Internet Predictions

More than a dozen leading experts give their opinions on where the Internet is headed and where it will be in the next decade in terms of technology, policy, and applications. They cover topics ranging from the Internet of Things to climate change to the digital storage of the future. A summary of the articles is available in the Web extras section

An investigation into internetworking education

Computer network technology and the Internet grew rapidly in recent years. Their growth created a large demand from industry for the development of IT and internetworking professionals. These professionals need to be equipped with both technical hands-on skills and non-technical or soft skills. In order to supply new professionals to the industry, educational institutions need to address these skills training in their curricula. Technical hands-on skills in internetworking education can be emphasised through the practical use of equipment in classrooms. The provision of the networking equipment to the internetworking students is a challenge. Particularly, university students in developing countries may find that this equipment is ineffectively provided by their teaching institutions, because of the expense. Modern online learning tools, such as remote access laboratories, may be used to address this need. However, the provision of such tools will also need to concentrate upon the pedagogical values. In addition, traditional remote access laboratories provide only text-based access, which was originally designed for highly professional use. Novice students may struggle with learning in these virtual environments, especially when the physical equipment is not available locally. Furthermore, non-technical skills or soft skills are social skills that should not be neglected in graduates’ future workplaces. A traditional model of developing soft skills that was used in face-to-face classroom may not be as effective when applied in an online classroom. Research on students’ opinions about their soft skills development during attending internetworking courses is needed to be conducted. In order to address both research needs, this study was focused on two research aspects related to online learning in internetworking education. The first focus was on research into providing a suitable technical learning environment to distance internetworking students. The second focus was on the students’ opinions about their non-technical skills development. To provide a close equivalent of a face-to-face internetworking learning environment to remote students in Thailand, a transformation of a local internetworking laboratory was conducted. A new multimedia online learning environment integrated pedagogically-rich tools such as state model diagrams (SMDs), a real-time video streaming of equipment and a voice communication tool. Mixed research data were gathered from remote online and local student participants. The remote online participants were invited to use the new learning environment developed in this study. Qualitative research data were collected from twelve remote online students after their trial usage. Concurrently, another set of research data were collected from local students asking their opinion about the development of soft skills in the internetworking course. There were sixty six participants in this second set of research data. Although the research data was limited, restricting the researcher’s ability to generalise, it can be concluded that the provision of multimedia tools in an online internetworking learning environment was beneficial to distant students. The superiority of the traditional physical internetworking laboratory cannot be overlooked; however, the remote laboratory could be used as a supplementary self-practice tool. A concrete learning element such as a real-time video stream and diagrams simplified students learning processes in the virtual environment. Faster communication with the remote instructors and the equipment are also critical factors for a remote access network to be successful. However, unlike the face-to-face laboratory, the future challenge of the online laboratory will creating materials which will encourage students to build soft skills in their laboratory sessions

Understanding user experience of mobile video: Framework, measurement, and optimization

Since users have become the focus of product/service design in last decade, the term User eXperience (UX) has been frequently used in the field of Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Research on UX facilitates a better understanding of the various aspects of the user’s interaction with the product or service. Mobile video, as a new and promising service and research field, has attracted great attention. Due to the significance of UX in the success of mobile video (Jordan, 2002), many researchers have centered on this area, examining users’ expectations, motivations, requirements, and usage context. As a result, many influencing factors have been explored (Buchinger, Kriglstein, Brandt & Hlavacs, 2011; Buchinger, Kriglstein & Hlavacs, 2009). However, a general framework for specific mobile video service is lacking for structuring such a great number of factors. To measure user experience of multimedia services such as mobile video, quality of experience (QoE) has recently become a prominent concept. In contrast to the traditionally used concept quality of service (QoS), QoE not only involves objectively measuring the delivered service but also takes into account user’s needs and desires when using the service, emphasizing the user’s overall acceptability on the service. Many QoE metrics are able to estimate the user perceived quality or acceptability of mobile video, but may be not enough accurate for the overall UX prediction due to the complexity of UX. Only a few frameworks of QoE have addressed more aspects of UX for mobile multimedia applications but need be transformed into practical measures. The challenge of optimizing UX remains adaptations to the resource constrains (e.g., network conditions, mobile device capabilities, and heterogeneous usage contexts) as well as meeting complicated user requirements (e.g., usage purposes and personal preferences). In this chapter, we investigate the existing important UX frameworks, compare their similarities and discuss some important features that fit in the mobile video service. Based on the previous research, we propose a simple UX framework for mobile video application by mapping a variety of influencing factors of UX upon a typical mobile video delivery system. Each component and its factors are explored with comprehensive literature reviews. The proposed framework may benefit in user-centred design of mobile video through taking a complete consideration of UX influences and in improvement of mobile videoservice quality by adjusting the values of certain factors to produce a positive user experience. It may also facilitate relative research in the way of locating important issues to study, clarifying research scopes, and setting up proper study procedures. We then review a great deal of research on UX measurement, including QoE metrics and QoE frameworks of mobile multimedia. Finally, we discuss how to achieve an optimal quality of user experience by focusing on the issues of various aspects of UX of mobile video. In the conclusion, we suggest some open issues for future study

