Welcome to the third International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS'2000) in Fortaleza (Brazil)! The first MMNS was held in Montreal ( Canada) in july 1997 and the second MMNS was held in Versailles (France) in November 1998. The MMNS conference takes place every year and a half and is aimed to be a truly international event by bringing together researchers and practitioners from all around the world and by organising the conference each time in a different continent/country. Over the past several years, there has been a considerable amount of research within the fields of multimedia networking and network management. Much of that work has taken place within the context of managing Quality-of Service in broadband integrated services digital networks such as the A TM, and more recently in IP-based networks, to respond to the requirements of emerging multimedia applications. A TM networks were designed to support multimedia traffic with diverse characteristics and can be used as the transfer mode for both wired and wireless networks. A new set of Internet protocols is being developed to provide better quality of service, which is a prerequisite for supporting multimedia applications. Multimedia applications have a different set of requirements, which impacts the design of the underlying communication network as well as its management. Several QoS management mechanisms intervening at different layers of the communication network are required including QoS-routing, QoS-based transport, QoS negotiation, QoS adaptation, FCAPS management, and mobility management.

Usability has become increasingly important as an essential part of the design and development of software and systems for all sectors of society, business, industry, government and education, as well as a topic of research. Today, we can safely say that, in many parts of the world, information technology and communications is or is becoming a central force in revolutionising the way that we all live and how our societies function. IFIP's mission states clearly that it "encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of information technology for the benefit of all people". The question that must be considered now is how much attention has been given to the usability of the IT-based systems that we use in our work and daily lives. There is much evidence to indicate that the real interests and needs of people have not yet been embraced in a substantial way by IT decision makers and when developing and implementing the IT systems that shape our lives, both as private individuals and at work. But some headway has been made. Three years ago, the IFIP Technical Committee on Human Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13) gave the subject of usability its top priority for future work in advancing HCI within the international community. This Usability Stream of the IFIP World Computer Congress is a result of this initiative. It provides a showcase on usability involving some practical business solutions and experiences, and some research findings.

Testing of Communicating Systems XIV presents the latest international results in both the theory and industrial practice of the testing of communicating systems, ranging from tools and techniques for testing to test standards, frameworks, notations, algorithms, fundamentals of testing, and industrial experiences and issues. The tools and techniques discussed apply to conformance testing, interoperability testing, performance testing, Internet protocols and applications, and multimedia and distributed systems in general.

Learn Unity Programming with UnityScript is your step-by-step guide to learning to make your first Unity games using UnityScript. You will move from point-and-click components to fully customized features. You need no prior programming knowledge or any experience with other design tools such as PhotoShop or Illustrator - you can start from scratch making Unity games with what you'll learn in this book.Through hands-on examples of common game patterns, you'll learn and apply the basics of game logic and design. You will gradually become comfortable with UnityScript syntax, at each point having everything explained to you clearly and concisely. Many beginner programming books refer to documentation that is too technically abstract for a beginner to use - Learn Unity Programming with UnityScript will teach you how to read and utilize those resources to hone your skills, and rapidly increase your knowledge in Unity game development. You'll learn about animation, sound, physics, how to handle user interaction and so much more. Janine Suvak has won awards for her game development and is ready to show you how to start your journey as a game developer. The Unity3D game engine is flexible, cross-platform, and a great place to start your game development adventure, and UnityScript was made for it - so get started game programming with this book today.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Databases in Networked Information Systems, DNIS 2013, held in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan in March 2013. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The workshop generally puts the main focus on data semantics and infrastructure for information management and interchange. The papers are organized in topical sections on cloud-based database systems; information and knowledge management; information extraction from data resources; bio-medical information management; and networked information systems: infrastructure.

