Information Retrieval on Mobile Access
(Position Paper for the W3C Workshop on Mobile Access)
  UEDA Takaya
  Media Technology Laboratory, Canon Inc.

Information retrieval technology plays an important part in the World 
Wide Web. The search engine is a typical example. IR technology is
necessary for navigation in the boundless WWW information space.

Although current search engines are designed for the use in the 
desktop environment, they would have many problems in mobile access.
Thus, yet another IR technology is needed to fix the problems.
For example, 

- Since user interface is restricted to input/output fewer information 
  in mobile devices, information summarizing and presentation 
  technology are important to make a compact interaction in IR 
  application.

- Since the band width of mobile devices is low, new protocols are
  important to reduce the turn around time of IR session.

- Since the place information would be important in the IR on mobile 
  access, the usability is improved by the IR technology to deal with 
  the place semantics.

We consider some standards of the Web are indispensable to apply these 
technology to the mobile access to the Web. They include the compact 
document format, IR protocol on the WWW, and formal semantic specification 
about the place information.

We have great interest in these issues but nothing to present in this 
workshop.