eWay

CfP: 4th International Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'11)

2011-08-22T12:33:00.001+02:00

Stories and story-telling (narration and storytelling systems) represent long-standing cultural achievements of significant relevance even in modern times. Nowadays, story-telling is being enhanced with the convergence of sociology, pedagogy, and technology. In recent times, computer gaming is also deployed for serious and educational purposes and has proved to be an effective approach to cognitive stimulation and development. Many conceptual and procedural similarities and inter-dependences exist between story-telling and educational gaming. For instance, a good story lays the foundation for immersion and emotional involvement in games. Therefore these two areas can be integrated for research on web-based learning. Digital stories are an ideal starting point for the creation of educational games, since each story addresses particular problems, so that the story recipient can benefit from other users' experiences. This leads to the development of more realistic stories providing the kernel for non-trivial educational games involving various types of media. These stories cover the instructional part of an educational game, while the game adds the motivation and engagement part.

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers, experts and practitioners from the domains of digital story-telling and educational and serious gaming to share ideas and generate new knowledge in the context of web-based learning. There is a great amount of disparate research in these fields and this workshop will allow the participants to discover and leverage potential synergies.

Workshop topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Theories in story-telling, learning and games
Story-telling and its role in digital educational games
Story and game design paradigms for Web-based Learning
Augmented story-telling and gaming
Story-telling and educational gaming with social software
Mobile story-telling and educational gaming
Cross-media/transmedia story-telling and gaming
Computer gaming for story-telling (Game design for narrative architectures)
Multimedia story and game authoring
Story-telling and educational gaming applications
Storytelling and pedagogy
Storytelling mechanics in serious games
Narratology and story-telling

Submissions

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research papers (max. 10 pages) according to Springer LNCS format. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed for originality, significance, clarity and quality. Accepted papers will be published as part of ICWL workshop proceedings in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

To submit your paper please use the STEG submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=steg2011 (will be open soon)

Important Dates

Paper Submission: 31 August 2011
Notification of acceptance: 26 September 2011
Camera Ready Submission: 15 October 2011
Author Registration: 15 October 2011
Workshop date: 8-10 December 2011

Organisers

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Michael Derntl, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Stefan Göbel, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Sandy Louchart, Heriot-Watt University, UK

CfP: MTAP Special Issue on "Multimedia on the Web"

2011-08-22T12:25:00.003+02:00

URL: http://mtap-mmweb.fim.uni-passau.de/

Streaming video has recently surpassed peer-to-peer networks in terms of network capacity hunger. Reports estimate a share of 40% of peak network capacity dedicated to entertainment, mostly streaming video. A large share of this traffic originates from web based services. YouTube alone takes up to 8% of the prime time internet traffic. So multimedia on the web is currently a big issue. While transmission currently works in a best effort system, multimedia information systems on the web are far from being perfect. Retrieval, annotation, validated and useful metadata, reliable and trusted services, and user interaction and context-based adaptation are still under discussion and allow improvement. Currently, the Web itself faces dramatic changes, looking for example at the spread of social networks, Linked Data or the impact of HTML5 or WebM. These activities also have a deep effect on multimedia data and content provider. This special issue shall collect high quality papers from applied and basic research as well as applications for multimedia on the web.

Submissions have to relate to multimedia on the web, or more specifically on the following topics:

Annotation of multimedia for the Web
Multimedia databases and metadata models
Multimedia & metadata adaptation
Multimedia in the social Web
Multimedia user communities
Multimedia semantics & ontologies for the Web
Proactive delivery and recommender systems
Semantic multimedia information services
User interaction & context
Web based emergence and self-organization
Web based multimedia search and retrieval

ICWL 2011 accepted workshops

2011-07-25T11:53:00.003+02:00

The following workshop proposal has been accepted to co-locate with ICWL 2011, Hong Kong:

