Smartgraphicsarepervasivein ourlives nowadays.Thewaysartistsand desi- ersproduceimagesthate?ectivelysupporthumancognitionandcommunication are continuously changing and evolving as they incorporate novel methods p- vided by the advances in science and technology. As a counterpart, the radically new visions in most art forms have stimulated scientists to breath-taking levels of achievement. This symbiotic relationship between art and science (and technology) is one of the foundations of the technological culture of contemporary society and is especiallyevidentinthecreationofsmartgraphics.Suchaprocessrestsonadeep understanding of the fundamentals of perception and cognition as they relate to interaction and communication technologies, together with arti?cial intelligence andcomputergraphicstechniques, toautomatereasoningandenhancecognition. The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2009 was held from May 28-30 in Salamanca, Spain. With this edition we celebrated our tenth anniv- sary: a successful series of inspiring and exciting meetings originating in 2000 as an American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence Spring Symposium. This year we proposed a speci?c emphasis on visual analytics as well as all kinds of transversalresearchthat harnesses the power of humans and technol- icalartifacts in order to convey, understandanddeal with complex scienti?c and socialprocesses.Wewereluckyto haveDanielKeim andJ] ornKohlhammer, two internationally renowned experts on this area of research, as invited speakers

The First Future Internet Symposium was held during September 28-30, 2008 in Vienna, Austria. FIS 2008 provided a forum for leading researchersand pr- titioners to meet and discuss the wide-ranging scienti?c and technical issues related to the design of a new Internet. The sentiment shared in Vienna was that we are at the beginning of something very exciting and challenging and that FIS 2008 has played a role in forming a community to address this. With overa billionusers,today's Internet is arguablythe most successful- man artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integralpart in the lives of everyoneon the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its ?fth decade, the Int- net has shown remarkable resilience and ?exibility in the face of ever-increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces gr- ing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scienti?c research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilization of the Internet. Japan, the USA and Europe are investing heavily in this area. The EU is shaping around the idea of the Future Internet its research programmes for the Seventh Framework. EU commissioners, national government ministers, industry leadersand researchersmet in Bled, Slovenia during March 31-April2, 2008, to begin developing a vision of a future Internet that will meet Europe's needs a decade from now, and beyond. Abroadprogrammeofscienti?cresearchisessentialtosupportingtheaimsof the Future Internetinitiative.

Die 16. GI/ITG-Fachtagung Kommunikation in Verteilten Systemen (KiVS 2009) befasst sich als wichtigstes deutschsprachiges Forum fur Forschung und Entwicklung auf den Gebieten Kommunikation und Verteilte Systeme mit einer grossen Vielfalt von innovativen und zukunftsorientierten Fragestellungen. Sie spannt dabei einen Bogen von allgegenwartigen verteilten Anwendungen uber Middleware-Konzepte und Protokolltechniken bis hin zu modernen Netztechniken mit ihren Mobilitats- und Sicherheitsfragen. Die KiVS dient der Standortbestimmung aktueller Entwicklungen, der Prasentation laufender Forschungsarbeiten und der Diskussion zukunftstrachtiger Ansatze fur die Kommunikation in Verteilten Systemen. "

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2009, held in Brisbane, Australia, in April 2009.

The 39 revised full papers and 22 revised short papers presented together with 3 invited keynote papers, 9 demonstration papers, 3 tutorial abstracts, and one panel abstract were carefully reviewed and selected from 186 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on uncertain data and ranking, sensor networks, graphs, RFID and data streams, skyline and rising stars, parallel and distributed processing, mining and analysis, XML query, privacy, XML keyword search and ranking, Web and Web services, XML data processing, and multimedia.

