Issues for the sharing and re-use of scientific workflows

In this paper, we outline preliminary findings from an ongoing study we have been conducting over the past 18 months of researchers’ use of myExperiment, a Web 2.0-based repository with a focus on social networking around shared research artefacts such as workflows. We present evidence of myExperiment users’ workflow sharing and re-use practices, motivations, concerns and potential barriers. The paper concludes with. a discussion of the implications of these our findings for community formation, diffusion of innovations, emerging drivers and incentives for research practice, and IT systems design

Datapedia: a Yellow Brick Roadmap

This note lays out a roadmap to Datapedia: the goal is to share numbers with the same power and ease that the Wiki has delivered for documents. This would transform the quality and usability of economic data. The goal is a system which, by analogy with Wikipedia can establish a world resource for reliable data. The paper discusses a process by which data providers and users can evolve a new set os systems for exchanging, describing and interacting with data to bring this about. The proposal centres on the metadata – additional descriptive data – that is associated with numeric data, and suggests how, in two cases – World GDP and Creative Industry Employment – data could be mapped in such a way that viable Datawiki platforms can be built. The proposal also allows existing communities of users to start reshaping the way they exchange and handle data, to permit, and also to improve existing standards for collaborative use of data. The first step would be Datawiki: an opensource system for recording revisions, changes and sources of data, allowing users to compare different revisions and versions of data with each other. It would be a set of protocols, and simple web tools, to help data researchers pool, compare, scrutinise, and revise datasets from multiple sources. The first step towards Datawiki is Wikidata: rethinking the way that data itself is transmitted between people that collaborate on it a platform-independent standard for exchanging specifically numeric data. I show that the ubiquitous standard for exchanging data – the spreadsheet – is not up to the task of serving as a platform for Datawiki, and assess how alternatives can be developed.Creative Industries; Economic statistics; Datapedia; Wikipedia; Wikidata, wikipedia, creative industries, macroeconomics

End-user composition of interactive applications through actionable UI components

Developing interactive systems to access and manipulate data is a very tough task. In particular, the development of user interfaces (UIs) is one of the most time-consuming activities in the software lifecycle. This is even more demanding when data have to be retrieved by accessing flexibly different online resources. Indeed, software development is moving more and more toward composite applications that aggregate on the fly specific Web services and APIs. In this article, we present a mashup model that describes the integration, at the presentation layer, of UI components. The goal is to allow non-technical end users to visualize and manipulate (i.e., to perform actions on) the data displayed by the components, which thus become actionable UI components. This article shows how the model has guided the development of a mashup platform through which non-technical end users can create component-based interactive workspaces via the aggregation and manipulation of data fetched from distributed online resources. Due to the abundance of online data sources, facilitating the creation of such interactive workspaces is a very relevant need that emerges in different contexts. A utilization study has been performed in order to assess the benefits of the proposed model and of the Actionable UI Components; participants were required to perform real tasks using the mashup platform. The study results are reported and discussed

SMIL State: an architecture and implementation for adaptive time-based web applications

In this paper we examine adaptive time-based web applications (or presentations). These are interactive presentations where time dictates which parts of the application are presented (providing the major structuring paradigm), and that require interactivity and other dynamic adaptation. We investigate the current technologies available to create such presentations and their shortcomings, and suggest a mechanism for addressing these shortcomings. This mechanism, SMIL State, can be used to add user-defined state to declarative time-based languages such as SMIL or SVG animation, thereby enabling the author to create control flows that are difficult to realize within the temporal containment model of the host languages. In addition, SMIL State can be used as a bridging mechanism between languages, enabling easy integration of external components into the web application. Finally, SMIL State enables richer expressions for content control. This paper defines SMIL State in terms of an introductory example, followed by a detailed specification of the State model. Next, the implementation of this model is discussed. We conclude with a set of potential use cases, including dynamic content adaptation and delayed insertion of custom content such as advertisements. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Leveraging simulation practice in industry through use of desktop grid middleware

This chapter focuses on the collaborative use of computing resources to support decision making in industry. Through the use of middleware for desktop grid computing, the idle CPU cycles available on existing computing resources can be harvested and used for speeding-up the execution of applications that have “non-trivial” processing requirements. This chapter focuses on the desktop grid middleware BOINC and Condor, and discusses the integration of commercial simulation software together with free-to-download grid middleware so as to offer competitive advantage to organizations that opt for this technology. It is expected that the low-intervention integration approach presented in this chapter (meaning no changes to source code required) will appeal to both simulation practitioners (as simulations can be executed faster, which in turn would mean that more replications and optimization is possible in the same amount of time) and the management (as it can potentially increase the return on investment on existing resources)

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Live Coding

Open Access peer reviewed papers on live coding published at the 1st International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) in Leeds

Evolution and Competition in the Market for Handheld Computers

Since the early 1990s, electronic organisers or electronic agendas have been evolving towards fully fledged, but miniature, computers. This paper is a case study about this market. Uniquely, and reminiscent of the home computer market in the 1980s, this is a market for personal computers not dominated by Microsoft. Or at least, not yet. In tracking the evolution of this market, the paper points especially to the importance of networking and standardization. The market for handheld computers is a small market, compared to the units shipped in the market for PCs. Nevertheless a surprisingly large number of vendors has been and still is active in this market. During the short history of this market, there have been several periods where technological breakthroughs created expectations of huge growth, with entry by new suppliers as a result. As the dust settled, the losers either changed strategy, or left the market altogether. The paper will argue that standardization and networking are major factors in explaining competitive success and the recent growth of the industry.industrial organization ;