Codice CMS: Towards a Multimedia Weblog Content Management System for Supporting Mobile Scenarios Pedro C. Santana 1 , Victor M. Gonzalez 2 , Marcela D. Rodríguez 3 1 Multimedia, Interaction and Smart Environments Group, CREATE-NET, Italy 2 Interactive Systems Design Group, University of Manchester, United Kingdom 3 School of Engineering, UABC University, México pedro.santana@create-net.it, vmgonz@manchester.ac.uk, marcerod@uabc.mx Abstract This paper describes an architecture extension proposal to the Codice CMS: a Weblog Content Management System in which a weblog is created by a web interface or through the Codice Web Services APIs. Codice is flexible in the content management; it is efficient and scalable through its plug-in engine and the web service API. The paper illustrates the solutions adopted to support the management of multimedia documents on mobile scenarios. 1. Introduction Our research aims to provide a technological solution focused on supporting the access, posting and edition of multimedia blog entries for mobile scenarios [1]. In many contexts of interaction, people can potentially use a variety of devices to manage multimedia blog-entries including laptop with wireless cards, or camera-enabled mobile phones. Therefore, it is required to develop content management systems (CMS) that go beyond the desktop and facilitate multimedia blogging practices while being mobile. Inspiration for the proposed technology came from our previous studies and technology implementations aiming to support relationship between elder people living alone in Mexico and their relatives living abroad [1]. Following a user-centered design approach based on ethnographic interviews and prototype evaluations, we envisioned a home-based pervasive communication system: The Electronic Family Newspaper (EFN) [2]. The system facilitates communication between elders and their families living abroad. The EFN is a blogging tool based on Codice, a CMS. The current implementation of EFN supports the blogging of content using Tablet PCs (with a simplified interface for elders) and any other device from where a Web browser can be accessed. Evaluation trials with EFN are providing clear indications of scenarios where mobile access and posting through mobile phones could be advantageous. 2. Codice CMS A weblog (or blog) is a term used to refer to a webpage that has frequent postings made to it by the person who created the page and others who are given rights to access the page. The trend of using Content Management Systems (CMS) to manage weblogs is gaining momentum with the introduction of automated publishing tools that facilitate the publishing process and improve the user experience and usability. Codice CMS, is a weblog content management system in which a weblog is created by the web interface or through the Codice Web Services APIs. Codice was built on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) and PHP. The Ajax engine, allows the user to interact with Codice synchronously by using a web based interface. To implement the API (Application Programming Interface), we used the Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm [3]; thus, we used services as the fundamental elements for developing applications. This responds to the need of providing a uniform and ubiquitous information distributor for a wide range of computing devices (such a Tablet PCs, PDAs, mobile telephones, or appliances) and software platforms (e.g., LINUX or Windows). We based our architecture on a Web service API layer in order to interact with Codice CMS programmatically (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Codice CMS architecture.