and I fear that soon his place on earth will be vacant. An uncle
allows him two pounds a week so long as he remains at Boulogne.
To "Royal Ascot," as it was called by the sporting prophets, I
went, determined to do my best to defeat the layers of odds. A
careful study of the programme made me fancy I could name a few
winners.
Entering the course on Hunt Cup day, I was addressed by a
miserable looking object, who informed me that he was the brother
of a famous jockey. He knew, he said, a certainty for the principal
race. Not believing for a moment that he had any reliable
information, I threw the half-starved wretch a shilling, and was
walking away when he ran after me and gave me a scrap of paper.
In a popular play, derived of course from French sources, it is
seen of what great importance a few words of writing may become.
The strip of paper handed to me by the Newmarket tout, and which
I carelessly put into my waistcoat pocket without reading it, was
destined to save me from a grave difficulty; and dirty as it is, it will
always have a prominent place in my album.
Over the previous events I had varying luck, and when the
numbers went up for the prettiest race of the year, I had won
altogether twenty-five pounds, so I resolved to give myself a chance.
There was a large field, and long prices were offered against
many of the competitors. A man had only to know the winner to
realize a fortune for a ridiculously small outlay.
The favourites I discarded, as I had seen too many "certainties"
settled coming up the stiff ascent. I had taken stock of most of the
horses before they cantered, and was trying to get a hint from the
betting, when I recollected the neglected "tip" in my pocket.
On the soiled paper was scrawled with a pencil, "The winner of
the Hunt Cup is Jasper! Back him, and send a trifle out of your
winnings to R. F., Black Bull Inn, Newmarket."
I had seen and liked the form and condition of Baron
Rothschild's horse. He looked admirably adapted to ascend the hill,
as his hind legs were well placed under him; and considering his
performances, he was not over-burdened with weight. There were
many more unlikely candidates, and finding that all the sporting
Solons, excepting one who wrote under the odd name of "Disgue,"
had not a favourable word to say about Jasper, and in the absence
of other authentic intelligence, I pinned my faith to the selection of
the Newmarket tout.
"How much Jasper?" I asked a prominent member of the ring.
"Hundred to three," was the answer.
"Put it down seven times," I said, and I handed the bookmaker
twenty-one pounds.
If the horse lost I would still be the winner of four pounds on
the day, and there were other races to speculate on. I was not kept
long in suspense. A bell announced that the starter had got rid of his
eager and troublesome customers. Anxious eyes watched the
struggle.
"The favourite's beat," was soon proclaimed, and several
gentlemen shouted, "Steel, Nicholls, what against Jasper?"
As they neared the Grand Stand a terrific shout told me—for I
was so hemmed in I could not see the race—that Jasper was
winning in a canter.
Lucky shilling!
My seven hundred pounds was paid immediately after the
jockey weighed in, and I increased my winnings to a thousand
before the last race was run on Friday. With this piece of good luck
my difficulties were happily at an end. When the bill was presented it
was duly honoured, but to his credit it must be stated that
Drummond never rested until he got a relation to refund me the
money. It need scarcely be put on record here that the brother of
the famous jockey had occasion to rejoice at the success of Jasper.

A trial at the Old Bailey in the following November showed the

public that Mr. and Mrs. Selby were nothing but a couple of swindlers
who went about preying on unsuspecting men like my unfortunate
friend, Drummond.
The Silver Gauntlet.
A STORY OF THE TURF.

In Four Chapters.
CHAPTER I.
An Introduction to Billy Platt.
It was the eve of the Wincastle races which were first started in
that period so fruitful of duchesses—the reign of old Rowley.
Historians differ as to whether the Merry Monarch did or did not, on
a certain occasion, actually patronise this meeting in person,
accompanied by a notorious play actress; but that does not matter.
Historians, as well as doctors, agree to differ. The quaint
country town of Wincastle was full to the over-flowing, and the
oldest inhabitant pledged his word at the bar of the Black Bull that
he had never set eyes on such a big crowd.
It was a motley assemblage, at any rate, peculiar about the
shape of its coat, and the cut of its trousers; not too particular as to
the delicacy of its language, but much exercised in its mind where it
was going to sleep.
The old-fashioned inns and lodging-houses had, early in the
day, let their last bed, and were now asking and getting exorbitant
prices for the sofas, tables, and chairs. Later on there will be eager
bidders for the right to spend the night on the bare floor.
Thoroughbred horses, worth small fortunes, accustomed to all the
refinement and luxury of a Newmarket stable, had to be contented
with the miserable shelter of a cow-byre or a cart-shed.
It was no doubt Mr. Strathill, the energetic clerk of the course,
who had been instrumental in drawing the additional bipeds and
quadrupeds to Wincastle this autumn. According to his specious
advertisements his annual gathering was the very paradise of all
race-goers, and he dwelt impressively on a new contest, of singular
interest, to be decided on the first day, called the Silver Gauntlet.
This extra attraction was first mooted by the Duchess of
Wincastle—a fascinating widow of twenty-five—and the trophy was
subscribed to by her Grace and all the unmarried belles of the
neighbourhood.
The Gauntlet was an imitation of a lady's glove in silver, and was
a masterpiece of Hunt and Roskell. The fingers were so arranged
that this beautiful and expensive work of art (it cost £200) when
filled with flowers could appropriately be used to decorate a table.
The new race was to be run over three miles of a fair hunting
country, gentlemen riders.
At this palpable challenge of beauty every eligible man in the
country, who had a decent horse, was eager to try his fortune.
The large field of fifteen or sixteen competitors was expected,
and already there had been some heavy wagering at the clubs.
Nothing worthy of note occurred in connection with any of the
other races at Wincastle; but the unfortunate and peculiar
circumstances surrounding the battle for the Silver Gauntlet soon
became the all-absorbing topic of conversation.
The race was a success in a monetary sense, but the clerk of
the course would sooner cut off his right hand than include it in his
programme a second time.
It was the first and last Silver Gauntlet ever contested for on the
Wincastle Downs.
Amongst the surging crowd at the entrance to the Black Bull
might have been seen two men in deep conversation; they were a
strange contrast to each other. One was a tall, handsome, devil-may-
care-looking fellow about thirty, who owned an estate in the
neighbourhood, and who, from a disappointment in love or
something else, was said to be going headlong to ruin. Yet his
comrades would tell you that a more open-handed and steadfast
friend than Ivan Moordown did not exist.
The other man, who was making Moordown wince at his coarse
and cutting remarks, was a noted member of the betting ring—Billy
Platt. Billy's appearance was not in his favour; it was of the