Self presentation is evolving; with digital technologies, with the Web and personal publishing, and then with mainstream adoption of online social media. Where are we going next? One possibility is towards a world where we log and own vast amounts of data about ourselves. We choose to share - or not - the data as part of our identity, and in interactions with others; it contributes to our day-to-day personhood or sense of self. I imagine a world where the individual is empowered by their digital traces (not imprisoned), but this is a complex world. This thesis examines the many factors at play when we present ourselves through Web technologies. I optimistically look to a future where control over our digital identities are not in the hands of centralised actors, but our own, and both survey and contribute to the ongoing technical work which strives to make this a reality. Decentralisation changes things in unexpected ways. In the context of the bigger picture of our online selves, building on what we already know about self-presentation from decades of Social Science research, I examine what might change as we move towards decentralisation; how people could be affected, and what the possibilities are for a positive change. Finally I explore one possible way of self-presentation on a decentralised social Web through lightweight controls which allow an audience to set their expectations in order for the subject to meet them appropriately. I seek to acknowledge the multifaceted, complicated, messy, socially-shaped nature of the self in a way that makes sense to software developers. Technology may always fall short when dealing with humanness, but the framework outlined in this thesis can provide a foundation for more easily considering all of the factors surrounding individual self-presentation in order to build future systems which empower participants.

A Web é a aplicação mais popular da Internet e, desde sua criação, gerou mudanças de diversas maneiras na vida das pessoas. Esse é um dos motivos que a transformou em objeto de estudo de diversas pesquisas de cunho social, tecnológico econômico e político. A metodologia descrita nesta dissertação pode ser entendida como uma extensão do projeto TIC Web, que foi desenvolvido como parceria entre o NIC.br, o escritório do W3C Brasil e o instituto InWeb para estudar características de qualidade da Web Brasileira. Nesse sentido, a presente metodologia possui o objetivo de automatizar análises de domínios e sites Web, principalmente com base nos resultados sobre a Web Governamental Brasileira obtidos pelo TIC Web. Ou seja, o presente trabalho se foca na definição e aplicação de metodologia baseada em técnicas de aprendizado de máquina para a automatização das análises de domínios Web, visando praticidade na execução da categorização de sites Web segundo critérios relacionados à qualidade percebida por seus usuários. Os tópicos aqui discutidos compreendem: a importância dos padrões abertos e elementos de desempenho para a determinação da qualidade de um site; fundamentos de aprendizado de máquina; o detalhamento das ferramentas utilizadas para coletar e extrair informações dos sites, bem como dos atributos e indicadores por elas adquiridos; a metodologia proposta, incluindo a descrição de diversos algoritmos utilizados; e, um caso de uso demonstrando sua aplicabilidade. Além disso, propõe-se como parte da metodologia de análise a utilização dos resultados de seus resultados para realizar a avaliação de sites segundo sua qualidade percebida. / The World Wide Web is the most popular application throughout the Internet and, since its creation, it has changed people\'s lives in lots of ways, hence, it has become subject to several social, technological, economical and political researches. The methodology described in the present text may be unterstood as an extension of the TIC Web project, which was developed by a partnership among NIC.br, Brazilian W3C office and the InWeb institute in order to study some quality related issues about the Brazilian Web. Accordingly, the methodology presented in this work aims to automate analyses of Web domains and sites, mainly based on the results over the Brazilian Governmental Web obtained by TIC Web. In other words, the present project focus on the definition and use of a methodology dependent on machine learning in order to automate the analyses of extracted data, having the goal of easing the classification of Web sites according to the quality perceived by their users. Some of the discussed topics are as follows: the importance of Open Standards and performance features to defy the quality of a site; basics of machine learning; details of the tool applied to extract Web sites data, as well as its acquired parameters and indicators; the proposed methodology, including the description of applied algorithms; and a use case evincing its applicability. Additionally, it is proposed, as part of the methodology, the utilization of the results obtained by the domain analysis to evaluate other websites in accordance to their perceived quality.

