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).

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."

The advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT) has enabled broad use of ICT and facilitated the use of ICT in the private and personal domain. ICT-related industries are directing their business targets to home applications. Among these applications, entertainment will differentiate ICT applications in the private and personal market from the of?ce. Comprehensive research and development on ICT - plications for entertainment will be different for the promotion of ICT use in the home and other places for leisure. So far engineering research and development on enterta- ment has never been really established in the academic communities. On the other hand entertainment-related industries such as the video and computer game industries have been growing rapidly in the last 10 years, and today the entertainment computing bu- ness outperforms the turnover of the movie industry. Entertainment robots are drawing theattentionofyoungpeople. TheeventcalledRoboCuphasbeenincreasingthenumber of participants year by year. Entertainment technologies cover a broad range of pr- ucts and services: movies, music, TV (including upcoming interactive TV), VCR, VoD (including music on demand), computer games, game consoles, video arcades, g- bling machines, the Internet (e. g. , chat rooms, board and card games, MUD), intelligent toys, edutainment, simulations, sport, theme parks, virtual reality, and upcoming service robots. The?eldofentertainmentcomputingfocusesonusers'growinguseofentertainment technologies at work, in school and at home, and the impact of this technology on their behavior. Nearly every working and living place has computers, and over two-thirds of childreninindustrializedcountrieshavecomputersintheirhomesaswell.

FIDJI 2004 was an international forum for researchers and practitioners int- estedinthe advancesin,andapplicationsof,softwareengineeringfordistributed application development. Concerning the technologies, the workshop focused on "Java-related" technologies. It was an opportunity to present and observe the latest research, results, and ideas in these areas. Allpaperssubmittedtothisworkshopwerereviewedbyatleasttwomembers of the International Program Committee. Acceptance was based primarily on originality and contribution. We selected, for these post-workshop proceedings, 11 papers amongst 22 submitted, a tutorial and two keynotes. FIDJI2004aimedatpromotingascienti?capproachtosoftwareengineering. The scope of the workshop included the following topics: - design of distributed applications - development methodologies for software and system engineering - UML-based development methodologies - development of reliable and secure distributed systems - component-based development methodologies - dependability support during system life cycle - fault tolerance re?nement, evolution and decomposition - atomicity and exception handling in system development - software architectures, frameworks and design patterns for developing d- tributed systems - integration of formal techniques in the development process - formal analysis and grounding of modelling notation and techniques (e. g. , UML, metamodelling) - supporting the security and dependability requirements of distributed app- cations in the development process - distributed software inspection - refactoring methods - industrial and academic case studies - development and analysis tools The organization of such a workshop represents an important amount of work.

We greeted the attendees of CIVR 2004 with the following address: "T' aimid an- ' bhroduil ' failte ' a chur romhaibh chuig Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Atha Cliath agus ' chuig an triu ' Comhdh' ail Idirn' aisiun ' ta ar Aisghabh' ail Iomh' anna agus F' ?se' an. ' T'asuil ' againn go mbeidh am iontach agaibh anseo in Eirinn agus go mbeidh bhur gcuairt taitneamhnach agus sas ' uil. ' T' aimid an-bhroduil ' go hairithe ' failte ' a chur roimh na daoine on ' oiread sin t' ?ortha difriula ' agus na daoine a th' ainig as i bhfad i gc' ein. T'aanoireadsinpaip ' ' ear curtha isteach chuig an chomhdh' ail seo go bhfuil caighde' an na bp' aip' ear agus na bp' ostaer an-ard ar fad agus taimid ' ag s' uil go mor ' le h' ocaid iontach. " rd We were delighted to host the 3 International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval in Dublin City University. We hope that all attendees had a wonderful stay in Ireland and that their visits were enjoyable and rewarding. There were 125 papers in total submitted to the CIVR2004 conference and each was reviewed by at least three independent reviewers. We are grateful to the 64 members of the technical programme committee and the 29 other rev- wers who completed these reviews and allowed us to put together a very strong technical programme.

This volume collects the proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Multimedia Information Systems, MIS 2005, which was held during September 19 21, 2005 in the beautiful town of Sorrento, Italy. The MIS series of workshops started in 1995 with the aim of fostering - terdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of multimedia information systems, in all their diversity. Since then, in MIS workshops, issues ranging from fundamental multimedia information management research to advanced app- cations in multimedia systems related ?elds have been discussed, new systems have been reported, and the lessons learned have provided new insights into this dynamic and exciting area of computer science and engineering. As the program chairs of the MIS 2005 workshop, we note that while desi- ing an e?ective multimedia system, two complementary issues have to be taken into account: (a) the need to use appropriate technologies in acquiring, p- cessing, and delivering multimedia data which manifest themselves under very di?erent shapes; and (b) the need for modeling, indexing, querying, retrieving, mining, and visualizing data under di?erent system and device capabilities, for di?erent users. Therefore, besides the development of more traditional content management technologies, there are emerging needs to gather media from se- ing devices in the environmental context, for informedprocessingofmediabased on the current task and resources, and for making the results available to the user in the most suitable form based on the capabilities and preferences of the user."

