Abstract:
As users interact with the world and their peers through their computers, it is becoming important to archive and later search the information that they have viewed. This talk presents DejaView, a personal virtual computer recorder that provides a complete record of a desktop computing experience that a user can playback, browse, search, and revive seamlessly. DejaView records visual output, checkpoints corresponding application and file system state, and uses accessibility interfaces to capture displayed text with contextual information to index the record.A user can then browse and search the record for any visual information that has been displayed on the desktop, and revive and interact with the desktop computing state corresponding to any point in the record. DejaView combines display, operating system, and file system virtualization to provide its functionality transparently without any modifications to applications, window systems, or operating system kernels. We have implemented DejaView and evaluated its performance on real-world desktop applications. Our results demonstrate that DejaView can provide continuous low-overhead recording without any user noticeable performance degradation, and allows browsing, search and playback of records fast enough for interactive use.

Biography:
Jason Nieh is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Network Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. He previously served as the technical advisor for nine States on the Microsoft Antitrust Settlement and an expert witness in the Microsoft New York Class Action Settlement. He has made research contributions in software systems across a broad range of areas, including operating systems, virtualization, thin-client computing, utility computing, mobile computing, multimedia, web technologies, and performance evaluation. Honors for his research work include the Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award, awarded once every two years in the physical sciences and engineering, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Department of Energy Early Career Award, multiple IBM Faculty and Shared University Research Awards, and various best paper awards, including the 2004 MobiCom Best Student Paper Award. A dedicated teacher, he received the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association for his innovations in teaching operating systems and for introducing virtualization as a pedagogical tool. Professor Nieh earned his B.S. from MIT and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in Electrical Engineering.