This comprehensive book draws together experts to explore how knowledge technologies can be exploited to create new multimedia applications, and how multimedia technologies can provide new contexts for the use of knowledge technologies. Thorough coverage of all relevant topics is given. The step-by-step approach guides the reader from fundamental enabling technologies of ontologies, analysis and reasoning, through to applications which have hitherto had less attention.

Correcting the Great Mistake People often mistake one thing for another. That's human nature. However, one would expect the leaders in a particular ?eld of endeavour to have superior ab- ities to discriminate among the developments within that ?eld. That is why it is so perplexing that the technology elite - supposedly savvy folk such as software developers, marketers and businessmen - have continually mistaken Web-based graphics for something it is not. The ?rst great graphics technology for the Web, VRML, has been mistaken for something else since its inception. Viewed variously as a game system, a format for architectural walkthroughs, a platform for multi-user chat and an augmentation of reality, VRML may qualify as the least understood invention in the history of inf- mation technology. Perhaps it is so because when VRML was originally introduced it was touted as a tool for putting the shopping malls of the world online, at once prosaic and horrifyingly mundane to those of us who were developing it. Perhaps those ?rst two initials,"VR,"created expectations of sprawling, photorealistic f- tasy landscapes for exploration and play across the Web. Or perhaps the magnitude of the invention was simply too great to be understood at the time by the many, ironically even by those spending the money to underwrite its development. Regardless of the reasons, VRML suffered in the mainstream as it was twisted to meet unintended ends and stretched far beyond its limitations.

Both modern mathematical music theory and computer science are strongly influenced by the theory of categories and functors. One outcome of this research is the data format of denotators, which is based on set-valued presheaves over the category of modules and diaffine homomorphisms. The functorial approach of denotators deals with generalized points in the form of arrows and allows the construction of a universal concept architecture. This architecture is ideal for handling all aspects of music, especially for the analysis and composition of highly abstract musical works.

This book presents an introduction to the theory of module categories and the theory of denotators, as well as the design of a software system, called Rubato Composer, which is an implementation of the category-theoretic concept framework. The application is written in portable Java and relies on plug-in components, so-called rubettes, which may be combined in data flow networks for the generation and manipulation of denotators.

The Rubato Composer system is open to arbitrary extension and is freely available under the GPL license. It allows the developer to build specialized rubettes for tasks that are of interest to composers, who in turn combine them to create music. It equally serves music theorists, who use them to extract information from and manipulate musical structures. They may even develop new theories by experimenting with the many parameters that are at their disposal thanks to the increased flexibility of the functorial concept architecture.

Two contributed chapters by Guerino Mazzola and Florian Thalmann illustrate the application of the theory as well as the software in the development of compositional tools and the creation of a musical work with the help of the Rubato framework.

Current middleware solutions, e.g., application servers and Web services, are very complex software products that are hard to tame because of intricacies of distributed systems. Their functionalities have mostly been developed and managed with the help of administration tools and corresponding configuration files, recently in XML. Though this constitutes flexibility for developing and administrating a distributed application, the conceptual model underlying the different configurations is only implicit.

To remedy such problems, Semantic Management of Middleware contributes an ontology-based approach to support the development and administration of middleware-based applications. The ontology is an explicit conceptual model with formal logic-based semantics. Its descriptions may therefore be queried, may foresight required actions, or may be checked to avoid inconsistent system configurations.

This book builds a rigorous approach towards giving the declarative descriptions of components and services a well-defined meaning by specifying ontological foundations and by showing how such foundations may be realized in practical, up-and-running systems.

Avatars at Work and Play brings together contributions from leading social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on virtual environments used for collaboration and online gaming. They present a well-rounded and state-of-the-art overview of current applications of multi-user virtual environments, ranging from highly immersive virtual reality systems to internet-based virtual environments on personal computers. The volume is a follow-up to a previous essay collection, The Social Life of Avatars, which explored general issues in this field. This collection goes further, examining uses of shared virtual environments in practical settings such as scientific collaboration, distributed meetings, building models together, and others. It also covers online gaming in virtual environments, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and presents an opportunity for studying a myriad of social issues. Covering both work and play, the volume brings together issues common to the two areas, including:

What kind of avatar appearance is suitable for different kinds of interaction? How best to foster collaboration and promote usable shared virtual spaces? What kinds of activities work well in different types of virtual environments and systems?

Avatars at Work and Play will be required reading for computer scientists and social scientists who are researching and developing virtual worlds. It will be useful on courses in New Media and human-computer interaction"

A large number of information systems use many different individual schemas to represent data. Semantically linking these schemas is a necessary precondition to establish interoperability between agents and services. Consequently, ontology alignment and mapping for data integration has become central to building a world-wide semantic web.