4th International Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG 2011)
http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg11
4th International Workshop on Social and Personal Computing for Web-Supported Learning Communities (SPeL 2011)
http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2011/
1st International Workshop on Enabling Successful Self-Regulation in Open Learning Environments (S-ROLE 2011)
http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/S-ROLE2011/
1st International Workshop on Enhancing Learning with Social Media (ELSM 2011)
http://elsm2011.mine.tku.edu.tw/
1st International Symposium on Knowledge Management & E-Learning (KMEL 2010)
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~kwchiu/kmel2011.htm

CfP: CTUW'11

2011-07-11T10:52:00.000+02:00

Call for Papers

The 3rd International Workshop on Cognitive-based Text Understanding and Web Wisdom

12-14 December 2011, Sydney, Australia
http://iic.shu.edu.cn/huiyi/CTUW3rdCFP.html

in conjunction with the
International Conference on Social Computing and its Applications (SCA2011)
http://www.swinflow.org/confs/sca2011/

Recent years, many new theories and technologies for Web Wisdom have made the Web much wiser. Among these technologies, Cognitive-based text understanding (CTU) is one of the newest directions of Web Wisdom and should be paid more attention to. The machine understanding of Web resources is the basis of Web Wisdom. Cognitive Informatics (CI) is an emerging discipline that studies the natural intelligence, internal information processing mechanisms of the brain and the processes involved in perception and cognition as well. CTU simulates the cognitive process of human brain understanding text, so it takes advantage of cognitive theories to make the machine understanding of Web resources effectively and promotes Web Wisdom to a great extent.

Topics:
The objective of the workshop is to invite authors to submit original manuscripts that demonstrate and explore current advances in all aspects of Web Wisdom (especially the aspect of Cognitive-based text understanding). The workshop solicits novel papers on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:
* Theories and Practices of World Wide Wisdom Web (W4)
* Cognitive Models and Computational Models for W4
* Intelligent Web Searching and Services
* Web Mining and Information Retrieval
* Web Knowledge Organization and Fusion
* Data Link and Semantic Link
* Web Knowledge Flow
* Web-based Cooperation Model
* Text Understanding and Representation
* Text Complexity Measurement
* Text Readability Measurement
* Text Trust Measurement
* Interactive Computing

Submission Requirements:
Please email your manuscripts in PDF to xwei@shu.edu.cn with the email subject as “CTUW paper submission”. Papers should be limited up to 8 pages in IEEE format. All papers will be peer reviewed by two or three pc members. Submitting a paper to the workshop means that if the paper is accepted, at least one author should register to SCA2011 and attend the conference to present the paper.

Publication of Papers:
All accepted papers will appear in the proceedings published by IEEE Computer Society (EI indexed). Selected papers will be invited to special issues of SCA2011 in Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Social Science Computer Review and Computers in Human Behavior.

Important Dates:
Full paper submission due: August 15, 2011
Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2011
Camera-ready paper due: October 3, 2011
Conference presentation: December 12-14, 2011

Program Committee Co-Chairs:
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Jinjun Chen, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Xiao Wei, Shanghai Institute of Technology, China

Program Committee:
Bernadette Sharp, Staffordshire University, UK
Chantal Soule-Dupuy, Université de Toulouse, France
Didier Schwab, University of Grenoble, France
Farhad Arbab, Leiden University, Netherlands
Feiyue Ye, Shanghai University, China
Florence Sèdes, Université de Toulouse, France
Jan van Leeuwen, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands
Jinjun Chen, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Lizhe Wang, Indiana University, USA
Marc Spaniol, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Germany
Michael Zock, LIF-CNRS, Marseille, France
Oliver Kutz, University of Bremen, Germany
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Roche Christophe, Université de Savoie, France
Ronald R. Yager, Iona College, USA
Stephane Bressan, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Styliani K. Loizou, University of Leeds, UK
Wanchun Dou, Nanjing University, China
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Xiao Wei, Shanghai Institute of Technology, China
Xiaobo Yin, Anhui University of Science and Technology, China
Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

CfP: MONET 2011

2011-03-16T10:23:00.001+01:00

Sixth International Workshop on

MObile and NEtworking Technologies for social applications (MONET´11)

Crete, Greece, Oct 16-21, 2011

Proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag

The best papers of the workshop, opportunely extended, will be selected for a special issue on an international journal.

