Improving Web Recommendations Using Web Usage Mining and Web Semantics

This project addresses the topic of improving web recommendations. With the immense increase in the number of websites and web pages on the internet, the issue of suggesting users with the web pages in the area of their interest needs to be addressed as best as possible. Various approaches have been proposed over the years by many researchers and each of them has taken the solution of creating personalized web recommendations a step ahead. Yet, owing to the large possibilities of further improvement, the system proposed in this report takes generating web recommendations one more step ahead. The proposed system uses the information from web usage mining, web semantics and time spent on web pages to improve the recommendations

Using an essentiality and proficiency approach to improve the web browsing experience of visually impaired users

Increased volumes of content exacerbate the Web accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Essentiality & Proficiency is presented as one method of easing access to information in Websites by addressing the volume of content coupled with how it is presented. This research develops the concept of Essentiality for Web authors. A preliminary survey was conducted to understand the accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants and a further 26 participants responded to online questionnaires. In total there were 38 participants (both sexes), aged 18 to 54 years. 68% had visual impairments, three had motor issues, one had a hearing impairment and two had cognitive impairments. The findings show that the overload of information on a page was the most prominent difficulty experienced when using the Web. The findings from the preliminary survey fed into an empirical study. Four participants aged 21 to 54 years (both sexes) from the preliminary survey were presented with a technology demonstrator to check the feasibility of Essentiality & Proficiency in the real environment. It was found that participants were able to identify and appreciate the reduced volume of information. This initiated the iterative development of the prototype tool. Microformatting is used in the development of the Essentiality & Proficiency prototype tool to allow the reformulated Web pages to remain standards compliant. There is a formative evaluation of the prototype tool using an experimental design methodology. A convenience sample of nine participants (both sexes) with a range of visual impairments, aged 18 to 52 performed tasks on a computer under three essentiality conditions. With an alpha level .05, the evaluation of the Essentiality & Proficiency tool has been shown to offer some improvement in accessing information

A framework for delivering personalized e-government services from a citizen-centric approach

E-government is becoming more attentive towards providing intelligent personalized online services to citizens so that citizens can receive better services with less time and effort. This paper proposes a new conceptual framework for delivering personalized e-government services to citizens from a citizen-centric approach, called Pe-Gov service framework. This framework outlines the main components and their interconnections. Detailed explanations about these components are given and the special features of this framework are highlighted. The Pe-Gov framework has the potential to outperform the existing e-Gov service systems as illustrated by two real life examples. © 2010 ACM

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Prediction Techniques in Internet of Things (IoT) Environment: A Comparative Study

Socialization and Personalization in Internet of Things (IOT) environment are the current trends in computing research. Most of the research work stresses the importance of predicting the service & providing socialized and personalized services. This paper presents a survey report on different techniques used for predicting user intention in wide variety of IOT based applications like smart mobile, smart television, web mining, weather forecasting, health-care/medical, robotics, road-traffic, educational data mining, natural calamities, retail banking, e-commerce, wireless networks & social networking. As per the survey made the prediction techniques are used for: predicting the application that can be accessed by the mobile user, predicting the next page to be accessed by web user, predicting the users favorite TV program, predicting user navigational patterns and usage needs on websites & also to extract the users browsing behavior, predicting future climate conditions, predicting whether a patient is suffering from a disease, predicting user intention to make implicit and human-like interactions possible by accepting implicit commands, predicting the amount of traffic occurring at a particular location, predicting student performance in schools & colleges, predicting & estimating the frequency of natural calamities occurrences like floods, earthquakes over a long period of time & also to take precautionary measures, predicting & detecting false user trying to make transaction in the name of genuine user, predicting the actions performed by the user to improve the business, predicting & detecting the intruder acting in the network, predicting the mood transition information of the user by using context history, etc. This paper also discusses different techniques like Decision Tree algorithm, Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining based Machine learning techniques, Content and Collaborative based Recommender algorithms used for prediction

A novel Big Data analytics and intelligent technique to predict driver's intent

Modern age offers a great potential for automatically predicting the driver's intent through the increasing miniaturization of computing technologies, rapid advancements in communication technologies and continuous connectivity of heterogeneous smart objects. Inside the cabin and engine of modern cars, dedicated computer systems need to possess the ability to exploit the wealth of information generated by heterogeneous data sources with different contextual and conceptual representations. Processing and utilizing this diverse and voluminous data, involves many challenges concerning the design of the computational technique used to perform this task. In this paper, we investigate the various data sources available in the car and the surrounding environment, which can be utilized as inputs in order to predict driver's intent and behavior. As part of investigating these potential data sources, we conducted experiments on e-calendars for a large number of employees, and have reviewed a number of available geo referencing systems. Through the results of a statistical analysis and by computing location recognition accuracy results, we explored in detail the potential utilization of calendar location data to detect the driver's intentions. In order to exploit the numerous diverse data inputs available in modern vehicles, we investigate the suitability of different Computational Intelligence (CI) techniques, and propose a novel fuzzy computational modelling methodology. Finally, we outline the impact of applying advanced CI and Big Data analytics techniques in modern vehicles on the driver and society in general, and discuss ethical and legal issues arising from the deployment of intelligent self-learning cars

A usability approach to improving the user experience in web directories

PhDWeb directories are hierarchically organised website collections that offer users subjectbased access to the Web. They played a significant part in navigating the Web in the past but their role has been weakened in recent years due to their cumbersome expanding collections. This thesis presents a unified framework combining the advantages of personalisation and redefined directory search for improving the usability of Web directories. The thesis begins with an examination of classification schemes that identifies the rigidity of hierarchical classifications and their suitability for Web directories in contrast to faceted classifications. This leads on to an Ontological Sketch Modelling (OSM) case study which identifies the misfits affecting user navigation in Web directories from known rigidity issues. The thesis continues with a review of personalisation techniques and a discussion of the user search model of Web directories following the suggested directions of improvement from the case study. A proposed user-centred framework to improve the usability of Web directories which consists of an individual content-based personalisation model and a redefined search model is then implemented as D-Persona and D-Search respectively. The remainder of the thesis is concerned with a usability test of D-Persona and D-Search aimed at discovering the efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction of the solution. This involves an experimental design, test results and discussions for the comparative user study. This thesis extracts a formal definition of the rigidity of hierarchies from their characteristics and justifies why hierarchies are still better suited than facets in organising Web directories. Second, it identifies misfits causing poor usability in Web directories based on the discovered rigidity of hierarchies. Third, it proposes a solution to tackle the misfits and improve the usability of Web directories which has been experimentally proved to be successful

A Usability Approach to Improving the User Experience in Web Directories

Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Queen Mary, University of Londo

Content marketing and website users engagement: The impact of relevant content on the web on user engagement behaviors

The marketing landscape is changing; we are switching from traditional methods to digitalized methods to attract consumers/users. The new trend of marketing tends to gain loyal consumers. Nowadays, content marketing is used to create this trusting consumer relationship. It consists in providing valuable information in the form of content, this content is in both sides giving information to the user and strengthening bonds with the brand offering the content. This article is a study of Content Marketing linked to Website users’ engagement. Its aim is to understand how the relevance of the content and the quality of a website can influence the users’ engagement. A study of existing concepts and an exploratory research were developed in the article to find the relationship between content marketing and engagement behavior of Internet users. The article tries to understand how consumers/users perceive the content online and based on which standards they choose to engage or not. The challenge today for the enterprises is not only creating content for the users, but creating a valuable and relevant content for their consumers

Using an essentiality & proficiency approach to improve the web browsing experience of visually impaired users

Increased volumes of content exacerbate the Web accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Essentiality & Proficiency is presented as one method of easing access to information in Websites by addressing the volume of content coupled with how it is presented. This research develops the concept of Essentiality for Web authors. A preliminary survey was conducted to understand the accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants and a further 26 participants responded to online questionnaires. In total there were 38 participants (both sexes), aged 18 to 54 years. 68% had visual impairments, three had motor issues, one had a hearing impairment and two had cognitive impairments. The findings show that the overload of information on a page was the most prominent difficulty experienced when using the Web. The findings from the preliminary survey fed into an empirical study. Four participants aged 21 to 54 years (both sexes) from the preliminary survey were presented with a technology demonstrator to check the feasibility of Essentiality & Proficiency in the real environment. It was found that participants were able to identify and appreciate the reduced volume of information. This initiated the iterative development of the prototype tool. Microformatting is used in the development of the Essentiality & Proficiency prototype tool to allow the reformulated Web pages to remain standards compliant. There is a formative evaluation of the prototype tool using an experimental design methodology. A convenience sample of nine participants (both sexes) with a range of visual impairments, aged 18 to 52 performed tasks on a computer under three essentiality conditions. With an alpha level .05, the evaluation of the Essentiality & Proficiency tool has been shown to offer some improvement in accessing information.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo