52,463 research outputs found
Will this work for Susan? Challenges for delivering usable and useful generic linked data browsers
While we witness an explosion of exploration tools for simple datasets on Web 2.0 designed for use by ordinary citizens, the goal of a usable interface for supporting navigation and sense-making over arbitrary linked data has remained elusive. The purpose of this paper is to analyse why - what makes exploring linked data so hard? Through a user-centered use case scenario, we work through requirements for sense making with data to extract functional requirements and to compare these against our tools to see what challenges emerge to deliver a useful, usable knowledge building experience with linked data. We present presentation layer and heterogeneous data integration challenges and offer practical considerations for moving forward to effective linked data sensemaking tools
Beltway: Getting Around Garbage Collection Gridlock
We present the design and implementation of a new garbage collection framework that significantly generalizes existing copying collectors. The Beltway framework exploits and separates object age and incrementality. It groups objects in one or more increments on queues called belts, collects belts independently, and collects increments on a belt in first-in-first-out order. We show that Beltway configurations, selected by command line options, act and perform the same as semi-space, generational, and older-first collectors, and encompass all previous copying collectors of which we are aware. The increasing reliance on garbage collected languages such as Java requires that the collector perform well. We show that the generality of Beltway enables us to design and implement new collectors that are robust to variations in heap size and improve total execution time over the best generational copying collectors of which we are aware by up to 40%, and on average by 5 to 10%, for small to moderate heap sizes. New garbage collection algorithms are rare, and yet we define not just one, but a new family of collectors that subsumes previous work. This generality enables us to explore a larger design space and build better collectors
From usability to secure computing and back again
Secure multi-party computation (MPC) allows multiple parties
to jointly compute the output of a function while preserving
the privacy of any individual partyās inputs to that function.
As MPC protocols transition from research prototypes to realworld
applications, the usability of MPC-enabled applications
is increasingly critical to their successful deployment and
widespread adoption. Our Web-MPC platform, designed with
a focus on usability, has been deployed for privacy-preserving
data aggregation initiatives with the City of Boston and the
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. After building and
deploying an initial version of the platform, we conducted a
heuristic evaluation to identify usability improvements and
implemented corresponding application enhancements. However,
it is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of these changes
within the context of real-world deployments using traditional
web analytics tools without compromising the security guarantees
of the platform. This work consists of two contributions
that address this challenge: (1) the Web-MPC platform has
been extended with the capability to collect web analytics
using existing MPC protocols, and (2) as a test of this feature
and a way to inform future work, this capability has been
leveraged to conduct a usability study comparing the two versions
ofWeb-MPC. While many efforts have focused on ways
to enhance the usability of privacy-preserving technologies,
this study serves as a model for using a privacy-preserving
data-driven approach to evaluate and enhance the usability of
privacy-preserving websites and applications deployed in realworld
scenarios. Data collected in this study yields insights
into the relationship between usability and security; these can
help inform future implementations of MPC solutions.Published versio
A survey of UK university web management: staffing, systems and issues
Purpose:
The purpose of the paper is to summarize the findings of a survey of UK universities about how their web site is managed and resourced, which technologies are in use and what are seen as the main issues and priorities.
Methodology/approach:
The paper is based on a web based questionnaire distributed in summer 2006, and which received 104 usable responses from 87 insitutions.
Findings:
The survey showed that some web teams were based in IT and some in external relations, yet in both cases the site typically served internal and external audiences. The role of web manager is partly management of resources, time and people, partly about marketing and liaison and partly also concerned with more technical aspects including interface design and HTML. But it is a diverse role with a wide spread of responsibilities. On the whole web teams were relatively small. Three quarters of responding institutions had a CMS, but specific systems in use were diverse. 60% had a portal. There was evidence of increasing use of blogs and wikis. The key driver for the web site is student recruitment, with instituitional reputation and information to stakeholders also being important. The biggest perceived weaknesses were maintaining consistency with devolved content creation and currency of content; lack of resourcing a key threat while comprehensiveness was a key strength. Current and wished for projects pointed again to the diversity of the sector.
Research implications/limitations:
The lack of comparative data and difficulties of interpreting responses to closed questions where respondents could have quite different status (partly reflecting divergent patterns of governance of the web across the sector) create issues with the reliability of the research.
Practical implications:
Data about resourcing of web management, technology in use etc at comparable institutions is invaluable for practitioners in their efforts to gain resource in their own context.
Originality/value of paper:
The paper adds more systematic, current data to our limited knowledge about how university web sites are managed
Analytics-Driven Digital Platform for Regional Growth and Development: A Case Study from Norway
In this paper, we present the growth barometer (Vekstbarometer in Norwegian),
which is a digital platform that provides the development trends in the
regional context in a visual and user-friendly way. The platform is developed
to use open data from different sources that is presented mainly in five main
groups: goals, premises or prerequisites for growth, industries, growth, and
expectations. Furthermore, it also helps to improve decision-making and
transparency, as well as provide new knowledge for research and society. The
platform uses sensitive and non-sensitive open data. In contrast to other
similar digital platforms from Norway, where the data is presented as raw data
or with basic level of presentations, our platform is advantageous since it
provides a range of options for visualization that makes the statistics more
comprehensive.Comment: The Thirteenth International Conference on Digital Society and
eGovernments (ICDS 2019
A model to assess the feasibility of public-private partnership for social housing
The effects of the world economic and financial crisis, which began in 2007 and is still in progress, has made increasingly sharp the line of demarcation between those able to access home ownership on the free market, and those unable to do so. For the European Union's member states, Social Housing (SH) policies include all the initiatives aimed at providing housing support for all the weak segments of the population; these policies have declined differently by different Member States according to their specific needs. In Italy, the growing need for SH accommodation together with the shortage of public resources makes developing forms of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) necessary. Evaluation techniques like Break-Even Analysis and Contribution Margin Analysis are useful in planning interventions including SH initiatives in the context of real estate development or retraining initiatives in PPP (in negotiation processes or in project financing). These kinds of techniques especially allow evaluation of public and private convenience in PPP. In the present work, an assessment procedure has been structured: first the main parameters of a settlement of SH initiative in PPP are defined; subsequently, it is possible to assess the feasibility and the financial balance of the initiative itself. The procedure has been applied to a case study: the interrupted initiative of self-renovation in Via Grotta Perfetta 315 in Rome (Italy)
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