From broadcast television to Internet audio/video: techniques and tools for VCR‐style interactivity

One of the new applications evolving in the Internet is streaming audio/video. A major reason for its growing popularity is interest in the compelling new services that become possible. Prototype services are being developed which are new to the Internet but offer the same look, feel, and functionality that have traditionally only been found in services delivered via other communication medium, e.g. broadcast television. In addition, the Internet is evolving to offer ‘value‐added’ services, like streaming audio/video with VCR‐style interactivity and embedded hyperlinks. We are poised both on seeing the development of new paradigms for interacting with audio/video, and on seeing the merging of broadcast television and Internet‐based broadcasts. Before this process can be considered successful, a number of technical challenges, derived from the various ways in which content is physically delivered, must be solved. In this paper, we focus on the value‐added service of VCR interactivity. VCR interactivity has long been a challenge for both broadcast television and streamed Internet audio/video. The challenge is how to provide individualized playout for content being streamed to a large group of users using one‐to‐many delivery. While some new companies are starting to offer devices which provide this kind of service for broadcast television, there are still numerous technical challenges for the Internet‐based version of a similar service. This paper has a three‐fold objective. First, we describe the types of services available in the traditional broadcast infrastructure and compare these to the types of services that are deployed or possible in Internet‐based services. Second, we describe our attempts to implement some of the more challenging and novel service types. In particular, we examine client‐based control of programs streamed over the Internet to tens, thousands, or even millions of users. Finally, we discuss the impact of these services on the protocols and applications used to support Internet‐based, multi‐party conferencing. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An empirical investigation of the consumer demand for digital television application services

In the era of convergence of digital television (DTV) broadcasting and internet, DTV application services will be the key to success. Through theoretical and empirical analysis, this study showed that the integrated model which includes basic products/services, value-added services, interactive services, and behavioural intention is applicable to explain consumer's demands of DTV application services. Results indicated that value-added services is the most important factor affecting the behavioural intention to adopt DTV application services, while interactive services is the best way to create consumer's emotional value. In addition, this study also provided some impetus for both researchers and practitioners.     

Design principles for preschool children’s interactive TV

Preschool children have increased access to media via a number of platforms, including digital interactive television. However, the viewing and interaction needs of this user group have not been extensively researched. The project reported in this paper investigates preschoolers’ interactions with a simulated interactive television set-up. The study involved the development of an electronic programme guide prototype and its empirical evaluation. This research was carried out with children in Brazil and in the United Kingdom, aged between three and four. The main issues that arose during the interaction with the prototype application are documented, and a list of design principles is presented to assist in the design of accessible preschool interactive television applications for this age group.     

Telehealth and ubiquitous computing for bandwidth-constrained rural and remote areas

The information and communication technology infrastructure available in rural and remote areas may often not have the bandwidth to support all types of telehealth applications; therefore, for example, some traditionally envisaged videoconferencing-based telehealth applications may not be able to be used or not used in their anticipated form at this time. While the level of broadband services available may impose limitations on these types of telehealth applications, in this review article, we identify applications that allow the maximizing of telehealth benefits in the presence of low-bandwidth connectivity and have potential benefits well-matched to rural and remote area healthcare challenges. In particular, we include consideration of how ubiquitous computing might potentially bring non-traditional approaches to telehealth that can also come into usage more immediately in bandwidth-constrained rural and regional areas. In this article, we review the benefits of ubiquitous computing for rural and remote telehealth including social media-based preventative, peer support and public health communication, mobile phone platforms for the detection and notification of emergencies, wearable and ambient biosensors, the utilization of personal health records including in conjunction with mobile and sensor platforms, chronic condition care and management information systems, and mobile device–enabled video consultation.     

