The City of Winnipeg, located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, has over 240 km of natural riverbank property. The increased frequency and magnitude of flooding along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers over the past decade appears to have influenced the number of slope failures along riverbank property, resulting in the loss of both public green space and privately owned land. The loss of private and public property adjacent to the river has led to the loss of valuable real estate and public parkland amenities. To ensure that riverbank property is preserved for future generations, the City of Winnipeg wants to increase the stability of certain reaches of publicly owned riverbank property along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that are prone to slope movements. Extensive research has been conducted on slope stability problems in the Winnipeg area, but a transparent prioritization procedure for the remediation of riverbank stability problems has not existed. Therefore, a Riverbank Asset Management System (RAMS) was developed for publicly owned riverbank property to prioritize riverbank slope stability problems along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The RAMS provides the City of Winnipeg with a rational approach for determining risk levels for specific reaches of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The calculated risk levels allow the City to develop recommended response levels for slope stability remediation projects in a fiscally responsible manner with minimal personal and political influences. This system permits the City to facilitate timely and periodic reviews of priority sites as riverbank conditions and input parameters change.

Denna examensuppsats är ett resultat av en observationsstudie utförd på ett svenskt företag, verksam inom musikbranschen. Uppsatsens teoretiska utgångspunkter är relationsmarknadsföringsteori och konvergensteori. Relationsmarknadsföring, även förkortat RM utgår från nätverksteori och idén om att kommunikation flödar mellan noder (som exempelvis utgörs av personer, organisationer och till och med datorer) sammankopplade av relationer i ett nätverk. Konvergensteori bygger på konvergens vilket innebär att två tidigare åtskilda ting går samman till en enhet. Utifrån detta är uttrycket konvergenskultur sprunget. Utifrån dessa teorier har Företaget* granskats i ett försök att svara på frågeställningarna: Hur arbetar Företaget* med marknadskommunikation kring sina produktioner i sociala/digitala medier? Vilka paralleller kan dras till relationsmarknadsföring? Hur påverkar arbetsförhållanden på Företaget* sättet på vilket det kommunicerar med slutkund? Hur försöker man mäta de digitala relationen till slutkund? Undersökningen är gjord som en fallstudie, vilket innebär att de resultat den ger inte är generella, utan endast beskriver detta specifika studieobjekt. Observationsstudien genomfördes under två separata veckor under vilka författaren fick följa flera olika medarbetare i deras dagliga arbete. Vissa medarbetare intervjuades även separat. Resultatet av studien visar att arbetsförhållandena hos företage i stor utsträckning påverkar deras rutiner för kommunikation med slutkund. Eftersom de anställda koncentrerar sig på att sälja spelningar mot arrangörer faller uppgiften att marknadsföra på praktikanter. För dessa finns utvecklade rutiner för hur marknadskommunikationssarbetet i den digitala världen bör skötas. I slutdiskussionen diskuteras faran med att låta tillfälliga medarbetare sköta denna uppgift då det medför risker för enhetligheten i kommunikationen. Resultaten visar även att Företaget* till viss del arbetar med konvergens och synergi bl.a. genom transmediala projekt. De verktyg Företaget* använder för att mäta utfallet av sina marknadsåtgärder beskrivs och utvärderas. Slutligen föreslås vissa åtgärdsförslag.

The City of Winnipeg, located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, has over 240 km of natural riverbank property. The increased frequency and magnitude of flooding along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers over the past decade appears to have influenced the number of slope failures along riverbank property, resulting in the loss of both public green space and privately owned land. The loss of private and public property adjacent to the river has led to the loss of valuable real estate and public parkland amenities. To ensure that riverbank property is preserved for future generations, the City of Winnipeg wants to increase the stability of certain reaches of publicly owned riverbank property along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that are prone to slope movements. Extensive research has been conducted on slope stability problems in the Winnipeg area, but a transparent prioritization procedure for the remediation of riverbank stability problems has not existed. Therefore, a Riverbank Asset Management System (RAMS) was developed for publicly owned riverbank property to prioritize riverbank slope stability problems along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The RAMS provides the City of Winnipeg with a rational approach for determining risk levels for specific reaches of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The calculated risk levels allow the City to develop recommended response levels for slope stability remediation projects in a fiscally responsible manner with minimal personal and political influences. This system permits the City to facilitate timely and periodic reviews of priority sites as riverbank conditions and input parameters change.

