Content repurposing is the reorganizing of data for presentation on different display hardware (Singh, 2004). It has been particularly important recently with the growth of handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), sophisticated telephones, and other small specialized devices. Unfortunately, such devices pose serious problems for multimedia delivery. With their tiny screens (150 by 150 for a basic Palm PDA or 240 by 320 for a more modern one, vs. 640 by 480 for standard computer screens), one cannot display much information (i.e., most of a Web page); with their low bandwidths, one cannot display video and audio transmissions from a server (i.e., streaming) with much quality; and with their small storage capabilities, large media files cannot be stored for later playback. Furthermore, new devices and old ones with new characteristics have been appearing at a high rate, so software vendors are having difficulty keeping pace. So some real-time, systematic, and automated planning could be helpful in figuring how to show desired data, especially multimedia, on a broad range of devices.
