Personalization algorithms for portable personality

With the advances in ubiquitous computing, there is an increasing focus on personalization of user information especially in web applications. Currently those personalized user profiles are scattered around the Internet, mostly stored for each individual website. Therefore, this prohibits the usage of those profiles in other environments such as shopping in local stores or sharing interests among people. The so-called Portable Personality focuses on the management and distribution of personalized profiles via mobile devices. This paper provides an overview of related factors, which are to be considered in a portable personality environment. We discuss common user profile categorization approaches and their possible representation. Moreover, we mention the current state-of-the-art of profile acquisition and management algorithms to obtain and handle personalized information. This also includes approaches towards portable profiles. At the end, profile merging and personalization algorithms are covered to handle the challenges of aggregate multiple profiles and personalized recommendations based on distributed (portable) profiles. Copyright 2008 ACM