Facilitating personal content management in smart phones

Smart phones, which combine, e.g., communication and mobile multimedia features, store increasing amount of media content and so they face content management challenges similar to what desktop computers are experiencing. Content management refers to actions performed on content (e.g., capture image, or edit text) although the similar management action may vary depending on content type (e.g., editing audio involves different operations than editing an image). A key enabler for content management is metadata, which describes content with textual attribute–value pairs, and aids the user in, e.g., automatic grouping, sorting, searching, and organizing. Research on mobile personal content management is on its infancy and therefore the dissertation focuses on common enablers which are required for further management of multimedia in smart phones. As a result, we claim that information about the context of use could enrich metadata and improve ease-of-use with the system, e.g., to support later information retrieval and visualizing content. Another prerequisite for enabling the personal content management is to locate the content either by browsing or searching. Finally, after content has been located, it must be visualized to begin the actual content management and defining how to display the content is essential as the user can view it only briefly while moving