This is the second of a two-volume set that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Symposium on Human Interface 2007, held in Beijing, China in July 2007. It covers communication and collaboration, knowledge, learning and education, mobile interaction, interacting with the world wide web and electronic services, business management and industrial applications, as well as environment, transportation and safety.

Refereed post-proceedings of the First International Workshop on Data Management in Grids, in Trondheim, Norway. The 11 papers in this book address current research activities in relation to data management in dynamic, heterogeneous and cross-organizational environments, or grids. They show expertise in the management of very large, widely distributed databases. Conversely, Grids offer a novel and exciting field of research for database scientists in application domains and for fundamental research.

China has been one of the first countries to develop its own aesthetic for dynamic images and to create animation films with distinctive characteristics. In recent years, however, and subject to the influence of Western and Japanese animation, the Chinese animation industry has experienced several new stages of development, prompting the question as to where animation in China is heading in the future. This book describes the history, present and future of China's animation industry. The author divides the business's 95-year history into six periods and analyses each of these from an historical, aesthetic, and artistic perspective. In addition, the book focuses on representative works; themes; directions; artistic styles; techniques; industrial development; government support policies; business models; the nurturing of education and talent; broadcasting systems and animation. Scholars and students who are interested in the history of Chinese animation will benefit from this book and it will appeal additionally to readers interested in Chinese film studies.

We are delighted to welcome readers to the proceedings of the 6th Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM). The first PCM was held in Sydney, Australia, in 2000. Since then, it has been hosted successfully by Beijing, China, in 2001, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2002, Singapore in 2003, and Tokyo, Japan, in 2004, and finally Jeju, one of the most beautiful and fantastic islands in Korea. This year, we accepted 181 papers out of 570 submissions including regular and special session papers. The acceptance rate of 32% indicates our commitment to ensuring a very high-quality conference. This would not be possible without the full support of the excellent Technical Committee and anonymous reviewers that provided timely and insightful reviews. We would therefore like to thank the Program Committee and all reviewers. The program of this year reflects the current interests of the PCM s. The accepted papers cover a range of topics, including, all aspects of multimedia, both technical and artistic perspectives and both theoretical and practical issues. The PCM 2005 program covers tutorial sessions and plenary lectures as well as regular presentations in three tracks of oral sessions and a poster session in a single track. We have tried to expand the scope of PCM to the artistic papers which need not to be strictly technical."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, TIDSE 2006, held in Darmstadt, Germany in December 2006. It contains 37 papers that cover a broad spectrum, from conceptual ideas, theories, and technological questions, to best practice examples in the different storytelling application domains, with a focus on entertainment and games.

Aimed at a business applications programmer and presenting designs and techniques useful in that environment, with provided information about the semantics of GDI+ (Graphical Device Interface), this volume is language agnostic, and the examples are written in C#. A good working knowledge of C# syntax and of the .NET Framework is assumed.

The only guide you need to build a podcast from scratch with tips, techniques and stories from the pioneers of podcasting, by expert and early adopter Gilly Smith. From This American Life's Ira Glass and George the Poet to the teams behind My Dad Wrote a Porno and Table Manners with Jessie Ware, this practical book is packed full of exclusive, behind-the-scenes advice and informative, inspiring stories that will teach you how to tell the greatest stories in the world. This is a comprehensive yet accessible and warmly written book for creatives who are striving to understand how their content could be successfully turned into a podcast, from conception through to execution, distribution, marketing and monetising. It covers: - Recognising who your show is for, deciding what it is about and where to find inspiration. - Deciding on the format and working on structure and script. - Hosting, casting and interview techniques. - Production expertise - from equipment you'll need to editorial tips and determining the ideal length of your show. - Distribution - deciding on a release schedule, show art, metadata and how to distribute. - Growing your podcast - promotion and building community among fans. With original material throughout, case studies from podcasters across genres and a companion podcast featuring interviews with the pioneers, this is a first in guides to podcasting.