Personalized and mobile digital TV applications

The introduction of mobile and broadband networks in complement to the existing satellite, cable, and terrestrial platforms, opens new opportunities for interactive TV (ITV) applications. In addition, the widespread adoption of multimedia computing has enabled the processing of TV content on personal devices such as mobile phones and PCs. The above developments raise novel issues and require the adoption of new multimedia standards and application frameworks. In particular, the explosion in the amount of available TV channels over digital television platforms (broadcast or internet protocol) makes searching and locating interesting content a cumbersome task. In this context, personalization research is concerned with the adaptation of content (e.g. movies, news, advertisements). Personalization is achieved with the employment of algorithms and data collection schemes that predict and recommend to television viewers content that match their interests. In addition, the distribution of TV content to mobile devices over broadband wireless raises the issue of video quality. Video quality depends on many aspects of the video encoding systems, such as bit rate and algorithms that model human perception of video on small screens. In this article, we examine contemporary research in personalized and mobile digital TV applications. Moreover, we present a critical survey of the most prominent research and provide directions for further research in personalized and mobile digital TV (DTV) applications.     

Vehicular mobile commerce

Growing interest in mobile commerce among users, service providers, content developers, businesses, and researchers has spawned many new applications ncluding location-based services, mobile financial services, multiparty interactive games, and mobile auctions. Most of these applications are designed to be accessible via personal digital assistants or cell phones, but handhelds have limited capabilities and are impractical or dangerous to use while driving. Increased computing and communications power, coupled with advances in wireless networking technology and the explosive growth in wireless local area network (WLAN) deployments, have the potential to enable new m-commerce applications for drivers or passengers in motor vehicles. These applications range from entertainment and business services to diagnostic and safety tools. However, for vehicular m-commerce to become a reality, researchers must address a number of technical challenges.     

MobiPADS: a reflective middleware for context-aware mobile computing

Traditionally, middleware technologies, such as CORBA, Java RMI, and Microsoft's DCOM, have provided a set of distributed computing services that essentially abstract the underlying network services to a monolithic "black box." In a mobile operating environment, the fundamental assumption of middleware abstracting a unified distributed service for all types of applications operating over a static network infrastructure is no longer valid. In particular, mobile applications are not able to leverage the benefits of adaptive computing to optimize its computation based on current contextual situations. In this paper, we introduce the Mobile Platform for Actively Deployable Service (MobiPADS) system. MobiPADS is designed to support context-aware processing by providing an executing platform to enable active service deployment and reconfiguration of the service composition in response to environments of varying contexts. Unlike most mobile middleware, MobiPADS supports dynamic adaptation at both the middleware and application layers to provide flexible configuration of resources to optimize the operations of mobile applications. Within the MobiPADS system, services (known as mobilets) are configured as chained service objects to provide augmented services to the underlying mobile applications so as to alleviate the adverse conditions of a wireless environment.     

A service selection model for digital music service platforms using a hybrid MCDM approach

Digital music services have provided more and more digital contents and service styles. The number of people paying to download music is on the rise. Digital music files, mainly in MP3 format, have become widespread on the internet. Downloading digital products for free may harm creators and music publishers, because it is very easy to obtain free-music through peer-to-peer sharing technologies over the internet. At the same time, portable entertainment devices and mobile phones are now able to carry music files, enabling people to access music much more easily. On the other hand, with the coming of the 5G in the telecom infrastructure, the rise in downloading music using mobile devices becomes possible. People can access online-music platform services through cable/ADSL with their digital devices (e.g., Personal computer, Notebook and Smart phone) or through the telecom services accompanying their mobile devices. Therefore, a critical issue for record publishers, or digital music service providers, is how to provide services to create value and fulfill customer needs. By determining customer music service needs and intentions, this study identifies the selection criteria necessary for customers to evaluate and select digital music service platforms. A novel MCDM (Multiple Criteria Decision Making) technique is developed that integrates the Decision making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Analytical Network Procedure (ANP), and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). This technique ranks and improves the digital music service platforms to obtain the best win-win service selection. This paper will propose the key driving aspects of the digital music service platforms and rank them by using the model proposed. The conclusions are composed of suggestions for service providers to improve their existing functions and plan further utilities for the digital music service platforms.     

