Empowerment through seamfulness: smart phones in everyday life

In this paper, we describe research into use of multifunctional mobile phones by working adults and posit the device as a plausible realization of ubiquitous computing. We investigate how users actively adapt and adopt the different functions in smart phones to suit their needs and lifestyles. Through an interview and diary study, we discover how the smart phone is used in pragmatic and seamful ways, regardless of the interface of the specific phone selected or the particular features available. Users used phones in highly individual manners; mixed and adapted existing functions to meet their own priorities; added some functions and ignored others to create their own portfolio; and blended their use with the specifics of their everyday lives. While these data challenge some assumptions of human–computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, it also presents new research potential in terms of understanding how users take advantage of the multiple features in smart phone devices and how they utilize seamfulness in everyday smart phones practices.     

Casual information visualization: depictions of data in everyday life

Information visualization has often focused on providing deep insight for expert user populations and on techniques for amplifying cognition through complicated interactive visual models. This paper proposes a new subdomain for infovis research that complements the focus on analytic tasks and expert use. Instead of work-related and analytically driven infovis, we propose Casual Information Visualization (or Casual Infovis) as a complement to more traditional infovis domains. Traditional infovis systems, techniques, and methods do not easily lend themselves to the broad range of user populations, from expert to novices, or from work tasks to more everyday situations. We propose definitions, perspectives, and research directions for further investigations of this emerging subfield. These perspectives build from ambient information visualization [32], social visualization, and also from artistic work that visualizes information [41]. We seek to provide a perspective on infovis that integrates these research agendas under a coherent vocabulary and framework for design. We enumerate the following contributions. First, we demonstrate how blurry the boundary of infovis is by examining systems that exhibit many of the putative proper ties of infovis systems, but perhaps would not be considered so. Second, we explore the notion of insight and how, instead of a monolithic definition of insight, there may be multiple types, each with particular characteristics. Third, we discuss design challenges for systems intended for casual audiences. Finally we conclude with challenges for system evaluation in this emerging subfield.     

Trust in information sources: seeking information from people,documents, and virtual agents

The notion of trust has been virtually absent from most work on how people assess and choose their information sources. Based on two empirical cases this study shows that software engineers and users of e-commerce websites devote a lot of attention to considerations about the trustworthiness of their sources, which include people, documents, and virtual agents. In the project-based software engineering environment trust tends to be a collaborative issue and the studied software engineers normally know their sources first-hand or have them recommended by colleagues. Outside this network people are cautious and alert to even feeble cues about source trustworthiness. For example, users of e-commerce websites—generally perceived as single-user environments—react rather strongly to the visual appearance of virtual agents, though this is clearly a surface attribute. Across the two cases people need access to their sources in ways that enable them to assess source trustworthiness, access alone is not enough.     

Learning with new technologies: Help seeking and information searching revisited

Education researchers have amply documented the beneficial effects of help seeking on learning and understanding. Requesting help from teachers (or other human sources) when faced with a difficult task is now considered a self-regulated learning strategy. In a related domain, information search refers to learner-initiated efforts to obtain further task-related information from books or other non-human sources when undertaking an assignment. The integration of human and information-based resources in information and communication technology (ICT) tends to blur the distinction between help seeking and information searching, thus offering new perspectives on the study of the processes and skills involved in these activities. The aim of this paper is to redefine the boundaries between help seeking and information searching, by replacing the dichotomous definition (i.e., human versus non-human sources) by a more integrative theoretical framework. Beyond the obvious theoretical importance of the issue, clarifying the boundaries between seeking help and searching for information may contribute to the development of more effective forms of human and non-human support for technology-enhanced learning environments.     

Multi-density urban hotspots detection in smart cities: A data-driven approach and experiments

The detection of city hotspots from geo-referenced urban data is a valuable knowledge support for planners, scientists, and policymakers. However, the application of classic density-based clustering algorithms on multi-density data can produce inaccurate results. Since metropolitan cities are heavily characterized by variable densities, multi-density clustering seems to be more appropriate to discover city hotspots. This paper presents CHD (City Hotspot Detector), a multi-density approach to discover urban hotspots in a city, by reporting an extensive comparative analysis with three classic density-based clustering algorithms, on both state-of-the-art and real-world datasets. The comparative experimental evaluation in an urban scenario shows that the proposed multi-density algorithm, enhanced by an additional rolling moving average technique, detects higher quality city hotspots than other classic density-based approaches proposed in literature.     

