An eXtensible middleware for Multichannel, Multimodal, and Multipattern services (X3M)

In the Ubiquitous Internet scenario, users increasingly require to customize the ways they access online services and content, by choosing preferred devices (e.g. traditional PCs, PDAs, mobile phones, digital multimedia players), preferred communication channels (e.g. traditional wired or wireless networks, 3G mobile or VoIP infrastructures, DVB streaming media) and preferred interaction patterns (e.g. receiving content by means of explicit user requests or upon reaction to certain events). Traditional multimodal and multichannel support platforms have vertical approaches, lack extensibility and therefore support only limited sets of interaction devices, channels or patterns and often require specific content types (e.g. e-learning). We propose a novel platform for multichannel multimodal and multipattern content/service access that allows integration of different heterogeneous interaction styles and can easily be extended to cope with novel devices, communication channels or interaction patterns