This volume contains the ?nal proceedings of the 2004 Metainformatics Sym- sium (MIS 2004). The event was held during 15-18 September 2004 in Salzburg, Austria at Salzburg Research. MIS is an annual event focusing on ?nding common ground shared by - searchers and practitioners in many di?erent computer science areas who may use similar methods to achieve di?erent ends. The goal is to ?nd useful abstr- tions, notations, analytical frameworks, formalisms, and systems that improve ourunderstandingoftheunderlyingstructuresofvariousdisciplinesandfamilies of systems within computer science. Ideally these constructs should have usef- ness in conveying knowledge and understanding across disciplinary boundaries. The proceedings of previous MIS events were also published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series: LNCS 3002 (2003), LNCS 2641 (2002), LNCS 2266 (2001), and LNCS 1903 (2000). As with previous events in the MIS series, MIS 2004 attracted quality papers and brought together researchers from many di?erent ?elds within computer s- ence.WeexperiencedinterestingpresentationsandlivelydiscussionsinSalzburg. I hope that you will ?nd the papers contained in this volume as interesting as the other members of the Program Committee and I have. This volume would not have been possible without the help and assistance of many people. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Springereditors, AnnaKramerandChristineGun ] ther, andtheExecutiveEditor of the LNCS series, Alfred Hofmann.

We welcome you to the proceedings of IWQoS 2005 held at the University of Passau, in the beautiful state of Bavaria, Germany. We hope that all attendees enjoyed their time in that ancient and historic city. Quality of Service(QoS) continues to be an important area of research. T- ditionally very focused on the area of networking, it has grown to include mobile applications, wireless environments, 3G and 4G cellular networks, user expe- ence, overlay networks, large-scale systemsand other important areas ofappli- tion. Six full-paper sessions that comprised selected papers of very high quality were devoted to the above mentioned, cutting-edge topics in this volume. We had a fascinating cross-disciplinary program and hope to have seeded conn- tions between di?erent disciplines and between industry and academia. In addition to the reviewed paper sessions, we were pleased to present two inspiring keynote speakers in this year's program: Randy Katz, Universityof California, Berkeley, USA, and Michael Stal, SiemensAG, Munich, Germany. One speaker being from academia and one from industry, re?ected well the balanced view of this workshop. Both keynotes extended the scope of QoS and addressed pressing issues, such as "spam," and leading trends, such as "service orientation," and their relevance to QoS.

This provides an in-depth look at the new OpenGL ES (The Standard for Embedded Accelerated 3D Graphics) and shows what these new embedded systems graphics libraries can provide for 3D graphics and games developers. It teaches fundamental 3D mobile graphics programming with standard APIs and covers the basic and advanced application program interfaces behind the major wireless and mobile devices supporting 3D graphics applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, DGCI 2006, held in Szeged, Hungary in October 2006. The 28 revised full papers and 27 revised poster papers presented together with two invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Multimedia Content Representation, Classification and Security, MRCS 2006, held in Istanbul, Turkey in September 2006.

The 100 revised papers presented together with 4 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 190 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on biometric recognition, multimedia content security, steganography, watermarking, authentication, classification for biometric recognition, digital watermarking, content analysis and representation, 3D object retrieval and classification, representation, analysis and retrieval in cultural heritage, content representation, indexing and retrieval, content analysis and classification, feature extraction and classification, multimodal signal processing, 3D video and free viewpoint video, multimedia content transmission and classification, video and image processing, as well as video analysis and representation.

From November 30 to December 2, 2005, INTETAIN 2005 was held in beautiful Madonna di Campiglio, on the majestic mountains of the Province of Trento, Italy.The ideato holdthe?rstinternationalconferencethat wouldhaveas topic Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment seemed to be timely. In thepreviouscoupleofyearstherehadbeenothermorespeci?c ormoregeneric events where some of the relevant themes had made it to the front stage. With INTETAIN we were aiming at establishing a conference where intelligent computational technologies are at the basis of any interactive application for entertainment. As intelligent computational technologies we mean adaptive media pres- tations, recommendation systems in media scalable crossmedia, a?ective user interfaces, intelligent speech interfaces, tele-presence in entertainment, colla- rative user models and group behavior, collaborative and virtual environments, crossdomain user models, animation and virtual characters, holographic int- faces, augmented, virtual and mixed reality, computer graphics and multimedia, pervasive multimedia, creative language environments, computational humor, and so on. We also believe that there is an important role for novel underlying inter- tive device technologies, for example, mobile devices, home entertainment c- ters, haptic devices, wallscreendisplays, holographicdisplays, distributed smart sensors, immersive screens and wearable devices. Interactive applications for entertainment include, but are certainly not l- ited to, intelligent interactive games, intelligent music systems, interactive c- ema, edutainment, interactive art, interactive museum guides, city and tourism explorer assistants, shopping assistants, interactive real TV, interactive social networks, interactive storytelling, personal diaries, websites and blogs, and c- prehensive assisting environments for special groups (challenged, children, the elderly)."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2006, held in Vancouver, Canada, July 2006. The book presents 19 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent text processing, perceptive systems, smart visualization, visual features, sketching and graphical abstraction, intelligent image and film composing, as well as smart interaction.

