The 2002 IFIP Workshop on Internet Technologies, Applications, and Societal Impact (WITASI 2002), held in Wroclaw, Poland, October 10-11, 2002, presents different research aspects of the Internet, both technical and societal. The workshop aims at getting together scientists and practitioners from different research areas to work together on Internet development and reflect on Internet consequences to the economy and society. The papers presented in these proceedings describe state-of-the-art research in such areas of Internet applications as languages, mobility, multimedia, quality of service, voice over IP, and wireless access. A total of 40 papers were submitted to WITASI 2002 out of which 18 papers were selected for presentation at the workshop and inclusion in the proceedings. The workshop also includes 4 invited papers. WIT ASI 2002 was sponsored by IFIP -the International Federation for Information Processing. It was organized by Working Group WG 6.4 on Internet Applications Engineering of the Technical Committee TC 6 on Communication Systems. Locally, WITASI 2002 was organized by the Institute of Control and Systems Engineering, Wroclaw University of Technology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, ICEC 2012, held in Bremen, Germany, in September 2012. The 21 full papers, 13 short papers, 16 posters, 8 demos, 4 workshops, 1 tutorial and 3 doctoral consortium submissions presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on story telling; serious games (learning and training); self and identity, interactive performance; mixed reality and 3D worlds; serious games (health and social); player experience; tools and methods; user interface; demonstrations; industry demonstration; harnessing collective intelligence with games; game development and model-driven software development; mobile gaming, mobile life - interweaving the virtual and the real; exploring the challenges of ethics, privacy and trust in serious gaming; open source software for entertainment.

Rate-Quality Optimized Video Coding discusses the matter of optimizing (or negotiating) the data rate of compressed digital video and its quality, which has been a relatively neglected topic in either side of image/video coding and tele-traffic management. Video rate management becomes a technically challenging task since it is required to maintain a certain video quality regardless of the availability of transmission or storage media. This is caused by the broadband nature of digital video and inherent algorithmic features of mainstream video compression schemes, e.g. H.261, H.263 and MPEG series. In order to maximize the media utilization and to enhance video quality, the data rate of compressed video should be regulated within a budget of available media resources while maintaining the video quality as high as possible. In Part I (Chapters 1 to 4) the non-stationarity of digital video is discussed. Since the non-stationary nature is also inherited from algorithmic properties of international video coding standards, which are a combination of statistical coding techniques, the video rate management techniques of these standards are explored. Although there is a series of known video rate control techniques, such as picture rate variation, frame dropping, etc., these techniques do not view the matter as an optimization between rate and quality. From the view of rate-quality optimization, the quantizer is the sole means of controling rate and quality. Thus, quantizers and quantizer control techniques are analyzed, based on the relationship of rate and quality. In Part II (Chapters 5 and 6), as a coherent approach to non-stationary video, established but still thriving nonlinear techniques are applied to video rate-quality optimization such as artificial neural networks including radical basis function networks, and fuzzy logic-based schemes. Conventional linear techniques are also described before the nonlinear techniques are explored. By using these nonlinear techniques, it is shown how they influence and tackle the rate-quality optimization problem. Finally, in Chapter 7 rate-quality optimization issues are reviewed in emerging video communication applications such as video transcoding and mobile video. This chapter discusses some new issues and prospects of rate and quality control in those technology areas. Rate-Quality Optimized Video Coding is an excellent reference and can be used for advanced courses on the topic.

Processing: Creative Coding and Generative Art in Processing 2 is a fun and creative approach to learning programming. Using the easy to learn Processing programming language, you will quickly learn how to draw with code, and from there move to animating in 2D and 3D. These basics will then open up a whole world of graphics and computer entertainment. If you've been curious about coding, but the thought of it also makes you nervous, this book is for you; if you consider yourself a creative person, maybe worried programming is too non-creative, this book is also for you; if you want to learn about the latest Processing 2.0 language release and also start making beautiful code art, this book is also definitely for you. You will learn how to develop interactive simulations, create beautiful visualizations, and even code image-manipulation applications. All this is taught using hands-on creative coding projects. Processing 2.0 is the latest release of the open-source Processing language, and includes exciting new features, such as OpenGL 2 support for enhanced 3D graphics performance. Processing: Creative Coding and Generative Art in Processing 2 is designed for independent learning and also as a primary text for an introductory computing class. Based on research funded by the National Science Foundation, this book brings together some of the most engaging and successful approaches from the digital arts and computer science classrooms. Teaches you how to program using a fun and creative approach. Covers the latest release of the Processing 2.0 language. Presents a research based approach to learning computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems, RR 2012, held in Vienna, Austria, in September 2012. The 27 revised research papers, presented together with 2 invited talks and 5 research summaries were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections on technical communications, algorithms, design aspects of rule markup, design of ontology languages, engineering of engines, translators, and other tools, standardization efforts, such as the Rules Interchange Format activity at W3C, and applications.

