Position Paper for Workshop on

Position Dependent Information Services

- Browser with Position Data -

Dr Tomihisa Kamada

Access Co., Ltd.

Access is providing browser software for information appliances.

NetFront is widely used by a variety of products: TV, STB,

WebPhone, Home Game Machine, PDA, and Word Processor.

And, Compact NetFront is micro browser for small information

alliances such as cellular phones.

Recently, mobile devices are going to have Internet-access function.

Typical products are PDA, car navigation, and cellular phone.

In these devices, browser is required to handle position data.

We are, thus, interested in the relationship between browser and

application which process or utilize the position data.

Specific interesting topics are as follows:

(1) Standard data format of position data

- Data format for sending from the server to the client

Examples:

e-mail attachment

separate file

embedded data in the HTML

- Data format for sending from the client to the server

Examples:

HTTP header extension

submit command parameters

e-mail attachment

separate file

(2) Interface between browser and application

- How to transfer position data from the browser to the application

Examples:

position: x y

<embed> or <object>

special MIME-TYPE

- How to transfer position data from the application to the browser

Examples:

referring to the internal variables for position data

(3) Secure method for transferring position data

- SSL session

- Encrypting and Decrypting

The above methods are just examples for handling position data.

The suitable methods may depend on the purpose and applications.

We are studying how to handle position data with browser for

information appliances.