Ubiquitous Semantic Applications

As Semantic Web technology evolves many open areas emerge, which attract more research focus. In addition to quickly expanding Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud, various embeddable metadata formats (e.g. RDFa, microdata) are becoming more common. Corporations are already using existing Web of Data to create new technologies that were not possible before. Watson by IBM an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language can be a great example. On the other hand, ubiquitous devices that have a large number of sensors and integrated devices are becoming increasingly powerful and fully featured computing platforms in our pockets and homes. For many people smartphones and tablet computers have already replaced traditional computers as their window to the Internet and to the Web. Hence, the management and presentation of information that is useful to a user is a main requirement for today’s smartphones. And it is becoming extremely important to provide access to the emerging Web of Data from the ubiquitous devices. In this thesis we investigate how ubiquitous devices can interact with the Semantic Web. We discovered that there are five different approaches for bringing the Semantic Web to ubiquitous devices. We have outlined and discussed in detail existing challenges in implementing this approaches in section 1.2. We have described a conceptual framework for ubiquitous semantic applications in chapter 4. We distinguish three client approaches for accessing semantic data using ubiquitous devices depending on how much of the semantic data processing is performed on the device itself (thin, hybrid and fat clients). These are discussed in chapter 5 along with the solution to every related challenge. Two provider approaches (fat and hybrid) can be distinguished for exposing data from ubiquitous devices on the Semantic Web. These are discussed in chapter 6 along with the solution to every related challenge. We conclude our work with a discussion on each of the contributions of the thesis and propose future work for each of the discussed approach in chapter 7

RESTful PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE DEVICES

The growing popularity of mobile platforms is changing the Internet user’s computing experience. Current studies suggest that the traditional ubiquitous computing landscape is shifting towards more enhanced and broader mobile computing platform consists of large number of heterogeneous devices. Smartphones and tablets begin to replace the desktop as the primary means of interacting with IT resources. While mobile devices facilitate in consuming web resources in the form of web services, the growing demand for consuming services on mobile device is introducing a complex ecosystem in the mobile environment. This research addresses the communication challenges involved in mobile distributed networks and proposes an event-driven communication approach for information dissemination. This research investigates different communication techniques such as synchronous and asynchronous polling and long-polling, server-side push as mechanisms between client-server interactions and the latest web technologies namely HTML5 standard WebSocket as communication protocol within a publish/subscribe paradigm. Finally, this research introduces and evaluates a framework that is hybrid of REST and event-based publish/subscribe for operating in the mobile environment

Browser to browser media streaming with HTML5

Video on demand services generate one of the largest portions of Internet traffic every day and their use is constantly increasing. Scaling up the infrastructure to meet this demand with the current model of Internet video delivery over HTTP, is proving to be very costly for service providers. An alternative model for video content delivery is the need of the hour to meet this challenge. Peer-to-peer streaming is a viable alternative model that is highly scalable and can meet this increasing demand. The emerging HTML5 standard introduces APIs that give Web browsers the ability to communicate directly with each other in real-time. This also allows web browsers to behave as Peer-to-peer nodes. In this thesis, we utilize these new APIs to develop a Video on demand service within the Web browser. The goal of this being to determine the feasibility of such a solution and evaluate the usage of these APIs. We hope to aid the HTML standardization process with our findings

