Vol.6 No.3 September, 2010

A Platform for User Generated Multimedia Communication Services (185-206)
        Niklas Blum, Thomas Magedanz, Horst Stein, and Ingo Wolf 
Existing telecommunications networks and classical roles of operators are subject to fundamental change. Many network operators are currently seeking for new sources to generate revenue by exposing network capabilities to third party service providers. At the same time we can observe that applications in the World Wide Web (WWW) are becoming more mature in terms of communications functionality and the definition of APIs that are offered towards other services. The combinations of those services are commonly referred to as Web 2.0 mash-ups.  Rapid service design and creation becomes therefore important to meet the requirements in a changing technology and competitive market environment. This paper describes our approach to enable a service creation environment for complex, orchestrated real-time communications services through a service broker on top of Next Generation Networks (NGN) to combine the emerging web/telecommunications service space with existing network provider infrastructures.

Evaluation on Performer Support Methods for Interactive Performances Using Projector (207-226)
        Jun Ikeda, Yoshinari Takegawa, Tsutomu Terada, and Masahiko Tsukamoto 
Recently, performances that combine performers' actions and images projected from a projector have attracted a great deal of attention. In such performances, since the performer usually faces the audience, it is difficult for him/her to watch the projected images on a background screen. This means that he/she cannot make the performances dynamic in response to changes in the situation. Therefore, we evaluate multiple information presentation methods for interactive performances. We have developed a prototype system for supporting performers and evaluated its effectiveness. We confirmed that differences in display devices and in the types of presenting images affected the quality of performances. The implemented prototype was actually used in several stage performances, and we confirmed that the system was effective and improved the visibility of projected images.

Application of JXTA-Overlay Platform for Secure Robot Control (227-242)
        Evjola Spaho, Keita Matsuo, Leonard Barolli, Fatos Xhafa, Joan Arnedo-Moreno, and Vladi Kolici 
In this paper, we present the evaluation and experimental results of secured robot control in a P2P system. The control system is based on JXTA-Overlay platform. We used secure primitives and functions of JXTA-Overlay for the secure control of the robot motors. We investigated the time of robot control for some scenarios with different number of peers connected in JXTA-Overlay network.  All experiments are realised in a LAN environment. The experimental results show that with the join of other peers in the network, the average time of robot control is increased, but the difference between the secure and unsecure robot control average time is nearly the same.

Robustness of Dynamic Social Networks (243-262)
        Maytham Safar, Hisham Farahat, and Khaled Mahdi 
The cyclic entropy of a real virtual friendship network provides an insight on the degree of its robustness. Cyclic entropy depends on counting the number of cycles of different sizes in the network, in which a probability distribution function is resulted. Counting the number of cycles in the network is an NP problem. In this work we used a polynomial time approximation algorithm to count the number of cycles in an undirected graph that is based on regression and on a statistical mechanics approach. We used this approximation algorithm to analysis the dynamicity of a virtual social network, E-mail Messages Exchange Network (EMEN) where nodes and edges appear and disappear through time. We analyze the exact and approximated cyclic entropy variation with time as a function of the number of nodes and edges in the network. We further compare the cyclic entropy variation of the network to the traditional degree entropy variation. The purpose is to establish the robustness of the network. In addition, we study the effect of weighed links (number of interactions between users) on the analysis of such graphs. An actual friendship network is found to have cyclic entropy bounded between random and small-world networks models.

Situation Aware Cognitive Assistance in Smart Homes (263-280)
        Liming Chen and Chris Nugent
Smart Homes (SH) have emerged as a realistically viable solution capable of providing technology-driven assistive living for the elderly and disabled. Nevertheless, it still remains a challenge to provide situation-aware cognitive assistance for those in need in their Activity of Daily Living (ADL). This paper introduces a systematic approach to providing situation-aware ADL assistances in a smart home environment. The approach makes use of semantic technologies for sensor data modeling, fusion and management, thus creating machine understandable and processable situational data. It exploits intelligent agents for interpreting and reasoning semantic situational (meta)data to enhance situation-aware decision support for cognitive assistance. We analyze the nature and issues of SH-based healthcare for cognitively deficient inhabitants. We discuss the ways in which semantic technologies enhance situation comprehension. We describe a cognitive agent for realizing high-level cognitive capabilities such as prediction and explanation. We outline the implementation of a prototype assistive system and illustrate the proposed approach through simulated and real-time ADL assistance scenarios in the context of situation aware assistive living.

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