In recent years the research area of social mobile and networking technologies has made rapid progress, due to the increasing development of new mobile technologies and the widespread usage of the Internet as a new platform for social interactions.

Applications of mobile and networking technologies serve groups of people in shared activities, in particular geographically dispersed groups who are collaborating on some task in a shared context. An important characteristic of those social applications is the continuous interaction between people and technology to achieve a common purpose. Moreover, social applications tend to be large-scale and complex, involving difficult social and policy issues such as those related to privacy and security access.

Mobile technologies are devoted to play an important role in many areas of social activities, most likely in those areas where the right data in the right time have mission-critical importance. Mobile technologies play an essential role in personalizing working and interaction contexts, and supporting experimentation and innovation.

Social Networking technologies join friends, family members, co-workers and other social communities together. These technologies are convergent, emerging from a variety of applications such as search engines and employee evaluation routines while running on equally diverse platforms from server clusters to wireless phone networks.

The third generation of social networking technologies has hit the Web. This network serve increasingly significant social functions. Networking technologies have to face emerging problems of robustness, such as vulnerabilities to reliability and performance due to malicious attack.

Workshop participants can extent their background on this area, exchange ideas with other researchers and propose new solutions.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the proposed workshop is to gather researchers, from academia and industry, and practitioners to discuss about new mobile and networking technologies, to identify challenging problems that appear in social applications of those technologies and to show results and experiences realized by researchers. The workshop will be organized in a way to stimulate interaction among the participants. Shorter position papers may be presented from researchers of all backgrounds, in particular social-mobile technologies, information networking, human-computer interaction, security and privacy.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest to this workshop include, but are not limited to:

· Social networking technologies

· Social network analysis

· Mobile Social networks

· Social media technologies

· Semantic web

· Mobile and network security and privacy

· Web and mobile accessibility

· Knowledge Sharing and management

· Human-computer interaction

· Multi-modal applications

· Online communities and Social Computing

· Wireless technologies and services

· Mobile applications and services

· Mobile social services

· Mobile business services

· Future mobile applications

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission Deadline: Jun 20, 2011
Acceptance Notification: Aug 1, 2011
Camera Ready Due: Aug 22, 2011
Registration Due: Aug 22, 2011
OTM Conferences: October 16 - 21, 2011

CfP: ICWL 2011

2011-03-14T12:24:00.002+01:00

The 10th International Conference on Web-based Learning, December 2011, Hongkong, China

The conference program consists of high quality technical papers that are reviewed and selected by an international program committee. Papers are solicited on all technical aspects of web-based learning and related technologies, including but not limited to the following topics:

Technology Enhanced Learning
Personalized and Adaptive Learning
Computer Support for Intelligent Tutoring
Intelligent Tools for Visual Learning
Web-based Learning for Oriental Languages Learning
Game-based Learning
Personal Learning Environments (PLE)
Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
Web 2.0 and Social Learning Environments
Intelligent Learner and Group Modeling
Human Factors and Affective Computing for Learning
E-Learning Platforms and Tools
Design, Model and Framework of e-Learning Systems
Deployment, Organization and Management of Learning Objects
E-Learning Metadata and Standards
Semantic Web and Ontologies for E-learning
Mobile, Situated and Blended Learning
Pedagogical Issues
Practice and Experience Sharing
Paper Submission

Authors are invited to submit original papers reporting on research results or novel applications in web-based learning. All accepted full papers presented in the conference will be published as a volume in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Selected papers will be recommended for possible publication in some international journals, including IEEE Trans. on Learning Technologies. Papers for submissions should be formatted in single column of no more than 10 pages in single line spacing according to the Springer LNCS Authors Guideline for review. All papers should be submitted in PDF format. Please refer to the conference website (http://www.hkws.org/conference/icwl2011/) for more information and send us email at icwl2011@cs.cityu.edu.hk for any inquiry.

