Challenges in Developing Applications for Aging Populations

Elderly individuals can greatly benefit from the use of computer applications, which can assist in monitoring health conditions, staying in contact with friends and family, and even learning new things. However, developing accessible applications for an elderly user can be a daunting task for developers. Since the advent of the personal computer, the benefits and challenges of developing applications for older adults have been a hot topic of discussion. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various challenges developers who wish to create applications for the elderly computer user face, including age-related impairments, generational differences in computer use, and the hardware constraints mobile devices pose for application developers. Although these challenges are concerning, each can be overcome after being properly identified

Global-Scale Resource Survey and Performance Monitoring of Public OGC Web Map Services

One of the most widely-implemented service standards provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to the user community is the Web Map Service (WMS). WMS is widely employed globally, but there is limited knowledge of the global distribution, adoption status or the service quality of these online WMS resources. To fill this void, we investigated global WMSs resources and performed distributed performance monitoring of these services. This paper explicates a distributed monitoring framework that was used to monitor 46,296 WMSs continuously for over one year and a crawling method to discover these WMSs. We analyzed server locations, provider types, themes, the spatiotemporal coverage of map layers and the service versions for 41,703 valid WMSs. Furthermore, we appraised the stability and performance of basic operations for 1210 selected WMSs (i.e., GetCapabilities and GetMap). We discuss the major reasons for request errors and performance issues, as well as the relationship between service response times and the spatiotemporal distribution of client monitoring sites. This paper will help service providers, end users and developers of standards to grasp the status of global WMS resources, as well as to understand the adoption status of OGC standards. The conclusions drawn in this paper can benefit geospatial resource discovery, service performance evaluation and guide service performance improvements.Comment: 24 pages; 15 figure

Is a Dominant Service-Centric Sector Good for Diversity of Provision?

An obvious assumption underpinning the immense interest in service-oriented computing is that it is an inherently Good Thing, by which we mean that robust processes and tools for developing service-based systems will bring benefits for service providers and service consumers. The arguments, in terms of consumer choice and flexibility, are certainly quite convincing. However, in this position paper, we question the nature of the underlying assumption, in a world where requirements are as many and varied as potential users and ask if safeguards are needed to ensure that diversity of provision is maintained

MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS AS A TOOL FOR MUNICIPAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

In most decision making situations more than one criterion is involved and, as a consequence, confusion can arise if there is no logical and well structured decision-making process in place. The multi-criteria analysis (MCA) constitutes a tool that can help evaluate the relative importance of all criteria involved and reflect on their importance during project management and decision making. MCA is a management tool aiming at supporting decision makers faced with making numerous and conflicting evaluations by deriving a way to come to a compromise. This paper discusses the possibilities of applying MCA in the field of municipal property management, where the decision-makers have to find the most convenient destinations of municipal assets that can be used for various purposes such as: governmental, business, social use. In each case specific criteria and indicators are employed in the ranking and rating process, so as to get the corresponding weighted score. An application is also presented, as performed within a work package included in the project “Municipal Property Management in South- Eastern Cities (PROMISE)â€, aiming to develop a comprehensive system for municipal property classification for governmental use, social use and business use by means of criteria previously defined, processed by MCA operation. The resulted system is adapted to the strategic goals of the administrative authorities, contributing to an effective municipal property management by optimising and standardising the decision-making procedures. The framework created enables the municipalities to find an appealing combination between the use of properties for their own needs and for attracting investment and promoting sustainable development of their cities and regions. The project was initiated in 2009, being funded by the ERDF within the South-East Territorial Co-operation Programme. Keywords: multi-criteria analysis, criteria, indicators, ranking, municipal assets, strategic management

Japan's silver market: creating a new industry under uncertainty

It has often been asked whether today´s Japan will be able to move into new and promising industries, or whether it is locked into an innovation system with an inherent inability to give birth to new industries. One argument reasons that the thick institutional complementarities among labour, innovation, and finance among its enterprises and the public sector favour industrial development in sectors of intermediate uncertainty, while it is difficult to move into areas of major uncertainty. In this paper, we present the case of the silver industry or, somewhat more prosaically, the 60+ or even 50+ industry, for which most would agree that Japan has indeed become a lead market and lead producer on the global market. For an institutional economist, the case of the silver industry is particularly interesting, because Japan´s success is based on the cooperation of existing actors, the enterprise and public sector in particular, which helped overcome the information uncertainties and asymmetries involved in the new market by relying on several established mechanisms developed well before. In that sense, Japan´s silver industry presents a case of of what we propose to call successful institutional path activation with the effect of an innovative market creation, instead of the problematic lockin effects that are usually associated with the term path dependence

HUBUNGAN ANTARA KOMPETENSI HUMAS PEMERINTAHAN PROVINSI JAWA BARAT DENGAN STANDARISASI PELAYANAN KEPADA MASYARAKAT

This study aims to determine the extent of the relationship between the Competence of Public Relations Government of West Java Province which includes communication skills, managerial abilities, ability to build relationships, credibility and creativity, with Standardization of Services is measured through the Service Level Agreement concept which includes Accessibility, Reliability, Response Time, and Resolution who were given Public Relations to the Community who visited / visited the Public Relations Government of West Java Province. The method used is the Survey research method, through questionnaires to the people who came to the West Java Provincial Government Public Relations. The testing techniques carried out are frequency distribution tabulation, score ranking and correlation test. The results of the study illustrate that the Public Relations Government of West Java Province has communication and managerial skills in the Very good category, with the ability to foster relationships, credibility and creativity in the category of Good, Whereas the assessment of Standardization of Services to the Community is measured through Accessibility, reliability, response time and resolution in the category of Satisfaction. From the results of testing the correlation data, it can be concluded that There is a strong, unidirectional and significant relationship between PR competencies in West Java Province with the standardization of services to the public. A unidirectional relationship means that the West Java Provincial Government Public Relations Competency is good, Service Standardization also be more satisfyin

Content Accessibility of Web documents. Principles and Recommendations

The paper is an overview of issues related to the accessibility of Web sites, of European initiatives and recommendations in the field, of future solutions, such as developing Web 2.0 accessible applications with WAI-ARIA. As part of the Pro-Inclusiv project was included a set of accessibility recommendations to design web sites, recommendations presented in the paper.Web accessibility, users with disabilities, standards and recommendations