Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Gay men’s experiences coming out online : a qualitative study

The current study employed qualitative methodology to investigate the experiences of 12 men who came out online, using Facebook. Analysis of coding data yielded several key themes. First, gay men discussed a range of experiences that influenced their online disclosure including homophobia, internalized homophobia, and previous salient sexual identity disclosures. Participants also commonly expressed a variety of goals and concerns about coming out online, including improving relationships and loss of friends. Finally, gay men identified several benefits to coming out on Facebook, including increased efficiency in coming out as compared to face-to-face disclosures, increased authenticity, and decreased ambiguity about their sexuality. Results are discussed within the context of literature on men’s coming-out experiences, men and masculinity and online identity management.Educational Psycholog

GeoNotes: A Location-based Information System for Public Spaces

The basic idea behind location-based information systems is to connect information pieces to positions in outdoor or indoor space. Through position technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), GSM positioning, Wireless LAN positioning o

The Collective Building of Knowledge in Collaborative Learning Environments

The intention of this chapter is to investigate how collaborative learning environments (CLEs) can be used to elicit the collective building of knowledge. This work discusses CLEs as lively cognitive systems and looks at some strategies that might contribute to the improvement of significant pedagogical practices. The study is supported by rhizome principles, whose characteristics allow us to understand the process of selecting and connecting what is relevant and meaningful for the collective building of knowledge. A brief theoretical and conceptual approach is presented and major contributions and difficulties about collaborative learning environments are discussed. New questions and future trends about the collective building of knowledge are suggested

ICT skills acquisition by older people: motivations for learning and barriers to progression

This paper reports findings from one strand of an extensive research project investigating digital engagement of older people and the risks to sustained usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The factors that motivate older people to learn about ICTs, the barriers they face in the learning process and with on-going ICT use are examined. Research methods included focus groups (28 ICT learners aged 50+); questionnaires and interviews with seven 50+ learners; three interviews with ICT tutors; and observation sessions in three different ICT learning and support environments in England and Scotland. Findings show that while learning to use ICTs to ease the mechanics of daily life (e.g. on-line shopping) was a motivating factor for some, the more powerful drivers tended to be those applications seen as enriching quality of life e.g. using ICTs to keeping in contact with family and friends and using ICTs in pursuit of passions and interests. The key barriers relate to fear of using a computer; learning suppo rt ; quality and provision of ICT training; cost of training and technology; memory problems, and technology barriers. Implications of these findings for service providers, ICT designers and policy makers are identified and discussed

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks