Personal Network Aggregation System for Real-time
Communication Support
Toshiyuki Hirata⋆

Ikki Ohmukai‡♦

Hideaki Takeda‡♯

Susumu Kunifuji⋆hirata-t@jaist.ac.jp

i2k@nii.ac.jp

takeda@nii.ac.jp

kuni@jaist.ac.jp⋆

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 1-1 Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan‡♦

National Institute of Informatics, 2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8430, JapanThe Graduate University for Advanced Studies, 2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8430, Japan♯The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8568, Japan

Abstract
In this paper we propose a system that aggregates together
user’s multiple personal networks, constructs a personal network that uniﬁes their data and as well as adding activity
information for each user inside the uniﬁed personal network.
The system also allows transmission of user data within one’s
own personal network using P2P. This makes uniﬁcation ofuse of multiple personal networks possible. Furthermore, thisalso allows other user’s information to be fully understood,
greatly helping the process of communication.

Keywords
real-time communication support, personal network, aggregation, P2P.

1. Introduction
In recent years systems that use personal networks, placing
the individual at the center of a network of human relationships, have been on the increase, from the phone book inside
one’s mobile phone, to the contact list for one’s instant messenger (hereafter ’IM’) and social networking services (hereafter ’SNS’). In accordance with the increase in the numberof these systems, the number of personal networks each individual holds is also increasing. However, regardless of thefact that the personal networks created in these systems often
share the same human relationships they are generally individual entities with no interconnection between them. Thismeans that an individual must select and use a system thatsuits their needs and as well as the people with whom theywant to communicate.
Furthermore, because information pertaining to the user
exists within each system it is extremely diﬃcult to get an
overall grasp of one’s own personal network and user information. Thus, we propose a system that aggregates together
user’s multiple personal networks, constructing a uniﬁed personal network that brings together all shared elements. In
this system activity, information for each user within theuniﬁed personal network is also provided, such as Blog entries or IM chat logs. Addition of this activity informationmeans that the period in which each user operates can be determined, greatly aiding communication. However, this was

ICWSM’2007 Boulder, Colorado, USA

simply aggregating Blog entries and other information pertaining to other users that the user could themselves gather.
This created problems when it came to detailed user information and real-time information. Therefore, in this paper
we also propose a system equipped with a function to aggregate activity information pertaining directly to the user andthen share this with other users within the individual personal networks. This function allows an active uniﬁcation ofmultiple personal networks, rather than relying on a lengthy
process of manual uniﬁcation. Furthermore, this also allows
a total grasp of the current status and past status of otherusers, greatly facilitating communication.
A great deal of research has been carried out into a systemthat will support smooth communication through user activity information[3][4]. However, generally these conventional
systems are only able to operate within speciﬁc communities,
rather than making use of speciﬁc user activity information.
Furthermore, whilst they generally oﬀer information on theuser’s current status they do not oﬀer anything concerning
their past actions. Our system diﬀers from these others inthat it uniﬁes and uses all of the personal networks that theuser currently holds, making it highly versatile. In addition,
it supplies both present and past information for each user,
and by comparison of this information smoother communication should be enabled.

2. Proposed system
2.1 System composition
The composition of our system is shown in Fig.1.
Our system is an aggregation system intended to allowsmoother communication by transmission of user informationfrom acquaintances that provides an outline of their routine.
Our system is comprised of a user information collection function and a P2P transfer function. The system then displays
information pertaining to self and others aggregated by these
two functions via an information display interface. Our system also operates on the local machine, and all user information obtained is saved as a local ﬁle using SQLite, employing
a RDBMS. The user information saved as a local ﬁle is theuser’s personal networks, user’s activity information and received activity information from other users.
The user information collection function performs activity
information aggregating across personal networks that theuser holds. The two types of data speciﬁed above that thisfunction collects must ﬁrst fulﬁll some basic selection criteria.

user’s personal network is acquired. Three types of information are obtained: unique ID, picture and name.
(2) Windows Live Messenger
The user data for Windows Live Messenger is saved on
the Messenger servers. By using the user’s account datato connect to these servers the data for the connecteduser can be obtained. By analyzing the obtained data
the user’s personal network is acquired. Two types of
information are obtained: unique ID and name.
(3) Mobile phone internal address book
Fig. 1: System composition diagram

The selection criteria and aggregating process is detailed in
2.2 below.
The P2P transfer function can unify users who appear in
multiple personal networks from which aggregating has been
performed. Furthermore, it can also transmit and receive
activity information with other users. Further details can befound in 2.3 below.
The user information aggregated by these two functions is
all saved as a local ﬁle and can be viewed through information
display interface. By using this interface the status of one’s
own personal networks and the others within them can beviewed. See 3 below for further details.

