The Stanford Power Browser project addresses the problems of
interacting with the World-Wide Web through wirelessly connected
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). These problems include bandwidth
limitations, screen real-estate shortage, battery capacity, and the
time costs of pen-based search keyword input.
As a way to address bandwidth and battery life limitations, we
provide local site search facilities for all sites. We incrementally
index Web sites in real time as the PDA user visits them. These
indexes have narrow scope at first, and improve as the user dwells on
the site, or as more users visit the site over time. We address the
keyword input problem by providing site specific keyword completion,
and indications of keyword selectivity within sites. The system is
implemented on the Palm Pilot platform, using a Metricom radio
link. We describe the user level experience, and then present the
analyses that informed our technical decisions.