The International Conference on Networking (ICN 2005) was the fourth conf- ence in its series aimed at stimulating technical exchange in the emerging and important ?eld of networking. On behalf of the International Advisory C- mittee, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to the proceedings of the 2005 event. Networking faces dramatic changes due to the customer-centric view, the venue of the next generation networks paradigm, the push from ubiquitous n- working, andthenewservicemodels.Despitelegacyproblems, whichresearchers and industry are still discovering and improving the state of the art, the ho- zon has revealed new challenges that some of the authors tackled through their submissions. InfactICN2005wasverywellperceivedbytheinternationalnetworkingc- munity. A total of 651 papers from more than 60 countries were submitted, from which 238 were accepted. Each paper was reviewed by several members of the Technical Program Committee. This year, the Advisory Committee revalidated various accepted papers after the reviews had been incorporated. We perceived a signi?cant improvement in the number of submissions and the quality of the submissions. TheICN2005programcoveredavarietyofresearchtopicsthatareofcurrent interest, startingwithGridnetworks, multicasting, TCPoptimizations, QoSand security, emergency services, and network resiliency. The Program Committee selected also three tutorials and invited speakers that addressed the latest - search results from the international industries and academia, and reports on ?ndings from mobile, satellite, and personal communications related to 3rd- and 4th-generation research projects and standardiz

Welcome to Santiago de Compostela! We are pleased to host the 27th Annual EuropeanConferenceonInformationRetrievalResearch(ECIR2005)onits?rst visit to Spain. These proceedings contain the refereed full papers and poster abstracts p- sented at ECIR 2005. This conference was initially established by the Infor- tion Retrieval Specialist Group of the British Computer Society (BCS-IRSG) under the name "Annual Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research. " The colloquium was held in the United Kingdom each year until 1998, when the event was organized in Grenoble, France. Since then the conference venue has alternated between the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, re?ecting the growing European orientation of ECIR. For the same reason, in 2001 the event was renamed "European Conference on Information Retrieval Research. " In - cent years, ECIR has continued to grow and has become the major European forum for the discussion of research in the ?eld of information retrieval. ECIR 2005 was held at the Technical School of Engineering of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In terms of submissions, ECIR 2005 was a record-breaking success, since 124 full papers were submitted in response to the call for papers. This was a sharp increase from the 101 submissions received for ECIR 2003, which was the most successful ECIR in terms of submissions. ECIR 2005 established also a call for posters, and 41 posters where submitted. Paper and poster submissions were received from across Europe and further a?eld, including North America, South America, Asia and Australia, which is a clear indicationofthegrowingpopularityandreputationoftheconference.

Das Buch ist eine praktische EinfA1/4hrung in das Hochleistungsrechnen auf Linux-Clustern. In vier Teilen (Grundlagen, Technik, Programmierung, Praxis) wird ausfA1/4hrlich erklArt, wie man einen Haufen (Cluster) preiswerter Standard-PCs in einen Parallelcomputer verwandelt und diesen dann zur LAsung rechenintensiver Probleme einsetzt. Insbesondere enthAlt das Buch eine fundierte EinfA1/4hrung in MPI, dem grundlegenden Programmiermodell fA1/4r Cluster-Computer. Dabei werden anhand konkreter Beispiele die wichtigsten Paradigmen paralleler Programmierung prAsentiert. Vorgestellt werden auAerdem Entwicklungswerkzeuge, die Fehlersuche in parallelen Programmen und nA1/4tzliche Bibliotheken.

