A university-oriented Web 2.0 services portal

This paper reports several key challenges and solutions when we apply Web 2.0 mashup technology to build a university-oriented services portal. A two-layer mashup service model is proposed as the underlying basis to support multiple granularities of services mashup. We explore a caching technique to facilitate personalizable services requests. We also report our study of mashing up Facebook as a social relationship data source.     

浅谈网页设计中视觉元素的运用

网页设计是近二十年以来意义深远的新兴设计领域,但当前在网页设计中存在着一些问题,本文探讨了视觉元素在网页设计中的使用原则和方法,以期在一定程度上解决当前网页设计中存在的问题.     

Teachers' acceptance and use of an educational portal

In this study, teachers' acceptance and use of an educational portal is assessed based on data from two sources: usage data (number of logins, downloads, uploads, reactions and pages viewed) and an online acceptance questionnaire. The usage data is extracted on two occasions from the portal's database: at survey completion (T1) and twenty-two months later (T2). Framework for this study is C-TAM-TPB (Combined Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Planned Behavior). 919 usable responses from teachers are obtained. Based on the observed use data at T1, four types of portal users are distinguished: ‘new’ (N = 37), ‘light’ (N = 641), ‘medium’ (N = 201), and ‘heavy’ (N = 40). Path analyses show that all predictor variables in C-TAM-TPB influence teachers' portal acceptance, but their significance level varies depending on the user type. The strongest predictors of behavioral intention to use the portal are attitude (‘new’) and perceived usefulness (‘light’, ‘medium’ and ‘heavy’), with variance explained ranging from .39 (‘medium’) to .71 (‘heavy’). The observed use data show that the portal is primarily used to search for and download material, rather than for sharing material or information. The use data at T2 show that teachers become more efficient in their search behavior and that the majority of the teachers use the portal more frequently. Guidelines are proposed to policymakers and school boards aiming to introduce a similar technology to teachers.     

Studying information seeking on the non-English Web: An experiment on a Spanish business Web portal

The Internet is estimated to grow significantly as access to Web content in some non-English languages continues to increase. However, prior research in human–computer interaction (HCI) has implicitly assumed the primary language used on the Web to be English. This assumption is not true for many non-English-speaking regions where rapidly growing on-line populations access the Web in their native languages. For example, Latin America, where the majority of people speak Spanish, will have the fastest growing population in coming decades. However, existing Spanish search engines lack search, browse, and analysis capabilities. The research reported here studied human information seeking on the non-English Web. In it we developed a Spanish business Web portal that supports searching, browsing, summarization, categorization, and visualization of Spanish business Web pages. Using 42 Spanish speakers as subjects we conducted a two-phase experiment to evaluate this portal and found that, compared with a Spanish search engine and a Spanish Web directory, it achieved significantly better user ratings on information quality, cross-regional search capability, system performance attributes, and overall satisfaction. Subjects’ verbal comments strongly favored the search and browse functionality and user interface of our portal. As the Web becomes more international, this research makes three contributions: (1) an empirical evaluation of the performance level of a Spanish search portal; (2) an examination of the information quality, cross-regional search capability and usability of search engines for the non-English Web; and (3) a better understanding of non-English Web searching.     

Implementation features a university data portal using the Semantic Web technology

The paper describes realization of a university information storage and retrieval system using Semantic Web technology. A portal is designed on the base of the Research Institute platform provided by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The subject domain ontology developed by the author, the system architecture, its resources and services are described.     

Understanding user requirements and preferences for a digital library Web portal

This article reports the findings of a user study conducted in the context of the TELplus project to gain insights about user needs and preferences for the digital library services offered by The European Library Web portal. The user requirements collection for the Web portal was designed by adopting a comprehensive survey approach. This combined explicit user feedback with implicit usage data so as to provide a more in-depth analysis of user experience with the portal. The analysis conducted shed light on likely motivations for both participant usage and reluctance to use the services provided, leading to more informed decisions on how to refine, improve, and present Web portal services to their future users. The lessons learnt from this case study also contributed to the development of an integrated methodological framework which provided insights for the future design and evaluation of digital library Web portals and services.     

Drivers of agile software development use: Dialectic interplay between benefits and hindrances

Context

Agile software development with its emphasis on producing working code through frequent releases, extensive client interactions and iterative development has emerged as an alternative to traditional plan-based software development methods. While a number of case studies have provided insights into the use and consequences of agile, few empirical studies have examined the factors that drive the adoption and use of agile.

Objective

We draw on intention-based theories and a dialectic perspective to identify factors driving the use of agile practices among adopters of this software development methodology.

Method

Data for the study was gathered through an anonymous online survey of software development professionals. We requested participation from members of a selected list of online discussion groups, and received 98 responses.

Results

Our analyses reveal that subjective norm and training play a significant role in influencing software developers’ use of agile processes and methods, while perceived benefits and perceived limitations are not primary drivers of agile use among adopters. Interestingly, perceived benefit emerges as a significant predictor of agile use only if adopters face hindrances to their agile practices.

Conclusion

We conclude that research in the adoption of software development innovations should examine the effects of both enabling and detracting factors and the interactions between them. Since training, subjective norm, and the interplay between perceived benefits and perceived hindrances appear to be key factors influencing the adoption of agile methods, researchers can focus on how to (a) perform training on agile methods more effectively, (b) facilitate the dialog between developers and managers about perceived benefits and hindrances, and (c) capitalize on subjective norm to publicize the benefits of agile methods within an organization. Further, when managing the transition to new software development methods, we recommend that practitioners adapt their strategies and tactics contingent on the extent of perceived hindrances to the change.     