2.2 Aggregating user information
As explained above, our system aggregates information belonging to each user. There are two types of information aggregated, the personal networks that the user already holds
and the activity information that belongs to the user. The
details of each follow.

2.2.1 Aggregating personal networks
The personal networks used by our system must be a humanrelationships network based around the user. They must also
fulﬁll the following other criteria.
In each personal network that information is aggregatedfrom, each user must: (1) Have a unique ID. (2) Have aname or photo that allows who the user actually is to be
determined.
If these conditions are met, and information can actually beaggregated from it, then that personal network can be used
as a source of information. Even if condition (1) is not met
it can be used as an own personal network source. However,it cannot be used in the active uniﬁcation of personal networks via P2P transfer. The details of uniﬁcation of personal
networks via P2P transfer will follow below.
There are three types of personal network sources currently
used by our system: the SNS (1) mixi[2], the IM (2) Windows
Live Messenger[1] and (3) address book inside a mobile phone.
The following is an explanation of the method of aggregating
data from each of sources.
(1) Mixi
Mixi displays a user’s personal network, called a ”MyMixi”,
on a speciﬁc website. The HTML source data for thisweb page is acquired and through analysis of it, theMany of the address books stored inside a mobile terminal are in the vCard format. vCard is a format used
to handle name data. In vCard the data for each individual is stored between the brackets [BEGIN:VCARD]
and [END:VCARD], in the format of [Category : Value].
Our system saves the internal address book as a vCard
ﬁle on the calculator, and by analyzing this vCard ﬁlethe personal network is acquired. Three types of information are obtained: unique ID, name and picture.
The personal networks aggregated from the above three sources
are all saved as local ﬁles using SQLite.

2.2.2 Aggregating activity information
The user activity information used by our system must fulﬁll the criteria that the information has an acquisition time.
If this condition is fulﬁlled, and the information can be obtained, then that information can be used as a source of user
activity information.
Currently our system uses four types of user activity information: (1) location, (2) PC usage information, (3) Blog
log and (4) IM chat log. The details of these four types of
information are as follows.
(1) Location
Location data is obtained using the positional location
system EIRIS installed in the buildings belonging to theresearch departments to which we, the authors, belong.
Each user has a badge (Fig.2(B)) that transmits an infrared signal every four seconds that includes a unique
ID. This signal is received by readers (Fig.2(A)) placeson the ceiling of the rooms and corridors, and the position of the readers and unique IDs allows the locationof the individual to be ascertained.

Fig. 2: EIRIS system

The readers are positioned as shown in Fig3. The double circles indicate where readers are placed. There areapproximately 120 readers placed throughout the research block.

The information obtained is sent periodically to the
EIRIS servers where it is saved. Then, if the user whose
position has been found is using our proposed system
the information obtained from EIRIS can be sent to allusers. From EIRIS the time and location are acquired.

are user’s individual activity data that contains no communication. As (4) is related to chat that means there is always
a second person involved, and thus this information contains
communication.

2.3 Transmission of user information via P2P communication
Our system transmits user information, based upon the user
information it aggregates, to other users via P2P. The individuals to whom this user information is sent are other users
in one’s own personal network. There are two types of user
information transmitted via P2P, (a) one’s own proﬁle information and (b) activity information. The following are thedetails for each type of information.
(a) Proﬁle information

Fig. 3: Example of reader placement(2) PC usage information
In order to obtain PC usage information a special background application for windows is used. The information obtained is the name of currently active applications and Web URLs that have been viewed and the acquisition time for each. Furthermore, both mouse andkeyboard usage are acquired, and if neither are used fora certain period of time, the PC is deemed as not beingused.
(3) Blog
Blog as used in this paper refers to information sucha diary that a user maintains individually on the Web.
Our system aggregates information from Blog entries
that transmit RSS and from the Blog in the SNS Mixias outlined in section 2.2.1. The RSS is the base format of XML, which creates meta data such as Web siteheadings and summaries. By analyzing this RSS Blog
information can be acquired. From these two types of
Blog, the Blog content and date of alteration can beacquired.
(4) IM chat log
For Windows Live Messenger the chat log is stored as
an XML ﬁle for each individual acquaintance within theuser’s own PC. The content of each ﬁle obtained fromthe chats is analyzed and the chat content and date of
the chat is obtained.
The four types of activity information obtained are saved
as local ﬁles using SQLite. As the activity information
is updated frequently, it is necessary to save it actively.
(1) and (2) are actively saved as local ﬁle info, but a trigger
is required for the information for (3) and (4) to be checked.
Our system therefore periodically acquires this informationand saves the acquired activity data as a local ﬁle using
SQLite.
Each piece of activity information has to be divided into
one of two types: (1) Information that contains communication (2) Information that does not contain communication Of
the above four types of activity information (1), (2) and (3)Transmits a unique ID from the personal network sourceas the user’s own proﬁle information. By receiving unique
ID from other users any multiple occurrences of thesame person across personal networks begin to become
uniﬁed.
(b) Activity information
Activity information sends information that only theuser themselves has, and no other user could otherwise
gain access to. Regarding the activity information usedby our system, the above detailed (1) location and (2)PS use status relate to the users current physical situation. Other users are also able to obtain (3) Blog
log, therefore only the information required in order toacquire information like (3) is sent. Information like(4) contains communication with a third party and willthus not be sent.
Transmission of these two types of information will only be
performed whilst the user is using our system, with the information being resent if it changes. Information received fromother users is all saved as local ﬁles using SQLite.