Ontology Alignment: Bridging the Semantic Gap introduces novel methods and approaches for semantic integration. In addition to developing new methods for ontology alignment, the author provides extensive explanations of up-to-date case studies. The topic of this book, coupled with the application-focused methodology, will appeal to professionals from a number of different domains.

Designed for practitioners and researchers in industry, Ontology Alignment: Bridging the Semantic Web Gap is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.

Professionals who use multimedia documents as a tool to communicate concepts will find this a hugely illuminating text. It provides a comprehensive and up to date account of relevant research issues, methodologies and results in the area of multimedia comprehension. More specifically, the book draws connections between cognitive research, instructional strategies and design methodologies. It includes theoretical reviews, discussions of research techniques, ad original experimental contributions. The book highlights essential aspects of current theories, and trends for future research on the use of multimedia documents.

Motion-Free Super-Resolution is a compilation of very recent work on various methods of generating super-resolution (SR) images from a set of low-resolution images. The current literature on this topic deals primarily with the use of motion cues for the purpose of generating SR images. These cues have, it is shown, their advantages and disadvantages. In contrast, this book shows that cues other than motion can also be used for the same purpose, and addresses both the merits and demerits of these new techniques.

Motion-Free Super-Resolution supersedes much of the lead author 's previous edited volume, "Super-Resolution Imaging," and includes an up-to-date account of the latest research efforts in this fast-moving field. This sequel also features a style of presentation closer to that of a textbook, with an emphasis on teaching and explanation rather than scholarly presentation.

In the last decade, ontologies have received much attention within computer science and related disciplines, most often as the semantic web. Ontology Learning and Population from Text: Algorithms, Evaluation and Applications discusses ontologies for the semantic web, as well as knowledge management, information retrieval, text clustering and classification, as well as natural language processing.

Ontology Learning and Population from Text: Algorithms, Evaluation and Applications is structured for research scientists and practitioners in industry. This book is also suitable for graduate-level students in computer science.

"Sense of Touch and its Rendering" presents a unique and interdisciplinary approach highlighting the field of haptic research from a neuropsychological as well as a technological point of view. This edited book is the outcome of the TOUCH-HapSys European research project and provides an important contribution towards a new generation of high-fidelity haptic display technologies. The book is structured in two parts: A. Fundamental Psychophysical and Neuropsychological Research and B. Technology and Applications. The two parts are not however separated, and the many connections and synergies between the two complementary domains of research are highlighted in the text. The eleven chapters discuss the recent advances in the study of human haptic (kinaesthetic, tactile, temperature) and multimodal (visual, auditory, haptic) perception mechanisms. Besides the theoretical advancement, the contributions survey the state of the art in the field, report a number of practical applications to real systems, and discuss possible future developments.

Based on the Job Definition Format (JDF) new workflow concepts are developed which will help create integrated workflows in the graphic arts industry. These developments create new business opportunities that will lead to a cost reduction but also will entail risks. Starting with a comprehensive explanation of the new standard, information is offered that enables business executives to make sound decisions on software investments in the graphic arts industry. Available architectures and products are highlighted and benefits are described. The steps relevant for the process integration are discussed.

Written by supply chain researchers, consultants, and practitioners, this book explains the newly emerging techniques and practices for highly efficient supply chain management, made possible by the rapid progress in information and communication technologies.

Soft computing represents a collection of techniques, such as neural networks, evolutionary computation, fuzzy logic, and probabilistic reasoning. As - posed to conventional "hard" computing, these techniques tolerate impre- sion and uncertainty, similar to human beings. In the recent years, successful applications of these powerful methods have been published in many dis- plines in numerous journals, conferences, as well as the excellent books in this book series on Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing. This volume is dedicated to recent novel applications of soft computing in multimedia processing. The book is composed of 21 chapters written by experts in their respective fields, addressing various important and timely problems in multimedia computing such as content analysis, indexing and retrieval, recognition and compression, processing and filtering, etc. In the chapter authored by Guan, Muneesawang, Lay, Amin, and Lee, a radial basis function network with Laplacian mixture model is employed to perform image and video retrieval. D. Androutsos, P. Androutsos, Plataniotis, and Venetsanopoulos investigate color image indexing and retrieval within a small-world framework. Wu and Yap develop a framework of fuzzy relevance feedback to model the uncertainty of users' subjective perception in image retrieval.

MARTENS Bob and BROWN Andre Co-conference Chairs, CAAD Futures 2005 Computer Aided Architectural Design is a particularly dynamic field that is developing through the actions of architects, software developers, researchers, technologists, users, and society alike. CAAD tools in the architectural office are no longer prominent outsiders, but have become ubiquitous tools for all professionals in the design disciplines. At the same time, techniques and tools from other fields and uses, are entering the field of architectural design. This is exemplified by the tendency to speak of Information and Communication Technology as a field in which CAAD is embedded. Exciting new combinations are possible for those, who are firmly grounded in an understanding of architectural design and who have a clear vision of the potential use of ICT. CAAD Futures 2005 called for innovative and original papers in the field of Computer Aided Architectural Design, that present rigorous, high-quality research and development work. Papers should point towards the future, but be based on a thorough understanding of the past and present.