We are happy to present to you the proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Digital Watermarking, IWDW 2004. Since its modern reappearance in the academic community in the early 1990s, great progress has been made in understanding both the capabilities and the weaknesses of digital watermarking. On the theoretical side, we all are now well aware of the fact that digital watermarking is best viewed as a form of communication using side information. In the case of digital watermarking the side information in question is the document to be watermarked. This insight has led to a better understanding of the limits of the capacity and robustness of digital watermarking algorithms. It has also led to new and improved watermarking algorithms, both in terms of capacity and imperceptibility. Similarly, the role of human perception, and models thereof, has been greatly enhanced in the study and design of digital watermarking algorithms and systems. On the practical side, applications of watermarking are not yet abundant. The original euphoria on the role of digital watermarking in copy protection and copyright protection has not resulted in widespread use in practical systems. With hindsight, a number of reasons can be given for this lack of practical applications.

The study reported in this paper is an ongoing effort. We reported a preliminary analysis of the data in the paper. The current experiments varied the subjects to c- duct online group learning activities by the communication media such as email and threaded discussion. Although, we could have easily learned the impact of mobile devices in learning if we divided the subjects to use different hardware such as p- sonal computers, personal digital assistant, or mobile phones, we believe our findings will still be able to provide useful insights on the difficulties that the mobile learners will face in solving problems as a group. Our analysis result will also provide ba- line information on whether the traits of the successful or failed online groups are applicable to the mobile learners. For example, we expect the SMS will be a better medium to overcome the major problem of instant communication or the rapid propagation of the information as the mobile phones have built-in mechanism to remind the users of the incoming new messages and also the mobile phone users are expected to be interrupted for the incoming messages. However, we need further investigation of other problems, which hinder the optimum online group work. For example, 'accuracy of the transferred information' was identified as one of the pr- lems of using emails as the communication medium. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or SMS are more apt to deliver shorter messages than the typical emails.

It is an honor and great pleasure to write a preface for this postproceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Information Hiding. In the past 10 years, the field of data hiding has been maturing and expanding, gradually establishing its place as an active interdisciplinary research area uniquely combining information theory, cryptology, and signal processing. This year, the workshop was followed by the Privacy Enhancing Technologies workshop (PET) hosted at the same location. Delegates viewed this connection as fruitful as it gave both communities a convenient opportunity to interact. We would like to thank all authors who submitted their work for consideration. Out of the 70 submisions received by the program committee, 25 papers were accepted for publication based on their novelty, originality, and scientific merit. We strived to achieve a balanced exposition of papers that would represent many different aspects of information hiding. All papers were divided into eight sessions: digital media watermarking, steganalysis, digital forensics, steganography, software watermarking, security and privacy, anonymity, and data hiding in unusual content. This year, the workshop included a one-hour rump session that offered an opportunity to the delegates to share their work in progress and other brief but interesting contributions.

First of all, we appreciate the hard work of all the authors who contributed to ICEC 2005 by submitting their papers. ICEC 2005 attracted 95 technical paper submissions, 8 poster submissions and 7 demo submissions, in total 110. This number is nearly equal to ICEC 2004. Based on a thorough review and selection process carried out by 76 international experts from academia and industry as members of the senior and international program committees, a high-quality program was compiled. The program committee consisted of experts from all over the world: 1 from Austria, 3 from Bulgaria, 2 from Canada, 4 from China, 1 from Finland, 4 from France, 10 from Germany, 1 from Greece, 1 from Ireland, 1 from Israel, 1 from Italy, 26 from Japan, 1 from Korea, 4 from The Netherlands, 1 from New Zealand, 1 from Norway, 1 from Singapore, 1 from Thailand, 4 from the UK, and 8 from the USA. In this number, reviewers are included. The final decision was made at the senior program committee meeting based on three reviewers' feedback, available online via the conference management tool. Through earnest and fair discussion at the meeting, 25 technical papers were accepted as long papers and 32 technical papers were accepted as short papers from 95 submitted technical papers. Moreover, 3 poster papers and 5 demo papers were accepted.

