In this chapter we present an integrated framework for personalized access to interactive entertainment content, using characteristics from the emerging MPEG-21 standard. Our research efforts focus on multimedia content presented within the framework set by today’s movie content broadcasting over a variety of networks and terminals, i.e. analogue and digital television broadcasts, video on mobi...

Since the early days of the world wide web (WWW), the information infrastructure provided over the Internet has improved considerably. The simplicity of offering and accessing data on the WWW and the increase of commercial uses of the Internet are major reasons for this development. During this development, it was discovered that shifts in popularity of content and services offered over the web...

CareNet is an interactive Web-based system intended to support informal caregivers (ordinary citizens who are engaged in providing residential healthcare to their families and friends). The design of CareNet uses concepts from a number of areas including: Communities of Practice, software engineering, content authoring, and knowledge management to create a supportive environment for the caregiv...

OBJECTIVE To describe the experiences of patients with type 2 diabetes in a web based disease management programme based on an interactive electronic medical record. DESIGN Qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with patients enrolled in a diabetes care module that included access to their electronic medical record, secure email, ability to upload blood glucose readings, an educati...

Identifying and exploring relevant content in growing document collections is a challenge for researchers, users, and system providers alike. Supporting this is crucial for companies offering knowledge in the form of documents as their core product. Our demo shows an intelligent way of doing guided research in big text collections, using the collection of the major scientific publisher Springer...

With the proliferation of IP networking and wireless access, local exchange carriers (LEC) are under tremendous pressure to evolve into broadband service providers. On-demand video distribution to the mass appears to be one of the best evolution paths for the LEC. Various approaches for providing on-demand content/video distribution to massive viewers are compared. In particular, a novel low-co...

Postal questionnaire surveys were carried out with users of two digital interactive television (DiTV) providers of health content to investigate the use made of each service and the users' reactions to service content and its usefulness to them. The research indicated that health information on DiTV was used and, on the whole, rated favourably. There was some evidence also that such information...

Information lies at the core of freedom of expression since it empowers citizens to understand the functions of media and other information providers, to access and critically evaluate their content, and to make informed decisions as users and producer of information and media content. Information and related technologies have become increasingly essential to education, employment, social inter...

Material written for traditional textbooks is increasingly being made available via online textbooks. Such material still uses text and drawings to explain concepts. In contrast, material written natively for the web can use less text and drawings, and instead use animations, responsive questions, and interactive exercises. This work compares the lesson effectiveness of electronic textbooks hav...

Current challenges require automation industry to be more flexible and tailored to a wide range of production scenarios. The trend shows up that the quantity of products is alternating, while the amount of possible product configurations increases. For this, manufacturing systems as well as control software applications have to be reconfigurable and reusable to meet these demands. The internati...