Please accept my apologies if you've received this multiple times. Call for Papers: IEEE Pervasive Computing (also available at http://www.computer.org/pervasive/edcal0704.htm) Building and Evaluating Ubiquitous System Software Guest Editors: Vinny Cahill, Trinity College Dublin Armando Fox, Stanford University Tim Kindberg, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol Brian Noble, University of Michigan Submission Deadline: 15 March 2004 WIP Deadline: 1 May 2004 Author guidelines: www.computer.org/pervasive/author.htm Submission address: http://cs-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com Publication date: July 2004 Ubiquitous computing environments raise new challenges for system software researchers. These environments incorporate a wide variety of devices, many of which are highly constrained in power and other local resources. Coordinating the devices is an even greater challenge because ubicomp environments tend to be volatile. Consider, for example, measuring context parameters such as human presence from a variety of sensors subject to routine disconnection and failure, or exploiting services from a mobile device that regularly enters and leaves a state of connectivity. The heterogeneity and volatility of ubiquitous environments demand novel approaches to designing, building, and evaluating system software. IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine invites articles relating to system software for ubiquitous computing environments. We welcome papers that provide new software paradigms or algorithms, or relate implementation experience that other researchers can build upon. Successful submissions will clearly address an explicit ubiquitous system model and problem statement, which the authors relate to existing research. They will evaluate the proposed solution and so contribute to our knowledge of software for these systems in general. Example topics include (but are not limited to): * Resilience to routine failures and disconnections * Scalable coordination and synchronization mechanisms for volatile component collections * Operating systems and resource management algorithms for resource- constrained devices * Methods for acquiring environmental resources from minimal a priori models * Configuring and reconfiguring ubiquitous systems * Supporting spontaneous (ad hoc) interactions * The implications of physical-world integration for system design (system abstractions related to physical affordances) * Metrics and benchmarks * Case studies of deployed systems * Critical analyses of the state of the art Submissions should be 4,000 to 6,000 words long and should follow the magazine's guidelines on style and presentation. All submissions will be anonymously reviewed in accordance with normal practice for scientific publications. Electronic submissions via Manuscript Central should be received by 15 March 2004 to receive full consideration. Instructions on the submission process and the magazine guidelines on style and presentation can be found on the Author Guidelines page. In addition to full-length submissions, we also invite work-in-progress submissions of 250 words or less. These will not be peer-reviewed, but will be edited by the staff into a feature for the issue. The deadline for work-in- progress submissions is 1 May 2004. If you have any questions, please contact guest editor Tim Kindberg ([log in to unmask]).