Semantics in the field of widgets: a case study in public transportation departure notifications

widget, public transportation, time schedule

Widgets are becoming increasingly present in our everyday routines, which makes their portability and reusability desirable properties. As a particular example, we consider public transportation passengers who are extensively using the internet to make their lives simpler. In order to minimize the time spent at the bus stop, they use to check their bus line departures on the web before they leave their homes or offices. For this purpose, there exist several internet portals providing information on local transportation time schedules. This chapter starts by presenting a better way (quicker and easier) of obtaining the same information - using an adaptive desktop widget with comfortable user interface. The second step is the utilization of the semantics of considered data in order to make the widget portable through different data sources of the same domain.