OPTIMUS:online persistent tracking and identification of many users for smart spaces

A smart space, which is embedded with networked sensors and smart devices, can provide various useful services to its users. For the success of a smart space, the problem of tracking and identification of smart space users is of paramount importance. We propose a system, called Optimus, for persistent tracking and identification of users in a smart space, which is equipped with a camera network. We assume that each user carries a smartphone in a smart space. A camera network is used to solve the problem of tracking multiple users in a smart space and information from smartphones is used to identify tracks. For robust tracking, we first detect human subjects from images using a head detection algorithm based on histograms of oriented gradients. Then, human detections are combined to form tracklets and delayed track-level association is used to combine tracklets to build longer trajectories of users. Last, accelerometers in smartphones are used to disambiguate identities of trajectories. By linking identified trajectories, we show that the average length of a track can be lengthened by over six times. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated extensively in realistic scenarios.     

A reflection on information systems strategizing: the role of power and everyday practices

We review the IS strategizing literature and highlight its main strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include an account given to the relevance of tensions between planned and executed strategy, and associated tradeoffs such as rigidity and flexibility, formal and informal strategizing and the exploitation of static resources vis à vis the exploration of novel capabilities. Weaknesses relate to a predominant focus on an organizational level of analysis and a lack of power considerations. In this paper we aim to build on these strengths and to ameliorate these weaknesses by proposing a comprehensive IS strategizing framework that uses extant IS strategizing research as a foundation, rejuvenated by insights from the emerging strategy‐as‐practice literature. The paper extends our understanding of IS strategizing in light of the practice perspective by providing a multilevel account and incorporating power considerations.     

Sound information seeking in Web 2.0 virtual communities: the moderating effect of mindfulness

Virtual communities are a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0. Information seeking has been demonstrated to be a main motivator driving web use. Given the challenge brought by quality in the early stage, the healthy development of virtual communities relies on sound information seekers. Mindfulness, which is regarded as a psychological state of consciousness, is an important factor for individuals to make a sound decision. This study develops a research model by extending the updated information systems success model with the consideration of the moderating effect of mindfulness. Data collected from users of virtual communities were used to test the model. The findings suggest that mindfulness negatively moderates the effects of information quality, system quality and service quality on perceived usefulness, which further impacts information seeking in virtual communities. The findings and the implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Modeling and navigation of social information networks in metric spaces

We are living in a world of various kinds of social information networks with small-world and scale-free characteristics. It is still an intriguing problem for researchers to explain how and why so many obviously different networks emerge and share common intrinsic characteristics such as short diameter, higher cluster and power-law degree distribution. Most previous works studied the topology formation and information navigation of complex networks in separated models. In this paper, we propose a metric based range intersection model to explore the topology evolution and information navigation in a synthetic way. We model the network as a set of nodes in a distance metric space where each node has an ID and a range of neighbor information around its ID in the metric space. The range of a node can be seen as the local knowledge or information that the node has around its position in the metric space. The topology is formed by setting up a link between two nodes that have intersected ranges. Information navigation over the network is modeled as a greedy routing process using neighbor links and the distance metric. Different from previous models, we do not assume that nodes join the network one by one and set up link according to the degree distribution of existing nodes or distances between nodes. Range of node is the key factor determining the topology and navigation properties of a network. Moreover, as the ranges of nodes grow, the network evolves from a set of totally isolated nodes to a connected network. Thus, we can easily model the network evolutions in terms of the network size and the individual node information range using the range intersection model. A set of experiments shows that networks constructed using the range intersection model have the scale-free degree distribution, high cluster, short diameter, and high navigability properties that are owned by the real networks.     

