The World Wide Web (Web) has become a key technology to provide access to on-line information. The Mobile Web users, who access the Web using small devices such as mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), make errors on entering text and controlling cursors. These errors are caused by both the characteristics of a device and the environment in which it is used, and are called situational impairments. Disabled Web users, on the other hand, have difficulties in accessing the Web due to their impairments in visual, hearing or motor abilities. We assert that errors experienced by the Mobile Web users share similarity in scope with those hindering motor-impaired Web users with dexterity issues, and existing solutions from the motor-impaired users domain can be migrated to the Mobile Web domain to address the common errors.Results of a systematic literature survey have revealed 12 error types that affect both the Mobile Web users and disabled Web users. These errors range from unable to locate a key to unable to pin-point a cursor. User experiments have confirmed that the Mobile Web users and motor-impaired Web users share errors in scope: they both miss key presses, press additional keys, unintentionally press a key more than once or press a key too long. In addition, both small device users and motor-impaired desktop users have difficulties in performing clicking, multiple clicking and drag selecting. Furthermore, when small device users are moving, both the scope and the magnitude of the errors are shared. In order to address these errors, we have migrated existing solutions from the disabled Web users domain into the Mobile Web users domain. We have developed a typing error correction system for the Mobile Web users. Results of the user evaluation have indicated that the proposed system can significantly reduce the error rates of the Mobile Web users.This work has an important contribution to both the Web accessibility field and the Mobile Web field. By leveraging research from the Web accessibility field into the Mobile Web field, we have linked two disjoint domains together. We have migrated solutions from one domain to another, and thus have improved the usability and accessibility of the Mobile Web.

Diversos ciudadanos de Lima tienen adversidades en los servicios básicos del hogar. Problemas comunes como el atoro de inodoros, una volada de fusible e inclusive daño que imposibilite realizar su vida de manera cotidiana. Así mismo, hay muchos trabajadores informales que pueden dar solución a estos problemas. Las cuales son personas que viven del día a día, y mientras más trabajo tenga, mejor calidad de vida podría alcanzar. Por ello, el objetivo de nuestro proyecto es conectar a estos dos segmentos, a través de una plataforma web, donde podrán encontrar personal capacitado para lo que se requiera. Los proveedores del servicio decidirán entre dos tipos de suscripciones mensuales; y por el lado de los clientes, pagarán una tarifa plana para la revisión de sus problemas. Se tiene la convicción de la viabilidad de este proyecto, basados en los resultados de la investigación de mercado, focus group, entrevistas a expertos y resultados del concierge. / Many citizens of Lima have adversities with the home basic services. These can get stuck, spoiled, even completely broken. And, on the other side, many informal workers that can give solutions to these problems. Which are people that lives up to a daily income; as much work they can make, they can achieve a better life quality. For that reason, this project intends to connect these two segments, through a web platform, where they can find the qualified technician it is needed. The providers of this service will choose between two option of subscription; meanwhile, the clients will pay a flat rate for the inspection of their problem. The team has the belief of the viability of this project, based on the results of the market investigation, focus group, interviews to experts and the concierge. / Trabajo de investigación

Au cours des dernières années, l'intérêt porté aux performances de la navigation internet n'a cessé de croître au sein de la communauté scientifique. Afin de comprendre la perception qu'a l'utilisateur des performances de la navigation Web, au cours de cette thèse nous abordons différents problèmes liés aux performances de la navigation Internet telle qu'elle est perçue par l'utilisateur final. Cette thèse se compose de trois parties: la première partie présente notre nouvelle plateforme basée sur des mesures faites au niveau du navigateur. Nous présentons les différents paramètres que nous obtenons facilement à partir du navigateur, ainsi que des indicateurs du ressenti de l'utilisateur final. Ensuite nous utilisons des techniques de partitionnement de données afin de trouver les corrélations existantes entre performances de haut niveau et de bas niveau. Dans une seconde partie, nous présentons notre outil de diagnostic appelé “Firelog”. Nous étudions tout d'abord les différentes causes qui peuvent affecter le rendu d'une page Web. Ensuite nous décrivons en détails les différents composant de notre outil et les mesures qu'il effectue. Sur la base des paramètres mesurés, nous illustrons notre modèle pour le diagnostic des performances d'une manière automatique. Dans la dernière partie, nous proposons une nouvelle méthodologie, “Critical Path Method” (ou Méthode du Chemin Critique) pour l'analyse des performances de la navigation Web. Nous expliquons d'abord en détails les caractéristiques intrinsèques du Navigateur lors du rendu d'une page Web, puis nous présentons formellement notre méthodologie. / In recent years, the interest of the research community in the performance of Web browsing has grown steadily. In order to reveal end-user perceived performance of Web browsing, in this thesis work, we address multiple issues of Web browsing performance from the perspective of the end-user. The thesis is composed by three parts: the first part introduces our initial platform which is based on browser-level measurements. We explain measurement metrics that can be easily acquired from the browser and indicators for end-user experience. Then, we use clustering techniques to correlate higher-level performance metrics with lower level metrics. In the second part, we present our diagnosis tool called FireLog. We first discuss different possible causes that can prevent a Web page to achieve fast rendering; then, we describe details of the tool's components and its measurements. Based on the measured metrics, we illustrate our model for the performance diagnosis in an automatic fashion. In the last part, we propose a new methodology named Critical Path Method for the Web performance analysis. We first explain details about Web browser's intrinsic features during page rendering and then we formalize our the methodology.

