Some more papers - Day 1

mSpace Mobile Project
This paper focussed on an exploratory search where users can learn and investigate as opposed to a google like non-exploratory search. They likened it to facetted browsing (like some of those PC websites which allow you to configure your search by specifying minimum and maximum price, config parameters) , the difference here being that this allows use of a dynamic path creation by the user.
Their selling point ? "Information is always 0 pages away", the demo was quite compelling and they even have a version on the chi 2006 website. They had a demo of both a desktop version and a handheld version of the mSpace explorer. The handheld version did smart things like resizing the different panes to focus or zoom on one of them to better utilize the limited screen real estate. All in all a very good use of the google maps api to build something really new.

Perspective Cursor
This work was mainly about handling the cursor across multiple displays. They focussed on changing the perspective view of the cursor, so that in a fluid environment with multiple displays at varied alignments to each other, the user could drag and drop objects across them the cursor always appeared to be the same size and shape to the user.
Evidently as the perspective of the cursor was being changed, to anyone else observing the cursor there would be a distortion of the cursor.
Limitations of this approach ? Well you need some kind of a head tracking device.