Chapter 3: Mobile Personal Content Uncovered 75 publishing, selling, and so forth. Then the shared content object will continue its life in some other user’s GEMS cycle. Naturally, not all pieces of content go through all the steps. Likewise, a piece of content may jump from any category to any other, such as after maintaining it can be enjoyed. Not surprisingly, our model of personal content lifecycle shares many common aspects with the digital information lifecycle model presented by Gilliland-Swetland (2006). In this model, the phases include Creation and Multiversioning, Organization, Searching and Retrieval, Using, and Preservation and Disposition. What is the largest difference is our consumer- and experience-oriented point of view and the fact that the GEMS phases are independent of each other, except for the obvious fact that the “G” phase must precede any other. Thus, some devices may function primarily in the G section (digital still cameras), while others are targeted at “E” (MP3 players). For instance, many mobile devices have evolved over time from mere “E” devices fi rst to cover “S” actions by the means of connectivity, and are now becoming “GES” devices. Speaking of evolution, in section 2.2 we introduced a three-phase classifi cation for mobile devices: dedicated devices, Swiss-army-knife- devices, and toolbox devices. To some extent, these categories map with the GEMS phases, especially relating to the device evolution from one category to another, where an evolutionary step often introduces new GEMS actions or even a new phase (such as adding connectivity to a device enables “S” actions). A model as generic as GEMS can never be complete or unambigu- ous. However, the main purpose of GEMS is to provide a fi lter through which any system dealing with mobile personal content can be viewed and further analyzed on a high abstraction level. GEMS can be under- stood as an analysis tool. Since GEMS is a high-level framework, it can be applied in many ways, specializing when necessary. The simplest cases include using it as a plain checklist: have all the important aspects of available user activities been taken into consideration? More advanced uses include considering an application concept, and mapping its planned functions and services on a GEMS map. This kind of analysis may help in classify- ing applications and services for fi nding optimal target user groups. We discuss this approach in Chapter 7, when application designs related to personal content are reviewed and analyzed using GEMS. Chapter 6 presents a more detailed discussion on different GEMS phases related to user interfaces. One could argue that there is yet another essential action related to personal content that should be regarded an action category all of