This work proposes a scheme which takes into account the k-hop mobility-based outsourcing strategy where the mobile devices are using a sequential scheme for caching requested high ranked resources onto neighboring nodes in the k-hop path in order to be available during a request. The scheme takes into consideration the relay epoch and the mobility aspects of each node in the k-hop path in order to disseminate effectively and within a specified duration any requested file chunks. The combined community oriented model enables the involved nodes in the path to contribute into the diffusion process pathetically according to the k-hop replication diffusion scenario using a feedback oriented mechanism which increases the multicasting diffusion throughput response significantly as simulation results show.
This paper describes a model of adaptation of multimedia application. The adaptation is based on user’s progress in using a content of the application and a plan that defines long-time usage strategy of the application. The model was applied to education application but it can be used also in other use-cases. This model was designed to be easy to implement and use, and it is an alternative to robust learning models. The implementation of the model is presented on Physical Exercise application.
Users’ attitudes towards the use of an experimental location based service running on a mobile phone using Wi-Fi beacons as a locator are reported. Twenty one users took part in the trial and sixteen went on to be active users. Detailed results based on logging and user interviews are reported exploring usage, perceptions and experiences. The attitudes reported to a service of this type were generally positive.
In the past years the amount of multimedia content on the Internet or in home networks has been drastically increasing. Instead of buying traditional media (such as CDs or DVDs) users tend to buy online media. This leads to the difficulty of managing the content (e.g., movies, images). A vast amount of tools for content management exists but they are mainly focusing on one type of content (e.g., only images). Furthermore, most of the available tools are not configurable to the user’s preferences and cannot be accessed by different devices (e.g., TV, computer, mobile phone) in the home network. In this paper we present a UPnP A/V-based system for managing and sharing audio/visual content in home environments which is configurable to the user’s preferences. Furthermore, the paper depicts how this system can be used to improve the user experience by using MPEG-V.
This work-in-progress paper presents an approach for interactive geo-localized multimedia services. The GeoMedia platform will provide richer user experience within the context of city-level cultural or sport events. This will be achieved by means of media aggregation using geo-references and multi-view of pictures and videos aligned with the geospatial coordinate system. The composed imagery/video will be made available for the event participants via their mobile devices, such as smartphones. This will enable the users to reconstruct recent scenes and situations at certain locations of the medium-scale event, thus augmenting the participation experience.
Democratic and personalized production of multimedia content is a challenge for content providers. In this paper, members of the FP7 APIDIS consortium explain how it is possible to address this challenge by building on computer vision tools to automate the collection and distribution of audiovisual content. In a typical application scenario, a network of cameras covers the scene of interest, and distributed analysis and interpretation of the scene are exploited to decide what to show or not to show about the event, so as to edit a video from of a valuable subset of the streams provided by each individual camera. Generation of personalized summaries through automatic organization of stories is also considered. In final, the proposed technology provides practical solutions to a wide range of applications, such as personalized access to local sport events through a web portal, cost-effective and fully automated production of content for small-audience, or automatic log in of annotations.
In user-centric networking users become the endpoint of their communication sessions. This approach intrinsically accounts for mobility management, as terminal handovers and session migrations are expected when the user moves. However, effectiveness of session migration procedure is not trivial to assess, because it mainly concerns the subjective impressions that human users have about their interaction with the system, thus a common approach is to carry out user-evaluation at live demos. In this paper we describe the user evaluation of our dynamic user-centric networking framework, done at a national science exhibition through a Voice-over-IP application running on top of it.
This paper presents a framework for controlling remote applications by means of personalized multi-touch interfaces. The designed framework allows end-users to fully personalize the mapping between gestures and input commands. A two-tier architecture has been developed. A formal description of the original interface is automatically generated at the server side to identify a set of available actions for controlling existing applications. The client is in charge of loading the description of the target application, allowing the user to shape the preferred mapping between gestures and actions. Finally, the server converts the identified actions into one or more commands understandable by the original computer interface. The implementation of the system for this work specifically relies on handheld multi-touch devices. Test results are encouraging, both from an objective and a subjective point of view; indeed, the designed framework resulted to outperform a traditional GUI both in terms of number of actions to perform a task and average completion time.
For enjoying 3D video to its full extent, access and consumption of 3D content should be user centric, which in turn ensures enhanced quality of user experience. The experience nevertheless is easily influenced by several factors, including content characteristics, users’ preferences, contexts prevailing in various usage environments, etc. Utilizing ambient illumination as an environmental context for the purposes of efficient provision of 3D video to users has particularly not been studied in literature in detail. This paper investigates the effects of ambient illumination on 3D video quality and depth perception for utilizing this information as one of the key context elements in future user centric 3D access and consumption environments. Subjective tests conducted under different illumination conditions demonstrate that the illumination of the viewing environment encircling the users has significant effects on the perceived 3D video quality as well as depth perception.