High Performance Networking is a state-of-the-art book that deals with issues relating to the fast-paced evolution of public, corporate and residential networks. It focuses on the practical and experimental aspects of high performance networks and introduces novel approaches and concepts aimed at improving the performance, usability, interoperability and scalability of such systems. Among others, the topics covered include: * Java applets and applications; * distributed virtual environments; * new internet streaming protocols; * web telecollaboration tools; * Internet, Intranet; * real-time services like multimedia; * quality of service; * mobility. High Performance Networking comprises the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on High Performance Networking, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and was held at Vienna Univrsity of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in September 1998. High Performance Networking is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course on high performance networking, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Mobile communications havepermeated the globe in both business and social cultures. In only af ew short years, Japan aloneh ash ad more than ten million subscribers enter the mobilem arket. Such explosive popularity is an indication ofa strong commercial demand for communications in both the tethered and tetherless environments. Accompanying the vibrant growth in mobile communications is the growth in multimedia communications, includingthe Internet. Mobile and multime dia communications technologies are merging, making mobile computing ak ey phrasei n the coming advanced information communication era. Thegrowth i n these dynamic industries shows that achange in our chosen method of commu nications is already well advanced. Reading e mail and connecting to various information feeds have already become a part ofdaily business activities. We are trying to grasp theo verall picture of mobile computing. Its shape and form are just starting to appear as personal digital assistants (PDA), handheld personal computers (HPC), wireless data communication services, and com mercial software designed for mobile environments. We are at the cusp of vast popularization of "computers on the go. " "Any time Anywhere Computing" provides the reader with an understand able explanationo ft he current developments and commercialization of mobile computing. Thec oret ec hnologies and applications needed to un derstand the industry are comprehensively addressed. Thebook emphasizes three infrastruc tures: (1) wireless communication network infrastructure, (2) terminal devices (or "computers on the go"), and (3) software middleware and architectures that support wireless and mobile computing.

Audio Signal Processing for Next-Generation Multimedia Communication Systems presents cutting-edge digital signal processing theory and implementation techniques for problems including speech acquisition and enhancement using microphone arrays, new adaptive filtering algorithms, multichannel acoustic echo cancellation, sound source tracking and separation, audio coding, and realistic sound stage reproduction. This book's focus is almost exclusively on the processing, transmission, and presentation of audio and acoustic signals in multimedia communications for telecollaboration where immersive acoustics will play a great role in the near future.

The NSF Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) was formed in the Computer Science Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1992. Through its efforts in basic research, applied research, and technology transfer, the CIIR has become known internationally as one of the leading research groups in the area of information retrieval. The CIIR focuses on research that results in more effective and efficient access and discovery in large, heterogeneous, distributed text and multimedia databases. The scope of the work that is done in the CIIR is broad and goes significantly beyond 'traditional' areas of information retrieval such as retrieval models, cross-lingual search, and automatic query expansion. The research includes both low-level systems issues such as the design of protocols and architectures for distributed search, as well as more human-centered topics such as user interface design, visualization and data mining with text, and multimedia retrieval.Advances in Information Retrieval: Recent Research from the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval is a collection of papers that covers a wide variety of topics in the general area of information retrieval. Together, they represent a snapshot of the state of the art in information retrieval at the turn of the century and at the end of a decade that has seen the advent of the World-Wide Web. The papers provide overviews and in-depth analysis of theory and experimental results. This book can be used as source material for graduate courses in information retrieval, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This book contains the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 14th Information Hiding Conference, IH 2012, held in Berkeley, CA, USA, in May 2012. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on multimedia forensics and counter-forensics, steganalysis, data hiding in unusual content, steganography, covert channels, anonymity and privacy, watermarking, and fingerprinting.

