Recommendations in a heterogeneous service environment

Christian Überall, Christopher Köhnen, Veselin Rakocevic, Rudolf Jäger, Erich Hoy and Muttukrishnan Rajarajan

Abstract

This paper presents novel algorithms which are able to generate recommendations within a heterogeneous service environment. In this work explicitly set preferences as well as implicitly logged viewing behavior are employed to generate recommendations for Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) content. This paper also discusses the similarity between the DVB genres and YouTube categories. In addition it presents results to show the comparison between well known collaborative filtering methods. The outcome of this comparison study is used to identify the most suitable filtering method to use in the proposed environment. Finally the paper presents a novel Personal Program Guide (PPG), which is used as a tool to visualize the generated recommendations within a heterogeneous service environment. This PPG is also capable of showing the linear DVB content and the non-linear YouTube videos in a single view.

Keywords  Personalized television – Recommendations – Content-based – Collaborative filtering – Similarity – Media convergence – Personal Program Guide – DVB – YouTube

A social network perspective on the management of product development programs

A social network perspective on the management of product development programs

Jan Kratzer^a, , , Roger Th.A.J. Leenders^b, 1, , Jo M.L. van Engelen^b, 1, 

a	Berlin Institute of Technology, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany

b	University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands

Available online 17 October 2009.

Abstract

Creativity is essential to the performance of product development programs (PDPs). Most PDPs are designed around teams that jointly work together according to the product decomposition into components, the design and development procedure, and the methods of the final integration. Since the creative product development task requires the teams to combine and integrate input from multiple other teams, the team's structure of interaction is an important determinant of their creativity. In research and practice, however, little is known about the social networks of the teams and their creativity within PDPs. In this study we investigate different structural aspects of social networks of such teams and their creativity within two multinational PDPs. The main results of our investigation imply that many direct network contacts around a weekly intensity stimulate the creativity of teams of PDPs, whereas very open networks with a high information variety minimizes the team's creativity.

Keywords: Social Networks; Creativity; Product development programs; Space research; Regression

The social networks of collaborative process

The social networks of collaborative process

Liaquat Hossain ^, , Daniel Fazio

Project Management Graduate Programme, Room 335 PNR, J05, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies, The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia

Available online 30 October 2009.

Abstract

We present a study exploring the connection between social networks and collaborative process. We focus on exploring academics' network position and its effect on their collaborative networks. In this paper, we discuss two types of networks of collaboration—(i) citation; and, (ii) co authorship. We explore the effects of social networks on these two types of collaborative process. By defining network position in this way, we develop a social network that uses the academics as nodes within the network instead of each published paper. We obtained the collaboration data through archival records (i.e. Web of Science) and examined the interactions among different actors from the archival records for determining the existence and strength of relations between actors.

Keywords: Social networks; Collaborative process; Co-authorship; Citation

Exploring user acceptance of technology using social networks

Liaquat Hossain^a, , , Anjali de Silva^b

a	Project Management Graduate Programme, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

b	Accenture, Sydney, Australia

Available online 27 March 2009.

Abstract

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used to study user acceptance of new computer technologies. However, it does not incorporate social structure and influence as a significant factor. In this study, we ask the following questions: (i) What are the limitations of the existing TAM for studying virtual community? (ii) What is effect of social networks on user acceptance of technology for virtual community? and (iii) How can the influence of different types of social ties serve as a basis for exploring the user acceptance of technology in a virtual community? Here, we explore the possibility for extending TAM to incorporate the influence of the different types of social ties as a new theoretical construct. Preliminary analysis of data from a virtual community results show that weak and strong ties influence technology acceptance. The findings enable HCI researchers to account for influence of social ties in future investigations using TAM.

Keywords: Technology acceptance; User behaviour; Strong ties; Weak ties; Social networks; Virtual community

Green service over Internet of Things: a theoretical analysis paradigm

Liang Zhou

Abstract

There are two kinds of uncertainty for providing green service over Internet of Things (IoT): network service period and user satisfaction model. In this paper, we consider a power-aware service problem over IoT where both of the uncertainties are incorporated. Specifically, we consider a generic IoT’s service scenario: a server provides different kinds of services without knowledge of user satisfaction model and network service period. Our objective aims at dynamically adjusting the power allocation for each service over a uncertain period to maximize expected user satisfaction. It should be noted that practical user satisfaction rate is observed over time, but the inherent functional relationship between the power and satisfaction rate is unknown. In order to present a quantitative analysis, we consider a general user satisfaction model belonging to a class of functions that do not deploy any parametric representation. In this case, a blind dynamic powering algorithm is developed, in which one learns the satisfaction function and optimizes power-aware user satisfaction with on-line operation. More precisely, the algorithm performance is measured in terms of regret which denotes the satisfaction loss compared to the optimal satisfactions that can be obtained when the service period and satisfaction rate are known. Moreover, a tight bound on this regret is proposed for any possible powering policy, and we show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a regret that is close to this bound.

Keywords  Internet of Things – Green service – Dynamic powering – Satisfaction model

Mobile cloud computing framework for a pervasive and ubiquitous environment

Min Choi, Jonghyuk Park and Young-Sik Jeong

Abstract

The increasing use of wireless Internet and smartphone has accelerated the need for pervasive and ubiquitous computing (PUC). Smartphones stimulate growth of location-based service and mobile cloud computing. However, smartphone mobile computing poses challenges because of the limited battery capacity, constraints of wireless networks and the limitations of device. A fundamental challenge arises as a result of power-inefficiency of location awareness. The location awareness is one of smartphone’s killer applications; it runs steadily and consumes a large amount of power. Another fundamental challenge stems from the fact that smartphone mobile devices are generally less powerful than other devices. Therefore, it is necessary to offload the computation-intensive part by careful partitioning of application functions across a cloud. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient location-based service (LBS) and mobile cloud convergence. This framework reduces the power dissipation of LBSs by substituting power-intensive sensors with the use of less-power-intensive sensors, when the smartphone is in a static state, for example, when lying idle on a table in an office. The substitution is controlled by a finite state machine with a user-movement detection strategy. We also propose a seamless connection handover mechanism between different access networks. For convenient on-site establishment, our approach is based on the end-to-end architecture between server and a smartphone that is independent of the internal architecture of current 3G cellular networks.

Keywords  Low-power location awareness – Location-based service – Mobile cloud offloading – Connection handover – Pervasive and ubiquitous computing – Cloud computing

Official iPhone app for Lincoln Center

The first official iPhone app for Lincoln Center, the world’s leading performing arts center, designed by IDEO in partnership with Pivotal Labs.

觀摩學習其使用介面～

Lincoln Center iPhone App from IDEO on Vimeo.