DBMMS: DataBase MultiMedia System: un sistema per la gestione di contenuti culturali su internet

Questo documento descrive le modalità di attuazione e di realizzazione di alcuni tools per la gestione e l’organizzazione di informazioni aggregate nell’ambito di applicazioni su Internet caratterizzate dal possedere natura multimediale. Il sistema software, descritto in questo documento, cerca di offrire all’utente, in maniera assolutamente trasparente, la capacità di navigare tra informazioni logicamente correlate ed organizzate. Tali informazioni saranno strutturate in maniera da fornire una chiave di lettura logica attraverso raccolte di dati idealmente guidate e mirate. Le informazioni andranno a costituire un unico archivio organizzato secondo particolari criteri, utili per rendere più semplice e logica la fruizione delle risorse che saranno rese disponibili via Web

Playing by the rules: co-designing interactive installations with pupils

During the last couple of decades our perception of what constitutes a good learning environment has changed. Thanks to the use of technology, education is evolving from a passive model towards a more productive model, where students generate knowledge, teach each other, and collaborate on activities that make learning fun and interesting. In some previous works we have adopted this attitude: creating interactive installations thought for learning in an amusing way. Design-based research has demonstrated its potential as a methodology suitable to both research and design of technology-enhanced learning environments, a further step consists in co-design: students directly involved in designing with researchers. This paper provides some comments on the evaluation of the learning experience using two interactive installations promoting eco-friendly behaviours, and describe our experience in codesigning with pupils. We also report the ethnographic research performed underlining the weaknesses and the strengths, the difficulties and findings during the whole work

A collaborative, semantic and context-aware search engine

Search engines help people to find information in the largest public knowledge system of the world: the Web. Unfortunately its size makes very complex to discover the right information. The users are faced lots of useless results forcing them to select one by one the most suitable. The new generation of search engines evolve from keyword-based indexing and classification to more sophisticated techniques considering the meaning, the context and the usage of information. We argue about the three key aspects: collaboration, geo-referencing and semantics. Collaboration distributes storage, processing and trust on a world-wide network of nodes running on users’ computers, getting rid of bottlenecks and central points of failures. The geo-referencing of catalogued resources allows contextualisation based on user position. Semantic analysis lets to increase the results relevance. In this paper, we expose the studies, the concepts and the solutions of a research project to introduce these three key features in a novel search engine architecture.213-21

XPlaces : An open framework to support the digital living at home

In this paper we describe our research in the design and evaluation of novel interaction techniques for pervasive computer technology at home. We particularly focus on supporting every day life by the means of an open source, multi-platform framework called XPlaces (extensible Places) designed to enable interactive applications for several environments. Its main aim is to give to the ambient the role of a medium able to hide technological complexity implicit in everyday objects and to make easier people activities encouraging interaction with services and applications. It is primarily concerned with the human aspects of ubiquitous computing, applied to enhance the possible interactions between people and the technologies blended with an ambient. This paper is organized as follows: first we present the idea and the motivation behind the framework. Then, the architecture and the models for interaction are described, followed by integration issues of the current XPlaces specification. Finally we discuss some observation and conclusions.</p

Natural exploration of multimedia contents

In this paper we present a research experience of tangible exploration of multimedia contents: the troll, as we dubbed it, consists in the coupling of a paper brochure and a LCD display. Browsing the brochure the user can access multimedia contents that are displayed on the screen; the animations and movies are related to each specific page of the brochure, that in turn reports a description of our projects. We show the rationale behind the exploitation of TUIs in the specific design space of the demo corner of our research lab, discuss the implementation and evaluation with users of a working prototype, and suggest a broader viewpoint in the context of natural interaction as well as further work.</p

Dynamic TV content augmentation by Web pages - A prototype of enhanced remote control capable to complement TV-Viewing retrieving additional information from the World Wide Web

In this paper, we focus on integration of television program with Web contents. In the near future, these media will have similar features and the boundaries between them will become increasingly blurred, but nowadays both media are different enough to require noteworthy modifications in their respective computing models. We propose a first step towards their fusion, merging their features without forcing or changing their own structure. Starting from the idea that the integration of Internet and TV contents implies that the "digital objects" could migrate between the two devices, we developed the concept of enhanced remote control. We present a setopbox prototype capable of controlling the TV set, the media systems, and that additionally will enable the linking from television programs into the Web.</p

Multitouch sensing for collaborative interactive walls

In this paper we explain the design of t-Frame, a hardware/software architecture that allows the implementation of multiuser interactive wall. t-Frame brings multi-touch sensing to a generic display by means of low cost digital video cameras. The design of t-Frame is illustrated in detail, together with a prototype installation. We show how t-Frame differs from other approaches and discuss our findings, together with a plan of future research and improvements.</p

WebRogue: Rendezvous in a web place

In this paper, we describe the nuts and bolts of WebRogue. WebRogue is an internet tool, which bridges the gap between the virtual presence in a website and the full interaction with other users browsing the same page. The rationale behind WebRogue is simple indeed: a web browser and a chat client are linked together and each time the user loads a web page, he/she can see who is connected to that site and can start an end-to-end chat session with the other users. This allows web surfers to spontaneously aggregate around sites of interest, as happens in the real world, without being limited or controlled in any way by site owners. Additionally, WebRogue provides users with many functionalities to allow sophisticate interactions, such as whispering (sending private messages), screaming (sending a chat message that anyone can read), joining a group of users for group surfing and waiting in line.</p

WebRogue : Virtual presence in web sites

WebRogue is an application for virtual presence over the Web. It provides the Web Browser with a chat subwindow that allows users connected to the same Web site to meet, share opinions and cooperate in a totally free, non moderated and uncensored environment. Each time the user loads a Web page in the Web Browser, WebRogue opens a discussion channel in a centralized server application, that is completely decoupled from the Web server, using the URL of the Web site as a key. Thus whenever a new page is loaded the user can see who is connected, as if entering a physical site. Interactivity is supported by means of two type of commands: comunication commands allow synchronous interaction as with chat or instant messaging software; Social commands allow cooperation: group surfing, exchange of visit-cards and wait in line.</p