The growth of the Internet and the availability of enormous volumes of data in digital form has necessitated intense interest in techniques for assisting the user in locating data of interest. The Internet has over 350 million pages of data and is expected to reach over one billion pages by the year 2000. Buried on the Internet are both valuable nuggets for answering questions as well as large quantities of information the average person does not care about. The Digital Library effort is also progressing, with the goal of migrating from the traditional book environment to a digital library environment. Information Retrieval Systems: Theory and Implementation provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext-linked structure is put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure.The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information. The theoretical metrics used to describe information systems are expanded to discuss their practical application in the uncontrolled environment of real world systems. Information Retrieval Systems: Theory and Implementation is suitable as a textbook for a graduate-level course on information retrieval, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This volume contains papers presented at the fourth working conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS'99), held in Leuven, Belgium from September 20-21, 1999. The Conference, arrangedjointly by Technical Committees 11 and 6 of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP), was organized by the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The name "Communications and Multimedia Security" was used for the first time in 1995, when Reinhard Posch organized the first in this series of conferences in Graz, Austria, following up on the previously national (Austrian) IT Sicherheit conferences held in Klagenfurt (1993) and Vienna (1994). In 1996, CMS took place in Essen, Germany; in 1997 the conference moved to Athens, Greece. The Conference aims to provide an international forum for presentations and discussions on protocols and techniques for providing secure information networks. The contributions in this volume review the state-of the-art in communications and multimedia security, and discuss practical of topics experiences and new developments. They cover a wide spectrum inc1uding network security, web security, protocols for entity authentication and key agreement, protocols for mobile environments, applied cryptology, watermarking, smart cards, and legal aspects of digital signatures.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2014, held in Padua, Italy, in May 2014. The 27 revised full papers and 12 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. In addition to the themes of persuasive technology dealt with in the previous editions of the conference, this edition highlighted a special theme, i.e. persuasive, motivating, empowering videogames.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia, PCM 2013, held in Nanjing, China, in December 2013. The 30 revised full papers and 27 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 153 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the area of multimedia content analysis, multimedia signal processing and communications and multimedia applications and services.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF USER INTERFACES l 2 Jean Vanderdonckt and Angel Puerta ,3 Jlnstitut d'Administration et de Gestion - Universite catholique de Louvain Place des Doyens, 1 - B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) vanderdonckt@gant,ucl. ac,be , vanderdoncktj@acm,org Web: http://www. arpuerta. com JKnowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, MSOB x215 Stanford, CA 94305-5479, USA puena@camis. stanford. edu 3RedWhaie Corp. , 277 Town & Country Village Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA puerta@ redwhale. com Web: http://www. redwhale. com Computer-Aided Design of Vser Interfaces (CADUI) is hereby referred to as the particular area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) intended to provide software support for any activity involved in the development life cycle of an interactive application, Such activities namely include task analysis, contextual inquiry [l], requirements definition, user-centred design, application modelling, conceptual design, prototyping, programming, in- stallation, test, evaluation, maintenance, Although very recently addressed (e. g. , [3]), the activity of re-designing an existing user interface (VI) for an interactive application and the activity of re-engineering a VI to rebuild its underlying models are also considered in CADVI. A fundamental aim of CADVI is not only to provide some software sup- port to the above activities, but also to incorporate strong and solid meth- odological aspects into the development, thus fostering abstraction reflection and leaving ad hoc development aside [5,7]. Incorporating such methodo- logical aspects inevitably covers three related, sometimes intertwined, facets: models, method and tools.

Designing Effective and Usable Multimedia Systems presents research and development and industrial experience of usability engineering for multimedia user interfaces. The book discusses the methods, tools and guidelines for multimedia use and implementation and covers the following topics in detail: * Design methods for multimedia (MM) systems; * Social and cognitive models for MM interaction; * Empirical studies of the effects of MM on learning and behavior; * Design and prototyping support tools; * Intelligent MM Systems and Design support; * Usability evaluation. GBP/LISTGBP Designing Effective and Usable Multimedia Systems contains the proceedings of the International Working Conference on Designing Effective and usable Multimedia Systems, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), held in Stuttgart, Germany, in September 1998. It is essential reading for computer scientists, software developers, information systems managers and human scientists, especially those working in the applied disciplines such as human factors and interface design.

The research domains information retrieval and information visualization have always been independent from each other. However, they have the potential to be mutually beneficial. With this in mind, a writer school was organized in Zinal, Switzerland, in January 2012, within the context of the EU-funded research project PROMISE (Participative Research Laboratory for Multimedia and Multilingual Information Systems Evaluation). PROMISE aims at advancing the experimental evaluation of complex multimedia and multilingual information systems in order to support individuals, commercial entities, and communities who design, develop, employ, and improve such complex systems. The overall goal of PROMISE is to deliver a unified environment collecting data, knowledge, tools, and methodologies, and to help the user community involved in experimental evaluation.

This book constitutes the outcome of the PROMISE Winter School 2012 and contains 11 invited lectures from the research domains information retrieval and information visualization. A large variety of subjects are covered, including hot topics such as crowdsourcing and social media.

Packed with numerous examples this easy-to-use manual provides designers of interactive media with a practical guide to screen design. Written for the working designer the manual shows how to rework information so that it is suitable for the chosen target group and the media they are using. It describes background information and encourages further development of the language of digital media. In doing so it covers all aspects of screen design, including: perception and learning, ergonomics, communication theory, image research, aesthetics, and the design of navigation and orientation elements.

This book contains papers invited after the First International Workshop on Mobile Social Signal Processing, MSSP 2010, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in September 2010. The 9 revised papers included in this volume represent the diversity of two fields of research, Mobile HCI and Social Signal Processing and areas of overlap. They cover a wide range of topics spanning from approaches for effective interaction with mobile and wearable devices to modelling, analysis and synthesis of nonverbal behaviour in human-human and human-machine interactions.

