This dissertation addresses the problem of providing a®ordable mobile mul-timedia services in wide area wireless networks. The approach is to con-sider novel system architectures, based on reusing and sharing of the ex-isting network infrastructure for cellular and terrestrial TV broadcastingsystems. The focus has been on the radio resource management techniques,and the evaluation of the potential cost savings, compared to traditionalevolution tracks of the cellular and broadcasting systems.The studies show that deployment cost of a wide area broadcastingnetwork, using DVB-H technology, is very large if high data rate and fullarea coverage is targeted. For this reason we propose to avoid the broad-casting infrastructure dimensioning for full area coverage, and use insteadthe cellular systems to enable error correction for broadcasting transmis-sions. For the special case of mobile users, the chosen approach is to tradesystem's cost and capacity for improved perceived coverage. This trade-o®is enabled by the use of application layer forward error correction, usingRaptor coding.The general purpose Ambient Networks technology was chosen to en-able a platform for inter-operability between cellular and broadcasting sys-tems, especially the necessary interfaces. Under the Ambient Networksframework, we investigate the achievable cost savings o®ered by a hybridcellular-broadcasting system when combinations of broadcast and point-to-point transmissions are jointly utilized to provide ¯le transfers and stream-ing services. Two cases were investigated: one where the cellular systemacts as a replacement and deliver the data in the areas where broadcastingtransmissions cannot reach, and another one where cellular system carriesparity data to users that experience temporary outage in the broadcastingsystem. The results are encouraging, as they show that ¯le transfer costcan be reduced by more than 50%, but only under certain conditions.On a short term, hybrid cellular-broadcasting systems based on 3G andDVB-H, o®er a good platform for testing new and innovative mobile TVservices, enriched with interactivity and content personalization. From atechnical perspective, the outcomes of the presented studies indicate thatfuture systems built on hybrid cellular-broadcasting infrastructures are ableprovide a long term and cost e±cient solution for delivery of a®ordablebroadband multimedia services to mobile users. However, today's cellularand broadcasting systems live in di®erent worlds, are driven by di®erentrevenue models, and they are now starting to compete, instead of cooperate,for controlling the multimedia delivery channels to mobile users. / QC 20100708

Bakgrund: En av skolans främsta uppgifter är att rusta eleverna för framtiden på olika sätt. I studien lyfter vi vikten av att eleverna måste kunna orientera sig i en komplex verklighet med stort informationsflöde och snabb förändringstakt (Lpo 94, 2006). Vi undersöker hur lärarna arbetar med olika media i sin undervisning. Vi har också intresserat oss för vilka datorprogram de väljer att använda. Dagens elever har en helt annan erfarenhet av och tillgång till Internet än tidigare elever har haft, vilket gjort att de redan i tidig ålder möts av olika utmaningar och faror. Syfte: Syftet med undersökningen är att ta reda på hur lärarna ser på multimedia i undervisningen i år 2-5, samt hur multimedia praktiskt används i arbetet med eleverna. Metod: Som metod valde vi kvalitativ semistrukturerad forskningsintervju. Vi har utfört elva intervjuer med mp3-spelare, vilka har transkriberats till text och analyserats. Intervjupersonerna har varit lärare som arbetar i år 2-5, och arbetar i fem olika kommuner. Intervjuerna har vi analyserat utifrån en vidare hermeneutisk tolkning, utifrån ett fenomenologiskt synsätt. Resultat: Vi har funnit att de flesta lärarna arbetar mycket medvetet med multimedia i sin undervisning. De är i stort sett nöjda med de typer och antal av multimedia och program skolan tillhandahåller. Lärarna på de flesta skolorna utbildar eleverna utifrån en medvetenhet om omvärldens faror. Vi har även funnit att lärarens inställning påverkar deras användande av multimedia i undervisningen. Flera lärare anser att PIM-utbildning för kommunens lärare ökar deras engagemang. Är läraren intresserad, så blir eleverna intresserade. Att använda multimedia gör lärandet mer lustfyllt och ökar motivationen hos de flesta elever, samtidigt som det främjar deras samarbete och sociokulturella lärande.

