RSVP Browser: Web Browsing on Small Screen Devices

In this paper, we illustrate the use of space-time trade-offs for information presentation on small screens. We propose the use of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) to provide a rich set of navigational information for Web browsing. The principle of RSVP browsing is applied to the development of a Web browser for small screen devices, the RSVP browser. The results of an experiment in which Web browsing with the RSVP browser is compared with that of a typical WAP browser suggests that RSVP browsing may indeed offer alternative to other forms of Web browsing on small screen devices.     

Designing for Semantic Access: A Video Browsing System

Users of browsing applications often have vague information needs which can only be described in conceptual terms. Therefore, a video browsing system must accept conceptual queries for preselection and offer mechanisms for interactive inspection of the result set by the user. In this paper, we describe a MM-DBMS that we extended with the following components: Our retrieval engine calculates relevance values for the results of a conceptual query by feature aggregation on video shot granularity to offer conceptual, content-based access. To reduce startup delays within sessions, our admission control module admits only complete browsing sessions, if required resources, which are heuristically predicted from query results, are available. In addition, our intelligent client buffer strategy employs the retrieval relevance values to enable flexible user interactions during browsing.     

Designing E-Collaboration Technologies to Facilitate Compensatory Adaptation

This article argues that e-collaboration technologies often pose obstacles to effective communication in complex collaborative tasks. The reason presented is that typically those technologies selectively suppress face-to-face communication elements that human beings have been designed by evolution to use extensively while communicating with each other. It is argued that technology users invariably react to those obstacles by engaging in compensatory adaptation, whereby they change their communicative behavior in order to compensate for the obstacles. The article concludes with a call for more research on how e-collaboration technologies can be designed to facilitate compensatory adaptation.     

A Look at the Future

If predictions about the future were as easy to come by as judgments about the past, the set of papers I organized for this 25th Anniversary issue might well have focused on the next 25 years—particularly since other papers in this issue deal with the corresponding past quartercentury. But predicting the future is always a chancey business, and trying to look 25 years into the future of our fast-moving industry is a long shot indeed. So, sacrificing symmetry for caution, we have focused most of our attention on the nearer term.     

Children of DES: A Look at the Advanced Encryption Standard

Cryptography has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. From intricate codes, comprised of numbers and text to forms of invisible ink, encryption has played a part in communication throughout the ages. Today is no different; with computers being the tools for communication, the only way to protect information from hackers is to use encryption. With increasingly powerful processors and the costs of computing power halving every 18 months, it is essential to continually ‘update’ cryptographic algorithms.     

基于WindowsCE的嵌入式浏览器的设计

设计了一个基于WinCE平台的简单的嵌入式浏览器。该浏览器依据由W3C制定的DOM系列规范,在借鉴开源项目相关技术的基础上,以Wince为平台,研究了基于此平台的嵌入式浏览器的相关技术。其主要由网络连接模块、语法与语义分析模块、页面元素排版模块、图形图像显示模块等4个模块组成。能够完成基本的网页浏览任务。     

A Look at the Telecommunications ACT of 1996

The Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1996 has significantly changed the market in which telecommunications providers compete. This column clarifies some of the important sections of the act and the implications of the changes for those involved in the provision and use of telecommunications services.     

A Look at Tokyo Youth at Leisure: Towards the Design of New Media to Support Leisure Outings

In this paper we present a set of studies designed to explore Japanese young people’s practices around leisure outings (how they are discovered, planned, coordinated, and conducted), and the resources they use to support these practices. Tokyo youth have a wealth of leisure opportunities and tools to choose from; they are technologically savvy, and are in the vanguard of those for whom the new mobile Internet technologies are available. We characterize typical leisure outings described by our study participants, how they are structured, and the tools used to support them. We found that discovery of leisure options tends to occur serendipitously, often through personal recommendations from friends and family. For leisure research and planning, the Internet is the tool of choice, but accessed via PC, not the mobile phone (or “keitai”), which is primarily used to communicate and coordinate, not to search for information. These and related findings suggest some emerging issues and opportunities for the design of future leisure support technologies.     

A Close Look at Domain Testing

White and Cohen have proposed the domain testing method, which attempts to uncover errors in a path domain by selecting test data on and near the boundary of the path domain. The goal of domain testing is to demonstrate that the boundary is correct within an acceptable error bound. Domain testing is intuitively appealing in that it provides a method for satisfying the often suggested guideline that boundary conditions should be tested.     