QoE on media deliveriy in 5G environments

231 p.5G expandirá las redes móviles con un mayor ancho de banda, menor latencia y la capacidad de proveer conectividad de forma masiva y sin fallos. Los usuarios de servicios multimedia esperan una experiencia de reproducción multimedia fluida que se adapte de forma dinámica a los intereses del usuario y a su contexto de movilidad. Sin embargo, la red, adoptando una posición neutral, no ayuda a fortalecer los parámetros que inciden en la calidad de experiencia. En consecuencia, las soluciones diseñadas para realizar un envío de tráfico multimedia de forma dinámica y eficiente cobran un especial interés. Para mejorar la calidad de la experiencia de servicios multimedia en entornos 5G la investigación llevada a cabo en esta tesis ha diseñado un sistema múltiple, basado en cuatro contribuciones.El primer mecanismo, SaW, crea una granja elástica de recursos de computación que ejecutan tareas de análisis multimedia. Los resultados confirman la competitividad de este enfoque respecto a granjas de servidores. El segundo mecanismo, LAMB-DASH, elige la calidad en el reproductor multimedia con un diseño que requiere una baja complejidad de procesamiento. Las pruebas concluyen su habilidad para mejorar la estabilidad, consistencia y uniformidad de la calidad de experiencia entre los clientes que comparten una celda de red. El tercer mecanismo, MEC4FAIR, explota las capacidades 5G de analizar métricas del envío de los diferentes flujos. Los resultados muestran cómo habilita al servicio a coordinar a los diferentes clientes en la celda para mejorar la calidad del servicio. El cuarto mecanismo, CogNet, sirve para provisionar recursos de red y configurar una topología capaz de conmutar una demanda estimada y garantizar unas cotas de calidad del servicio. En este caso, los resultados arrojan una mayor precisión cuando la demanda de un servicio es mayor

Curating Kisumu: Adapting Mobile Humanities Interpretation in East Africa

The Center for Public History + Digital Humanities (CPHDH) at Cleveland State University and Maseno University in Kenya seek NEH Level II Start-Up funding for Curating Kisumu to extend best practices for mobile interpretation to the developing world. CPHDH will explore how to use the Curatescape mobile interpretive framework to facilitate interchange between the humanities and pressing needs in East Africa. Faculty and students on both sides of the Atlantic will conduct collaborative research. Our team will also explore how to modify Curatescape to enable bilingual user inputs on the administrative backend and to allow the richest possible experience for users who use still-prevalent feature phones. Our team will develop an educational exchange to create content; develop, implement, and test an app that we adapt thoughtfully to local needs and technical constraints; and collaboratively identify a set of recommendations for overcoming barriers to mobile curation in Africa

Study, design and implementation of WebRTC for a realtime multimedia messaging application

Social networks are no longer a phenomenon; nowadays it is not that they are a reality but have become something indispensable. During its growth and consolidations period internet has suffered a great transformation due to the new kind of most demanded content. Sharing images, videos or even making calls with another user are tasks that an average user would make several times a day. This transition could only happen thanks to new technologies that not only simplify those tasks but, due to handheld devices' irruption, would work successfully under reasonable data and battery consumption rates. Videoconferences over the network and multimedia data streams in general have always gone hand in hand of closed software products like Macromedia Flash, for instance, that required of a plugin installation on the browser by the end user. Under those premises, this project will focus on the investigation of WebRTC as a technology capable of successfully achieving videoconferences between users without the need of any browser plugin. In order to verify the knowledge gathered through the study of the technology, the design, architecture and implementation of an application capable of doing so will be proposed

Emerging & Unconventional Malware Detection Using a Hybrid Approach

Advancement in computing technologies made malware development easier for malware authors. Unconventional computing paradigms such as cloud computing, the internet of things, In-memory computing, etc. introduced new ways to develop more complex and effective malware. To demonstrate this, we designed and implemented a fileless malware that could infect any device that supports JavaScript and HTML5. In addition, another proof-of-concept is implemented that signifies the security threat of in-memory malware for in-memory data storage and computing platforms. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of unconventional malware has been performed using current state-of-the-art malware analysis and detection techniques. Our analysis shows that, by utilizing the unique characteristics of emerging technologies, malware attacks could easily deceive the anti-malware tools and evade themselves from detection. This clearly demonstrates the need for an innovative and effective detection mechanism. Because of the limitations of existing techniques, we propose a hybrid approach using specification-based and behavioral analysis techniques together as an effective solution against unconventional and emerging malware instances. Our approach begins with the specification development where we present the way of writing it in a succinct manner to describe the expected behavior of the application. Moreover, the behavior monitoring component of our approach makes the detection mechanism effective enough by matching the actual behavior with pre-defined specifications at run-time and alarms the system if any action violates the expected behavior. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by applying it for the detection of in-memory malware that threatens the HazelCast in-memory data grid platform. In our experiments, we evaluated the performance and effectiveness of the approach by considering the possible use cases where in-memory malware could affect the data present in the storage space of HazelCast IMDG