The papers in this volume were presented at the Second Annual Work shop on Active Middleware Services and were selected for inclusion here by the Editors. The AMS workshop was organized with support from both the National Science Foundation and the CAT center at the Uni versity of Arizona, and was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 1, 2000, in conjunction with the 9th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC-9). The explosive growth of Internet-based applications and the prolifer ation of networking technologies has been transforming most areas of computer science and engineering as well as computational science and commercial application areas. This opens an outstanding opportunity to explore new, Internet-oriented software technologies that will open new research and application opportunities not only for the multimedia and commercial world, but also for the scientific and high-performance computing applications community. Two emerging technologies - agents and active networks - allow increased programmability to enable bring ing new services to Internet based applications. The AMS workshop presented research results and working papers in the areas of active net works, mobile and intelligent agents, software tools for high performance distributed computing, network operating systems, and application pro gramming models and environments. The success of an endeavor such as this depends on the contributions of many individuals. We would like to thank Dr. Frederica Darema and the NSF for sponsoring the workshop.

Enterprises all over the world are experiencing a rapid development of networked computing for applications that are required for the daily survival of an organization. Client-server computing offers great potential for cost-effective networked computing. However, many organizations have now learned that the cost of maintenance and support of these networked distributed systems far exceeds the cost of buying them. Computer Supported Creative Work (CSCW) is the new evolving area that promotes the understanding of business processes and relevant communication technologies. Cooperative Management of Enterprise Networks uses CSCW as the medium for conveying ideas on the integration of business processes with network and systems management. This book will be useful for systems management professionals wishing to know about business process integration; business managers wishing to integrate their tasks with network/systems management; software system developers wishing to adopt participatory design practices; and students and researchers.

Wireless systems for mobile communication is one of the most rapidly expanding fields in digital telecommunications. Such hot topics as wireless Internet, mobile access to multimedia services and wireless convergence systems are likely to affect the whole of the information society and will pose intellectual challenges to researchers in the foreseeable future. Transmission techniques like WCDMA, user-oriented protocols like WAP and communication structures like LEO are just a few tools that seem to usher in the era of unlimited resource availability. Personal Wireless Communications addresses these issues, with 17 regular papers and 4 invited papers by leading researchers in the area of wireless communications. The volume comprises the proceedings of the Working Conference on Personal Wireless Communications (PWC'2000), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Gdansk, Poland in September 2000.The contributions cover a wide range of topics, from 3G cellular systems to wireless Internet and WAP design to wireless LAN and ATM; from speech coding and antenna design to teletraffic modelling and protocol evaluation. The book is thus essential reading for theoreticians and engineers interested in the current progress in wireless systems, as well as for IT students and researchers.

Intelligence in Networks is a concept, the meaning of which is highly related to the time-period when it is used. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it was mainly related to the teleservice repertoire 'an sich'. In the 1990s, it is more related to efficient flexibility in the introduction of new teleservices and teleservice repertoire. This state-of-the-art text sets out to identify and study issues related to solutions for increasing intelligence in networks. As examples, intelligence networks (IN), telecommunication information networking architecture (TINA) and mobile agents and active networks are different solutions for improving the grade of network intelligence. The areas under discussion include research and development within various closely related fields such as: * Teleservices, service architecture and service creation; * Middleware and specification languages; * Mobile agents, active networks, plug-and-play issues; and * Quality of service and performance.GBP/LISTGBP Intelligence in Networks contains the proceedings of SMARTNET'99, the fifth in a series of conferences on intelligence in networks sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), at the Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand in November 1999.

The very word "digital" has acquired a status that far exceeds its humble dictionary definition. Even the prefix digital, when associ ated with familiar sectors such as radio, television, photography and telecommunications, has reinvented these industries, and provided a unique opportunity to refresh them with new start-up companies, equipment, personnel, training and working practices - all of which are vital to modern national and international economies. The last century was a period in which new media stimulated new job opportunities, and in many cases created totally new sectors: video competed with film, CDs transformed LPs, and computer graphics threatened traditional graphic design sectors. Today, even the need for a physical medium is in question. The virtual digital domain allows the capture, processing, transmission, storage, retrieval and display of text, images, audio and animation without familiar materials such as paper, celluloid, magnetic tape and plastic. But moving from these media to the digital domain intro duces all sorts of problems, such as the conversion of analog archives, multimedia databases, content-based retrieval and the design of new content that exploits the benefits offered by digital systems. It is this issue of digital content creation that we address in this book. Authors from around the world were invited to comment on different aspects of digital content creation, and their contributions form the 23 chapters of this volume.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Sino-foreign-interchange Workshop on Intelligence Science and Intelligent Data Engineering, IScIDE 2011, held in Xi'an, China, in October 2011. The 97 papers presented were carefully peer-reviewed and selected from 389 submissions. The IScIDE papers in this volume are organized in topical sections on machine learning and computational intelligence; pattern recognition; computer vision and image processing; graphics and computer visualization; knowledge discovering, data mining, web mining; multimedia processing and application.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2012 - the successor of the ECDL (European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries) - held in Paphos, Cyprus, in September 2012. The 23 full papers, 19 short papers, 15 posters and 8 demonstrations presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 139 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on user behavior, mobiles and place, heritage and sustainability, preservation, linked data, analysing and enriching documents, content and metadata quality, folksonomy and ontology, information retrieval, organising collections, as well as extracting and indexing.