In this paper, a novel framework for search and retrieval of multimodal content is introduced as part of the EU-funded project I-SEARCH. The main objective of I-SEARCH is to create a unified framework for multimodal content search, i.e. to retrieve content of any media type (text, 2D images, video, audio and 3D) by using as query any of the above media, along with real-world information, expressive and social cues. The outcome will be a highly user-centric search engine, able to deliver to the end-users only the content of interest, satisfying their information needs and preferences, which is expected to significantly improve end-user’s experience. The paper will present the concept of I-SEARCH, as well as its major scientific advances.
WiMAX is an emerging wireless access network offering high data rates and good coverage range. This makes it an appealing last-mile delivery network for IPTV and video applications. However, TV/video delivery must be designed with respect to WiMAX characteristics in different environmental conditions. This paper studies the possibility of providing TV and video over the downlink and uplink of a Fixed WiMAX network without compromising the user perceived video quality. Measurements were taken using professional IPTV and video streaming equipments on commercial IEEE 802.16d equipment. Analysis was done for different video settings and network configurations. A key outcome of this analysis was the feasibility of TV/video delivery over WiMAX with good quality of user experience provided that system limitations are respected.
The article describes a prototype system aimed at monitoring attitudes toward any social group. The approach involves web mining and content analysis based on Rectitude Gain category from the Laswell dictionary of political values, extended into shallow predicate rules. The system requires no lexical sentiment resources and no training corpora. It has been designed, implemented and tested in Polish.
This paper deals with ways in which designers of user-centered systems and products can make use of other disciplines, primarily social science, to inform design practice. It discusses various ways in which theories, models and frameworks from social science can be integrated into design research and the problems that can arise when translating concepts, theories and methods from one discipline to another. The paper argues for not only using social science before or after the design process to provide context but letting it intervene in all stages of the design process. The paper draws from experiences with the TA2 project for social group communication.
This paper surveys a collection of sample applications for networked user-centric context-aware embodied music listening. The applications have been designed and developed in the framework of the EU-ICT Project SAME (www.sameproject.eu) and have been presented at Agora Festival (IRCAM, Paris, France) in June 2009. All of them address in different ways the concept of embodied, active listening to music, i.e., enabling listeners to interactively operate in real-time on the music content by means of their movements and gestures as captured by mobile devices. In the occasion of the Agora Festival the applications have also been evaluated by both expert and non-expert users.
In this paper, we propose a new concept how tempo-social information about moments of togetherness within a social group of people can be retrieved in the palm of the hand from social context. The social context is digitised by audio logging of the same user centric device such as mobile phone. Being asynchronously driven it allows automatically logging social events with involved parties and thus helps to feel at home anywhere anytime and to nurture user to group relationships. The core of the algorithm is based on perceptual time-frequency analysis via confidence estimate of dynamic cepstral pattern matching between audio logs of people within a social group. The results show robust retrieval and surpass the performance of cross correlation while keeping lower system requirements.
This paper considers the visual quality assessment for view synthesis in the context of 3D video delivery chain. It is targeted to perceptually quantify the reconstruction quality of synthesised camera viewpoints. It is needed for developing better QoE models related to 3D-TV, as well as for a better representation of the effect of depth maps on views synthesis quality. In this paper, existing 2D video quality assessment methods, like PSNR and SSIM, are extended to assess the perceived quality of synthesised viewpoints based on the depth range. The performance of the extended assessment techniques is measured by correlating multiple sample video assessment scores to that of the Video Quality Metric (VQM) scores, which are a robust reflector of real subjective opinions.
Virtual Worlds have become serious business models and thus gained the attention of law professionals. The legal problems arising out of Virtual Worlds have started a discussion which will be summarized in this article. Moreover arguments will be delivered which can be used to protect users of those Virtual Realities.
Among the major reasons for the success of the Internet have been the simple networking architecture and the IP interoperation layer. However, the traffic model has recently changed. More and more applications (e.g. peer-to-peer, content delivery networks) target on the content that they deliver rather than on the addresses of the servers who (originally) published/hosted that content. This trend has motivated a number of content-oriented networking studies. In this paper we summarize some the most important approaches.
We define Interactive Digital Artworks as Information Technology intensive systems for which spectators are involved in the production of the artistic output. We propose a novel framework for classification of interactive digital artworks built on the critical revision and refinement of previous work. Our approach is based on the input-process-output view of Information Systems. The classification framework is validated by applying it to the classification of 54 interactive digital artworks realized in Italy.
In this paper, we exploit the characteristics of scalable video and Peer-to-peer (P2P) network in order to propose an efficient streaming mechanism for scalable video. The scalable video is divided into chunks and prioritized with respect to its significance in the sliding window by an efficient proposed piece picking policy. Furthermore the neighbour selective policy is also proposed to receive the most important chunks from the good peers in the neighbourhood to maintain smooth content delivery of certain Quality of Service for the received video. Experimental evaluation of the proposed system clearly demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach.