A Web é a aplicação mais popular da Internet e, desde sua criação, gerou mudanças de diversas maneiras na vida das pessoas. Esse é um dos motivos que a transformou em objeto de estudo de diversas pesquisas de cunho social, tecnológico econômico e político. A metodologia descrita nesta dissertação pode ser entendida como uma extensão do projeto TIC Web, que foi desenvolvido como parceria entre o NIC.br, o escritório do W3C Brasil e o instituto InWeb para estudar características de qualidade da Web Brasileira. Nesse sentido, a presente metodologia possui o objetivo de automatizar análises de domínios e sites Web, principalmente com base nos resultados sobre a Web Governamental Brasileira obtidos pelo TIC Web. Ou seja, o presente trabalho se foca na definição e aplicação de metodologia baseada em técnicas de aprendizado de máquina para a automatização das análises de domínios Web, visando praticidade na execução da categorização de sites Web segundo critérios relacionados à qualidade percebida por seus usuários. Os tópicos aqui discutidos compreendem: a importância dos padrões abertos e elementos de desempenho para a determinação da qualidade de um site; fundamentos de aprendizado de máquina; o detalhamento das ferramentas utilizadas para coletar e extrair informações dos sites, bem como dos atributos e indicadores por elas adquiridos; a metodologia proposta, incluindo a descrição de diversos algoritmos utilizados; e, um caso de uso demonstrando sua aplicabilidade. Além disso, propõe-se como parte da metodologia de análise a utilização dos resultados de seus resultados para realizar a avaliação de sites segundo sua qualidade percebida. / The World Wide Web is the most popular application throughout the Internet and, since its creation, it has changed people\'s lives in lots of ways, hence, it has become subject to several social, technological, economical and political researches. The methodology described in the present text may be unterstood as an extension of the TIC Web project, which was developed by a partnership among NIC.br, Brazilian W3C office and the InWeb institute in order to study some quality related issues about the Brazilian Web. Accordingly, the methodology presented in this work aims to automate analyses of Web domains and sites, mainly based on the results over the Brazilian Governmental Web obtained by TIC Web. In other words, the present project focus on the definition and use of a methodology dependent on machine learning in order to automate the analyses of extracted data, having the goal of easing the classification of Web sites according to the quality perceived by their users. Some of the discussed topics are as follows: the importance of Open Standards and performance features to defy the quality of a site; basics of machine learning; details of the tool applied to extract Web sites data, as well as its acquired parameters and indicators; the proposed methodology, including the description of applied algorithms; and a use case evincing its applicability. Additionally, it is proposed, as part of the methodology, the utilization of the results obtained by the domain analysis to evaluate other websites in accordance to their perceived quality.

This thesis is driven by the motivation to explore a way of working collaboratively that closely reflects the World Wide Web (WWW), more specifically the potential of the Web architecture built on Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data. The goal is to describe a generic approach and architecture that satisfies the needs for loose collaboration and collective knowledge construction as exemplified by the applications described in this thesis. This thesis focuses on a contribution-centric architecture which allows for flexible applications that support loose forms of collaboration. The first research question deals with how Web-based collective knowledge construction can be supported. The second research question explores the characteristics of collective knowledge construction with respect to the Open World Assumption (OWA). The OWA implies that complete knowledge about a subject cannot be assumed at any time, which is one of the most fundamental properties of the WWW. The third research question investigates how Semantic Web technologies be used in order to support such a contribution-centric architecture. The thesis and its underlying publications are of a technical character and are always grounded in theoretical models and considerations that have led to functional implementations. The research has evolved in iterative development processes and was explicitly directed at building applications that can be used in collaborative settings and that are based on standardized Web technologies. One of the main outcomes, an information model, was developed together with such an application and provides a number of novel approaches in the context in which it was designed. The validity of the presented research is supported by evaluations from different perspectives: a list of implemented applications and showcases, results from structured interviews that have investigated the suitability for various resource annotation processes, as well as scalability aspects. The thesis concludes that it is ultimately up to the application how "loose" the collaboration should be and to which extent the OWA is incorporated. The presented architecture provides a toolkit to support the development of loosely collaborative applications. The showcased applications allow the construction of collaborative conceptual models and to collaboratively annotate educational resources. They show the potential of the used technology stack and the introduced contribution-centric architecture that sits on top if it. / <p>QC 20140417</p>