In the early 1990s, the establishment of the Internet brought forth a revolutionary viewpoint of information storage, distribution, and processing: the World Wide Web is becoming an enormous and expanding distributed digital library. Along with the development of the Web, image indexing and retrieval have grown into research areas sharing a vision of intelligent agents. Far beyond Web searching, image indexing and retrieval can potentially be applied to many other areas, including biomedicine, space science, biometric identification, digital libraries, the military, education, commerce, culture and entertainment. Machine Learning and Statistical Modeling Approaches to Image Retrieval describes several approaches of integrating machine learning and statistical modeling into an image retrieval and indexing system that demonstrates promising results. The topics of this book reflect authors' experiences of machine learning and statistical modeling based image indexing and retrieval. This book contains detailed references for further reading and research in this field as well.

Just a few years ago, virtual reality was regarded as more a toy than a tool. Today, however, it is becoming the enabling technology for man-machine communications. The rapid development of graphics hardware and soft ware makes its application possible. Besides building walkthroughs and landscape fly-overs with very realistic visual effects, we can recognize the trend toward industrial applications. This is because of the emerging need for tools for rapid product development. Especially in the aeronautical and automotive industries, companies have began to investigate and develop virtual reality tools for their own needs in co-operation with research or ganizations. In co-operation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD), the Computer Graphics Center (ZGDV) in Darmstadt established the German working group on virtual reality in 1993 as a forum for infor mation exchange between industry and research. German researchers, system developers, and industrial users have met several times in Darm stadt at the Computer Graphics Center. In these meetings they discussed the essential issues inherent in applying virtual reality to industrial appli cations and exchanged their latest research results and experiences.

This book and its companion volume, LNCS 7282 and 7283, constitute the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference, EuroHaptics 2012, held in Tampere, Finland, in June 2012. The 99 papers (56 full papers, 32 short papers, and 11 demo papers) presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 153 submissions. Part I contains the full papers whereas Part II contains the short papers and the demo papers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Haptic and Audio Interaction Design, HAID 2012, held in Lund, Sweden, in August 2012. The 15 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on haptics and audio in navigation, supporting experiences and activities, object and interface, test and evaluation.

This book provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The major difference between this book and the first edition is the addition to this text of descriptions of the automated indexing of multimedia documents, as items in information retrieval are now considered to be a combination of text along with graphics, audio, image and video data types. The growth of the Internet and the availability of enormous volumes of data in digital form have necessitated intense interest in techniques to assist the user in locating data. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext linked structure are put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure. The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information.With the availability of large quantities of multi-media on the Internet (audio, video, images), Information Retrieval Systems need to address multi-modal retrieval. The primary use of this book is as a college text on Information Retrieval Systems. But in addition to the theoretical aspects, the book maintains a theme of practicality that puts into perspective the importance and utilization of the theory in systems that are being used by anyone on the Internet. The student will gain an understanding of what is achievable using existing technologies and deficient areas that warrant additional research. The text provides coverage of all of the major aspects of information retrieval and has sufficient detail to allow students to implement a simple Information Retrieval System.

Testing of Communicating Systems presents the latest international results in both the theory and industrial practice of the testing of communicating systems. The topics discussed range from tools and techniques for testing to test standards, frameworks, notations, algorithms, fundamentals of testing, and industrial experiences and issues. The tools and techniques discussed apply to conformance testing, interoperability testing, performance testing of communications software, Internet protocols and applications, and multimedia and distributed systems in general, such as systems for electronic commerce. This volume contains the extensively refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Testing of Communicating Systems (TestCom 2000), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in early September 2000. Testing of Communicating Systems is essential reading for engineers, designers, managers of IT products and services, and all researchers interested in advancing the technology of engineering Internet frameworks, systems, services, and applications for reliability and quality.

Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems reflects the state of the art of emerging research on the meaning of multimedia information, as presented during IFIP's Eighth Data Semantics Working Conference (DS-8), organized by its Working Group 2.6 on Databases, and held at Rotorua, New Zealand, in January 1999. DS-8 was planned as an active forum for researchers and practitioners focusing on those issues that involve the semantics of the information represented, stored, and manipulated by multimedia systems. Depending on the topic and state of research, issues may be covered either deeply theoretically or quite practically, or even both. These proceedings contain twenty-one papers carefully selected by an International Programme Committee and organized in six thematic areas: * Video Data Modelling and Use; * Image Databases; * Applications of Multimedia Systems; * Multimedia Modeling in General; * Multimedia Information Retrieval; * Semantics and Metadata.For almost every area, important topics and issues include: * data modeling and query languages for media such as audio, video, and images; * methodological aspects of multimedia database design; * intelligent multimedia information retrieval; * knowledge discovery and data mining in multimedia information; * multimedia user interfaces. Three visionary keynote addresses, by famous experts Ramesh Jain, Hermann Maurer and Masao Sakauchi, set the stage for discussion and future directions for the field. The collection of papers that resulted now offers a glimpse of the excitement and enthusiasm from DS-8. Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on database systems, multimedia systems, or information retrieval systems and as a reference for practitioners and researchers in industry.

The advances in the generation and processing of multimedia data (e. g. documents, images, video, audio, animations, etc. ) have had an immense impact on multimedia applications and, as a result, multimedia has permeated almost every aspect of our daily lives. This development has also brought with it a whole host of issues and ch- lenges which were either not as apparent before or were non-existent. Today, digital media is relied upon as primary news and information resource, as evidence in a court of law, as part of medical records or as financial documents. However, there is still lack of authoritative mechanisms to verify the origin and veracity of media data. - deed, multimedia content has become an extremely valuable asset, and it is being both disseminated and consumed on a larger scale than ever before, but the issues conce- ing how the content owners and publishers should control the distribution of and - cess to their content have not been satisfactorily resolved yet. There are various other issues related to use of multimedia that require further analysis and research. For example, it is a known fact that some criminal organi- tions communicate with its members by posting information embedded media to p- lic forums and web-sites to evade surveillance by law enforcement. Conventional multimedia processing approaches do not provide sufficiently effective means for - fending against such communication.

Multimedia Information Systems explores the technical, human, organizational and socio-economic issues which underpin the implementation and use of multimedia information systems. This unique book comprehensively defines multimedia information systems and its emerging architecture. Today's important issues of networked multimedia information systems and multimedia trafficking on the information superhighway are thoroughly investigated. Multimedia information systems applications and organizational implications are also discussed along with multimedia authoring systems. Multimedia Information Systems is essential reading for all students and professionals faced with the challenges of multimedia information systems management and development. Multimedia Information Systems develops an awareness of the problems associated with multimedia information systems management, and the ability to understand and address these emerging challenges on an organizational and technical level. The book explores the limitations of multimedia on the information superhighway, and offers solutions for present and future development on the Internet. This book also scrutinizes the current applications of multimedia information systems, and examines how they can be developed. Multimedia Information Systems serves as an excellent text for courses on the subject, and as an invaluable reference for multimedia information systems professionals.

Information and communication technologies can provide new paradigms in healthcare provision. In particular, new Pervasive Healthcare technologies can revolutionise the dynamics of healthcare, enabling people to remain at home for longer, at lower costs to health and welfare organisations.

This book reveals how pervasive healthcare technologies can be designed in conjunction with users and carers, as well as exploring the application of novel methods and technologies.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, W2GIS 2012, held in Naples, Italy, in April 2012. The 13 full and 4 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: 3D and multimodal spatial interaction; positioning; spatial human-computer interaction; trajectory analysis; geo semantics; and sensor networks.

The research in content-based indexing and retrieval of visual information such as images and video has become one of the most populated directions in the vast area of information technologies. Social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, FileMobile, and DailyMotion host and supply facilities for accessing a tremendous amount of professional and user generated data. The areas of societal activity, such as, video protection and security, also generate thousands and thousands of terabytes of visual content. This book presents the most recent results and important trends in visual information indexing and retrieval. It is intended for young researchers, as well as, professionals looking for an algorithmic solution to a problem.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN 11). The 20 full papers, 3 posters, 10 demos and 4 workshops presented were carefully selected from numerous submissions. The conference aims enhancing the understanding of recent and anticipated advances in interactive technologies, and their applications to entertainment, education, culture, and the arts. Interaction technologies are having relevant changes in the last years, and will influence the way users consume and interact with the media and applications, both locally and over the Internet. The explosion of natural, multimodal, and touch based interfaces, and their access to the general public, has made new interaction paradigms a reality.