A proposal for a set of attributes relevant for Web portal data quality

Data Quality is a critical issue in today’s interconnected society. Advances in technology are making the use of the Internet an ever-growing phenomenon and we are witnessing the creation of a great variety of applications such as Web Portals. These applications are important data sources and/or means of accessing information which many people use to make decisions or to carry out tasks. Quality is a very important factor in any software product and also in data. As quality is a wide concept, quality models are usually used to assess the quality of a software product. From the software point of view there is a widely accepted standard proposed by ISO/IEC (the ISO/IEC 9126) which proposes a quality model for software products. However, until now a similar proposal for data quality has not existed. Although we have found some proposals of data quality models, some of them working as “de facto” standards, none of them focus specifically on web portal data quality and the user’s perspective. In this paper, we propose a set of 33 attributes which are relevant for portal data quality. These have been obtained from a revision of literature and a validation process carried out by means of a survey. Although these attributes do not conform to a usable model, we think that it might be considered as a good starting point for constructing one.

The use of guidelines to automatically verify Web accessibility

Accessibility is one of the key challenges that the Internet must currently face to guarantee universal inclusion. Accessible Web design requires knowledge and experience from the designer, who can be assisted by the use of broadly accepted guidelines. Nevertheless, guideline application may not be obvious, and many designers may lack experience to use them. The difficulty increases because, as the research on accessibility is progressing, existing sets of guidelines are updated and new sets are proposed by diverse institutions. Therefore, the availability of tools to evaluate accessibility, and eventually repair the detected bugs, is crucial. This paper presents a tool, EvalIris, developed to automatically check the accessibility of Websites using sets of guidelines that, by means of a well-defined XML structure, can be easily replaced or updated.

Implementation and use of the PLT scheme Web server

The PLT Scheme Web Server uses continuations to enable a natural, console-like program development style. We describe the implementation of the server and its use in the development of an application for managing conference paper reviews. In the process of developing this application, we encountered subtle forms of interaction not directly addressed by using continuations. We discuss these subtleties and offer solutions that have been successfully deployed in our application. Finally, we present some details on the server’s performance, which is comparable to that of the widely-used Apache Web server. This research is partially supported by multiple NSF grants. Preliminary versions of parts of this material have appeared in print (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2638, pp. 100–128, 2003; European Symposium on Programming, pp. 122–136, 2001; Scheme Workshop, pp. 53–58, 2003; Symposium on the Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, pp. 2–16, 2003). P.W. Hopkins’ current affiliation: Google, Inc. P.T. Graunke’s current affiliation: Galois Connections, Inc. G. Pettyjohn’s current affiliation: Turbine, Inc.     

eCos驱动程序分析

eCos（Embedded Configurable Operating System）是由Cygnus公司开发的,在1997年推出第一版,绝大多数内核代码使用C＋＋完成。eCos最大的特点是模块化,它是一个针对16位、32位和64位处理器。且开源免费的嵌入式RTOS。与嵌入式Linux相比,eCos是专门为嵌入式应用设计的,体积相当小巧,其二进制代码在100KB左右。     

Web mining based on Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps: Analysis of a real citizen web portal

This work is focused on the usage analysis of a citizen web portal, Infoville XXI (http://www.infoville.es) by means of Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). In this paper, a variant of the classical SOM has been used, the so-called Growing Hierarchical SOM (GHSOM). The GHSOM is able to find an optimal architecture of the SOM in a few iterations. There are also other variants which allow to find an optimal architecture, but they tend to need a long time for training, especially in the case of complex data sets. Another relevant contribution of the paper is the new visualization of the patterns in the hierarchical structure. Results show that GHSOM is a powerful and versatile tool to extract relevant and straightforward knowledge from the vast amount of information involved in a real citizen web portal.     

WDM设备驱动程序的设计与实现

设备驱动程序是硬件设备连接到计算机系统的软件接口。WDM是一种新的设备驱动程序模型,对它的研究对设计优秀的设备驱动程序有重要指导作用。文章分析了WDM的结构,并给出基本的编程技巧。     

Automatic Software Test Drivers

Typical testing activities may involve many hundreds of tests. An automatic software test driver assists the tester by managing all of the test data, and automatically running the tests. Savings during regression testing can be significant.     

Drivers and Road Signs

The function of the road sign system as an information channel for car drivers was investigated. The data were gathered from more than 5,000 car drivers stopped after passing a road sign on a Swedish highway. The main results are as follows.

1. The overall probability of a road sign being noticed on passing is not higher than about 0·5.

2. The different signs studied form a scale of recording probability of perception extending from a low group with a probability of being perceived of about 0·25 up to a group with probabilities between 0·60-0·75. The rank order of the signs is consistent between occasions.

3. The results verified the outcome of a previous investigation by Johansson and Rumar, 1966.

The main conclusion must be that the road sign system to a high degree does not achieve its purpose.     

Windows驱动程序设计

Windows驱动程序模型的概念及驱动程序的工作原理,讨论了根据WDM模型编制的驱动程序的基本框架和程序各部分的功能.     

Solaris10的设备和设备驱动管理

通过对Solaris基本的驱动规格的研究,介绍了Solaris下的设备驱动器和设备配置,比较了Solaris10和linux2.6环境下设备驱动配置的异同。文章涉及的大部分内容可以在早期的版本中使用。