Learning from others within the landscape of “transitional economies” and the challenge in ICT development for African countries

This paper presents the experience of good practices and bench learning in the EU for sustainable development in transitional economies. In exploring key issues of ICT development for economic growth in African countries, it will showcase how information and experience from different geographical/economic sectors within the EU have been collated into a comprehensive knowledge system, and shared among users, using both electronic and traditional methods—see The BEEP Project . It will then discuss how this good practice model could be developed further as a Pan-African Initiative, as part of the IST Africa Programme for participating countries, to enable them share experience and information in their attempt to narrow the digital divide for sustainable growth.

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High performance motion detection: some trends toward new embedded architectures for vision systems

The goal of this article is to compare some optimised implementations on current high performance platforms in order to highlight architectural trends in the field of embedded architectures and to get an estimation of what should be the components of a next generation vision system. We present some implementations of robust motion detection algorithms on three architectures: a general purpose RISC processor—the PowerPC G4—a parallel artificial retina dedicated to low level image processing—Pvlsar34—and the Associative Mesh, a specialized architecture based on associative net. To handle the different aspects and constraints of embedded systems, execution time and power consumption of these architectures are compared.

Ethical regulations on robotics in Europe

There are only a few ethical regulations that deal explicitly with robots, in contrast to a vast number of regulations, which may be applied. We will focus on ethical issues with regard to “responsibility and autonomous robots”, “machines as a replacement for humans”, and “tele-presence”. Furthermore we will examine examples from special fields of application (medicine and healthcare, armed forces, and entertainment). We do not claim to present a complete list of ethical issue nor of regulations in the field of robotics, but we will demonstrate that there are legal challenges with regard to these issues.

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A comprehensive investigation on the relationship between information technology investments and firm diversification

This paper empirically investigates the role played by information technology in diversified firms by building a demand function for IT investments. First by reviewing the management literature, we briefly examine different types of diversification, including related diversification, unrelated diversification, and geographic diversification. After carefully developing the theoretical arguments we empirically test the relationship between IT investments and different types of diversification. We find that in general diversified firms demand more investments in information technology, but the positive relationship may also depend on the extent to which firms diversify. Our findings show that firms with diversified structures that increase the complexities of coordination and control, e.g. unrelated diversification or extensive geographic diversification, would face a lesser demand for IT investments because of the increased use of financial controls instead of strategic controls by these firms. Overall, we find that information technology can serve as an effective coordination and control mechanism for moderate levels of diversification whereas non-IT mechanisms for coordination and control becomes more suitable in a context of higher levels of diversification. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Innovative order types as success factors in stock exchange competition

Through the worldwide integration of the financial markets, operators of the particular stock exchanges face an increasing competition. One—if not the most important—alternative to assure their position during this competition is the functional expansion and refinement of their trading rules (market model). However, the design of a market model is a challenging task, due to complex interdependences of the different parts of the trading rules (structural parameters). Therefore a market model cannot be planned at the drawing table and directly afterwards be built up like a house. In order to avoid bad investments, it has to be analyzed carefully, if the new designed market model possesses the required characteristics and produces the desired market outcome. In order to work out this task a prototype implementation of the market model seems to be indispensable, since such a prototype allows for testing the model by game-theoretic experiments and by simulations. In this article, we discuss the benefits, which customers obtain from using the relative or the bracket order as two examples of a functional expansion of a market model. We further augmented the market engineering tool meet2trade to support this new, innovative order types.

Developing, and testing, a theoretical framework for inter-organisational systems (IOS) as infrastructure to aid future IOS design

Over time many inter-organisational systems (IOS) have evolved to become open systems with the promise of delivering benefits to their broad base of organisational users. However in practice benefits have often remained concentrated, primarily accruing to the dominant party, resulting in low rates of adoption and usage, and often culminating in the failure of the IOS. A framework for IOS as infrastructure is proposed as the basis for designing IOS that will widen the distribution of benefits and increase the likelihood of the IOS succeeding. Potential characteristics of IOS as infrastructure are proposed and three cases studies presented to illustrate how the framework can differentiate between IOS and how IOS as infrastructure looks to be an option worthy of further investigation.

