A personal networking solution

This paper presents an overview of research being conducted on Personal Networking Solutions within the Mobile VCE Personal Distributed Environment Work Area. In particular it attempts to highlight areas of commonality with the MAGNET initiative. These areas include trust of foreign devices and service providers, dynamic real-time service negotiation to permit context-aware service delivery, an automated controller algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks, and routing protocols for ad hoc networking environments. Where possible references are provided to Mobile VCE publications to enable further reading

A cognitive approach to user perception of multimedia quality: An empirical investigation

Whilst multimedia technology has been one of the main contributing factors behind the Web's success, delivery of personalized multimedia content has been a desire seldom achieved in practice. Moreover, the perspective adopted is rarely viewed from a cognitive styles standpoint, notwithstanding the fact that they have significant effects on users’ preferences with respect to the presentation of multimedia content. Indeed, research has thus far neglected to examine the effect of cognitive styles on users’ subjective perceptions of multimedia quality. This paper aims to examine the relationships between users’ cognitive styles, the multimedia quality of service delivered by the underlying network, and users’ quality of perception (understood as both enjoyment and informational assimilation) associated with the viewed multimedia content. Results from the empirical study reported here show that all users, regardless of cognitive style, have higher levels of understanding of informational content in multimedia video clips (represented in our study by excerpts from television programmes) with weak dynamism, but that they enjoy moderately dynamic clips most. Additionally, multimedia content was found to significantly influence users’ levels of understanding and enjoyment. Surprisingly, our study highlighted the fact that Bimodal users prefer to draw on visual sources for informational purposes, and that the presence of text in multimedia clips has a detrimental effect on the knowledge acquisition of all three cognitive style groups

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

QoS adaptation in multimedia multicast conference applications for e-learning services

Tolerant real-time applications, such as video conferences, are in the frontline to benefit from QoS adaptation. However, not all include adaptive technology able to provide both end-system and network quality awareness. Adaptation, in these cases, can be achieved by introducing a multiplatform middleware layer responsible for tutoring the applications’ resources (enabling adjudication or limitation) based on the available processing and networking capabilities. Congregating these technological contributions, an adaptive platform has been developed integrating public domain multicast tools, applied to a Web-based distance learning system. The system is user-centered (estudent), aiming at good pedagogical practices and proactive usability for multimedia and networkresources. The services provided, including QoS adapted interactive multimedia multicast conferences (MMC), are fully integrated and transparent to end-users. QoS adaptation, when treated systematically in tolerant real-time applications, denotes advantages in group scalability and QoS sustainability in heterogeneous and unpredictable environments such as the Internet

PENGEMBANGAN LINGKUNGAN DIGITAL BERBASIS ADAPTIVE QoS UNTUK MENDUKUNG PROSES PEMBELAJARAN DI KAMPUS

Penelitian ini mengembangkan model lingkungan digital dalam proses pembelajaran dengan mempertimbangkan aspek Quality of Service (QoS) akses Internet yang tersedia. Terkait penyediaan sumberdaya yang memadai dalam melakukan akses ke konten pembelajaran, kondisi ketersediaan bandwidth diperlukan untuk menentukan layanan yang dapat disediakan oleh sistem kepada partisipan. Konten pembelajaran yang berbasis multimedia memerlukan konsumsi bandwitdh yang lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan konten berbasis teks. Hal ini akan menimbulkan masalah ketika ketersediaan bandwidth dalam jaringan bersifat fluktuatif. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini dilakukan mengikuti metodologi rekayasa perangkat lunak dengan pendekatan object-oriented. Tahapan pengembangan meliputi: (i) Identifikasi kebutuhan; (ii) Analisis model konseptual; (iii) Desain model akses untuk lingkungan digital berbasis QoS adaptif yang menghasilkan cetak biru penelitian; (iv) Implementasi berupa pengembangan prototipe yang menunjukkan bahwa desain dapat diimplementasikan untuk mengatasi masalah ketidakhandalan koneksi Internet dalam pembelajaran kolaboratif, (v) Pengujian terhadap model yang dikembangkan dilakukan melalui serangkaian skenario pada skala simulasi laboratorium. Target penelitian diharapkan (a) identifikasi persyaratan tingkat QoS (kebutuhan bandwidth) untuk aplikasi-aplikasi yang digunakan dalam proses pembelajaran, (b) identifikasi parameter-parameter sebagai dasar pengukuran preferensi terhadap tingkat QoS yang diperlukan oleh partisipan pembelajaran, (c) rancangan model lingkungan digital, (d) pengembangan kerangka kerja (framework) akses berbasis QoS adaptif, (e) Integrasi kerangka kerja DLE pada aplikasi-aplikasi pembelajaran, (f) melakukan publikasi hasil penelitian melalui seminar dan jurnal ilmiah

Challenges Emerging from Future Cloud Application Scenarios

The cloud computing paradigm encompasses several key differentiating elements and technologies, tackling a number of inefficiencies, limitations and problems that have been identified in the distributed and virtualized computing domain. Nonetheless, and as it is the case for all emerging technologies, their adoption led to the presentation of new challenges and new complexities. In this paper we present key application areas and capabilities of future scenarios, which are not tackled by current advancements and highlight specific requirements and goals for advancements in the cloud computing domain. We discuss these requirements and goals across different focus areas of cloud computing, ranging from cloud service and application integration, development environments and abstractions, to interoperability and relevant to it aspects such as legislation. The future application areas and their requirements are also mapped to the aforementioned areas in order to highlight their dependencies and potential for moving cloud technologies forward and contributing towards their wider adoption

Computer-Mediated Communication

This book is an anthology of present research trends in Computer-mediated Communications (CMC) from the point of view of different application scenarios. Four different scenarios are considered: telecommunication networks, smart health, education, and human-computer interaction. The possibilities of interaction introduced by CMC provide a powerful environment for collaborative human-to-human, computer-mediated interaction across the globe