In the Footsteps of the Prince: A Look at Renaissance Ferrara

The history of Ferrara and its princes has left a clear and readable imprint on the city’s streets, palaces and churches. Written in their stones is the memory of what has gone before. Ferrara was the site of the Nexus 2000 conference on architecture and mathematics, 4–7 June 2000.     

MizBee: A Multiscale Synteny Browser

In the field of comparative genomics, scientists seek to answer questions about evolution and genomic function by comparing the genomes of species to find regions of shared sequences. Conserve dsyntenic blocks are an important biological data abstraction for indicating regions of shared sequences. The goal of this work is to show multiple types of relationships at multiple scales in a way that is visually comprehensible in accordance with known perceptual principles. We present a task analysis for this domain where the fundamental questions asked by biologists can be understood by a characterization of relationships into the four types of proximity/location, size, orientation, and similarity/strength, and the four scales of genome, chromosome, block, and genomic feature. We also propose a new taxonomy of the design space for visually encoding conservation data. We present MizBee, a multiscale synteny browser with the unique property of providing interactive side-by-side views of the data across the range of scales supporting exploration of all of these relationship types. We conclude with case studies from two biologists who used MizBee to augment their previous automatic analysis work flow, providing anecdotal evidence about the efficacy of the system for the visualization of syntenic data, the analysis of conservation relationships, and the communication of scientific insights.     

A Graphical Interface to an Economist's Workstation

The artificial intelligence rapid prototyping methodology has been employed in the development of an advanced workstation for non-computer-trained professionals.     

A Critical Look at Software Capability Evaluations: An Update

Terry Bollinger and Clement McGowan provide differing viewpoints on the CMM's progress since their 1991 article, "A Critical Look at Software Capability Evaluations."     

A Closer Look at Viruses and Worms

Reviewed in this issue:Peter Szor, The Art of Computer Virus Research and Defense, Addison-Wesley, 2005, ISBN: 0-321-30454-3, 744 pages, US$49.99.     

A Look at 25 Years of Data

Is 25 years enough time to build up a coherent body of knowledge that can help point to useful principles? As a testbed for helping us answer this question, software testing techniques are a good place to start. Few software practices are as important as testing, and testing techniques are amenable to measurement and reasoning about their effectiveness. Because they're aimed at removing faults, measuring the number and type of such removed faults seems like a natural part of applying these techniques. To make sense of this data, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid researchers have spent some time worrying about how to put 25 years' worth of work together usefully.     

Swoop: A Web Ontology Editing Browser

In this paper, we describe Swoop, a hypermedia inspired Ontology Browser and Editor based on OWL, the recently standardized Web-oriented ontology language. After discussing the design rationale and architecture of Swoop, we focus mainly on its features, using illustrative examples to highlight its use. We demonstrate that with its Web-metaphor, adherence to OWL recommendations and key unique features, such as Collaborative Annotation using Annotea, Swoop acts as a useful and efficient Web Ontology development tool. We conclude with a list of future plans for Swoop, that should further increase its overall appeal and accessibility.     

ENIAC as a Stored-Program Computer: A New Look at the Old Records

From a historical point of view, there is a crucial difference between ENIAC operating as a stored-program machine in March-May 1948 as against September 1948. This arises because the Manchester Baby, which operated as a stored-program machine from the beginning, is known to have first operated on 21 June 1948.     

Another Look at Large-Cap Stock Return Comovement: A Semi-Markov-Switching Approach

The paper revisits the question of how stock return comovement varies with volatility and market returns. I propose an eigenvalue-based measure of comovement implied by the state-dependent correlation matrix estimated using a novel multivariate semi-Markov-switching approach. I show that compared to a basic Markov-switching structure the refined model performs very well in terms of capturing the well-known stylized facts of stock returns such as volatility clustering. With a focus on large-cap stocks, I illustrate the significance of comovement differential across states and document the different comovement patterns in different industries. Although the financial sector tends to conform to the conventional sentiment that comovement is highest when market is down and volatile, the conclusion should be tempered with caution when applied to other industries. In some cases, it is the high return state that registers the highest comovement.