NoTube – making TV a medium for personalized interaction

In this paper, we introduce NoTube’s vision on deploying semantics in interactive TV context in order to contextualize distributed applications and lift them to a new level of service that provides context-dependent and personalized selection of TV content. Additionally, lifting content consumption from a single-user activity to a community-based experience in a connected multi-device environment is central to the project. Main research questions relate to (1) data integration and enrichment - how to achieve unified and simple access to dynamic, growing and distributed multimedia content of diverse formats? (2) user and context modeling - what is an appropriate framework for context modeling, incorporating task-, domain and device-specific viewpoints? (3) context-aware discovery of resources - how could rather fuzzy matchmaking between potentially infinite contexts and available media resources be achieved? (4) collaborative architecture for TV content personalization - how can the combined information about data, context and user be put at disposal of both content providers and end-users in the view of creating extremely personalized services under controlled privacy and security policies? Thus, with the grand challenge in mind - to put the TV viewer back in the driver's seat – we focus on TV content as a medium for personalized interaction between people based on a service architecture that caters for a variety of content metadata, delivery channels and rendering devices

Digital library research : current developments and trends

This column gives an overview of current trends in digital library research under the following headings: digital library architecture, systems, tools and technologies; digital content and collections; metadata; interoperability; standards; knowledge organisation systems; users and usability; legal, organisational, economic, and social issues in digital libraries

Context-Aware Information Retrieval for Enhanced Situation Awareness

In the coalition forces, users are increasingly challenged with the issues of information overload and correlation of information from heterogeneous sources. Users might need different pieces of information, ranging from information about a single building, to the resolution strategy of a global conflict. Sometimes, the time, location and past history of information access can also shape the information needs of users. Information systems need to help users pull together data from disparate sources according to their expressed needs (as represented by system queries), as well as less specific criteria. Information consumers have varying roles, tasks/missions, goals and agendas, knowledge and background, and personal preferences. These factors can be used to shape both the execution of user queries and the form in which retrieved information is packaged. However, full automation of this daunting information aggregation and customization task is not possible with existing approaches. In this paper we present an infrastructure for context-aware information retrieval to enhance situation awareness. The infrastructure provides each user with a customized, mission-oriented system that gives access to the right information from heterogeneous sources in the context of a particular task, plan and/or mission. The approach lays on five intertwined fundamental concepts, namely Workflow, Context, Ontology, Profile and Information Aggregation. The exploitation of this knowledge, using appropriate domain ontologies, will make it feasible to provide contextual assistance in various ways to the work performed according to a user’s taskrelevant information requirements. This paper formalizes these concepts and their interrelationships

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

Considerations regarding the agile development of portals

Starting with methodologies, methods and techniques used generally in the development of information systems, a personal approach regarding quick development of portals has been introduced. After a strict theoretical foundation the proposal has been applied within a real collaborative knowledge portal development project. We consider the proposed agile development approach (based on the prototype technique enriched with MDA valences) suitable to all kind of information systems. The agile development framework establishes the life-cycle phases of product development taking into account the desired functionalities.portal, prototype technique, model driven architecture, agile development

Open semantic service networks

Online service marketplaces will soon be part of the economy to scale the provision of specialized multi-party services through automation and standardization. Current research, such as the *-USDL service description language family, is already defining the basic building blocks to model the next generation of business services. Nonetheless, the developments being made do not target to interconnect services via service relationships. Without the concept of relationship, marketplaces will be seen as mere functional silos containing service descriptions. Yet, in real economies, all services are related and connected. Therefore, to address this gap we introduce the concept of open semantic service network (OSSN), concerned with the establishment of rich relationships between services. These networks will provide valuable knowledge on the global service economy, which can be exploited for many socio-economic and scientific purposes such as service network analysis, management, and control