These proceedings contain the papers presented at ECIR 2009, the 31st - ropean Conference on Information Retrieval. The conference was organized by the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), in cooperation with the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the British Computer So- ety (BCS-IRSG) and was supported by the Special Interest Group on Infor- tion Retrieval (ACM SIGIR), the French Association of Information Retrieval (ARIA) and E-IRSG. It was held during April 6-9, 2007 in Toulouse, hosted by the Pierre Baudis congress center. ECIR 2009 con?rmed the growth trend of submissions, with 188 full-paper submissions. Many of these submissions came from outside Europe, and 25 countries were represented in the ?nal ECIR 2009 program, re?ecting the international po- larityandreputationoftheconferenceseries.Furthermorethetraditionalstrong focus on students was well preserved, with their participation being great. All submitted papers were reviewed by at least three members of the int- national Program Committee. Out of the 188 papers 42 were selected as full research papers and a further 18 were accepted as short research papers. Short papers were given 8 pages in the proceedings (instead of 12). Out of these 60 selected papers, 30 have a student as the primary author. The accepted papers themselves come from a mixture of universities, researchinstitutes and comm- cial organizations. There was also a separate call for posters. Each of the 60 poster submissions wasreviewedbythreeProgramCommitteemembers, aswithpapersubmissions. Twenty-?ve posters were accepted for presentation. Takentogether, thesepaperscoverthestateoftheartininformationretrieval, including topicssuchasretrievalmodels, evaluationandWeb search, andeme- ing topics such as learning to rank, expert search and opinion detect

Mobile Response 2008, the Second International Workshop on Mobile Infor- tion Technology for Emergency Response, aimed at a focussed exchange on how mobile information technology can be e?ectively used to the bene?t of em- gency response. The gap between the great potential bene?t that usable mobile IT could yield in the domain of emergency response and the speci?c design challenges for such technologies in this particularly unforgiving domain was the foundation of our decision to create a venue for researchers and practitioners from di?erent disciplines. During this year's workshopthe latest approachesand technical solutions in the area of mobile information technology for emergency response planning and execution were presented and demonstrated. We invited participation from research, industry and public rescue orga- zations to enable an in-depth discussion of the opportunities and drawbacks of new digital technologies for emergency response. The call for papers for the second Mobile Response workshop attracted over 25 submissions from 11 d- ferent countries, including international submissions from the USA, Brazil and Japan.AninternationalProgramCommitteewithexpertsonmobileinformation technology, emergency response and emergency response equipment selected 12 submissions for presentation during the workshop. The program was completed by two outstanding keynote presentations and one invited presentation on p- vailing topics of high interest to the scienti?c and practitioner communities.

Asdataminingtechniquesandtoolsmature, theirapplicationdomainsextendto previousuncharteredterritories.The commontheme ofthe workshopsorganized along with the main 2008 Paci?c Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) in Osaka, Japan was to extend the application of data mining techniques to new frontiers. Thus the title of the proceedings: "New Frontiers in Application of Data Mining." For the 2008 program, three workshops were organized. 1. Algorithms for Large-Scale Information Processing (ALSIP). The focus of the workshop was novel algorithms and data structures to deal with p- cessing of very large data sets. 2. Data Mining for Decision Making and Risk Management (DMDRM), which emphasized applications of risk information derived from data mining te- niques on diverse applications ranging from medicine to marketing to chemistry. 3. Interactive Data Mining (IDM), which emphasized the relationship between techniques in data mining and human-computer interaction. In total 38 papers were submitted to the workshops. After consultation with theworkshopChairswhowereaskedto ranktheir submissions,18wereaccepted for publicationin this volume.We hope that the published papers propelfurther interest in the growing ?eld of knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). The paper selection of the industrial track and the workshops was made by the Program Committee of each organization. Upon the paper selection, the book was edited and managed by the volume editors.

