Telecommunication networks already store a large amount of subscriber data (e.g., subscriber profile, location data, presence information), and even more data could be captured. Although this data is a key asset of telecommunication network operators, it is seldom fully exploited. This article proposes a novel architecture to enable the provisioning of new value-added services, based on subscriber data. This architecture uses semantic web to build a knowledge base from the subscriber data available in individual telecommunication networks. KBs are then federated across telecommunication networks to provide a single and unified interface to service providers for accessing the different KBs. The article also illustrates the use of the proposed architecture in a concrete scenario, and presents a proof-of-concept prototype.
Although mobile services can be used ubiquitously, their employment and the interaction with them are still restricted by the constraints of mobile devices. In order to facilitate and leverage mobile interaction with services, we present a generic framework that combines semantic Web service technology and physical mobile interaction. This interaction paradigm uses mobile devices to extract information from augmented physical objects and use it for a more intuitive and convenient invocation of associated services. For that purpose, the presented framework exploits Web service descriptions for the automatic and dynamic generation of customizable user interfaces that support and facilitate physical mobile interaction. This generic approach to mobile interaction with services through the interaction with physical objects promises to meet the complementary development of the Internet of things. A user study with a prototype application for mobile ticketing confirms our concept and shows its limits
We prove that groups acting geometrically on delta-quasiconvex spaces contain no essential Baumslag-Solitar quotients as subgroups. This implies that they are translation discrete, meaning that the translation numbers of their nontorsion elements are bounded away from zero.