From a media industries, fan studies, and emerging socio-cultural public relations perspective, this project pulls back the Hollywood curtain to explore two questions: 1) How do TV public relations practitioners and key tastemaker/gatekeeper media define, create, build, and maintain fandom?; and 2) How do they make meaning of fandom and their agency/role in fan creation from their position of industrial producers, cultural intermediaries, members of the audience, and as fans themselves? This project brings five influential, working public relations and media professionals into a conversation about two case studies from the 2010-2011 television season – broadcast network CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 and basic cable network AMC’s The Walking Dead. Each of these shows speaks to fandom in particular ways and are representative of the industry’s current approaches in luring specific audiences to TV. This study shows that the relationship between entertainment publicists and media is dynamic, intertwined, complex, and historically hidden.

Affective haptic research is a rapidly growing field. Today, more smart haptic clothes are being studied and implemented which are aimed to effect its users emotionally. However, they have some limitations. This research intends to improve the existing literature and contribute by involving consumers directly in the design of a smart haptic jacket by adding heat, vibration actuators, and by enhancing portability. In this thesis, we are interested in six basic emotions: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. An online survey was designed and conducted on 92 respondents that gave feedback of what it is expected from an affective haptic jacket. The results of this survey assisted in the general design, and the feedback helped to build a prototype. 86% of the respondents expressed interest in the system and are willing to try it when it is ready. A detailed design architecture is provided along with details on the hardware and software used for the implementation. Finally, the prototype was evaluated on 14 participants using the actual prototype haptic jacket based on a QoE comparison between the absence and the presence of haptic actuation. The proposed system showed improvement over a similar system that is designed for the same purpose.

Demands for multimedia content, one form of digital content, are continuously increasing at a phenomenal pace, as video features are commonly available on personal devices, such as iPod, cell phone, laptop, PDA, and Blackberry. The streaming service poses unique bandwidth and delay challenges to application designers. The size of a typical video content is usually orders of magnitude larger than that of any other type of content, resulting in high demands for bandwidth contribution from the content providers. Even more challenging, the content must be delivered to end hosts in real time to maintain smooth playback, i.e., the content must be transmitted at a satisfactory rate. In this thesis, we present our research towards a high-quality peer-to-peer live streaming system that utilizes network coding, a novel technique that permits coding at every peer, which has proven benefits in file dissemination applications. To ensure the practicality of our work, it is our imperative objective to conduct all experiments under realistic settings.

The QoS Steiner Tree Problem asks for the most cost efficient way to multicast multimedia to a heterogeneous collection of users with different data consumption rates. We assume that the cost of using a link is not constant but rather depends on the maximum bandwidth routed through the link. Formally, given a graph with costs on the edges, a source node and a set of terminal nodes, each one with a bandwidth requirement, the goal is to find a Steiner tree containing the source, and the cheapest assignment of bandwidth to each of its edges so that each source-to-terminal path in the tree has bandwidth at least as large as the bandwidth required by the terminal. Our main contributions are: (1) New flow-based integer linear program formulation for the problem; (2) First implementation of 4.311 primal-dual constant factor approximation algorithm; (3) an extensive experimental study of the new heuristics and of several previously proposed algorithms.

Actualmente en nuestro país la educación no rinde los frutos estimados. Esto es debido a que no se emplean los métodos y/o herramientas adecuadas para fortalecer el aprendizaje del alumno por lo cual esto incide en su rendimiento académico, es por ello que las personas encargadas de ésta labor didáctica deben emplear o crear nuevas herramientas educativas que, con el transcurso del avance tecnológico, permita que los alumnos logren un correspondiente desempeño en el área curricular a la vez de la mejora de su rendimiento. La presente investigación busca plantear una solución en la mejora del rendimiento académico en los alumnos del quinto grado de educación primaria de la IE Juan Tomis Stack, la cual presenta un proyecto de la implementación de un software educativo con soporte multimedia, con el objetivo de lograr que el alumno llegue a un nivel de rendimiento académico adecuado para su aprendizaje. La metodología que se empleó en la implementación del software educativo, es la metodología anteriormente mencionada, Ommma-L (Lenguaje Orientada a Objetos para la Modelación de Aplicaciones Multimedia), con lo cual pretende brindar una herramienta que permita mejorar el rendimiento académico de los alumnos mejorando el nivel de enseñanza de la mencionada institución educativa.

