Mixing the reactive with the personal: Opportunities for end-user programming in personal information management

The transition of personal information management (PIM) tools off the desktop to the Web presents an opportunity to augment these tools with capabilities provided by the wealth of real-time information readily available. In this chapter, we describe a personal information assistance engine that lets end-users delegate to it various simple context- and activity-reactive tasks and reminders. Our system, Atomate, treats RSS/ATOM feeds from social networking and life-tracking sites as sensor streams, integrating information from such feeds into a simple unified RDF world model representing people, places and things and their time-varying states and activities. Combined with other information sources on the web, including the user's online calendar, web-based e-mail client, news feeds and messaging services, Atomate can be made to automatically carry out a variety of simple tasks for the user, ranging from context-aware filtering and messaging, to sharing and social coordination actions. Atomate's open architecture and world model easily accommodate new information sources and actions via the addition of feeds and web services. To make routine use of the system easy for non-programmers, Atomate provides a constrained-input natural language interface (CNLI) for behavior specification, and a direct-manipulation interface for inspecting and updating its world model

Web Services-Enhanced Agile Modeling and Integrating Business Processes

In a global business context with continuous changes, the enterprises have to enhance their operational efficiency, to react more quickly, to ensure the flexibility of their business processes, and to build new collaboration pathways with external partners. To achieve this goal, they must use e-business methods, mechanisms and techniques while capitalizing on the potential of new information and communication technologies. In this context, we propose a standards, model and Web services-based approach for modeling and integrating agile enterprise business processes. The purpose is to benefit from Web services characteristics to enhance the processes design and realize their dynamic integration. The choice of focusing on Web services is essentially justified by their broad adoption by enterprises as well as their capability to warranty interoperability between both intra and inter-enterprises systems. Thereby, we propose in this chapter a metamodel for describing business processes, and discuss their dynamic integration by addressing the Web services discovery issue. On the one hand, the proposed metamodel is in line with the W3C Web services standards, namely, WSDL, SAWSDL and WS-Policy. It considers the use of BPMN standard to describe the behavioral aspect of business processes and completes their design using UML diagrams describing their functional, non-functional and semantic aspects. On other hand, our approach for integrating processes is in line with BPEL standard recommended to orchestrate Web services. To realize executable business processes, this approach recommends the use of semantic matching and selection mechanisms in order to produce agile systems.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, Book chapte

Mobilizing learning: mobile Web 2.0 scenarios in tertiary education

Based upon three years of mobile learning (mlearning) projects, a major implementation project has been developed for integrating the use of mobile web 2.0 tools across a variety of departments and courses in a tertiary education environment. A participatory action research methodology guides and informs the project. The project is based upon an explicit social constuctivist pedagogy, focusing on student collaboration, and the sharing and critique of student-generated content using freely available web 2.0 services. These include blogs, social networks, location aware (geotagged) image and video sharing, instant messaging, microblogging etc… Students and lecturers are provided with either an appropriate smartphone and/or a 3G capable netbook to use as their own for the duration of the project. Keys to the projects success are the level of pedagogical and technical support, and the level of integration of the tools into the courses – including assessment and lecturer modelling of the use of the tools. The projects are supported by an intentional community of practice model, with the researcher taking on the role of the “technology steward”. The paper outlines three different scenarios illustrating how this course integration is being achieved, establishing a transferable model of mobile web 2.0 integration and implementation. The goal is to facilitate a student-centred, collaborative, flexible, context-bridging learning environment that empowers students as content producers and learning context generators, guided by lecturers who effectively model th

Toward a Conceptual Model for Citizens’ Adoption of Smart Mobile Government Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Jordan

With the accelerated evolution of smart mobile applications, more government organizations are putting forth efforts to motivate their citizens to utilize mobile government (m-gov) applications and services. Accordingly, the citizens’ perspective is vital to improve the applications and promote their engagement in the public services. The current study explored an important issue related to the factors affecting citizens adoption of smart m-gov services in the Jordanian context in order to develop a conceptual framework. Previous research on e-government adoption has paid attention to traditional web-based services. Yet, given the distinguishing characteristics of mobile technology and its application, more study of m-government is warranted. The current study expands the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by integrating its original variables (i.e., Performance Expectancy PE, Effort Expectancy EE, Social influence SI, Facilitating Conditions FC) with contextual variables (i.e., Fear of COVID-19, Trust, Corruption Avoidance). The proposed model will contribute to academic literature and provide practical implications, advancing the understanding of mobile-based governmental services and applications during crisis time (e.g., COVID-19)

Toward a Conceptual Model for Citizens’ Adoption of Smart Mobile Government Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Jordan

