Tag clouds for situated interaction and place profiling

Tag clouds have become very popular as visual representations of the main topics in document sets or as navigation tools that can provide quick access to resources related with specific topics. However, their ability to represent the information environment associated with any meaningful reality in a way that is collectively visible, actionable and easily understood may also be very relevant, even when the reality being represented is no longer a set of documents or resources, but a stream of interactions occurring within a particular ubiquitous computing environment. In this paper, we explore the use of tag clouds within the context of situated displays and services. We hypothesise that such tag clouds may have a role as dynamic representations of place and also as interaction controls, supporting the same comprehension and navigation functions of classical tag clouds. We describe two case studies in which this concept of situated tag cloud has been experimented in real-world settings. The case studies demonstrate two different applications of the tag cloud concept as the basis for place description and situated interaction. The results obtained from the case studies suggest that situated tag clouds can indeed provide valuable representations of place and situations and can also support simple interaction models, allowing people to reason about the system behaviour and how it is being influenced by new interactions.Fernando Ribeiro was supported by a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology scholarship (SFRH/BD/31292/2006). The research leading to these results has received funding from FCT under the Carnegie Mellon - Portugal agreement: Wesp (Web Security and Privacy (Grant CMU-PT/SE/028/2008)

Using Cloudworks to Support OER Activities

This report forms the third and final output of the Pearls in the Clouds project, funded by the Higher Education Academy. It focuses on evaluation of the use of a social networking site, Cloudworks, to support evidence-based practice. The aim of this project (Pearls in the Clouds) has been to evaluate the ways in which web 2.0 tools like Cloudworks can support evidence-informed practices in relation to learning and teaching. We have reviewed evidence from empirically grounded studies surrounding the uses of web2.0 in higher education and highlighted the gap between using web2.0 to support learning and teaching, and using it to support learning about learning and teaching (in an evidence-informed way) (Conole and Alevizou, 2010). We have reported on findings from a case study focusing on the use of Cloudworks by a community of practice - educational technologists - reflecting upon, and, negotiating their role in enhancing teaching and learning in higher education (Galley et al., 2010). The object of this study is to explore and evaluate the use of the site by individuals and communities involved in the production of, and research on, the development, delivery and use of Open Educational Resources (OER)

A view at desktop clouds

Cloud has emerged as a new computing paradigm that promises to move into computing-as-utility era. Desktop Cloud is a new type of Cloud computing. It merges two computing models: Cloud computing and volunteer computing. The aim of Desktop Cloud is to provide Cloud services out of infrastructure that is not made for this purpose in order to reduce running and maintenance costs. This paper discusses this new type of Cloud by comparing it with current Cloud and Desktop Grid models. It, also, presents several research challenges in Desktop Cloud that require further attention

What would learning in an open world look like? A vision for the future

The pace of current technological advancement is phenomenal. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of ever more sophisticated gaming technologies, rich, immersive virtual worlds and new social networking services that enable learners and teachers to connect and communicate in new ways. The pace of change looks set to continue as annual Horizon reports testify (http://www.nmc.org/horizon). Clearly new technologies offer much in an educational context, with the promise of flexible, personalised and student-centred learning. Indeed research over the past few years, looking at learners' use of technologies, has given us a rich picture of how learners of all ages are appropriating new tools within their own context, mixing different applications for finding/managing information and for communicating with others (Sharpe and Beetham, forthcoming)

Interactive tag maps and tag clouds for the multiscale exploration of large spatio-temporal datasets

'Tag clouds' and 'tag maps' are introduced to represent geographically referenced text. In combination, these aspatial and spatial views are used to explore a large structured spatio-temporal data set by providing overviews and filtering by text and geography. Prototypes are implemented using freely available technologies including Google Earth and Yahoo! 's Tag Map applet. The interactive tag map and tag cloud techniques and the rapid prototyping method used are informally evaluated through successes and limitations encountered. Preliminary evaluation suggests that the techniques may be useful for generating insights when visualizing large data sets containing geo-referenced text strings. The rapid prototyping approach enabled the technique to be developed and evaluated, leading to geovisualization through which a number of ideas were generated. Limitations of this approach are reflected upon. Tag placement, generalisation and prominence at different scales are issues which have come to light in this study that warrant further work

Interactive visual exploration of a large spatio-temporal dataset: Reflections on a geovisualization mashup

Exploratory visual analysis is useful for the preliminary investigation of large structured, multifaceted spatio-temporal datasets. This process requires the selection and aggregation of records by time, space and attribute, the ability to transform data and the flexibility to apply appropriate visual encodings and interactions. We propose an approach inspired by geographical 'mashups' in which freely-available functionality and data are loosely but flexibly combined using de facto exchange standards. Our case study combines MySQL, PHP and the LandSerf GIS to allow Google Earth to be used for visual synthesis and interaction with encodings described in KML. This approach is applied to the exploration of a log of 1.42 million requests made of a mobile directory service. Novel combinations of interaction and visual encoding are developed including spatial 'tag clouds', 'tag maps', 'data dials' and multi-scale density surfaces. Four aspects of the approach are informally evaluated: the visual encodings employed, their success in the visual exploration of the clataset, the specific tools used and the 'rnashup' approach. Preliminary findings will be beneficial to others considering using mashups for visualization. The specific techniques developed may be more widely applied to offer insights into the structure of multifarious spatio-temporal data of the type explored here

Prototyping Incentive-based Resource Assignment for Clouds in Community Networks

Wireless community networks are a successful example of a collective where communities operate ICT infrastructure and provide IP connectivity based on the principle of reciprocal resource sharing of network bandwidth. This sharing, however, has not extended to computing and storage resources, resulting in very few applications and services which are currently deployed within community networks. Cloud computing, as in today's Internet, has made it common to consume resources provided by public clouds providers, but such cloud infrastructures have not materialized within community networks. We analyse in this paper socio-technical characteristics of community networks in order to derive scenarios for community clouds. Based on an architecture for such a community cloud, we implement a prototype for the incentive-driven resource assignment component, deploy it in a testbed of community network nodes, and evaluate its behaviour experimentally. Our evaluation gives insight into how the deployed prototype components regulate the consumption of cloud resources taking into account the users' contributions, and how this regulation affects the system usage. Our results suggest a further integration of this regulation component into current cloud management platforms in order to open them up for the operation of an ecosystem of community cloud

Evaluating tag-based information access in image collections

The availability of social tags has greatly enhanced access to information. Tag clouds have emerged as a new "social" way to find and visualize information, providing both one-click access to information and a snapshot of the "aboutness" of a tagged collection. A range of research projects explored and compared different tag artifacts for information access ranging from regular tag clouds to tag hierarchies. At the same time, there is a lack of user studies that compare the effectiveness of different types of tag-based browsing interfaces from the users point of view. This paper contributes to the research on tag-based information access by presenting a controlled user study that compared three types of tag-based interfaces on two recognized types of search tasks - lookup and exploratory search. Our results demonstrate that tag-based browsing interfaces significantly outperform traditional search interfaces in both performance and user satisfaction. At the same time, the differences between the two types of tag-based browsing interfaces explored in our study are not as clear. Copyright 2012 ACM