It is certain that, over the next few years, data traffic will dwarf voice traffic on telecommunications networks. Growth in data-traffic volumes far exceeds that for voice, and is driven by increased use of applications such as e-mail attachments, remote printing and fileserver access, and the now omnipresent World Wide Web. The growth of data networking to connect computers with each other and with their peripheral devices began in earnest in the 1970s, took off in the 1980s and exploded in the 1990s. The early 21st century will see ever faster, more cost effective networks providing flexible data access into ever more businesses and homes. Since the 1970s there have been great advances in technology. For the past twenty years the processing power of computers has continued to grow with no hint of slowing - recall the oft-cited Moore's Law claiming that this power doubles every 18 months. Advances in the data networking equipment required to support the data traffic generated have been enormous. The pace of development from early X. 25 and modem technology through to some of the advanced equipment functionality now available is breathtaking - it is sometimes hard to believe that the practical router is barely ten years old! This book provides an overview of the advanced data networking field by bringing together chapters on local area networks, wide area networks and their application.

Alias|Wavefront's Maya 3D animation software is an integrated collection of tools for creating computer generated images, used in nearly every blockbuster special effects film that has been released in the last few years. The first choice for digital content creators, Maya combines animation, dynamics, modelling and rendering tools, enabling you to create digital characters and visual effects for live action films or stand-alone animation.

In order to establish technical prerequisites for efficient electronic business and education on the Internet, appropriate system support is needed as a vital condition for maximization of both short-term and long-term profits. Electronic Business and Education: Recent Advances in Internet Infrastructures discusses current research topics in the domain of system support for e-business and e-education on the Internet, and stresses the synergistic interaction of these two components. Attention is given to both scientific and engineering issues. Electronic Business and Education: Recent Advances in Internet Infrastructures is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry, particularly in the area of e-business and e-education on the Internet. 'There is no longer any question that the Internet and electronic communication are the major new tools for collaborative advances in the creation of new knowledge and in future learning.' Excerpt from Foreword by Robert C. Richardson, Nobel Laureate 1996, Cornell University, USA

Traditionally, scientific fields have defined boundaries, and scientists work on research problems within those boundaries. However, from time to time those boundaries get shifted or blurred to evolve new fields. For instance, the original goal of computer vision was to understand a single image of a scene, by identifying objects, their structure, and spatial arrangements. This has been referred to as image understanding. Recently, computer vision has gradually been making the transition away from understanding single images to analyz ing image sequences, or video understanding. Video understanding deals with understanding of video sequences, e. g. , recognition of gestures, activities, fa cial expressions, etc. The main shift in the classic paradigm has been from the recognition of static objects in the scene to motion-based recognition of actions and events. Video understanding has overlapping research problems with other fields, therefore blurring the fixed boundaries. Computer graphics, image processing, and video databases have obvious overlap with computer vision. The main goal of computer graphics is to gener ate and animate realistic looking images, and videos. Researchers in computer graphics are increasingly employing techniques from computer vision to gen erate the synthetic imagery. A good example of this is image-based rendering and modeling techniques, in which geometry, appearance, and lighting is de rived from real images using computer vision techniques. Here the shift is from synthesis to analysis followed by synthesis.

Advances in electronics, communications, and the fast growth of the Internet have made the use of a wide variety of computing devices an every day occurrence. These computing devices have different interaction styles, input/output techniques, modalities, characteristics, and contexts of use. Furthermore, users expect to access their data and run the same application from any of these devices. Two of the problems we encountered in our own work [2] in building VIs for different platforms were the different layout features and screen sizes associated with each platform and device. Dan Ol sen [13], Peter Johnson [9], and Stephen Brewster, et al. [4] all talk about problems in interaction due to the diversity of interactive platforms, devices, network services and applications. They also talk about the problems associ ated with the small screen size of hand-held devices. In comparison to desk top computers, hand-held devices will always suffer from a lack of screen real estate, so new metaphors of interaction have to be devised for such de vices. It is difficult to develop a multi-platform user interface (VI) without duplicating development effort. Developers now face the daunting task to build UIs that must work across multiple devices. There have been some ap proaches towards solving this problem of multi-platform VI development in cluding XWeb [14]. Building "plastic interfaces" [5,20] is one such method in which the VIs are designed to "withstand variations of context of use while preserving usability".

Shape Analysis and Retrieval of Multimedia Objects provides a comprehensive survey of the most advanced and powerful shape retrieval techniques used in practice today. In addition, this monograph addresses key methodological issues for evaluation of the shape retrieval methods. Shape Analysis and Retrieval of Multimedia Objects is designed to meet the needs of practitioners and researchers in industry, and graduate-level students in Computer Science.