No description available.

Los servicios Web constituyen una tecnología que ha modi-ficado las prácticas de diseño, desarrollo e implementación de aplicaciones, permitiendo la integración de diversas empre-sas, entornos heterogéneos y diferentes implementaciones. Además los servicios Web posibilitan el reuso de componentes y el desarrollo de nuevos servicios más complejos a través de la integración de servicios existentes. Este trabajo se enfoca en las tecnologías desarrolladas en torno a la Web semántica y los servicios Web en general, y en especial en las cuestiones relacionadas con la composición de servicios Web semánticos. Para lograr una mejor comprensión de los conceptos, están-dares y tecnologías describimos un ejemplo de aplicación para ser implementada como servicios Web, se trata una aplica-ción de reservación de pasajes de colectivo que hace uso de diversos servicios y ontologías para brindar al usuario la mejor opción a la hora de solicitar la reservación para viajar de una ciudad a otra, optimizando el recorrido y la coordinación de los trayectos recorridos. Para finalizar concluimos con un capítulo destinado a analizar y comparar las propuestas surgidas en torno a la composición de servicios Web y se describen los lineamientos a seguir en trabajos futuros. / Nowadays, there exists a great expansion of Web services that have modified the applications design, development and implementation, and allow the enterprise integration even on the heterogeneous environments and implementations. In addition, Web services that make reuse of components and development of new services more complex possible across integration of existing services. This work focuses in the technologies developed concerning the semantic web and web services, and especially in the questions related to the web services composition.To achieve a better comprehension of the concepts, standards and technologies we describe an example of application to be implemented as Web services. The applications objective is the travel reservation using web services and ontologies to select the best option to travel from a city to other one, optimizing the tour. Finally we formu-late our conclusion where we analyze and compare the pro-posalsconcerning the web services composition and we des-cribe the works to do in the future.

In this dissertation, we present a novel approach for the automatic composition of Web services on the envisioned Semantic Web. Automatic service composition requires dealing with three major research thrusts: semantic description of Web services, composability of participant services, and generation of composite service descriptions. This dissertation deals with the aforementioned research issues. We first propose an ontology-based framework for organizing and describing semantic Web services. We introduce the concept of community to cluster Web services based on their domain of interest. Each community is defined as an instance of an ontology called community ontology. We then propose a composability model to check whether semantic Web services can be combined together, hence avoiding unexpected failures at run time. The model defines formal safeguards for meaningful composition through the use of composability rules. We also introduce the notions of composability degree and tau-composability to cater for partial and total composability. Based on the composability model, we propose a set of algorithms that automatically generate detailed descriptions of composite services from high-level specifications of composition requests. We introduce a Quality of Composition (QoC) model to assess the quality of the generated composite services. The techniques presented in this dissertation are implemented in WebDG, a prototype for accessing e-government Web services. Finally, we conduct an extensive performance study (analytical and experimental) of the proposed composition algorithms. / Ph. D.