数字电视机顶盒人机交互组件的设计与实现

对交互组件的RC5码信号规范进行分析,定义了遥控器的脉冲、状态变量以及解码应用的数据类型,完成交互组件的初始化、中断处理、键值信号处理的流程设计与软件实现。最后基于嵌入式操作系统在机顶盒硬件上进行人机交互运行调试。结果表明,该交互组件不仅能满足数字电视和交互增值业务的需求,而且相比其他同类产品在响应速度上得到提高,人机交互的时延有所减小。     

面向云应用系统的容错即服务优化提供方法

通过提供高效且持续可用的容错服务以保障云应用系统的可靠运行是至关重要的.采用容错即服务的模式,提出了一种优化的云容错服务动态提供方法,从云应用组件的可靠性及响应时间等方面描述云应用容错需求,以常用的复制、检查点和NVP（N-version programming）等容错技术为基础,充分考虑容错服务动态切换开销,分别针对支撑容错服务的底层云资源是否足够的场景,给出可用容错即服务提供方案的最优化求解方法.实验结果表明,所提方法降低了云应用系统支付的容错服务费用及支撑容错服务的底层云资源的开销,提高了容错服务提供商为多个云应用实施高效、可靠容错即服务的能力.     

A Context-Aware Infrastructure for Supporting Applications with Pen-Based Interaction

Pen-based user interfaces which leverage the affordances of the pen provide users with more flexibility and natural interaction.However,it is difficult to construct usable pen-based user interfaces because of the lack of support for their development.Toolkit-level support has been exploited to solve this problem,but this approach makes it hard to gain platform independence,easy maintenance and easy extension.In this paper a context-aware infrastructure is created,called WEAVER,to provide pen interaction services for both novel pen-based applcations and legacy GUI-based applications.WEAVER aims to support the pen as another standard interactive device along with the keyboard and mouse and present a high-level access interface to pen input.It emplolys application context to tailor its sevice to different applications.By modeling the application context and egistering the relevant action adapters,WEAVER can offer servicxes,such as gesture recognition,continuous handwriting and other fundamental ink manipulations,to appropriate applications.One of the distinct features of WEAVER is that off-the-shelf GUI-based software packages can be easily enhanced with pen interaction without modifying the existing code.In this paper,the architecture and components of WEAVER are described.In addition ,examples and feedbacks of its use are presented.     

Taking advantage of contextualized interactions while users watch TV

While watching TV, viewers use the remote control to turn the TV set on and off, change channel and volume, to adjust the image and audio settings, etc. Worldwide, research institutes collect information about audience measurement, which can also be used to provide personalization and recommendation services, among others. The interactive digital TV offers viewers the opportunity to interact with interactive applications associated with the broadcast program. Interactive TV infrastructure supports the capture of the user–TV interaction at fine-grained levels. In this paper we propose the capture of all the user interaction with a TV remote control—including short term and instant interactions: we argue that the corresponding captured information can be used to create content pervasively and automatically, and that this content can be used by a wide variety of services, such as audience measurement, personalization and recommendation services. The capture of fine grained data about instant and interval-based interactions also allows the underlying infrastructure to offer services at the same scale, such as annotation services and adaptative applications. We present the main modules of an infrastructure for TV-based services, along with a detailed example of a document used to record the user–remote control interaction. Our approach is evaluated by means of a proof-of-concept prototype which uses the Brazilian Digital TV System, the Ginga-NCL middleware.     

Digital teaching files in diagnostic imaging

An architecture for digital teaching of radiology targets the next generation of network based education in diagnostic imaging. We developed applications of this system in UCSF hospitals (San Francisco, USA). The networked digital teaching file for medical imaging presented here builds on the availability of existing clinical information infrastructure in hospitals, such as PACS and RIS, and the recent advances in open systems Internet technology. Such a digital teaching file possesses enormous potential to change the practice and landscape of medical imaging education. Countries throughout the world share the goal of improving health care productivity and quality. They must invest not only in clinical services, but also in effective training of a new generation of imaging specialists. A networked digital teaching file provides a cost effective tool for attaining this goal     

Adaptive middleware supporting scalable performance for high-end network services