The Transactions on Computational Science journal is part of the Springer series Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and is devoted to the gamut of computational science issues, from theoretical aspects to application-dependent studies and the va- dation of emerging technologies. The current issue is devoted to computer systems research and the application of such research, which naturally complement each other. The issue is comprised of Part 1: Computational Visualization and Optimization, and Part 2: Computational Methods for Model Design and Analysis. Part 1 - Computational Visualization and Optimization - is devoted to state-of-the-art research carried out in this area with the use of novel computational methods. It is c- prised of five papers, each addressing a specific computational problem in the areas of shared virtual spaces, dynamic visualization, multimodal user interfaces, computational geometry, and parallel simulation, respectively. Part 2 - Computational Methods for Model Design and Analysis - continues the topic with an in-depth look at selected computational science research in the areas of data representation and analysis. The four papers comprising this part cover such areas as efficient reversible logic design, missing data analysis, stochastic computation and neural network representation for eccentric sphere models. Each paper describes a detailed experiment or a case study of the methodology presented to amplify the impact of the contribution.

Engineering Interactive Systems 2007 is an IFIP working conference that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in strengthening the scientific foun- tions of user interface design, examining the relationship between software engine- ing (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI) and on how user-centerd design (UCD) could be strengthened as an essential part of the software engineering process. Engineering Interactive Systems 2007 was created by merging three conferences: * HCSE 2007 - Human-Centerd Software Engineering held for the first time. The HCSE Working Conference is a multidisciplinary conference entirely dedicated to advancing the basic science and theory of human-centerd software systems engineering. It is organized by IFIP WG 13.2 on Methodologies for User-Centerd Systems Design. * EHCI 2007 - Engineering Human Computer Interaction was held for the tenth time. EHCI aims to investigate the nature, concepts, and construction of user interfaces for software systems. It is organized by IFIP WG 13.4/2.7 on User Interface Engineering. * DSV-IS 2007 - Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems was held for the 13th time. DSV-IS provides a forum where researchers wo- ing on model-based techniques and tools for the design and development of - teractive systems can come together with practitioners and with those working on HCI models and theories.

th Welcome to the 15 International Multimedia Modeling Conference (MMM 2009), held January 7-9, 2009 at EURECOM, Sophia-Antipolis, France. MMM is a leadinginternationalconference for researchersandindustry practitionersto share their new ideas, original research results and practical development ex- riences from all multimedia-related areas. MMM 2009 was held in co-operation with the ACM Special Interest Group on MultiMedia (ACM SIGMM). It was a great honor to host MMM 2009, one of the most long-standing th multimedia conferences, at EURECOM in Sophia-Antipolis, France. The 15 edition of MMM marked the return of the conference to Europe after numerous years of activity in Asia, and we are proud to have organized such a prestigious conference on the French Riviera. EURECOM is an engineering school in the domain of information and communication technology and a research center in communication systems. Since its creation in 1991 by TELECOM ParisTech and EPFL, it has developed strong international links with both academic and industrial partners. The heart of EURECOM is its internationally renowned research activities which focus on three areas: networking and security, mobile communications, and multimedia.

The authors reflect the preoccupation of academia with the latest trends in e-content and communication technologies, such as going mobile or discovering new, innovative interfaces. In addition, they introduce new learning methods with interactive media.

The Second Workshop of Blended Learning (WBL 2008), as part of the 7th Inter- tional Conference on Web-Based Learning (ICWL 2008), was held in Zhejiang N- mal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China during August 20-22, 2008. WBL 2008 provided an international forum for the dissemination of original results in the design, implementation, and evaluation of blended learning systems and related areas. In particular, the aim of WBL 2008 was to bring together researchers from academia as well as commercial developers from industry to explore ideas, exchange and share experiences, and further build the blended learning research network. The inspirations and new ideas were expected to emerge from intensive discussions during formal sessions and social activities. The main focus of WBL 2008 was on the most critical areas of blended learning, namely, 'e-Learning Platforms and Tools, ' 'Design, Model and Framework of e- Learning Systems, ' 'Practice and Experience Sharing, ' and 'Pedagogical Issues.' In total, the workshop selected 17 papers from authors of different countries for presen- tion and publication, a task which was not easy due to the high quality of the subm- ted papers. Using stringent selection criteria, submissions were rigorously reviewed based on their originality, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation by an international Program Committee from Germany, Spain, UK, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and Macao.

