Zapping index: Using smile to measure advertisement zapping likelihood

In marketing and advertising research, 'zapping' is defined as the action when a viewer stops watching a commercial. Researchers analyze users' behavior in order to prevent zapping which helps advertisers to design effective commercials. Since emotions can be used to engage consumers, in this paper, we leverage automated facial expression analysis to understand consumers' zapping behavior. Firstly, we provide an accurate moment-to-moment smile detection algorithm. Secondly, we formulate a binary classification problem (zapping/non-zapping) based on real-world scenarios, and adopt smile response as the feature to predict zapping. Thirdly, to cope with the lack of a metric in advertising evaluation, we propose a new metric called Zapping Index (ZI). ZI is a moment-to-moment measurement of a user's zapping probability. It gauges not only the reaction of a user, but also the preference of a user to commercials. Finally, extensive experiments are performed to provide insights and we make recommendations that will be useful to both advertisers and advertisement publishers

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

CHORUS Deliverable 3.3: Vision Document - Intermediate version

The goal of the CHORUS vision document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area (in line with the mandate of CHORUS as a Coordination Action). This current intermediate draft of the CHORUS vision document (D3.3) is based on the previous CHORUS vision documents D3.1 to D3.2 and on the results of the six CHORUS Think-Tank meetings held in March, September and November 2007 as well as in April, July and October 2008, and on the feedback from other CHORUS events. The outcome of the six Think-Thank meetings will not just be to the benefit of the participants which are stakeholders and experts from academia and industry – CHORUS, as a coordination action of the EC, will feed back the findings (see Summary) to the projects under its purview and, via its website, to the whole community working in the domain of AV content search. A few subjections of this deliverable are to be completed after the eights (and presumably last) Think-Tank meeting in spring 2009

Wireless Communications in the Era of Big Data

The rapidly growing wave of wireless data service is pushing against the boundary of our communication network's processing power. The pervasive and exponentially increasing data traffic present imminent challenges to all the aspects of the wireless system design, such as spectrum efficiency, computing capabilities and fronthaul/backhaul link capacity. In this article, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in the design of scalable wireless systems to embrace such a "bigdata" era. On one hand, we review the state-of-the-art networking architectures and signal processing techniques adaptable for managing the bigdata traffic in wireless networks. On the other hand, instead of viewing mobile bigdata as a unwanted burden, we introduce methods to capitalize from the vast data traffic, for building a bigdata-aware wireless network with better wireless service quality and new mobile applications. We highlight several promising future research directions for wireless communications in the mobile bigdata era.Comment: This article is accepted and to appear in IEEE Communications Magazin

The Curious Case of the PDF Converter that Likes Mozart: Dissecting and Mitigating the Privacy Risk of Personal Cloud Apps

Third party apps that work on top of personal cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox, require access to the user's data in order to provide some functionality. Through detailed analysis of a hundred popular Google Drive apps from Google's Chrome store, we discover that the existing permission model is quite often misused: around two thirds of analyzed apps are over-privileged, i.e., they access more data than is needed for them to function. In this work, we analyze three different permission models that aim to discourage users from installing over-privileged apps. In experiments with 210 real users, we discover that the most successful permission model is our novel ensemble method that we call Far-reaching Insights. Far-reaching Insights inform the users about the data-driven insights that apps can make about them (e.g., their topics of interest, collaboration and activity patterns etc.) Thus, they seek to bridge the gap between what third parties can actually know about users and users perception of their privacy leakage. The efficacy of Far-reaching Insights in bridging this gap is demonstrated by our results, as Far-reaching Insights prove to be, on average, twice as effective as the current model in discouraging users from installing over-privileged apps. In an effort for promoting general privacy awareness, we deploy a publicly available privacy oriented app store that uses Far-reaching Insights. Based on the knowledge extracted from data of the store's users (over 115 gigabytes of Google Drive data from 1440 users with 662 installed apps), we also delineate the ecosystem for third-party cloud apps from the standpoint of developers and cloud providers. Finally, we present several general recommendations that can guide other future works in the area of privacy for the cloud

Global Diffusion of the Internet XV: Web 2.0 Technologies, Principles, and Applications: A Conceptual Framework from Technology Push and Demand Pull Perspective

Web 2.0, the current Internet evolution, can be described by several key features of an expanded Web that is more interactive; allows easy social interactions through participation and collaboration from a variety of human sectors; responds more immediately to users\u27 queries and needs; is easier to search; and provides a faster, smoother, realistic and engaging user search capability, often with automatic updates to users. The purpose of this study is three-fold. First, the primary goal is to propose a conceptual Web 2.0 framework that provides better understanding of the Web 2.0 concept by classifying current key components in a holistic manner. Second, using several selective key components from the conceptual framework, this study conducts case analyses of Web 2.0 applications to discuss how they have adopted the selective key features (i.e., participation, collaboration, rich user experience, social networking, semantics, and interactivity responsiveness) of the conceptual Web 2.0 framework. Finally, the study provides insightful discussion of some challenges and opportunities provided by Web 2.0 to education, business, and social life

Exploring Millennials’ Motives in Media Class Preferences: Advertising Implications

Millennials have become a preoccupation for marketers, especially as they enter their peak earning and spending life stages. This exploratory study represents a touchstone to the motivations, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors members of the millennial cohort, those born between 1980-2000, exhibited toward three major media classes (print, broadcast, and Internet). Forty-one millennials participated in a series of synchronous online focus groups administered through a learning management system (LMS), or focus group chats (FGCs) for short. This study compares millennials’ views toward traditional media (namely, television and newspapers) against the Internet with an emphasis on perceived advantages and disadvantages of each medium, especially as they relate to millennials’ media class preferences. Support for the participants’ suppositions and expressions of their motives, behaviors, and opinions came by way of their verbatim answers to questions posed by the online focus group moderator. The findings suggest that millennials’ media class choices are influenced by convenience, access availability, time shift issues, and preferences. The participants showed discernable control anxiety about new Internet connected devices (ICDs) and media content sources