Toward Smart Community Networks

The advent of IEEE 802.11 in the late 1990s spurred the development of new network paradigms. In particular, new technology enthusiasts saw the potential of WiFi to bring broadband Internet connections to under-provisioned areas, giving rise to networks deployed and maintained by their users. This paradigm led to non-profit decentralized structures that grow by the unplanned addition of heterogeneous network devices: community networks (CNs). There have been hundreds of CN deployments worldwide; some have disappeared, while others have blossomed into complex networks with thousands of nodes. The networking research community has been aware of CNs, and many works studied CNs in their various aspects: design (routing, scalability, security), deployment, measurements, services, and so on. We argue that emerging technologies will give a new impetus to CNs by transforming them into smart CNs. This article aims to lay out the technical features of future CNs and encourage the research community to tackle the stimulating research challenges they raise

Building bridges, filling gaps : toward an integrative interdisciplinary and mixed method approach for future audience research in relation to the mediation of distant suffering

Based on extensive literature research and 11 expert interviews with academics familiar with the field of audience studies and mediation of distant suffering, this article provides a metadiscussion of the different paradigms and methodologies that can be used for further empirical audience research. It is argued that the “middle-way” paradigms such as critical realism, grounded theory, and pragmatism can productively serve as the basis for a common epistemic language in interdisciplinary research. A mixed-methods approach may serve well for a broad and holistic study of the audience. It is further argued that future empirical research of media users in relation to distant suffering could benefit from an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach

Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

[Abstract]: Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users

Power and Practice in Academic Library Materials Selection Paradigms

This article examines the theoretical and practical implications of three methods of materials acquisitions in an academic library. First, it evaluates how traditional collection development, electronic patron driven acquisitions (PDA) and other older forms of PDA affect materials storage, preservation, purchase speed and usage. Then this paper employs Foucault’s theories about power to discuss the ramifications of these acquisitions methods for librarians and three major user groups: faculty, graduate students and undergraduates. The article concludes that each method presents different practical and theoretical advantages and disadvantages

Personal Volunteer Computing

We propose personal volunteer computing, a novel paradigm to encourage technical solutions that leverage personal devices, such as smartphones and laptops, for personal applications that require significant computations, such as animation rendering and image processing. The paradigm requires no investment in additional hardware, relying instead on devices that are already owned by users and their community, and favours simple tools that can be implemented part-time by a single developer. We show that samples of personal devices of today are competitive with a top-of-the-line laptop from two years ago. We also propose new directions to extend the paradigm