Many animators and designers would like to supplement their Maya learning with a less-technical, more helpful book. This new self-study manual is both a general guide for understanding 3-D computer graphics and a specific guide for learning the fundamentals of Maya: workspace, modeling, animation, shading, lighting, and rendering.

This well-integrated and produced volume covers these fundamentals in each chapter so that readers gain increasingly detailed knowledge. After an initial 'concepts' section launches each chapter, hands-on tutorials are provided, as well as a chapter project that progressively adds newly learned material and culminates in the final animated short. This is the first book on Maya that teaches the subject using a sensible, proven methodology for both novices and intermediate users.

Topics and features: * Proven method that emphasizes preliminaries to every chapter * Integrates the "why" concepts of 3-D simultaneously with the "how-to" techniques * Skills reinforced with tutorials and chapter projects * Real-world experience distilled into helpful hints and step-by-step guides for common tasks * CD-ROM with practice animations, case studies and additional methods

The book, suitable for novices or intermediate users, presents all the basic 3-D animation concepts and Maya software background needed for learning animation techniques and creating sophisticated, state-of-the-art animations. It is an essential resource for animators, game developers, effects specialists, and computer graphic artists, as well as an ideal self-study guide for students or individuals pursuing interests in graphics or animation.

Welcome to the proceedings of the 5th Paci?c Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM 2004) held in Tokyo Waterfront City, Japan, November 30-December 3, 2004. Following the success of the preceding conferences, PCM 2000 in Sydney, PCM 2001 in Beijing, PCM 2002 in Hsinchu, and PCM 2003 in Singapore, the ?fth PCM brought together the researchers, developers, practitioners, and educators in the ?eld of multimedia. Theoretical breakthroughs and practical systems were presented at this conference, thanks to the support of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, IEEE Region 10 and IEEE Japan Council, ACM SIGMM, IEICE and ITE. PCM2004featuredacomprehensiveprogramincludingkeynotetalks, regular paperpresentations, posters, demos, andspecialsessions.Wereceived385papers andthenumberofsubmissionswasthelargestamongrecentPCMs.Amongsuch a large number of submissions, we accepted only 94 oral presentations and 176 poster presentations. Seven special sessions were also organized by world-leading researchers. We kindly acknowledge the great support provided in the reviewing of submissions by the program committee members, as well as the additional reviewers who generously gave their time. The many useful comments provided by the reviewing process must have been very valuable for the authors' work. Thisconferencewouldneverhavehappenedwithoutthehelpofmanypeople. We greatly appreciate the support of our strong organizing committee chairs and advisory chairs. Among the chairs, special thanks go to Dr. Ichiro Ide and Dr. Takeshi Naemura who smoothly handled publication of the proceedings with Springer. Dr. Kazuya Kodama did a fabulous job as our Web master.

Following the previous four annual conferences, the 5th Chinese Conference on Biometrics Recognition (Sinobiometrics 2004) was held in Guangzhou, China in December 2004. The conference this year was aimed at promoting the international exchange of ideas and providing an opportunity for keeping abreast of the latest developments in biometric algorithms, systems, and applications. The 1st Biometrics Verification Competition (BVC) on face, iris, and fingerprint recognition was also conducted in conjunction with the conference. This book is composed of 74 papers presented at Sinobiometrics 2004, contributed by researchers and industrial practitioners from Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, UK, US, as well as China. Of these, 60 papers were selected from 140 submissions and 14 were invited. The papers not only presented recent technical advances, but also addressed issues in biometric system design, standardization, and applications. Included among the invited were four feature papers on the ideas and algorithms of the best-performing biometric engines, which were either competition winners at the Face Authentication Test (FAT) 2004 or the Fingerprint Verification Competition (FVC) 2004, or they were the best-performing iris and palmprint recognition algorithms. The papers were complemented by five keynote lectures on biometrics, and face, fingerprint, and iris authentication and multimodal fusion by Arun Ross (West Virginia University) and Anil K. Jain (Michigan State University), Josef Kittler (University of Surrey), John Daugman (University of Cambridge), Raffaele Cappelli (University of Bologna), and Stan Z. Li (Chinese Academy of Sciences).