Session 5- Nov 1: Annotated Bib for Meyers article

Citation:
Myers, B. (2001). Using hand-held devices and PCs together. Communications of the ACM. 44(11). pp. 34 - 41.

Summary:
The idea that a handheld device is more than just that is the work of Dr. Brad A Meyers and the Pebbles project. Pebbles stands for PDAs for Entry of Both Bytes and Locations from External Sources (PEBBLES) which works with multimachine user interfaces (MMUIs). The idea is for the handheld to enhance a personal computer instead of being used in the absence of a computer. The article contains a brief description of Slideshow Commander, Scribble, Shortcutter, Remote Commander, Pebbles Draw, Switcher, and the Universal Remote Control with screen shots and examples of how one would use each aspect of Pebbles.

The article went on to discuss three key research issues in MMUIs for individual users, control of the application, sharing information among the computers, and using the handhelds as universal remote controls. The article then discussed the types of communication that the handheld needed to use to communicate with the computer. Lastly he finished with a link to the commercially released Slideshow Commander and the other applications at their research site of www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu.

Review:
I chose this article because it was relevant to my technology comparison and I needed to learn more about this Pebbles software that was refereed to me from a presentation I attended. Luckily, Dr. Meyers has many of the journal articles that he has been published in posted on his own personal site and available for download and that is where I got this article for review.

I found this article to be quite informative and helpful to my research needs. The article was easy to read and easy to follow. The screen shots were quite helpful and were a good reference one I received the software from Dr. Meyers. On a side note, the day I emailed Dr. Meyers, he responded what felt like instantly and told me I was more than welcome to use the software; in fact he was excited to hear that I was going to attempt to use this in a middle school. The strength of the article was the ease of reading, the helpful screen shots, and a flow chart of the Pebbles Architecture (p.40). A weakness would be if you are not familiar with handhelds, then this article would do you no good.

I found the article to be very informative and would recommend it to any handheld user and would encourage you to discover Pebbles on your own. Below I attached a few more citations of his articles for your reference.

For Further Information from Dr. Brad Meyers and Handheld Devices:
Brad A. Myers, Jeffrey Nichols, Jacob O. Wobbrock, and Robert C. Miller. Taking Handheld Devices to the Next Level. IEEE Computer. December, 2004. vol. 37, no. 12. pp. 36-43
Brad A. Myers. Using Handhelds for Wireless Remote Control of PCs and Appliances. Interacting with Computers, Elsevier Science Journals. 2005. Volume 17, Issue 3, May 2005, Pages 251-264
Brad A. Myers. Mobile Devices for Control. The Fourth Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Mobile Devices, Mobile HCI'02. (Keynote speech), September 18-20, 2002, Pisa, Italy. pp. 1-8.