In practice, most approaches for text error detection and correction are based on a conventional domain-dependent background dictionary that represents a fixed and static collection of correct words of a given language and, as a result, satisfactory correction can only be achieved if the dictionary covers most tokens of the underlying correct text. Again, most approaches for text correction are for only one or at best a very few types of errors. The purpose of this thesis is to propose an unsupervised approach to detecting and correcting text errors, that can compete with supervised approaches and answer the following questions: Can an unsupervised approach efficiently detect and correct a text containing multiple errors of both syntactic and semantic nature? What is the magnitude of error coverage, in terms of the number of errors that can be corrected? We conclude that (1) it is possible that an unsupervised approach can efficiently detect and correct a text containing multiple errors of both syntactic and semantic nature. Error types include: real-word spelling errors, typographical errors, lexical choice errors, unwanted words, missing words, prepositional errors, article errors, punctuation errors, and many of the grammatical errors (e.g., errors in agreement and verb formation). (2) The magnitude of error coverage, in terms of the number of errors that can be corrected, is almost double of the number of correct words of the text. Although this is not the upper limit, this is what is practically feasible. We use engineering approaches to answer the first question and theoretical approaches to answer and support the second question. We show that finding inherent properties of a correct text using a corpus in the form of an n-gram data set is more appropriate and practical than using other approaches to detecting and correcting errors. Instead of using rule-based approaches and dictionaries, we argue that a corpus can effectively be used to infer the properties of these types of errors, and to detect and correct these errors. We test the robustness of the proposed approach separately for some individual error types, and then for all types of errors. The approach is language-independent, it can be applied to other languages, as long as n-grams are available. The results of this thesis thus suggest that unsupervised approaches, which are often dismissed in favor of supervised ones in the context of many Natural Language Processing (NLP) related tasks, may present an interesting array of NLP-related problem solving strengths.

In this dissertation’s study of virtual reality (VR), I focus my attention on two prominent types of VR: real virtualities and virtual realities. I argue that both are composed of performative acts of spatial production and that through the study of those acts, researchers can isolate and describe the difference between these two tropes of virtual reality. My thesis focuses on Henri Lefebvre’s theorisation of social space as the most detailed and appropriate spatial theory for such a process while Victor Turner’s liminal theory of social and ritual performance provides the necessary performative methodology to complement Lefebvre’s. My use of these theories allows researchers to identify the difference between social spaces that produce new spaces and practices, and those which reinforce the spatial paradigm that generated them. The process of identifying these differences further clarifies Lefebvre’s complicated description of social space, but it also provides a platform for researchers to distinguish between the two different types of virtual reality. Through a detailed examination of three ostensibly different examples of VR, I argue that virtual realities ought to be considered primarily as realities made virtual while real virtualities should be discussed as virtualities made real. In doing so this thesis advances the study and application of Lefebvrean thought whilst opening up new directions for virtuality studies. I have chosen to explore three case studies that, through their difference, foreground their spatial and performative nature. By focusing on distinctly different and atypical case studies, I highlight the methodology described in this project and its suitability (or otherwise) for discussing VR. Focusing firstly on Google, I explore the virtual reality of the World Wide Web, perhaps the most ubiquitous example of a virtual reality. The sheer pervasiveness, uptake and constant evolution of the World Wide Web means that it requires constant academic attention. Google is the page through which a staggering 53.3% of Web users access the Internet and to say that most people are actually browsing Google’s web instead of the actual web is by no means an under statement. Google, like all other search engines, has its own formula for determining results and rankings for search queries. Google is not, as many people would like to think, an objective map of the Internet. It relies so heavily on users’ data in relation to their search query (which pages they click on, how long they spend there, whether they click back) that apart from the virtual algorithms that it uses to articulate the process Google could be said to be constituted solely by the real world practices of its users. Secondly I explore an example of the other type of VR, a real virtuality. Though the Gothic cathedral may not traditionally fall under the rubric of virtuality studies, the building itself provides an excellent example of the interaction of space and performance required to bring into existence that which was not there before. The Gothic cathedral is a concrete resolution of the actual/virtual dialectic and provides a unique opportunity to test my methodology’s ability to describe both types of VR and highlight the distinction between them. Whereas much of what constitutes virtuality studies centres on what I am calling the virtualisation of reality (online chat rooms, virtual banking, etc) – spaces that represent virtual others of real world entities, the Gothic cathedral represents the reverse of this: the realisation of a virtuality. The Gothic cathedral is unique in the context of this thesis for it is first and foremost a physical building rather than an onscreen other. It is a real virtuality in this thesis because, while concrete, there are some aspects of its reality that remain essential rather than formal and are dependent upon parishioners’ performance in order to be made ‘real.’ The final case study of this project represents the future usefulness of my methodology. In following up the work on exploring the suitability of describing a Gothic cathedral alongside Google, the last chapter of my dissertation explores the suitability of describing theatrical space as a VR. Similar to the Google chapter, this chapter focuses on a digital VR tool recently developed by Joanne Tompkins at the University of Queensland called the Online Theatre Project. The Online Theatre Project (OTP) represents a unique approach to the documentation, digital conceptualisation and archival problems that present themselves to a working theatre company in its everyday practice. The OTP is a server-based modeling and archival tool that allows users to draw, model and design their theatre production in real-time and then house their data on a remotely accessible server. Any notional description of theatrical space is necessarily a slippery one, given the relative youth of such studies and this project positions itself in this ever evolving debate by suggesting that the Online Theatre Project actually provides a description of what theatrical space entails where others have not. This thesis argues that VR space is dependent upon a constant spatial and performative production process. It illustrates how Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the production process is most suitable for describing that production process and argues that re-imagining Lefebvre’s definition with the assistance of Turner’s everyday performative theory of liminality affords researchers the chance to differentiate between real virtualities and virtual realities. In doing so this thesis advances the study of VR, by proving that it is possible to discuss such complicated subjects in spatial and performative terms instead of the dominant real or un-real ones. Further, I outline the necessary adaptation of Lefebvre’s spatial triad that can be undertaken to prove its usefulness in many other aspects of VR studies.