The 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, under the auspices of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), was held September 25-27, 2008 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Based on the very successful first international workshop (IWEC 2002) and the following international conferences (ICEC 2003 through ICEC 2007), ICEC 2008 was an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst researchers and developers in the field of entertainment computing. ICEC is the longest established and most prestigious conference in the field of entertainment computing. The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for advanced research in entertainment computing, broadly defined. ICEC is truly international with leading experts from 14 nations representing academia and industry attending this year's conference. These leaders presented their newest research, insights, products and demonstrations. Although the field of entertainment computing is thought of as new, in fact modern digital computer games go back over 45 years with games such as Spacewar developed in 1961. This is not to say entertainment computing is limited to computer games. As evidenced by papers in this volume, entertainment computing covers virtually every aspect of today's recreational diversions.

We welcome you to the Third Paci?c-Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology (PSIVT 2009), sponsored by the National Institute of Informatics, MicrosoftResearch, and the Forumfor ImageInformaticsin Japan.PSIVT 2009 washeldinTokyo, Japan, duringJanuary13-16.Themainconferencecomprised eight major themes spanning the ?eld of image and video technology, namely, image sensors and multimedia hardware, graphics and visualization, image and video analysis, recognition and retrieval, multi-view imaging and processing, computer vision applications, video communications and networking, and m- timedia processing. To heighten interest and participation, PSIVT also included workshops, tutorials, demonstrations and invited talks, in addition to the tra- tional technical presentations. For the technical program of PSIVT 2009, a total of 247 paper submissions underwent a full review process. Each of these submissions was evaluated in a double-blind manner by a minimum of three reviewers. The review assignments were determined by a set of two to four Chairs for each of the eight themes. Final decisions were jointly made by the Theme Chairs, with some adjustments by the Program Chairs in an e?ort to balance the quality of papers among the themes and to emphasize novelty. Rejected papers with signi?cant discrepancies in review evaluations received consolidation reports explaining the decisio

WearepleasedtowelcomeyoutotheproceedingsoftheThirdInternationalC- ference onSemantic andDigital Media Technologiesheld inKoblenz, Germany. The SAMT agenda brings together researchers at extreme ends of the - mantic multimedia spectrum. At one end, the Semantic Web and its supporting technologies are becoming established in both the open data environment and within specialist domains, such as corporate intranet search, e-Science (parti- larly life sciences), and cultural heritage. To facilitate the world-wide sharing of media, W3C is developing standard ways of denoting fragments of audio/visual content and of specifying and associating semantics with these. At the other end of the spectrum, media analysis tools continue to grow in sophistication, identifying features that can then be associated with explicit semantics, be they expressed formally or informally, using proprietary formats or open standards. Recent progress at these two fronts of the SAMT spectrum means that research spanningthesemanticgapisnowofvitalimportancetofeedtherealapplications that are emerging. This conference also represents a step towards bridging the gap between the research cultures and their respective approaches at both ends of the spectrum. The papers selected show that SAMT is able to attract researchers from media analysis, who see the bene?ts that more explicit semantics can provide, as well as researchers from knowledge engineering who realize that, while a picture can be expressed as a thousand concepts, a million morearewaiting to be extracted