Demands for multimedia content, one form of digital content, are continuously increasing at a phenomenal pace, as video features are commonly available on personal devices, such as iPod, cell phone, laptop, PDA, and Blackberry. The streaming service poses unique bandwidth and delay challenges to application designers. The size of a typical video content is usually orders of magnitude larger than that of any other type of content, resulting in high demands for bandwidth contribution from the content providers. Even more challenging, the content must be delivered to end hosts in real time to maintain smooth playback, i.e., the content must be transmitted at a satisfactory rate. In this thesis, we present our research towards a high-quality peer-to-peer live streaming system that utilizes network coding, a novel technique that permits coding at every peer, which has proven benefits in file dissemination applications. To ensure the practicality of our work, it is our imperative objective to conduct all experiments under realistic settings.

Affective haptic research is a rapidly growing field. Today, more smart haptic clothes are being studied and implemented which are aimed to effect its users emotionally. However, they have some limitations. This research intends to improve the existing literature and contribute by involving consumers directly in the design of a smart haptic jacket by adding heat, vibration actuators, and by enhancing portability. In this thesis, we are interested in six basic emotions: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. An online survey was designed and conducted on 92 respondents that gave feedback of what it is expected from an affective haptic jacket. The results of this survey assisted in the general design, and the feedback helped to build a prototype. 86% of the respondents expressed interest in the system and are willing to try it when it is ready. A detailed design architecture is provided along with details on the hardware and software used for the implementation. Finally, the prototype was evaluated on 14 participants using the actual prototype haptic jacket based on a QoE comparison between the absence and the presence of haptic actuation. The proposed system showed improvement over a similar system that is designed for the same purpose.

A través de las acciones emprendidas por la Unión Europea en el área del multimedia off-line se pretende obtener una visión de conjunto de cómo ha podido influir esta política en la creación y consolidación de un potencial mercado español.Para ello, la primera parte de la tesis se centra en el análisis de los diferentes Programas Marco de investigación y desarrollo tecnológico emprendidos por la Unión Europea y su incidencia en el área de las nuevas tecnologías. Se ha llevado a cabo un análisis de la evolución presupuestaria de los Programas Marco y de sus principales líneas de acción.La segunda parte pretende acercarse al campo más concreto de las acciones unidas al multimedia off-line, todo ello gracias al análisis de los programas específicos vinculados con este sector.Finalmente, en el último apartado se aborda la forma en la que las diferentes empresas e instituciones españolas se han podido beneficiar o no de tales ayudas. Concretamente, se establece un perfil del solicitante tipo español y de los productos realizados.Con todo ello se pretende cumplir uno de los principales objetivos: comprobar hasta qué punto la política europea en materia de multimedia off-line ha sido eficaz para el mercado español. / Through the actions started by the European Union in the off-line multimedia field we want to get a whole vision of the influences of this policy in the creation and consolidation of the potencial spanish market.Because of that, the first part is centered in the analysis of the various RTD Frameworks started by the European Union and its influence in the field of new technologies. We have carried an analysis of the budgetary evolution of the different Frameworks and the main action lines.The second part wants to take a closer view of the off-line multimedia actions, analyzing the specifics programmes linked to this field.Finally, the last part examines the way of differents spanish companies and institutions have profited or not from those grants. We defined a profile of the spanish producers and their products.With all the previous studies we want to check if the off-line multimedia policy has been effective in tne spanish market.