Mobile RESTful context-aware middleware, or MoReCon, was created by the authors and is described in this paper. It’s essentially a new code library, one of those low-profile, glamor-free incremental innovations that keeps technology moving steadily forward.

According to the authors, MoReCon was created to “standardize the modeling, usage, and ... management of context data for mobile platforms.” In the current mobile software ecosystem, every application that wants to use context information, such as location, motion, or temperature, has to create its own access methods. This redundant work increases development effort and decreases maintainability. Standardizing the model and access methods lowers the bar to building context-aware apps, and makes it that much easier to put energy into new features.

The text is only five pages long and very easy to read. I was disappointed that there were no links to sample code or test pages, but that’s just because I appreciate the authors’ contribution. While obviously significant to mobile context-aware development, their RESTful model and extensible property management design can also be applied to many data mapping and ontological situations.