Yhteisöllinen energiatehokkuus mobiililaitteilla

We have created a mobile energy measurement application and gathered energy measurement data from over 725,000 devices, running over 300,000 applications, in heterogeneous environments, and constructed models of what is normal in each context for each application. We have used this data to find energy abnormalities in the wild, and provide users of our application advice on how to deal with them. These abnormalities cannot be discovered in laboratory conditions due to the rich interaction of the smartphone and its operating environment. Employing a collaborative mobile energy awareness application with thousands of users allows us to gather a large amount of data in a short time. Such a large and diverse dataset has helped us answer many research questions. Our work is the first collaborative approach in the area of mobile energy debugging. Information received from each device running our application improves the advice given to other users running the same applications. The author has developed a context data gathering hub for smartphones, discovered the need for a common API that unifies network connectivity, energy awareness, and user experience, and investigated the impact of mobile collaborative energy awareness applications, to find previously unknown energy bugs on smartphones, and to improve users' knowledge of smartphone energy behavior.Viime vuosien aikana älypuhelinten laitteistot ovat kehittyneet entistä tehokkaammiksi, mutta akkuteknologia ei ole kehittynyt yhtä nopeasti. Tämä on synnyttänyt tarpeen tehostaa sekä laitteiston että ohjelmiston energiatehokkuutta. Älypuhelimen energiatehokkuuden optimointi on haastavaa, koska toimintaympäristö on moninainen ja käsittää paitsi laitteiston ja sen asetukset, niin myös sovellukset, jotka käyttävät laitteiston toimintoja. Tässä väitöstyössä on keskitytty mobiililaitteiden energiaongelmien ja poikkeamien löytämiseen ja niiden korjaamiseen. Väitöskirja käsittelee yhteisöllisen metodin käyttöä energiankulutukseen liittyvien epätehokkuuksien löytämisessä ja korjaamisessa mobiililaitteilla. Tätä metodia on ensimmäistä kertaa sovellettu mobiililaitteille väitöstyöhön liittyvässä Carat-projektissa. Projektissa on luotu energianmittaussovellus mobiililaitteille ja kerätty energiamittauksia yli 725 000 laitteelta ja 300 000 sovelluksesta monipuolisissa ympäristöissä. Näiden pohjalta on tehty malleja sovellusten normaalista energiankulutuksesta eri konteksteissa. Tietojen ja mallien avulla on löydetty energiapoikkeavuuksia tavallisessa käytössä olevilta laitteilta ja annettu sovelluksen käyttäjille neuvoja poikkeavuuksien korjaamiseen. Väitöstyön aikana kerätty suurikokoinen ja monipuolinen aineisto on auttanut vastaamaan moniin kysymyksiin koskien älypuhelinten energiankulutusta arkikäytössä. Kaikkia poikkeavuuksia ei voida löytää laboratorio-olosuhteissa, sillä mobiililaitteen ympäristö vaikuttaa vahvasti sen toimintaan. Esitetty menetelmä on ensimmäinen, joka soveltaa yhteisöllistä lähestymistapaa mobiililaitteiden energiaongelmien löytämiseen. Kirjoittaja on kehittänyt kontekstitietojen keräysratkaisun älypuhelimille. Hän on huomannut tarpeen järjestelmälle, joka yhdistää mobiililaitteen tilanteen, käytön, energiatehokkuuden ja käyttäjäkokemuksen. Työssä on kehitetty uusi menetelmä energiapoikkeamien analyysiin yhteisöllisesti kerättyjen mittausten perusteella sekä tutkittu energiatehokkuussovellusten vaikutusta eri mobiililaitteilla. Näiden avulla on löydetty ennen tuntemattomia energiaongelmia älypuhelimista ja parannettu käyttäjien ymmärrystä älypuhelinten energiakäyttäytymisestä