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)."

Expert Flash developer and author De Donatis reveals everything needed to master Flash components, revealing how the architecture works, how to create effective component-based applications, and how to create custom components from what's already provided.

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 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."

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)."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

This volume comprises papers from the following ?ve workshops that were part of the complete program for the International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT) held in Heraklion, Greece, March 2004: * ICDE/EDBT Joint Ph. D. Workshop (PhD) * Database Technologies for Handling XML-information on the Web (DataX) * Pervasive Information Management (PIM) * Peer-to-Peer Computing and Databases (P2P&DB) * Clustering Information Over the Web (ClustWeb) Together, the ?ve workshops featured 61 high-quality papers selected from appr- imately 180 submissions. It was, therefore, dif?cult to decide on the papers that were to beacceptedforpresentation. Webelievethattheacceptedpaperssubstantiallycontribute to their particular ?elds of research. The workshops were an excellent basis for intense and highly fruitful discussions. The quality and quantity of papers show that the areas of interest for the workshops are highly active. A large number of excellent researchers are working on the aforementioned ?elds producing research output that is not only of interest for other researchers but also for industry. The organizers and participants of the workshops were highly satis?ed with the output. The high quality of the presenters and workshop participants contributed to the success of each workshop. The amazing environment of Heraklion and the location of the EDBT conference also contributed to the overall success. Last, but not least, our sincere thanks to the conference organizers - the organizing team was always willing to help and if there were things that did not work, assistance was quickly available.

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).

This work introduces computer graphics from a mathematical perspective, offering a balance of theory, applications, and code. The book begins with a discussion of basic graphics tools such as vectors, matrices, and quaternions, then builds up to more advanced topics such as the intersection of three-dimensional objects. Both classical and new topics are covered. Some topics discussed include basic transforms, curves, surfaces, and subdivision surfaces. New techniques such as wavelets, fractals, parameterization, and fluid simulation are also covered. Throughout a large portion of the book, a new curve and surface algorithm is developed to illustrate the use of mathematics to develop compute graphics algorithms. The book contains all of the classes in C# necessary for computer graphics, providing a full explanation of the C# code and C# implementations for many of the algorithms are provided. The authors are affiliated with the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

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."

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.

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.

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.

On behalf of the AH 2004 Program Committee, we were pleased to welcome att- dees to Eindhoven for the 3rd International Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems. Similar to previous years, the number of research groups involved in research and innovative applications of personalization and adaptation functionalities has continued to grow, resulting in a further increase of 33% in the number of papers submitted to the conference, compared to the previous conference. From the 138 submissions we received, the program committee, in a rigorous review process, accepted 27 submissions (i.e., 20%) as full papers and 18 (i.e., 13%) as short papers. The large number of papers submitted generated a tremendous amount of work for the program committee members and the external reviewers, and we are immensely greatful for the effort they put into the process of selecting the very best papers. Together with three invited talks (by Emile Aarts, Philips Research, Candy Sidner, Mitsubishi Research, and Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research), the AH 2004 - pers provide an excellent view on the successful approaches for innovative person- ization and adaptation functionalities in a variety of areas, including eLearning, eC- merce, mobile tourist guides and many more. They also show the integration of pers- alization functionalities being employed in Web environments, in ambient intelligence and intelligent agent contexts, and building upon adaptive hypermedia and Semantic Web technologies, Web search, Web services, social and peer-to-peer networks, and recommender systems, among others.

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.