The mental ray series of handbooks is conceived to provide concise and up to date general and technical information about the commercially available rendering software mental ray. The series addresses the needs of professional and non-professional users of the software as well as of software developers who intend to integrate the stand-alone version of mental ray or the mental ray component software into applications that require interactive photorealistic and high image quality programmable rendering. In addition, the series provides comprehensive information to students and researchers in computer graphics. mental ray is a valuable tool for teaching and demonstrating the fundamental concepts of photorealistic and programmable rendering as well as a benchmark and catalyst for further research. The rendering software mental ray and many of its unique underlying concepts are the result of ongoing research and development at the company mental images since its incorporation in 1986. Leading vendors of 3D digital content creation and 3D CAD and product design software have made mental ray their rendering software of choice for all purposes of high end visualization and image synthesis ranging from digital special effects and 3D animation for motion picture, video ?lm, and games production to 3D mechanical and architectural CAD and to industrial product design and automotive styling.

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."

We are delighted to present the proceedings of the 8th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS 2005). The MMNS 2005 conference was held in Barcelona, Spain on October 24-26, 2005. As in previous years, the conference brought together an international audience of researchers and scientists from industry and academia who are researching and developing state-of-the-art management systems, while creating a public venue for results dissemination and intellectual collaboration. This year marked a challenging chapter in the advancement of management systems for the wider management research community, with the growing complexities of the "so-called" multimedia over Internet, the proliferation of alternative wireless networks (WLL, WiFi and WiMAX) and 3G mobile services, intelligent and high-speed networks scalable multimedia services and the convergence of computing and communications for data, voice and video delivery. Contributions from the research community met this challenge with 65 paper submissions; 33 high-quality papers were subsequently selected to form the MMNS 2005 technical program. The diverse topics in this year's program included wireless networking technologies, wireless network applications, quality of services, multimedia, Web applications, overlay network management, and bandwidth management.

The International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL) is an annual international forum that provides opportunities for librarians, researchers and experts to exchange their research results, innovative ideas, service experiences and state-- the-art developments in the field of digital libraries. Building on the success of the first six ICADL conferences, the 7th ICADL conference hosted by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shanghai Library in Shanghai, China aimed to further strengthen the academic collaboration and strategic alliance in the Asia- Pacific Region in the development of digital libraries. The theme of ICADL 2004 was: Digital library: International Collaboration and Cross-fertilization, with its focus on technology, services, management and localization. The conference began with an opening ceremony and the conference program featured 9 keynote speeches and 5 invited speeches by local and international experts. During the 3-day program, 40 research paper presentations were given in 3 parallel sessions. The conference also included 6 tutorials and an exhibition. The conference received 359 submissions, comprising 248 full papers and 111 short papers. Each paper was carefully reviewed by the Program Committee members. Finally, 44 full papers, 15 short papers and 37 poster papers were selected. On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees of ICADL 2004, we would like to express our appreciation to all authors and attendees for participating in the conference. We also thank the sponsors, Program Committee members, supporting organizations and helpers for making the conference a success. Without their efforts, the conference would not have been possible.

Over the last few years Web Engineering has begun to gain mainstream acc- tance within the software engineering, IT and related disciplines. In particular, both researchers and practitioners are increasingly recognizing the unique c- racteristics of Web systems, and what these characteristicsimply in terms of the approaches we take to Web systems development and deployment in practice. A scan of the publications in related conference proceedings and journals highlights the diversity of the discipline areas which contribute to both the ri- ness and the complexity of Web Engineering. The 5th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2005), held in Sydney, Australia, extends the traditions established by the earlier conferences in the series: ICWE2004 in Munich, Germany; ICWE2003 in Oviedo, Spain; ICWE2002 in Santa Fe, Argentina; and ICWE2001 in Caceres, Spain. Not only have these conferences helped disseminate cutting edge research within the ?eld of Web Engineering, but they have also helped de?ne and shape the discipline itself.TheprogramwehaveputtogetherforICWE2005continuesthisevolution. Indeed, we can now begin to see the maturing of the ?eld. For possibly the ?rst time, there was very little debate within the Program Committee about which papers were in and out of scope, and much more debate as to the each papers contributions to the ?eld."