The Information Mural: a technique for displaying and navigatinglarge information spaces

Information visualizations must allow users to browse information spaces and focus quickly on items of interest. Being able to see some representation of the entire information space provides an initial gestalt overview and gives context to support browsing and search tasks. However, the limited number of pixels on the screen constrain the information bandwidth and make it difficult to completely display large information spaces. The Information Mural is a two-dimensional, reduced representation of an entire information space that fits entirely within a display window or screen. The Mural creates a miniature version of the information space using visual attributes, such as gray-scale shading, intensity, color, and pixel size, along with antialiased compression techniques. Information Murals can be used as stand-alone visualizations or in global navigational views. We have built several prototypes to demonstrate the use of Information Murals in visualization applications; subject matter for these views includes computer software, scientific data, text documents and geographic information     

Structure-based brushes: a mechanism for navigating hierarchicallyorganized data and information spaces

Interactive selection is a critical component in exploratory visualization, allowing users to isolate subsets of the displayed information for highlighting, deleting, analysis, or focused investigation. Brushing, a popular method for implementing the selection process, has traditionally been performed in either screen space or data space. In this paper, we introduce an alternate, and potentially powerful, mode of selection that we term structure-based brushing, for selection in data sets with natural or imposed structure. Our initial implementation has focused on hierarchically structured data, specifically very large multivariate data sets structured via hierarchical clustering and partitioning algorithms. The structure-based brush allows users to navigate hierarchies by specifying focal extents and level-of-detail on a visual representation of the structure. Proximity-based coloring, which maps similar colors to data that are closely related within the structure, helps convey both structural relationships and anomalies. We describe the design and implementation of our structure-based brushing tool. We also validate its usefulness using two distinct hierarchical visualization techniques, namely hierarchical parallel coordinates and tree-maps. Finally, we discuss relationships between different classes of brushes and identify methods by which structure-based brushing could be extended to alternate data structures     

Mímir: An open-source semantic search framework for interactive information seeking and discovery

Semantic search is gradually establishing itself as the next generation search paradigm, which meets better a wider range of information needs, as compared to traditional full-text search. At the same time, however, expanding search towards document structure and external, formal knowledge sources (e.g. LOD resources) remains challenging, especially with respect to efficiency, usability, and scalability.This paper introduces Mímir—an open-source framework for integrated semantic search over text, document structure, linguistic annotations, and formal semantic knowledge. Mímir supports complex structural queries, as well as basic keyword search.Exploratory search and sense-making are supported through information visualisation interfaces, such as co-occurrence matrices and term clouds. There is also an interactive retrieval interface, where users can save, refine, and analyse the results of a semantic search over time. The more well-studied precision-oriented information seeking searches are also well supported.The generic and extensible nature of the Mímir platform is demonstrated through three different, real-world applications, one of which required indexing and search over tens of millions of documents and fifty to hundred times as many semantic annotations. Scaling up to over 150 million documents was also accomplished, via index federation and cloud-based deployment.     

Control for smart systems: Challenges and trends in smart cities

There have been tremendous developments in theories and technologies in control for smart systems. In this paper we review applications to various systems that are crucial for the future of smart cities, for example enterprise and manufacturing systems, transportation systems, energy systems, and data centres. Beyond discussing the existing technological trends and the methodological approaches developed so far for managing and controlling such systems, we also provide visions on the future challenges for these systems in these various aspects.     

The protection of personal information in public registers: the case of urban planning information in Ireland

This article commences by describing public registers. Examples of such registers in use in Ireland are set out. The advantages of allowing the public access to public registers are discussed, as are the negative consequences that can arise from the provision of access. In particular, privacy issues arising from the provision of access are explored. The extent to which the provision of electronic access to public registers may give rise to special concern is raised. The making available to the public of planning related information in Ireland is used as a case study in exploring these issues. Examples of personal information used in the Irish planning process are set out and the legislative provisions governing access are described. Statutory protection available for privacy of such information contained in both planning law and data protection law are evaluated and suggestions are made with respect to achieving an appropriate balance between access and privacy of personal information in public registers.     

涉密计算机信息安全管理体系在国土资源局中的设计与实现

对涉密计算机信息安全管理体系中存在的问题进行充分的分析,参照相关的系统安全防护规范,研究制定信息安全管理体系的防护措施,并提出全新的信息安全管理体系在国土资源局中的应用方法。通过对实际工作的检验,证明信息安全管理体系的安全性与有效性,为今后工作的发展提供借鉴作用。     

Universal access to awareness information: using smart artefacts to mediate awareness in distributed teams

This paper presents a set of design recommendations for team awareness systems based on fundamental social and technical requirements. The work was motivated by recurring usability problems identified in evaluations of state-of-the-art awareness systems. Based on these findings, it is argued that the limited success of existing systems is mostly caused by conceptual shortcomings, which can be overcome by adhering to a set of design recommendations elaborated in this paper. To demonstrate the validity of this argumentation, the development and evaluation of an ambient awareness system is illustrated.