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Efficient corpus development for lexicography: building the New Corpus for Ireland

In a 12-month project we have developed a new, register-diverse, 55-million-word bilingual corpus—the New Corpus for Ireland (NCI)—to support the creation of a new English-to-Irish dictionary. The paper describes the strategies we employed, and the solutions to problems encountered. We believe we have a good model for corpus creation for lexicography, and others may find it useful as a blueprint. The corpus has two parts, one Irish, the other Hiberno-English (English as spoken in Ireland). We describe its design, collection and encoding.

Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking application

A number of mobile applications have emerged that allow users to locate one another. However, people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with this class of software, suggesting that broad adoption may only happen to the extent that these concerns are adequately addressed. In this article, we report on our work on PeopleFinder, an application that enables cell phone and laptop users to selectively share their locations with others (e.g. friends, family, and colleagues). The objective of our work has been to better understand people’s attitudes and behaviors towards privacy as they interact with such an application, and to explore technologies that empower users to more effectively and efficiently specify their privacy preferences (or “policies”). These technologies include user interfaces for specifying rules and auditing disclosures, as well as machine learning techniques to refine user policies based on their feedback. We present evaluations of these technologies in the context of one laboratory study and three field studies.

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Resource holding times: computation and optimization

In scheduling hard-real-time systems, the primary objective is to meet all deadlines. We study the scheduling of such systems with the secondary objective of minimizing the duration of time for which the system locks each shared resource. We abstract out this objective into the resource hold time (rht)—the largest length of time that may elapse between the instant that a system locks a resource and the instant that it subsequently releases the resource, and study properties of the rht. We present an algorithm for computing resource hold times for every resource in a task system that is scheduled using Earliest Deadline First scheduling, with resource access arbitrated using the Stack Resource Policy. We also present and prove the correctness of algorithms for decreasing these rht’s without changing the semantics of the application or compromising application feasibility.

Firm strategic profile and IT outsourcing

IT outsourcing research has often been at the transaction level, focusing on the role of the characteristics of the IT activities as the antecedents of outsourcing decisions. The present study extends past research efforts examining the relationships between organizational level variables—in particular the business strategy—and the decision to outsource. Results show that prospectors and analyzers are more aggressive in their use of outsourcing for IT operations. However, no differences between the behaviour of the different strategic groups were found for maintenance activities, suggesting that these activities are too far from the core of the organization to be influenced by strategic profile.

An exploratory study for analyzing interactional processes of group discussion: the case of a focus group interview

The purposes of this study are (a) to establish a measurement for evaluating conversational impressions of group discussions, and (b) to make an exploratory investigation on their interactional processes which may affect to form those impressions. The impression rating and factor analysis undertaken first give us four factors concerning conversational impressions of “focus group interviews (FGIs)”: conversational activeness, conversational sequencing, the attitudes of participants and the relationships of participants. In relation to the factors of conversational activeness and conversational sequencing in particular, the microanalysis of four selected topical scenes from our database further shows that the behavior of the moderator and the interviewees is organized not independently but with reference to each other. The study thus emphasizes the importance of the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches towards human interactions.

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Managing the false alarms: A framework for assurance and verification of surveillance monitoring

This article discusses methods to support assurance of surveillance monitoring and compliance verification knowledge management (CV-KM). The discussion includes aspects of primary monitoring systems, the different environments in which they operate, the verification problem solving and decision making tasks, the problem structure, and the coordination of the review process to facilitate truth maintenance and regulatory Meta rules. Based on the ALCOD (Alert Coding) prototype developed with the Surveillance Division of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), the surveillance operation is considered a primary monitoring function with the analysis of the resulting output the second-tier monitoring function—the assurance component.