3. Information display interface
3.1 Main interface
The main interface which displays the aggregated data isshown in Fig.4. The main interface displays user information for each use in the personal network, (Fig.4(1)), all users
activity information history (Fig.4(2)), speciﬁc user’s detailed
information (Fig.4(3)) and own activity information history(Fig.4(4)). All the user’s activity information displays otheruser’s activity information in chronological order, both user
activity information received via P2P transfer and activity
information collected by oneself. Three types of information
are displayed: time required, overview of activity information
and user’s name. In addition, one’s own activity information
history is displayed in chronological order, created from datataken from local ﬁles. Two types of information are displayed:
time acquired and overview of activity information. Details
of Fig.4(1), the personal network display, and Fig.4(3), theuser’s detailed information display, are given below.

3.2 Personal network display
Fig.5 shows the display of the uniﬁed personal network. This
display shows three types of information aggregated from thepersonal network sources: each user’s picture, name and an
icon displaying the source network (Fig.5(1)).

Fig. 6: Detailed information display

Fig. 4: Main interface

The following two types of information are also displayed:(1) Information on when each user’s activity information was
renewed last. (2) Information on when each user was communicated with.
These two types of data are displayed using bars (Fig.5(2)).
The less white is showing in the bar, and the more of anothercolor, the newer the information displayed is. Furthermore
clicking the icon by this bar will switch it from (1) to (2) or(2) back to (1). These bars not only make clear the activity
level of each user, but also the degree of communication takenwith them.

Fig. 5: Personal network display

3.3 User’s detailed information
Fig.6 shows the display of user’s detailed information. This
display shows the three types of information from the previous section (picture, name, icon), along with the two typesof bar, activity core time (Fig.6(1)), details on current activity information (Fig.6(2)) and activity information history(Fig.6(3)), a total of seven diﬀerent types of information.
The activity core time is a bar that displays the time inwhich that user is especially active, taken from when activities have overlapped in the total past activity information history. For example, if there are two IM chat histories, one from
17:05-17:25 and one from 17:03-17:18, the section of the bar
representing the overlapping period 17:05-17:18 would change
from white to another color. Each color on the bar represents
each type of activity information. This bar allows one toquickly see at what times a user is generally performing what
activities. The details of current activity information displays
the latest activity information received from P2P and detailsof it. If the user is not using the system then system not in
use is displayed. The activity information history displays
the user’s activity history in chronological order, taken fromthe saved local ﬁles.

4. Conclusion
This paper has proposed a system that aggregates activity information from personal networks comprised of other systems
and personal information that only the user has access to, anduses P2P to unify these personal networks and obtained activity information on other users. Through the use of thissystem, one cannot only grasp what another user is currently
doing but also what they have done in the past. This kindof user information should help a great deal in support realtime communication.
The proposed system has no limitations on the transmission of user information. Thus, using the system means information will be actively transmitted to other parties, andthis could raise privacy issues. Therefore, our next goal is toimplement a feature that allows the user to set limits on theamount of the information transmitted. We also intend toprovide a tool for actual communication, using the user dataobtained by this system.

References[1] Microsoft Co., Ltd. Windows Live Messenger.
http://messenger.msn.com/.
[2] mixi, Inc. mixi. http://mixi.jp/.
[3] H. Ueda, W. Ghee, M. Tsukamoto, and S. Nishio.
Devora: A Location Management System Using
Electronic Mail. Journal of Information Processing
Society of Japan, 41(12):3295–3306, 2000.
[4] R. Want, A. Hopper, V. Falcao, and J. Gibbons. The
Active Badge Location System. ACM Transactions on
Information Systems, 10(1):91–102, 1992.