We are delighted to present the proceedings of the 7th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks & Services (MMNS). The MMNS 2004 conference was held in San Diego, California, USA on October 4-6,2004.Asinpreviousyears, theconferencebroughttogether aninternational audience of researchers and scientists from industry and academia who are - searching and developing state-of-the-art management systems, while creating a public venue for results dissemination and intellectual collaboration. This year marked a challenging chapter in the advancement of management s- tems for the wider management researchcommunity, with the growing compl- ities ofthe Internet, the proliferationof alternativewireless networksandmobile services, intelligent and high-speed networks, scalable multimedia services, and the convergence of computing and communications for data and voice delivery. Contributions from the research community met this challenge with 84 paper submissions; 26 selected high-quality papers were subsequently selected to form the MMNS 2004 technical program. The diverse topics in this year's program included novel protocols in wireless systems, multimedia over wireless, mobility management, multimedia service control, proactive techniques for QoS mana- ment, MPLStra?cengineeringandresiliency, distributedsystems management, scalable multimedia systems, and adaptive methods for streaming multimedia.

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

The AMDO 2004 workshop took place at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) on 22-24 September, 2004, institutionally sponsored by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), the MCYT (Comision Interm- isterial de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Spanish Government), the AERFAI (Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis), the EG (Eurogra- ics Association) and the Mathematics and Computer Science Department of the UIB. Also important commercial sponsors collaborated with practical dem- strations; the main contributors were: Barco Electronics Systems (Title Sp- sor), VICOM Tech, ANDROME Iberica, CESA and TAGrv. The subject of the workshop was ongoing research in articulated motion on a sequence of images and sophisticated models for deformable objects. The goals of these areas are to understand and interpret the motion of complex objects that can be found in sequences of images in the real world. The main topics considered priorities are: deformable models, motion analysis, articulated models and animation, visualization of deformable models, 3D recovery from motion, single or multiple human motion analysis and synthesis, applications of deformable models and motion analysis, face tracking, recovery and recognition models, and virtual and augmented reality systems.

This volume contains papers selected for presentation at the 7th Asia Pacific Conference on Web Technology (APWeb 2005), which was held in Shanghai, China during March 29 April 1, 2005. APWeb is an international conference series on WWW technologies and is the primary forum for researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry to exchange knowledge on WWW-related technologies and new advanced applications. APWeb 2005 received 420 submissions from 21 countries and regions worldwide, including China, Korea, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, France, UK, Canada, USA, India, Hong Kong, Brazil, Germany, Thailand, Singapore, Turkey, Spain, Greece, Belgium, New Zealand, and UAE. After a thorough review process for each submission by the Program Committee members and expert reviewers recommended by PC members, APWeb 2005 accepted 71 regular research papers (acceptance ratio 16.9%) and 22 short papers (acceptance ratio 5.2%). This volume also includes 6 keynote papers and 11 invited demo papers. The keynote lectures were given by six leading experts: Prof. Ah Chung Tsoi (Australia Research Council), Prof. Zhiyong Liu (National Nature Science Foundation of China), Prof. John Mylopoulos (University of Toronto), Prof. Ramamohanarao (Rao) Kotagiri (University of Melbourne), Prof. Calton Pu (Georgia Tech), and Prof. Zhiwei Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences)."

The Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) is a leading international conference in the area of data mining and knowledge discovery. It provides an international forum for researchers and industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all KDD-related areas including data mining, data warehousing, machine learning, databases, statistics, knowledge acquisition and automatic scientific discovery, data visualization, causality induction, and knowledge-based systems. This year s conference (PAKDD 2005) was the ninth of the PAKDD series, and carried the tradition in providing high-quality technical programs to facilitate research in knowledge discovery and data mining. It was held in Hanoi, Vietnam at the Melia Hotel, 18 20 May 2005. We are pleased to provide some statistics about PAKDD 2005. This year we received 327 submissions (a 37% increase over PAKDD 2004), which is the highest number of submissions since the first PAKDD in 1997) from 28 countries/regions: Australia (33), Austria (1), Belgium (2), Canada (11), China (91), Switzerland (2), France (9), Finland (1), Germany (5), Hong Kong (11), Indonesia (1), India (2), Italy (2), Japan (21), Korea (51), Malaysia (1), Macau (1), New Zealand (3), Poland (4), Pakistan (1), Portugal (3), Singapore (12), Taiwan (19), Thailand (7), Tunisia (2), UK (5), USA (31), and Vietnam (9). The submitted papers went through a rigorous reviewing process. Each submission was reviewed by at least two reviewers, and most of them by three or four reviewers."

You want to make an animated film. You've got the idea. You've got Macromedia Flash. But where do you start? What's the best way to script your cartoon, how do you start animating with Flash, what do you really need to know in order to get your ideas out there to make you famous?

Who better to ask than two seasoned professionals, who've not only worked for Disney, but also run the hugely successful cult website, funnyazhell.com.

Kevin Peaty and Glenn Kirkpatrick draw on their rich studio experience and their knowledge of Flash to show you the best way to create great Flash cartoons that look as good as traditional animated films.