In this dissertation’s study of virtual reality (VR), I focus my attention on two prominent types of VR: real virtualities and virtual realities. I argue that both are composed of performative acts of spatial production and that through the study of those acts, researchers can isolate and describe the difference between these two tropes of virtual reality. My thesis focuses on Henri Lefebvre’s theorisation of social space as the most detailed and appropriate spatial theory for such a process while Victor Turner’s liminal theory of social and ritual performance provides the necessary performative methodology to complement Lefebvre’s. My use of these theories allows researchers to identify the difference between social spaces that produce new spaces and practices, and those which reinforce the spatial paradigm that generated them. The process of identifying these differences further clarifies Lefebvre’s complicated description of social space, but it also provides a platform for researchers to distinguish between the two different types of virtual reality. Through a detailed examination of three ostensibly different examples of VR, I argue that virtual realities ought to be considered primarily as realities made virtual while real virtualities should be discussed as virtualities made real. In doing so this thesis advances the study and application of Lefebvrean thought whilst opening up new directions for virtuality studies. I have chosen to explore three case studies that, through their difference, foreground their spatial and performative nature. By focusing on distinctly different and atypical case studies, I highlight the methodology described in this project and its suitability (or otherwise) for discussing VR. Focusing firstly on Google, I explore the virtual reality of the World Wide Web, perhaps the most ubiquitous example of a virtual reality. The sheer pervasiveness, uptake and constant evolution of the World Wide Web means that it requires constant academic attention. Google is the page through which a staggering 53.3% of Web users access the Internet and to say that most people are actually browsing Google’s web instead of the actual web is by no means an under statement. Google, like all other search engines, has its own formula for determining results and rankings for search queries. Google is not, as many people would like to think, an objective map of the Internet. It relies so heavily on users’ data in relation to their search query (which pages they click on, how long they spend there, whether they click back) that apart from the virtual algorithms that it uses to articulate the process Google could be said to be constituted solely by the real world practices of its users. Secondly I explore an example of the other type of VR, a real virtuality. Though the Gothic cathedral may not traditionally fall under the rubric of virtuality studies, the building itself provides an excellent example of the interaction of space and performance required to bring into existence that which was not there before. The Gothic cathedral is a concrete resolution of the actual/virtual dialectic and provides a unique opportunity to test my methodology’s ability to describe both types of VR and highlight the distinction between them. Whereas much of what constitutes virtuality studies centres on what I am calling the virtualisation of reality (online chat rooms, virtual banking, etc) – spaces that represent virtual others of real world entities, the Gothic cathedral represents the reverse of this: the realisation of a virtuality. The Gothic cathedral is unique in the context of this thesis for it is first and foremost a physical building rather than an onscreen other. It is a real virtuality in this thesis because, while concrete, there are some aspects of its reality that remain essential rather than formal and are dependent upon parishioners’ performance in order to be made ‘real.’ The final case study of this project represents the future usefulness of my methodology. In following up the work on exploring the suitability of describing a Gothic cathedral alongside Google, the last chapter of my dissertation explores the suitability of describing theatrical space as a VR. Similar to the Google chapter, this chapter focuses on a digital VR tool recently developed by Joanne Tompkins at the University of Queensland called the Online Theatre Project. The Online Theatre Project (OTP) represents a unique approach to the documentation, digital conceptualisation and archival problems that present themselves to a working theatre company in its everyday practice. The OTP is a server-based modeling and archival tool that allows users to draw, model and design their theatre production in real-time and then house their data on a remotely accessible server. Any notional description of theatrical space is necessarily a slippery one, given the relative youth of such studies and this project positions itself in this ever evolving debate by suggesting that the Online Theatre Project actually provides a description of what theatrical space entails where others have not. This thesis argues that VR space is dependent upon a constant spatial and performative production process. It illustrates how Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the production process is most suitable for describing that production process and argues that re-imagining Lefebvre’s definition with the assistance of Turner’s everyday performative theory of liminality affords researchers the chance to differentiate between real virtualities and virtual realities. In doing so this thesis advances the study of VR, by proving that it is possible to discuss such complicated subjects in spatial and performative terms instead of the dominant real or un-real ones. Further, I outline the necessary adaptation of Lefebvre’s spatial triad that can be undertaken to prove its usefulness in many other aspects of VR studies.