This paper accounts for the work with a website for a company whose real name will not be disclosed in the text of this paper. Instead, they have been assigned the fictitious name Larmbolaget, which can be translated as ‘The Alarm Company’. During our work with Larmbolaget’s website, we consulted a selection of accessibility guidelines from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, developed by a working group within the World Wide Web Consortium, as well as a number of design principles and heuristics outlined in this paper. We also conducted several usability tests on users from our intended target group. All the measures taken were an effort to ensure that Larmbolaget’s website be as accessible and usable as possible. Our conclusion is that the resulting website does comply with the accessibility guidelines and design principles described in this paper, and thus we consider it to be accessible and usable to a wide range of users, including those with disabilities. / Den här rapporten redogör för arbetet med en webbplats åt ett företag vars riktiga namn inte avslöjas i texten i denna rapport. Istället har de tilldeltas det påhittade namnet Larmbolaget. Under arbetet med Larmbolagets webbplats har vi tagit hänsyn till en utvald del av tillgänglighetsriktlinjerna i Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, utvecklade av en arbetsgrupp inom World Wide Web Consortium, samt ett antal designprinciper och heuristiker som vi sammanfattar i den här rapporten. Vi utförde även ett flertal användartester på användare inom vår tänkta målgrupp. Alla dessa åtgärder var ett försök att göra Larmbolagets webbplats så tillgänglig och användbar som möjligt. Vår slutsats är att den resulterande webbplatsen följer de tillgänglighetsriktlinjer och designprinciper som beskrivs i den här rapporten, och således anser vi den vara tillgänglig och användbar för en stor mängd användare, inklusive dem med funktionshinder.

Web-based simulation (WBS) systems offer tradeoffs between user interactivity and hardware requirements striking to seek a balance between the differing concerns. Server-based systems offer little interactivity or concurrent visualization capabilities, while client-based systems have increased hardware requirements asking the user to provide high-end workstations. Concurrent visualization of simulation output proves execution intensive, or unusable in some situations. Creating an execution efficient and user friendly WBS system greatly improves user experience while gaining all of the benefits inherent in a web-based system such as high accessibility and ease of maintenance. In order to provide a usable concurrent visualization WBS this thesis developed the Web-Based Queuing System Simulation System (WebQS3). WebQS3 splits the responsibilities of simulation execution and simulation visualization into a client-server environment; the client is responsible for the visualization display and server is responsible for simulation execution. The system differs from many previous WBS systems in that the client-side application is developed using web-standard technologies such as HTTP, XML, SVG, and ECMAScript instead relying on Java Applets and associated technologies. Using web-standards as the foundation of the client agent opens the visualization and model construction functionality to any user that accesses the application using a web browser while also making the application more scalable in terms of user load. Implementing the client with web-standards also included the development of an asynchronous client-server communication protocol as opposed to traditional synchronous communication protocols used by Java WBS systems. The asynchronous protocol demonstrates similar or better execution performance than similar synchronous communication protocols in most quality characteristics. By creating a WBS system using web-standards implemented in most modern web browsers any user may visit the WebQS3 site and have simulation tools available for use. Providing simulation services on the web makes eases the creation of simulation models my making the tools to readily available while facilitating information sharing and collaboration over the web. The WebQS3 system serves as a model to drive research in WBS systems away from proprietary Java technologies to web standards for front-end visualization technologies. / Master of Science