SEMA4A: An ontology for emergency notification systems accessibility

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. Reaching this goal is challenging due to users’ diversity: people with disabilities, elderly and children, and other vulnerable groups. Notifications are critical when an emergency scenario is going to happen (e.g. a typhoon approaching) so the ability to transmit notifications to different kind of users is a crucial feature for such systems. In this work an ontology was developed by investigating different sources: accessibility guidelines, emergency response systems, communication devices and technologies, taking into account the different abilities of people to react to different alarms (e.g. mobile phone vibration as an alarm for deafblind people). We think that the proposed ontology addresses the information needs for sharing and integrating emergency notification messages over distinct emergency response information systems providing accessibility under different conditions and for different kind of users.Ministerio de Educación y Cienci

InfoInternet for Education in the Global South: A Study of Applications Enabled by Free Information-only Internet Access in Technologically Disadvantaged Areas (authors' version)

This paper summarises our work on studying educational applications enabled by the introduction of a new information layer called InfoInternet. This is an initiative to facilitate affordable access to internet based information in communities with network scarcity or economic problems from the Global South. InfoInternet develops both networking solutions as well as business and social models, together with actors like mobile operators and government organisations. In this paper we identify and describe characteristics of educational applications, their specific users, and learning environment. We are interested in applications that make the adoption of Internet faster, cheaper, and wider in such communities. When developing new applications (or adopting existing ones) for such constrained environments, this work acts as initial guidelines prior to field studies.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, under review for a journal since March 201

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

Toward 2^W beyond Web 2.0

From its inception as a global hypertext system, the Web has evolved into a universal platform for deploying loosely coupled distributed applications. 2^W is a result of the exponentially growing Web building on itself to move from a Web of content to a Web of applications

European Law and Regulation of Mobile Net Neutrality

Mobile is a rapidly growing and potentially major element of the future Internet, and its environment cannot be sensibly considered in isolation from fixed networks [2]. A note on terminology: Europe uses the term Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) while the United States uses 'wireless' Internet Service Providers (ISPs) [3]. 'Wireless' is somewhat more open in the United States. In Europe, mobile has always made special pleading for forms of self-regulation, as we will see. The article introduces mobile broadband, then considers net neutrality in the fixed environment including the new laws passed in November 2009 in the European Parliament, before considering the mobile net neutrality debate, the degree of price control regulation exerted on European mobiles and the MNOs' vigorous rear-guard anti-regulation defence. Finally, I look at the effects of this regulatory asymmetry and whether MNO calls for mobile to be treated differently from other ISPs can be justified. I conclude by examining what the effect of price and content control on mobile is likely to be for incentives for fixed ISPs and produce a result that I describe as the 'fixed' strategy

Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions: supplementary materials

These supplementary materials accompany the report ‘Web 2.0 technologies for learning: the current landscape – opportunities, challenges and tensions’, which is the first report from research commissioned by Becta into Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. This report describes findings from the commissioned literature review of the then current landscape concerning learner use of Web 2.0 technologies and the implications for teachers, schools, local authorities and policy makers