FromJune14-17,2008, theCenterforAdvancedGamingandSimulation(AGS), UtrechtUniversity, incollaborationwiththeNLGDFestivalofGames, organized a Workshop on Motion in Games in Utrecht. Motion plays a crucial role in c- puter games. Characters move around, objects are manipulated or move due to physical constraints, entities are animated, and the camera moves through the scene. Even the motion of the player nowadays is used as input to games. - tion is currently studied in many di?erent areas of research, including graphics and animation, gametechnology, robotics, simulation, computer vision, and also physics, psychology, and urban studies. The goal of the Motion in Games wo- shop was to bring together researchers from this variety of ?elds to present the most recent results and to initiate collaboration. TheMIG 2008workshophostedover30internationallyrenownedresearchers who all presentedtheir ongoingworkon topicssuch ascrowdsimulation, motion capture, path planning and facial animation. This volume is a collection of the paperspresentedduringthe workshop.Since this volumewaspublishedafterthe workshop, the authors of the papers adapted their content in order to include anydiscussionsthattookplaceduringtheworkshopitself.All?nalcontributions were carefully checked by the workshop organizers. The Motion in Games workshop was a very successful event that has set the starting point for interdisciplinary collaborations and for novel research ideas following the interesting discussions that took place. We are very happy with the outcomeofthe workshopandthe excellentcontributionsby the participants, collected in this volume. August 2008 Arjan Egges Arno Kamphuis Mark Overmars SponsoringInstitutions This workshop was sponsored by the GATE 1 2 project and the NLGD Festival of G

Welcome to the proceedings of 9th Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM 2008) held at the National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan during Dec- ber 9-13, 2008. The first PCM was held in Sydney in 2000. Since then, it has been held successfully around the Pacific Rim, including Beijing in 2001, Hsinchu in 2002, Singapore in 2003, Tokyo in 2004, Jeju in 2005, Zhejiang in 2006, Hong Kong in 2007 and finally Tainan. PCM is a major annual international conference bringing together researchers, developers, and educators in the field of multimedia from around the world. It covers a wide spectrum of multimedia research, from state-of-the-art theoretical breakthroughs to the practical systems of multimedia analysis and processing. PCM 2008 featured a comprehensive program including tutorials, keynote talks, regular oral presentations, special sessions, and poster sessions. This year, we - cepted 79 papers out of 210 submissions, giving an acceptance rate of 37%. In addition, 39 papers were accepted for poster presentation. The submissions were categorized into five different tracks: multimedia compression, communication and networking, multimedia processing, analysis and retrieval, multimedia databases, systems, and applications, multimedia human-computer interfaces, multimedia security and digital right management, with a total of 210 submissions from 18 countries and regions. Among the five tracks, "multimedia analysis and retrieval" received the most submissions (34% of the submissions). We kindly appreciate the great effort made by the Program Committee members and the additional reviewers in the reviewing of submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International C- ference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL 2008) held in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2008. The objective of this conference series is to provide a forum for presentation of high-quality research in the ?eld of digital libraries. ICADL 2008 provided an opportunity for digital libraries researchers and practitioners in the Asia Paci?c area and beyond to gather to explore ideas, exchange and share experiences, and further build the research network in this region. ICADL 2008 was a truly international event, with presenters from 21 countries. A total of 63 papers were accepted for inclusion in the proceedings: 30 full papers, 20 short papers, and extended abstracts of 13 posters. Submissions were subject to a rigorous, blind peer-review process. The research topics cover the spectrum of digital libraries, including multimedia digital libraries, usab- ity and evaluation, information retrieval, ontologies, social tagging, metadata issues, multi- and cross-language retrieval, digital preservation, scholarly p- lishing and communities, and more. Additionally, three tutorials were o?ered in association with the conference by Andreas Rauber (Vienna University of Technology), David Bainbridge (University of Waikato), and George Buchanan (Swansea University).

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post-workshop proceedings of three international workshops held in conjunction with the 10th Asia-Pacific Web Conference, APWeb 2008, in Shenyang, China, in April 2008 (see LNCS 4976).

The 15 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers and 4 keynote lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. Topics addressed by the workshops are business intelligence and data mining (BIDM 2008), health data management (IWHDM 2008), and data engineering and Web technology research (DeWeb 2008). The papers focus on issues such as Web searching, Web services, database, data mining, bioinformatics, and business intelligence.