Full Paper Submission Deadline: May 15, 2011

PerCoSC 2011 Program

2011-03-14T12:18:00.003+01:00

The program can be downloaded at http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/PerCoSC2011/program.html

9:00 - 10:00 Session 1 Mobile Cloud Computing

Adaption of Archetype Patterns for Mobile Cloud-based Business Apps
Jakob Strauch, FH Aachen, Germany
Thomas Ritz, FH Aachen, Germany
Challenges in Securing the Interface between the Cloud and Mobile Systems
Brent J. Lagesse, CSIIR, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA

10:30 -12:00 Session 2 Overview of Service Clouds

Cloud Computing Oriented Network Operating Systems and Service Platform
Jianwei Yin, Zhejiang University, China
Yanming Ye, Zhejiang University, China
Bin Wu, Zhejiang University, China
Zuoning Chen, National Parallel Computing Engineering Research Center, Beijing, China
Mobile Search and the Cloud: The Benefits of Offloading
Eemil Lagerspetz, University of Helisinki, Finland Sasu Tarkoma, University of Helisinki, Finland
Ubiquitous Cloud: Managing Service Resources for Adaptive Ubiquitous Computing
Koichi Egami, Kobe University, Japan
Masahide Nakamura, Kobe University, Japan
Matsumoto Shinsuke Kobe University, Japan

13:30 – 15:00 Session 3 Pervasive Community Services and Applications

Contemporary Ubiquitous Media Services: Content Recommendation and Adaptation
Wenyuan Yin, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
Xinglei Zhu, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
Chang Wen Chen, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
Improving Pervasive Positioning through Three-tier Cyber Foraging
Mads Darø Kristensen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Aarhus University, Denmark
Thomas Toftkjær, Aarhus University, Denmark
Sourav Bhattacharya, University of Helsinki, Finland
Petteri Nurmi, University of Helsinki, Finland
Home Automation and Security for Mobile Devices
Somak Das, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Silvia Chita, Washington State University, USA
Nina Peterson, Lewis-Clark State College, USA
Behrooz Shirazi, Washington State University, USA
Medha Bhadkamkar, Washington State University, USA

15:30 – 16:30 Discussion and Wrap-up

Congratulations!

2010-11-15T23:06:00.005+01:00

Congratulations to Priv.-Doz. Dr. rer. nat. Ralf Klamma. I am glad to have taken some pictures, before they are posted to some CS-passionate blogs e.g. this one. :-)

CfP: PerCoSC 2011 (Submission Deadline Extended)

2010-11-01T14:33:00.001+01:00

The First IEEE PerCom Workshop on Pervasive Communities and Service Clouds (PerCoSC 2011)
Held in conjunction with 9th Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications 2011 (PerCom 2011), March 21, 2011, Seattle, USA

URL: http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/PerCoSC2011/
email: percosc2011@dbis.rwth-aachen.de

The First IEEE PerCom Workshop on Pervasive Communities and Service Clouds aims to offer researchers, Ph.D. students, and practitioners a forum to present and discuss research advances and challenges related to cloud computing support for pervasive communities. The workshop thus aims to enable the sharing of insights and experiences related to the development and use of cloud computing technologies, often called service clouds, for supporting pervasive communities. Pervasive communities are user communities that are enabled by pervasive computing technologies. Service clouds denote the totality of cloud computing services, applications, platforms, and infrastructure that comply with the service-oriented architecture paradigm.
Pervasive community services deal with data sensed and collected from the users’ physical environments via networked mobile devices. Hence, they support data exchange, communication, and collaboration among mobile users. Pervasive communities of users with mobile devices and network connections have been increasing. Thus, the pervasive technologies to support pervasive communities face new requirements, e.g., related to mobility support, context-awareness, spatiotemporal intelligence, connectivity to communities, information sharing, collaboration, pervasive interaction, and privacy and security issues. However, the computational capabilities of mobile devices remain limited, when faced with pervasive communities who share large data volumes. Cloud computing technologies offer computational resources on a pay-per-use basis and are capable of abstracting technical details from the mobile devices. These technologies thus hold the potential for enabling pervasive community services with varying computing requirements in a cost-effective and scalable manner. Indeed, service clouds may envision future pervasive computing and enables innovative pervasive community services and applications.

