Finding new music: a diary study of everyday encounters with novel songs

This paper explores how we, as individuals, purposefully or serendipitously encounter 'new music' (that is, music that we haven’t heard before) and relates these behaviours to music information retrieval activities such as music searching and music discovery via use of recommender systems. 41 participants participated in a three-day diary study, in which they recorded all incidents that brought them into contact with new music. The diaries were analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. The results of this analysis are discussed with respect to location, time, and whether the music encounter was actively sought or occurred passively. Based on these results, we outline design implications for music information retrieval software, and suggest an extension of 'laid back' searching

Development of a web-based information system for cascading utilisation of construction materials

This paper presents a Web-based information system for promoting the cascading utilisation of construction materials in order to mitigate the increasing environmental pressure by the construction industry. First, this paper points out me weaknesses of current waste material exchange systems. Then, a new approach is introduced to reuse demolished materials, by which the utilisation of demolished materials may be ascertained before the demolition is actually produced.. Information technologies, including web-based intelligent and distributed systems, are applied to actua1ise this approach. Finally, the development and implementation of the system is described in detail.<br /

Keyframe detection in visual lifelogs

The SenseCam is a wearable camera that passively captures images. Therefore, it requires no conscious effort by a user in taking a photo. A Visual Diary from such a source could prove to be a valuable tool in assisting the elderly, individuals with neurodegenerative diseases, or other traumas. One issue with Visual Lifelogs is the large volume of image data generated. In previous work we spit a day's worth of images into more manageable segments, i.e. into distinct events or activities. However, each event coud stil consist of 80-100 images. thus, in this paper we propose a novel approach to selecting the key images within an event using a combination of MPEG-7 and Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features