Form creation is key to information processing and forms workflow is a key concept within Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite. Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES is a stand-alone product that also comes bundled with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite. This is the first and only book about this new product specifically created for the design, creation, and processing of dynamically interactive forms. Foundation Form Creation with Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES is written for users of all abilities, with introductory material for beginners and advanced techniques for more experienced users. It discusses both the best-practices of designing forms that work and the specifics of implementing them efficiently for data collectionthe full life cycle of working with forms.

Adobe LiveCycle is all about creating efficient workflows for processing information, and this book demonstrates the full power of the various workflows available for collecting data using one of the most ubiquitous tools availableforms.Complete and thorough coverage of Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES Workflows for the design, implementation, and processing of forms Create and deploy interactive XML-based forms as HTML, PDF, or SWF Integrate forms with third-party tools What you'll learn Best practices for designing highly useable forms Efficient use of tools for implementing forms design Methodologies for data collection, both online and offline Supporting technologies to expand the capabilities of Adobe LiveCycle ES Who this book is for

Designers and developers who work with Adobe LiveCycle ES or is involved in form design, creation, or data collection from forms.

The use of computing technology for entertainment purposes is not a recent p- nomenon. Video game consoles, home computers and other entertainment media have been used widely for more than three decades, and people of all ages are spe- ing an increasing amount of time and money on these technologies. More recent is the rise of a vibrant research community focusing on gaming and entertainment applications. Driven by the growth and the coming of age of the g- ing industry, and by its increasing recognition in the media and the minds of the broader public, the study of computer games, game development and experiences is attracting the interest of researchers from very diverse fields: social sciences, comp- ing, electrical engineering, design, etc. Research of this kind looks to extend the boundaries of gaming technologies. In a relentless drive for innovation, it looks to create and understand an ever increasing range of experiences, and examine how games can provide value for educational, therapeutic and other 'serious' purposes. These themes were reflected in the call for participation and eventually the papers accepted for presentation. The Fun n' Games conference was the second event of a bi-annual series of c- ferences. The first event of the series was held in Preston in 2006 organized by the University of Central Lancashire. Following the success of this event it was decided to run a follow up.

The InternationalConferenceonWeb InformationSystems Engineering(WISE) providesanannualforumforexploringresearch, development, novelapplications and industrial innovations in the area of Web Information Systems. The 9th edition ofthis conference(WISE 2008)washeld in Auckland, NewZealandfrom September 1 to 3, 2008. This volume contains the papers that were presented during the WISE 2008 workshops. We commend these papers to you and hope you ?nd them useful. A major objective of the WISE conferences is to identify new issues and directions in Web engineering, to share experiences, to host discussions, and to initiate future workandcollaborations. Associatedworkshopsdevotedto eme- ing or specialist topics are an important part of the WISE conferences helping to make them an inspiring experience for all participants. Three workshopswere organized and held in conjunction with the WISE 2008 main conference: - The First International Workshop on Web Information Systems Engine- ing for Electronic Businesses and Governments (E-BAG 2008), chaired by Sebastian Link (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Hui Ma (VictoriaUniversityofWellington, NewZealand), andJianYang(Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia); - The Second International Workshop on Web Usability and Accessibility (IWWUA 2008), chaired by Silvia Abrahao (Valencia University of Techn- ogy, Spain), Cristina Cachero(University ofAlicante, Spain), and Maristella Matera (Politecnico di Milano, Italy); and - The First International Workshop on Mashups, Enterprise Mashups and LightweightCompositionontheWeb(MEM&LCW2008), chairedbyMarek Kowalkiewicz(SAP ResearchBrisbane, Australia), Dominik Flejter (Poznan University of Economics, Poland), and Tomasz Kaczmarek (Poznan Univ- sity of Economics, Poland). Following calls for papers, we received 40 submissions

