402019
Conversation trees and threaded chats
Chat programs and instant messaging services are increasingly popular among Internet users. However, basic issues with the interfaces and data structures of most forms of chat limit their utility for use in formal interactions (like group meetings) and decision-making tasks. In this paper, we discuss Threaded Text Chat, a program designed to address some of the deficiencies of current chat programs. Standard forms of chat introduce ambiguity into interaction in a number of ways, most profoundly by rupturing connections between turns and replies. Threaded Chat presents a solution to this problem by supporting the basic turn-taking structure of human conversation. While the solution introduces interface design challenges of its own, usability studies show that users' patterns of interaction in Threaded Chat are equally effective, but different (and possibly more efficient) than standard chat programs.
5888435
Visualization components for persistent conversations
An appropriately designed interface to persistent, threaded conversations could reinforce socially beneficial behavior by prominently featuring how frequently and to what degree each user exhibits such behaviors. Based on the data generated by the Netscan data-mining project [9], we have developed a set of tools for illustrating the structure of discussion threads like those found in Usenet newsgroups and the patterns of participation within the discussions. We describe the benefits and challenges of integrating these tools into a multi-faceted dashboard for navigating and reading discussions in social cyberspaces like Usenet and related interaction media. Visualizations of the structure of online discussions have applications for research into the sociology of online groups as well as possible interface designs for their members.
52819119
Video skimming and characterization through the combination of image and language understanding
Digital video is rapidly becoming important for education, entertainment and a host of multimedia applications. With the size of the video collections growing to thousands of hours, technology is needed to effectively browse segments in a short time without losing the content of the video. We propose a method to extract the significant audio and video information and create a skim video which represents a very short synopsis of the original. The goal of this work is to show the utility of integrating language and image understanding techniques for video skimming by extraction of significant information, such as specific objects, audio keywords and relevant video structure. The resulting skim video is much shorter; where compaction is as high as 20:1, and yet retains the essential content of the original segment. We have conducted a user-study to test the content summarization and effectiveness of the skim as a browsing tool.
37563848
Forward thinking
This year's British Dental Conference and Exhibition held in Bournemouth from Thursday 6 May to Saturday 8 May was more relevant to the whole dental team than ever before. A full programme of fringe sessions ran alongside the main conference programme. Reviews of some of the most relevant sessions are published below.
5238518
Evolving video skims into useful multimedia abstractions
This paper reports two studies that measured the effects of different “video skim” techniques on comprehension, navigation, and user satisfaction. Video skims are compact, content-rich abstractions of longer videos, condensations that preserve frame rate while greatly reducing viewing time. Their characteristics depend on the image- and audio-processing techniques used to create them. Results from the initial study helped refine video skims, which were then reassessed in the second experiment. Significant benefits were found for skims built from audio sequences meeting certain criteria.
7589048
Security considerations when designing a distributed file system using object storage devices
We present the design goals that led us to developing a distributed object-based secure file system, Brave. Brave uses mutually authenticated object storage devices, SCARED, to store file system data. Rather than require a new authentication infrastructure. we show how we use a simple authentication protocol that is bridged into existing security infrastructures, even if there is more than one authentication protocol or domain present. We position our work in the context of some of the current work going on in distributed secure file systems and present our implementation of our file system. We also present some security weaknesses that are shared with other distributed file systems that may not be apparent when designing these systems.
7156330
Balancing FPGA Resource Utilities
Balancing the use of FGPA resources such as FPGA slices, block RAMs, and block multipliers is desirable in many FPGA applications. This task can be carried out manually by experienced hardware designers with the use of hardware description languages, such as Verilog and VHDL. However, many users of reconfigurable computers are software developers who depend on hardware synthesis tools or even high-level synthesis tools to deal with the details beneath the application logic. In this paper, a motivating example of balancing FPGA resource utilities is given first. A module selection optimization problem is then formulated, in which, balancing FPGA resource utilities is treated as a constraint, so that the solution to the module selection problem is the balanced use of the FPGA resources. Several variations of the problem formulation are discussed. A naive algorithm and an efficient greedy algorithm to solve the problem are provided and compared. Some experimental results are also presented.