With the accelerated evolution of smart mobile applications, more government organizations are putting forth efforts to motivate their citizens to utilize mobile government (m-gov) applications and services. Accordingly, the citizens’ perspective is vital to improve the applications and promote their engagement in the public services. The current study explored an important issue related to the factors affecting citizens adoption of smart m-gov services in the Jordanian context in order to develop a conceptual framework. Previous research on e-government adoption has paid attention to traditional web-based services. Yet, given the distinguishing characteristics of mobile technology and its application, more study of m-government is warranted. The current study expands the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by integrating its original variables (i.e., Performance Expectancy PE, Effort Expectancy EE, Social influence SI, Facilitating Conditions FC) with contextual variables (i.e., Fear of COVID-19, Trust, Corruption Avoidance). The proposed model will contribute to academic literature and provide practical implications, advancing the understanding of mobile-based governmental services and applications during crisis time (e.g., COVID-19)

Open semantic annotation of scientific publications using DOMEO

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Our group has developed a useful shared software framework for performing, versioning, sharing and viewing Web annotations of a number of kinds, using an open representation model.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The Domeo Annotation Tool was developed in tandem with this open model, the Annotation Ontology (AO). Development of both the Annotation Framework and the open model was driven by requirements of several different types of alpha users, including bench scientists and biomedical curators from university research labs, online scientific communities, publishing and pharmaceutical companies.</p> <p>Several use cases were incrementally implemented by the toolkit. These use cases in biomedical communications include personal note-taking, group document annotation, semantic tagging, claim-evidence-context extraction, reagent tagging, and curation of textmining results from entity extraction algorithms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report on the Domeo user interface here. Domeo has been deployed in beta release as part of the NIH Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF, <url>http://www.neuinfo.org</url><it/>) and is scheduled for production deployment in the NIF’s next full release.</p> <p>Future papers will describe other aspects of this work in detail, including Annotation Framework Services and components for integrating with external textmining services, such as the NCBO Annotator web service, and with other textmining applications using the Apache UIMA framework.</p

Towards A model for Citizens’ Acceptance of E-Payment Systems for Public Sector Services in Jordan: Evidence from Crisis Era

E-payment systems (EPS) are an attractive trend in electronic services nowadays, and the public sector is not an exception. Earlier studies on e-payment services acceptance have paid attention to the use of web/mobile services during traditional common circumstances. However, given the distinguishing characteristics of the crisis-era (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic) and how this could lead to new business models based on online services and applications, more studies of EPS for e-government services, in particular, are warranted. This study explored an important issue related to the factors affecting citizens acceptance of E-payment systems for public sector services in the Jordanian context in order to develop a conceptual framework. Studying the acceptance and use of e-payment systems (EPSs) is not a new research topic. However, investigating the factors affecting the acceptance of EPSs in public organizations is a topic of great importance. This study extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) by integrating the theory original variables (i.e., Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social influence (SI), and Facilitating Conditions (FC)) with contextual variables (i.e., Fear of COVID-19 (FoC), Trust (TR), Security concern (SEC), and Perceived Risks (PR)). The proposed conceptual model will offer a contribution to the literature in the field as well as practical implications, enhancing the understanding of E-payment services during crisis time

Towards an Interaction-based Integration of MKM Services into End-User Applications

The Semantic Alliance (SAlly) Framework, first presented at MKM 2012, allows integration of Mathematical Knowledge Management services into typical applications and end-user workflows. From an architecture allowing invasion of spreadsheet programs, it grew into a middle-ware connecting spreadsheet, CAD, text and image processing environments with MKM services. The architecture presented in the original paper proved to be quite resilient as it is still used today with only minor changes. This paper explores extensibility challenges we have encountered in the process of developing new services and maintaining the plugins invading end-user applications. After an analysis of the underlying problems, I present an augmented version of the SAlly architecture that addresses these issues and opens new opportunities for document type agnostic MKM services.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Integrating information and knowledge for enterprise innovation

It has widely been accepted that enterprise integration, can be a source of socio-technical and cultural problems within organisations wishing to provide a focussed end-to-end business service. This can cause possible “straitjacketing” of business process architectures, thus suppressing responsive business re-engineering and competitive advantage for some companies. Accordingly, the current typology and emergent forms of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies are set in the context of understanding information and knowledge integration philosophies. As such, key influences and trends in emerging IS integration choices, for end-to-end, cost-effective and flexible knowledge integration, are examined. As touch points across and outside organisations proliferate, via work-flow and relationship management-driven value innovation, aspects of knowledge refinement and knowledge integration pose challenges to maximising the potential of innovation and sustainable success, within enterprises. This is in terms of the increasing propensity for data fragmentation and the lack of effective information management, in the light of information overload. Furthermore, the nature of IS mediation which is inherent within decision making and workflow-based business processes, provides the basis for evaluation of the effects of information and knowledge integration. Hence, the authors propose a conceptual, holistic evaluation framework which encompasses these ideas. It is thus argued that such trends, and their implications regarding enterprise IS integration to engender sustainable competitive advantage, require fundamental re-thinking

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C’s Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers’ observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is soun