ICT Infrastructure, Applications, Society and Education

Proceedings of the Annual Strathmore University ICT Conference 2006Proceedings of the Annual Strathmore University ICT Conference 200

Web Data Extraction, Applications and Techniques: A Survey

Web Data Extraction is an important problem that has been studied by means of different scientific tools and in a broad range of applications. Many approaches to extracting data from the Web have been designed to solve specific problems and operate in ad-hoc domains. Other approaches, instead, heavily reuse techniques and algorithms developed in the field of Information Extraction. This survey aims at providing a structured and comprehensive overview of the literature in the field of Web Data Extraction. We provided a simple classification framework in which existing Web Data Extraction applications are grouped into two main classes, namely applications at the Enterprise level and at the Social Web level. At the Enterprise level, Web Data Extraction techniques emerge as a key tool to perform data analysis in Business and Competitive Intelligence systems as well as for business process re-engineering. At the Social Web level, Web Data Extraction techniques allow to gather a large amount of structured data continuously generated and disseminated by Web 2.0, Social Media and Online Social Network users and this offers unprecedented opportunities to analyze human behavior at a very large scale. We discuss also the potential of cross-fertilization, i.e., on the possibility of re-using Web Data Extraction techniques originally designed to work in a given domain, in other domains.Comment: Knowledge-based System

From diversity to convergence : British computer networks and the Internet, 1970-1995

The Internet's success in the 21st century has encouraged analysts to investigate the origin of this network. Much of this literature adopts a teleological approach. Works often begin by discussing the invention of packet switching, describe the design and development of the ARPANET, and then examine how this network evolved into the Internet. Although the ARPANET was a seminal computer network, these accounts usually only briefly consider the many other diverse networks that existed. In addition, apart from momentary asides to alternative internetworking solutions, such as the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) seven-layer reference model, this literature concentrates exclusively on the ARPANET, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. While focusing on these subjects is important and therefore justified, it can leave the reader with the impression that the world of networking started with the ARPANET and ended with the Internet. This thesis is an attempt to help correct this misconception. This thesis analyses the evolution of British computer networks and the Internet between the years 1970 and 1995. After an introduction in Chapter 1, the thesis analyses several networks. In Chapters 2 and 3, the focus is on academic networks, especially JANET and SuperJANET. Attention moves to videotex networks in Chapter 4, specifically Prestel, and in Chapter 5, the dissertation examines electronic mail networks such as Telecom Gold and Cable & Wireless Easylink. Chapter 6 considers online services, including CompuServe, American Online, and the Microsoft Network, and the thesis ends with a conclusion in Chapter 7. All of the networks discussed used protocols that were incompatible with each other which limited the utility of the networks for their users. Although it was possible that OSI or another solution could have solved this problem, the Internet's protocols achieved this objective. This thesis shows how the networks converged around TCP/IP

Kehollistuneet vuorovaikutuskoreografiat. Kinesteettinen lähestymistapa älykkäiden ympäristöjen suunnitteluun