For the first time, a comprehensive collection of the latest developments in scripting and representation languages for life-like characters. The text introduces toolkits for authoring animated characters which further supports the practicality and ease of use of this new interface technology. As life-like characters is a vibrant research area, various applications have been designed and implemented. The text covers the most successful and promising applications, ranging from product presentation and student training to knowledge integration and interactive gaming. It also discusses the key challenges in the area and provides design guidelines for employing life-like characters.

After the very successful ECC-Book on "E-conomy" this new report of the European Communication Council (ECC) analyzes from various perspectives the profound societal and economical change of the media economy, initiated by digitalization and networking. Against the background of the current media history, it highlights for example the role of the Internet hype as a pathfinder in a modified media society. The key question is concerned with how the medial future will be like. The report examines effects and new perspectives in the area of economy, society, and politics. The aspects of behavior, business models, legal and regulation questions, self-conception of society and media economy are mooted by international authors to enhance the reader's understanding of the medial future and to disclose options for action.

"Convergence" is defined as the intertwinement of species or technologies. "Tech- logical convergence," on the other hand, refers to a trend where a single product such as a cell phone, used in the past solely for communication, evolves into a product that functions not only as a communication device but incorporates the distinct function- ities of a number of other technologies, thereby enabling users to take pictures, listen to music, access the Web, send and receive e-mail messages, find their way, and so on, equally successfully. Social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn, where users congregate, discuss certain issues, entertain themselves, and share information in t- tual, audio and video formats, are among the most frequented web sites. Social networks having Web 2. 0 features offer personalized services, allowing users to - corporate their own content easily and describe, organize and share it with others, thereby enriching users' experience. More often than not, a capable cell phone is all you need to get access to such social networks and carry out all those tasks. Such tools tend to change our private, social and professional lives and blur the boundaries among them. In other words, our private, social and professional lives are converging, too: someone using a cell phone could be communicating with his/her friend(s), accessing information services, taking an exam using a learning management system, or conducting business.

This is an edited volume based on the 2007 Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR), now in its second meeting. Metadata research is a pluri-disciplinary field that encompasses all aspects of the definition, creation, assessment, management and use of metadata. The volume brings together world class leaders to contribute their research and up-to-date information on metadata and semantics applied to library management, e-commerce, e-business, information science and librarianship, to name a few. The book is designed for a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry.

Hugo de Man Professor Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Senior Research Fellow IMEC The steady evolution of hardware, software and communications technology is rapidly transforming the PC- and dot.com world into the world of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). This next wave of information technology is fundam- tally different in that it makes distributed wired and wireless computing and communication disappear to the background and puts users to the foreground. AmI adapts to people instead of the other way around. It will augment our consciousness, monitor our health and security, guide us through traffic etc. In short, its ultimate goal is to improve the quality of our life by a quiet, reliable and secure interaction with our social and material environment. What makes AmI engineering so fascinating is that its design starts from studying person to world interactions that need to be implemented as an int- ligent and autonomous interplay of virtually all necessary networked electronic intelligence on the globe. This is a new and exciting dimension for most elect- cal and software engineers and may attract more creative talent to engineering than pure technology does. Development of the leading technology for AmI will only succeed if the engineering research community is prepared to join forces in order to make Mark Weiser's dream of 1991 come true. This will not be business as usual by just doubling transistor count or clock speed in a microprocessor or increasing the bandwidth of communication.

This volume presents state-of-the-art research from a wide area of subjects brought about by the digital convergence of computing, television, telecommunications and the World-Wide Web. It represents a unique snapshot of trends across a wide range of subjects including virtual environments; virtual reality; telepresence; human-computer interface design; interactivity; avatars; and the Internet. Both researchers and practitioners will find it an invaluable source of reference.

This book comprises a variety of breakthroughs and recent advances on Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) intended for both researchers and practitioners. Topics addressed here can be of interest for those people searching for last trends involving such a growing discipline. Important issues concerning this book includes cutti- edge topics such as Semantic Web Interfaces, Natural Language Processing and - bile Interaction, as well as new methodological trends such as Interface-Engineering techniques, User-Centred Design, Usability, Accessibility, Development Meth- ologiesandEmotionalUserInterfaces. Theideabehindthisbookistobringtogether relevant and novel research on diverse interaction paradigms. New trends are gu- anteedaccordingtothedemandingclaimsofbothHCIresearchersandpractitioners, which encourage the explicit arrangement of new industrial and technological topics such as the previously cited Interfaces for the Semantic Web, and Mobile Interfaces, but also Multimodal Interaction, Collaborative Interfaces, End-User Development, Usability and User Interface Engineering. Chapters included in this book comprise a selection of top high-quality papers from Interaccion 2007, which is the most important HCI conference sponsored by AIPO (the Spanish HCI Association). Papers were selected from a ranking - tained through double-blind peer review and later meta-review processes, cons- ering the best evaluated paper from both the review and presentation session. Such a paper selection constitutes only 33% of the papers published in the conference proceedings. We would like to thank the reviewers for their effort in revising the chapters included in this publication, namely Silvia T. Acuna, ~ Sandra Baldasarri, Crescencio Bravo, Cesar A.