After completing this tutorial you will be able to access "Google", conduct a simple search, and interpret the search results.

Η παρούσα εργασία αφορά τη διαδικασία ανάπτυξης, σχεδίασης και αξιολόγησης του εκπαιδευτικού λογισμικού «Μέγας Αλέξανδρος: η εκστρατεία του». Η εφαρμογή αναπτύχθηκε πάνω στο «Google Earth» χρησιμοποιώντας τα εργαλεία του και κυρίως τα αρχεία kmz. Παρουσιάζει με αλληλεπιδραστικό και δυναμικό τρόπο ιστορικές και γεωγραφικές πληροφορίες, δραστηριότητες και βίντεο για τους μαθητές. Το λογισμικό κατά τη διαδικασία αξιολόγησής του παρουσιάστηκε σε μαθητές, γυμνασίου και αξιολογήθηκε από αυτούς. / This work involves the development process, design and evaluation of educational software «Alexander the Great: his campaign». The application was developed on the «Google Earth» using the tools and particular files kmz. Presents in a interactive and dynamic way historical and geographical information, activities and videos for students. The software during the evaluation process was presented to students high school and was evaluated by the above.

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία έχει ως αντικείμενο αφενός την μελέτη και επισκόπηση των υπαρχόντων κοινωνικών δικτύων και την καταγραφή των πληροφοριών που παρέχουν, αφετέρου δε την ανάπτυξη μιας εφαρμογής κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, η οποία θα αποτελείται από δύο μέρη.Το πρώτο μέρος έχει την μορφή ενός tutorila των APIs τεσσάρων μεγάλων κοινωνικών δικτύων: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Friend Connect. Το δεύτερο μέρος παρέχει στον χρήστη την δυνατότητα συνάθροισης και προβολής των δεδομένων του που προέρχονται από τα προφίλ του στα προαναφερθέντα κοινωνικά δίκτυα. / The scope of this thesis is firstly to study and review of existing social networks and record the information they provide, and secondly, to develop a social networking application which will consist of two parts. The first part takes the form of an APIs tutorial of four large socila networks: Facebook, Twitter,Linkedin, Google Friend Connect. The second part provides the user the ability to gather and display the data from the profiles of the aforementioned social networks.

Το περιεχόμενο της εργασίας είναι η διαδικασία ανάπτυξης της εφαρμογής "Patras' Taxi" για την πλατφόρμα συσκευών smartphone Google Android. Η εφαρμογή είναι μια ψηφιακή εκδοχή του κλασικού αναλογικού ταξιμέτρου που βρίσκεται εγκατεστημένο στα οχήματα ταξί και προορίζεται για χρήση στην πόλη της Πάτρας και την ευρύτερη περιοχή. / The content of the paper is the process of development of the "Patras' Taxi" application, for smartphone devices with Google Android. The application is a digital version of the classic analog taximeter that is installed in taxis and is destined for use in the city of Patras and the surrounding area.