Research investigates interaction design through application of the concept of choreography. Special attention is paid to assess what kind of influences technological designs have on the user’s body and movements. Choreographic approach to interaction design emphasizes the felt experience of movement as content to interaction design and offers methods for conducting multi-level choreographic analysis. The concept of kinesthesia, which refers to the felt sensation of movement, is regarded as the foundational concept for both understanding and realizing the choreographic analysis. Choreographic method is applied in studying a future vision of intelligent information and communication environments. Intelligent environment refers to development where objects in everyday environments become connected and form a communicating-actuating network that possess abilities to collect information on the environment and of its users, and enables processing of this information for serving the user’s needs. The research data consists of two visions on intelligent environments in video format, introduced by Microsoft. Visions are analyzed through choreographic analysis with intention to investigate interactions between the user, the intelligent environment and the computer system. Micro level choreography analysis focuses on how the user experiences choreographies as movement continuums. Also local level choreographies that address the broader interaction context will be analyzed. Task based analysis focuses on two functions, first, sending and fetching digital information and, second, real time re-modelling of data and visualizations. Phenomenological methodology that enabled embodiment of the choreographies through dancing was applied in the analysis. Dancing aimed at internalizing the choreographies and enabled the analysis of felt sensation of movement. Key finding of the study is that choreographic analysis and hermeneutics of the body work well to be utilized in tandem in conducting a case study research on intelligent ICT environments. Dancing is considered as choreographic practice that provides understanding on the unfolding of interactions in space, time and movement. Furthermore, dancing integrates the designer’s explicit technological information to the design context and highlights the kinesthetic dimension of interaction. Presented methods provide relevant support for defining technological systems in intelligent ICT environments that are grounded in the embodied experience of interaction. I suggest that ‘dancing as choreographic practice’ is to be applied in user-centered design of intelligent information and communication environments.Tutkimus tarkastelee vuorovaikutussuunnittelua koreografian käsitteen kautta. Koreografinen lähestymistapa tarkastelee teknologian kokonaisvaltaista ohjausvaikutusta käyttäjän liikkeeseen teknologian käyttötilanteessa. Koreografinen suunnitteluote korostaa liikkeen kokemuksen huomioimisen tärkeyttä vuorovaikutussuunnittelussa ja tarjoaa menetelmiä monitasoisen vuorovaikutusanalyysin toteuttamiseen. Kinestesian käsite, jolla tarkoitetaan liikkeen kokemista kehossa, nousee yhdeksi koreografisen lähestymistavan keskeisistä käsitteistä. Sovellan koreografista menetelmää tulevaisuuden älykästä informaatio- ja kommunikaatioympäristöä kuvaavan vision tutkimiseen. Älykkäällä ympäristöllä viittaan kehityskulkuun, jossa jokapäiväisissä ympäristöissämme läsnä oleva teknologia verkottuu, kykenee keräämään ja jakamaan tietoa ympäristöstä ja käyttäjistä sekä mahdollistaa tiedon jalostuksen käyttäjän tarpeita palvelevalla tavalla. Aineistona on käytetty Microsoftin teknologiavisioita, joissa esitetyt kuvaukset älykkäistä ympäristöistä sekä esimerkit käyttäjän ja teknologian välisistä liikkeellisistä vuorovaikutuksista nousevat analyysin kohteeksi. Analyysissa keskitytään ensinnäkin käyttäjän toteuttamien mikroliikkeiden jatkumon kokemuksen analyysiin. Toiseksi analysoidaan yksilön kokemusta paikallisen tason koreografioissa. Tällä analyysitasolla huomiota kiinnitetään teknologista vuorovaikutusta laajemman vuorovaikutustapahtuman kontekstiin jolloin mm. sosiaaliset tapahtumat ja tilan vaikutus vuorovaikutukseen tulevat huomioiduksi. Analyysi toteutetaan tehtäväperusteisena ja analyysi käsittää kaksi toimintoa: tiedostojen jakaminen ja vastaanottaminen sekä datan ja visualisointien muokkaus. Toteutin tutkimuksen nojaten fenomenologiseen metodologiaan, joka mahdollisti koreografioiden henkilökohtaisen omaksumisen tanssin eli tutkimuksen kohteena olevien vuorovaikutustapojen kehollisen harjoittamisen kautta. Teknologiavisioissa esitetyn liikemateriaalin perusteella jäsentyi koreografia, jonka tanssiminen mahdollisti liiketiedon sisäistämisen ja vuorovaikutusten kehollisesti koettujen ulottuvuuksien arvioinnin. Tutkimus osoitti koreografisen analyysin ja osittain tanssimalla toteutetun ruumiin hermeneuttisen lähestymistavan soveltuvan hyvin sovellettavaksi yhdessä älykästä ympäristöä käsittelevässä tapaustutkimuksessa. Tutkimuksen johtopäätöksenä koreografisen menetelmän ja vuorovaikutusten kehollisen harjoittamisen todetaan auttavan suunnittelijaa tilassa, ajassa ja liikkeessä tapahtuvien vuorovaikutusten jäsentämisessä, ja arvioimaan miten teknologisen järjestelmän suunnitteluratkaisut vaikuttavat käyttäjän kehoon ja liikkeeseen vuorovaikutustapahtumassa. Esitän ’tanssimista koreografisena käytäntönä’ sovellettavaksi älykkäiden ympäristöjen käyttäjäkeskeisen suunnittelun menetelmänä