Efficient Detection of Patterns in 2D Trajectories of Moving Points

Moving point object data can be analyzed through the discovery of patterns in trajectories. We consider the computational efficiency of detecting four such spatio-temporal patterns, namely flock, leadership, convergence, and encounter, as defined by Laube et al., Finding REMO—detecting relative motion patterns in geospatial lifelines, 201–214, (2004). These patterns are large enough subgroups of the moving point objects that exhibit similar movement in the sense of direction, heading for the same location, and/or proximity. By the use of techniques from computational geometry, including approximation algorithms, we improve the running time bounds of existing algorithms to detect these patterns.

ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Interacting with mobile services: an evaluation of camera-phones and visual tags

We present a study of using camera-phones and visual-tags to access mobile services. Firstly, a user-experience study is described in which participants were both observed learning to interact with a prototype mobile service and interviewed about their experiences. Secondly, a pointing-device task is presented in which quantitative data was gathered regarding the speed and accuracy with which participants aimed and clicked on visual-tags using camera-phones. We found that participants’ attitudes to visual-tag-based applications were broadly positive, although they had several important reservations about camera-phone technology more generally. Data from our pointing-device task demonstrated that novice users were able to aim and click on visual-tags quickly (well under 3 s per pointing-device trial on average) and accurately (almost all meeting our defined speed/accuracy tradeoff of 6% error-rate). Based on our findings, design lessons for camera-phone and visual-tag applications are presented.

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Multimodal support to group dynamics

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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Network effects and embedded options: decision-making under uncertainty for network technology investments

The analysis of network effects in technology-based networks continues to be of significant managerial importance in e-commerce and traditional IS operations. Competitive strategy, economics and IS researchers share this interest, and have been exploring technology adoption, development and product launch contexts where understanding the issues is critical. This article examines settings involving countervailing and complementary network effects, which act as drivers of business value at several levels of analysis: the industry or market level, the firm or process level, the individual or product level, and the technology level. It leverages real options analysis for managerial decision-making under uncertainty across these contexts. We also identify a set of real options—compatibility, sponsorship and ownership option—which are unique to these settings, and which provide a template for managerial thinking and analysis when it is possible to delay an investment decision. We employ a hybrid jump-diffusion process to model countervailing and complementary network effects from the perspective of a user or a firm joining a network. We also do this from the perspective of a network developer. Our analysis shows that when countervailing and complementary network effects occur in the same network technology context, they give rise to real option value effects that may be used to control or modify the valuation trajectory of a network technology. The option value of waiting in these contexts jumps when the related business environment experiences shocks. Further, we find that the functional relationship between network value and the option value is not linear, and that taking into account a risk premium may not always result in a risk-neural investment. We also provide a managerial decision-making template through the different kinds of deferral options that we identify for this IT analysis context.

Advanced networking services for distributed multimedia streaming applications

Increased network speeds coupled with new services delivered via the Internet have increased the demand for intelligence and flexibility in network systems. This paper argues that both can be provided by new hardware platforms comprised of heterogeneous multi-core systems with specialized communication support. We present and evaluate an experimental network service platform that uses an emergent class of devices—network processors—as its communication support, coupled via a dedicated interconnect to a host processor acting as a computational core. A software infrastructure spanning both enables the dynamic creation of application-specific services on the network processor, mediated by middleware and controlled by kernel-level communication support. Experimental evaluations use a Pentium IV-based computational core coupled with an IXP 2400 network processor. The sample application services run on both include an image manipulation application and application-level multicasting.

Evolving strategy for a probabilistic game of imperfect information using genetic programming

We provide the complete record of methodology that let us evolve BrilliAnt, the winner of the Ant Wars contest. Ant Wars contestants are virtual ants collecting food on a grid board in the presence of a competing ant. BrilliAnt has been evolved through a competitive one-population coevolution using genetic programming and fitnessless selection. In this paper, we detail the evolutionary setup that lead to BrilliAnt’s emergence, assess its direct and indirect human-competitiveness, and describe the behavioral patterns observed in its strategy.

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