Dieses Buch bietet eine praxisorientierte Einfuhrung in die industrielle Bildverarbeitung. Das Buch liegt nun in einer uberarbeiteten 3. Auflage vor, die die aktuellen technologischen Entwicklungen zum Beispiel im Bereich Kameratechnik und Farbbildverarbeitung berucksichtigt. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf dem Zusammenwirken von Verfahren in einem bildverarbeitenden Gesamtsystem einschliesslich der typischen Problemstellungen bei der Integration in die automatisierte Fertigung. Anhand von realen Beispielen und der Standard-Software NeuroCheck wird eine Anleitung zur Loesung industrieller Sichtprufaufgaben gegeben. Basierend auf ihrer langjahrigen Erfahrung legen die Autoren auch diejenigen Rezepte offen, die zwar ublicherweise nicht publiziert werden, fur das Funktionieren von Bildverarbeitungssystemen jedoch wesentlich sind. Mit der als Download verfugbaren Testversion der Software kann das Gelesene nachvollzogen und eingeubt werden.

Welcome to the Proceedings of ICCHP 2010! We were proud to welcome participants from more than 40 countries from all over the world to this year's ICCHP. Since the late 1980s, it has been ICCHP's mission to support and reflect development in the field of "Assistive Technologies," eAccessibility and eInclusion. With a focus on scientific quality, ICCHP has become an important reference in our field. The 2010 conference and this collection of papers once again fulfilled this mission. The International Programme Committee, comprising 106 experts from all over the world, selected 147 full and 44 short papers out of 328 abstracts submitted to ICCHP. This acceptance ratio of about half of the submissions demonstrates our strict pursuit of scientific quality both of the programme and in particular of the proceedings in your hands. An impressive number of experts agreed to organize "Special Thematic Sessions" (STS) for ICCHP 2010. These STS help to bring the meeting into sharper focus in several key areas. In turn, this deeper level of focus helps to collate a state of the art and mainstream technical, social, cultural and political developments.

Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval 2009 was the sixth event of this - ternational conference series that was initiated in 2003. Since the start, this conference has been co-organized by the University of Aalborg, Esbjerg, D- mark (http: //www. aaue. dk) and the Laboratoire de M ecanique et d'Acoustique inMarseille, France(http: //www. lma. cnrs-mrs. fr)andhastakenplaceinFrance, ItalyandDenmark. The?vepreviouseditionsofCMMRo?eredavariedoverview of recent years' music information retrieval and sound modeling activities in addition to alternative ?elds related to human interaction, perception and c- nition, as well as philosophical aspects linked to the ?eld. We believe that the strength and the originality of this international conference both lie in its mul- disciplinary concept and its ability to permanently evolve and open for new trends and directions within the related ?elds of interest. This year's CMMR took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, May 18-22, 2009 and was associated with theInternationalConferenceonAuditoryDisplay(http: //www. icad. org), hereby introducing new topics related to sound design, soni?cation and augmented - ality to the computer music modeling and retrieval community."

The portable device and mobile phone market has witnessed rapid growth in the last few years with the emergence of several revolutionary products such as mobile TV, converging iPhone and digital cameras that combine music, phone and video functionalities into one device. The proliferation of this market has further bene?ted from the competition in software and applications for smart phones such as Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhone App- Store, stimulating tens of thousands of mobile applications that are made ava- able by individual and enterprise developers. Whereas the mobile device has become ubiquitous in people's daily life not only as a cellular phone but also as a media player, a mobile computing device, and a personal assistant, it is p- ticularly important to address challenges timely in applying advanced pattern recognition, signal, information and multimedia processing techniques, and new emerging networking technologies to such mobile systems. The primary objective of this book is to foster interdisciplinary discussions and research in mobile multimedia processing techniques, applications and s- tems, as well as to provide stimulus to researchers on pushing the frontier of emerging new technologies and applications. One attempt on such discussions was the organization of the First Int- national Workshop of Mobile Multimedia Processing (WMMP 2008), held in Tampa, Florida, USA, on December 7, 2008. About 30 papers were submitted from10countriesacrosstheUSA, Asia andEurope.