This book follows the professional process, taking a creative idea from storyboard stage, through layout to publishing, via a detailed look at animation techniques, that will give you the kind of insight normally only gained from years spent in the industry.

In depth and detailed, the book follows the production of a cartoon from inception to final outputlooking at all the decisions and skills that have contributed to its appeal.

The book covers Flash versions 4 and 5 as well as MX.

Whether you're completely new to Flash, or are making your first steps into the world of Flash cartooning, this book will let you work alongside the professionals to make your own animated masterpiece.

With this book on your desktop, all you need is an idea Watch and listen to 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' as created throughout the book by Glenn and Kevin. And then think how you'd have done it in your own style... All you need is Flash Cartoon Animation If you need even further inspiration, check out the funnyazhell.com website, where there a many fantastic movies by Kevin, Glenn and others.

Focusing on the manipulation and representation of geometrical objects, this book explores the application of geometry to computer graphics and computer-aided design (CAD). Over 300 exercises are included, some new to this edition, and many of which encourage the reader to implement the techniques and algorithms discussed through the use of a computer package with graphing and computer algebra capabilities. A dedicated website also offers further resources and useful links.

Diana Johnson (Sorenson Media) One of the best books on video for new users: editing, compression, and Flash MX technologies. Full of great tips. Let's make movies Interactive movies, totally integrated into your Flash interface With Macromedia Flash MX you have the power to import digital video and sound, and manipulate them just like any other media object. That's a whole world of design possibilities. This book takes you through all you need to know about producing such wonderful sites. The first section gives you a thorough grounding in how best to import your video and sound into Flash MX and the many different ways that you can manipulate it once it's in there. Then, in the second section, we go through a complete real-world case study from pre-production on the video to final output to the web and CD-ROM. Finally, we show you how can apply advanced ActionScript to video, and create a fully object-oriented sound and video playing Flash component that you'll be able to use time and time again. Flash MX - viewers who have the tiny Flash Player installed can now see video material that would otherwise require lengthy downloads and the clunky interfaces of other web video plug-ins. This book is the guide you need for this exciting new universe, offering inspiration and technical guidance in equal measure. As with all books from friends of ED our support is fast, friendly and free. Even if our dedicated support team are unable to solve your problem immediately, your queries will be passed onto the editors and authors who put the book together. All foED authors help with the support on their books, and will either directly mail readers with solutions or (more usually) send their response to an editor to pass on. This book assumes no knowledge beyond an ability to work with the Flash MX interface, and is not intended for those with substantial digital video experience. As such, this book does not assume that the reader has access to expensive video-editing software. All you need for this book is access to Flash MX, and some imagination. and Flash MX technologies. Gives you a thorough grounding in how best to import your video and sound into Flash MX and the many different ways you can produce such wonderful sites. Softcover. About the Author Hoss Gifford is one of the founding directors of Flammable Jam, and curator of his personal site. He regularly sponges his way around the world, getting free flights in exchange for talking at new media seminars, including FlashForward and Milia. Hoss reckons we should all take stuff a bit less seriously, and be happy with making 'quite nice things that entertain people for a wee while', as can be seen from his other two sites. Kristian Besley was born in Wales, grew up in the same street as Catherine Zeta Jones, and read Media Arts following interests in film and design. In his little spare time, you'll most likely find him creating random stuff which will eventually appear online at graphci, or laughing at personalised number plates. One day he vows to reform seminal band Ken.

This volume contains the ?nal proceedings for the 2004Computer Music Mod- ing and Retrieval Symposium (CMMR 2004). This event was held during 26-29 May 2004 in Esbjerg, Denmark on the joint campus area of Aalborg University Esbjerg and the University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg. CMMR is an annual event focusing on important aspects of computer music. CMMR 2004 is the s- ond event in this series. CMMR 2003, which was held in Montpellier, France in May 2003, was a great success and attracted high-quality papers and prominent researchers from the ?eld of computer music. The CMMR 2003 postsymposium proceedingswaspublishedbySpringerintheLectureNotesinComputerScience series (LNCS 2771). CMMR 2004 was jointly organized by Aalborg University Esbjerg in Denmark and LMA, CNRS, Marseille in France (in cooperation with ACM SIGWEB). The use of computers in music is well established. CMMR 2004 provided a unique opportunity to meet and interact with peers concerned with the cro- in?uence of the technological and creative in computer music. The ?eld of c- putermusicisinterdisciplinarybynatureandcloselyrelatedtoanumberofc- puter science and engineering areas such as information retrieval, programming, human computer interaction,digital libraries,hypermedia, arti? cialintelligence, acoustics, signal processing, etc. The event gathered many interesting people (researchers, educators, composers, performers, and others). There were many high-qualitykeynoteandpaperpresentations,thatfosteredinspiringdiscussions. I hope that you ?nd the work presented in these proceedings as interesting and exciting as I have.