This volume presents the proceedings of the 11th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia and Mobile Networks and Services (MMNS 2008), which was held on Samos, Greece during September 22-26 as part of the 4th International Week on Management of Networks and Services (Manweek 2008). As in the previous three years, the Manweek umbrella - lowed an international audience of researchers and scientists from industry and academia - who are researching and developing management systems - to share views and ideas and present their state-of-the-art results. The other events co-located with Manweek 2008 were the 19th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management (DSOM 2008), the 8th IEEE Workshop on IP Operations and Management (IPOM2008), the Third IEEE International Workshop on Modeling Autonomic CommunicationsEnvironments(MACE2008),the4thIEEE/IFIPInternational Workshop on End-to-End Virtualization and Grid Management (EVGM 2008) andthe5thInternationalWorkshoponNext-GenerationNetworkingMiddleware (NGNM 2008). Under this umbrella, MMNS again proved itself as a top public venue for dissemination of results and intellectual collaboration with speci?c emphasis on the management of emerging mobile and wireless networks. The objective of the conference is to bring together researchers and scientists from academia and industry interested in state-of-the-artmanagementof convergedmultimedia networks and services across heterogeneous networking infrastructures.

The European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2008) was the third event of a series that started in 2006. The two first editions were organized by Pro- Learn (http://www.prolearn-project.org/), a European Network of Excellence. In 2008, several members of Kaleidoscope, the other European Network of Excellence (http://www.noe-kaleidoscope.org/pub/), joined as co-chair, committee members, reviewers and authors. These two networks are no longer funded, but our aim was to turn EC-TEL into a sustainable series of high-quality events and thereby to contribute to the scientific landscape of technology-enhanced learning. A new network, named STELLAR, will be launched in 2009, with members from both existing networks as well as new members and will support the future editions of this conference. The scope of EC-TEL 2008 covered the different fields of learning technologies: e- cation, psychology, computer science. The contributions in this volume address the - sign of innovative environments, computational models and architectures, results of empirical studies on socio-cognitive processes, field studies regarding the use of te- nologies in context, collaborative processes, pedagogical scenarios, reusable learning objects and emerging objects, groups and communities, learning networks, interaction analysis, metadata, personalization, collaboration scripts, learning adaptation, collabo- tive environments, resources, tangible tools, as well as learning management systems.

From first installation to advanced image manipulation techniques, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition explains how anyone can utilizeGIMP: a free, open source image manipulation program. You will learn how to install GIMP on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms. Once you've installed the application, you'll learn about the interface and configuration options, and then jump into a quick and simple project to familiarize yourself.

With fourcolor graphics and screenshots throughout, you'll learn how to prepare camera images for display on web pagesincluding processes like rescaling, cropping, and balancing color. Utilizing layers, paths, and masks are also covered in extensive detail. Of course, you will also learn how to draw lines and shapes; utilize patterns and gradients; and even create your own brushes, patterns, and gradients.

GIMP expert and author Akkana Peck teaches you how to touch up digital photographs, smudging away blemishes, fixing redeye, and stitching panoramic images. You'll learn how to tap into the powerful filters, effects, and plugins that are available for GIMP and automate tasks using scripts. The entire book is approached in a projectbased manner, and as you progress, numerous projects will help strengthen your newly acquired abilities. What you'll learn Install GIMP on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Explore the interface and configuration options. Prepare your camera images for use on the Web, including rescaling, cropping, and balancing color. Learn basic techniques such as drawing lines and shapes, utilizing patterns, and making use of gradients. Master advanced techniques such as layers, paths, and masks. Create your own brushes, patterns, and gradients. Discover tricks for fixing blemishes, removing redeye, and stitching together panoramic images. Who this book is for

This book is for graphics designers, digital photographers, and hobbyists. It's is aimed at those who need to utilize a full-featured image manipulation program but don't have hundreds of dollars to pay for Photoshop. GIMP is also the preferred image manipulation application for the open source advocate. GIMP is available on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.