Network service-based computation is a promising paradigm for both scientific and engineering, and enterprise computing. The network service allows users to focus on their application and obtain services when needed, simply by invoking the service across the network. In this paper, we show that an adaptive, general-purpose run-time infrastructure in support of effective resource management can be built for a wide range of high-end network services running in a single-site cluster and in a Grid. The primary components of the run-time infrastructure are: (1) dynamic performance prediction; (2) adaptive intra-site resource management; and (3) adaptive inter-site resource management. The novel aspect of our approach is that the run-time system is able to dynamically select the most appropriate performance predictor or resource management strategy over time. This capability not only improves the performance, but also makes the infrastructure reusable across different high-end services. To evaluate the effectiveness and applicability of our approach, we have transformed two different classes of high-end applications—data parallel and distributed applications—into network services using the infrastructure. The experimental results show that the network services running on the infrastructure significantly reduce the overall service times under dynamically varying circumstances.     

End-to-End QoS Support for a Medical Grid Service Infrastructure

Quality of Service support is an important prerequisite for the adoption of Grid technologies for medical applications. The GEMSS Grid infrastructure addressed this issue by offering end-to-end QoS in the form of explicit timeliness guarantees for compute-intensive medical simulation services. Within GEMSS, parallel applications installed on clusters or other HPC hardware may be exposed as QoS-aware Grid services for which clients may dynamically negotiate QoS constraints with respect to response time and price using Service Level Agreements. The GEMSS infrastructure and middleware is based on standard Web services technology and relies on a reservation based approach to QoS coupled with application specific performance models. In this paper we present an overview of the GEMSS infrastructure, describe the available QoS and security mechanisms, and demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods with a Grid-enabled medical imaging service.     

云计算技术在信息化服务中的应用与创新

云计算作为当前信息领域的一个热点,其高可靠性、可扩展性和高度灵活性,推进IT行业的发展,也逐步影响着医疗卫生信息化服务。文章论述了云计算平台的主要服务类型及云计算技术的基本概念、技术特点,介绍了云计算技术在医疗卫生行业中的应用,提出了云计算技术在医疗卫生信息化服务的具体创新服务,以适应云环境的发展要求。     

Towards an autonomic performance management approach for a cloud broker environment using a decomposition–coordination based methodology

Efficient resource allocation of computational resources to services is one of the predominant challenges in a cloud computing environment. Furthermore, the advent of cloud brokerage and federated cloud computing systems increases the complexity of cloud resource management. Cloud brokers are considered third party organizations that work as intermediaries between the service providers and the cloud providers. Cloud brokers rent different types of cloud resources from a number of cloud providers and sublet these resources to the requesting service providers. In this paper, an autonomic performance management approach is introduced that provides dynamic resource allocation capabilities for deploying a set of services over a federated cloud computing infrastructure by considering the availability as well as the demand of the cloud computing resources. A distributed control based approach is used for providing autonomic computing features to the proposed framework via a feedback-based control loop. This distributed control based approach is developed using one of the decomposition–coordination methodologies, named interaction balance, for interactive bidding of cloud computing resources. The primary goals of the proposed approach are to maintain the service level agreements, maximize the profit, and minimize the operating cost for the service providers and the cloud broker. The application of interaction balance methodology and prioritization of profit maximization for the cloud broker and the service providers during resource allocation are novel contributions of the proposed approach.     

Smart cities in the new service economy: building platforms for smart services

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as ‘smart city’, ‘intelligent city’ and ‘knowledge city’ build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context.     

Quality of service provisioning for distributed data center inter-connectivity enabled by network virtualization

Today’s service platform or Cloud service models, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enable customers to deploy and execute applications on an on-demand available infrastructure. Such platforms reduce operational expenses for the service provider and lower the entry barrier for small and medium enterprises. However, current commercial solutions do not provide sufficient quality of service (QoS) guarantees for some applications. For example, they do not support various interactive real-time applications.In this paper, we introduce a way overcome these current Cloud service limitations. We show how to provide and guarantee quality of service requirements for resource networks within an IaaS framework.Our work has focused on methods for network resource management and flow control as well as QoS models. We have developed a framework that enables QoS support for real-time services executing within an IaaS environment.