<p> Facebook is stable and growing in users; however, the social networking site has seen a drop in certain areas of user participation. This study considers the reasons for potential user abandonment of Facebook with a complex analysis into not only the reasons cited by users as to why they abandon Facebook, but also the compilation of those reasons as part of an overall perception formulated about Facebook. Such reasons contribute to the perception of Facebook as user centric or nonuser-centric. The study hypothesizes that through a process of diffusion of innovation, a non-user-centric perception is growing among Facebook&rsquo;s users. Furthermore, the study compounds upon present research on innovation abandonment theory to offer explanation on the correlation between a perception of Facebook as nonuser-centric and Facebook user abandonment. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> Facebook, perception, user-centric, nonuser-centric, diffusion of innovation.</p>

Abstract The programme of the DoC-WILs is an init iat ive of the Department of Communicat ions in collaborat ion with Telkom, established through the Human Resources Fund to enable human resources development at historically disadvantaged learning institut ions. The Telecommunicat ions Act No 103 of 1996 establishes a Human Resources Fund to promote the provision of adequately skilled human resources at all levels of the telecommunicat ions sector in numbers suf f icient for the telecommunicat ions needs of the count ry. The DoC-WILs emphasise skills development through the use of ICTs in areas such as network management , creat ing Web sites, use of E-mail and the World Wide Web, mult imedia applicat ions and Int ranet development . It is however not known under what contextual circumstances this kind of ICT-usage will lead to interact ive learning benef its and how the DoC-WILs should go about achieving them. This art icle therefore at tempts to shed some light on the condit ions under which ICT usage could impact on educat ional outcomes desired by the DoCWILs and on how these DoC-WILs could best go about taking appropriate act ions to improve the possibility of achieving desired interact ive learning benef its. It is argue that the ability of the DoC-WILs to successfully achieve desired benef its is crucially dependent on contextual conditions, policies or processes that apply to the DoC-WILs or their users. This is in line with the social shaping of technology approach that local circumstances surrounding the deployment of ICTs in different sectors of society are more important in shaping the consequence of ICTs than technological variable.

<p>This study questions the way sports fans create (a sense of) community through online conversations. Here, &lsquo;community&rsquo; and &lsquo;internet&rsquo; are seen as invitational terms that suggest an authentic social interaction. By examining the language used by fans to sustain a sense of solidarity in the virtual realm, this study questions the ways in which rhetoric frames the situation. Participation in the virtual space relies on practices of identification derived from physical engagements. By using a rhetorical approach, this study illuminates the way individual participants operationalize a rhetoric in virtual conversations that spiritualize the fan&rsquo;s experience at the base of a sporting hierarchy. </p><p> This study centralizes identification as key to participation and the formation of community identity. The same language practices that work to shape the group also reinforce a sports ideology that spiritualizes fan participation. What emerges as a dominant substance is loyalty as key to identification/participation in the virtual community. This value-based substance offers the fan the ability to re-purpose their role as a profit source in the capitalist sporting structure. Therefore, the individuals focus on loyalty is rhetorical due to the internet space as capitalized communication. This study speaks to the way communication fosters virtual organizations, and points to how our cultured understandings conceal the rhetoric in everyday interactions. </p>

Visualisation in intelligent planning systems [Ghallab et al., 2004] is a subject that has not been given much attention by researchers. Among the existing planning systems, some well known planners do not propose a solution for visualisation at all, while others only consider a single approach when this solution sometimes is not appropriate for every situation. Thus, users cannot make the most of planning systems because they do not have appropriate support for interaction with them. This problem is more enhanced when considering mixed-initiative planning systems, where agents that are collaborating in the process have different backgrounds, are playing different roles in the process, have different capabilities and responsibilities, or are using different devices to interact and collaborate in the process. To address this problem, we propose a general framework for visualisation in planning systems that will give support for a more appropriate visualisation mechanism. This framework is divided into two main parts: a knowledge representation aspect and a reasoning mechanism for multi-modality visualisation. The knowledge representation uses the concept of ontology to organise and model complex domain problems. The reasoning mechanism gives support to reasoning about the visualisation problem based on the knowledge bases available for a realistic collaborative planning environment, including agent preferences, device features, planning information, visualisation modalities, etc. The main result of the reasoning mechanism is an appropriate visualisation modality for each specific situation, which provides a better interaction among agents (software and human) in a collaborative planning environment. The main contributions of this approach are: (1) it is a general and extensible framework for the problem of visualisation in planning systems, which enables the modelling of the domain from an information visualisation perspective; (2) it allows a tailored approach for visualisation of information in an AI collaborative planning environment; (3) its models can be used separately in other problems and domains; (4) it is based on real standards that enable easy communication and interoperability with other systems and services; and (5) it has a broad potential for its application on the Semantic Web.