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not restricted to the following topics:
• cloud computing (services, platforms, infrastructure, and standards etc.) for pervasive communities
• cloud computing for pervasive technologies
• user-targeted pervasive, mobile and context-aware services and applications
• location-based, temporal, or spatiotemporal services and applications
• software architectures for cloud computing and pervasive computing
• data modeling and management for cloud computing and pervasive communities
• social software and Web 2.0 in cloud computing and pervasive computing
• augmented reality for pervasive communities
• security and privacy in cloud computing and pervasive communities

Submission

The papers should present original and previously unpublished results that are not simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Authors are invited to submit papers limited to 6 pages formatted in accordance with the IEEE format for conference proceedings. Workshop papers will be included and indexed in the IEEE digital libraries (Xplore), showing their affiliation with IEEE PerCom.

Please submit your paper to the EDAS Conference Management System at http://edas.info/N9371.

Important Dates

• November 7, 2010 (extended) Deadline for workshop paper submission
• January 7, 2011 Notification of acceptance
• January 28, 2011 Deadline for camera ready papers
• March 21, 2011 PerCom 2011

Workshop Organizers

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Christian S. Jensen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dejan Kovachev, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Program Committee

Christian Bischof, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Erik Buchmann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Daniel Catrein, Ericsson Eurolab, Germany
Vincent Charvillat, ENSEEIHT, France
Chang Wen Chen, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Michael Granitzer, Know Center Graz, Austria
Wolfgang Gräther, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Tim Hussein, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Antony D. Joseph, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
Wei-Shinn Ku, Auburn University, USA
Wang-Chien Lee, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Mathias Lux, Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria
Sergio Mascetti, University of Milan, Italy
Martin Memmel, German Research Center for AI, Germany
Vincent Oria, New Jersey's Science & Technology University, USA
Marc Spaniol, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Germany
Marcus Specht, Open University of the Netherlands, the Netherlands
Markus Strohmaier, Know Center Graz, Austria
Christian Timmerer, Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria
Goce Trajcevski, Northwestern University, USA
Mark Vorwerk, Ericsson Eurolab, Germany
Weichao Wang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Felix Wolf, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Call for Participation: Developer's Day 2010

2010-10-04T11:01:00.004+02:00

Our students are hosting a nice event 5th Developer's Day 2010 at Informatik 5, RWTH Aachen University. This workshop is organized by students to present the participants the state-of-the-art software development technologies, including IDE, tools, services, and frameworks. The organizers Ana-Maria Dragomir and Petru Nicolaescu have managed to give a full-day program with many contributions of our students Patrick Schlebusch, Michael Lottko and Gökhan Aksakalli, as well as contributions from industry e.g. Microsoft Germany. We look forward to a successful workshop tomorrow!

CfP: STEG 2010 (Submission Deadline Extended)

2010-09-26T23:50:00.000+02:00

====================================================================================
Call for Papers

The Third International Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG 10)

held in conjunction with

The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 10)

Shanghai, China
December 8-10, 2010

URL: http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg10
email: steg10@easychair.org

====================================================================================

Aims and Scope
==============

Stories and story-telling are cultural achievements of significant relevance even in modern times. Nowadays, story-telling is being enhanced with the convergence of sociology, pedagogy, and technology. Recently, computer gaming is also deployed for educational purposes and has proved to be an effective approach to mental stimulation and intelligence development. Many conceptual similarities and some procedural correlation exist between story-telling and educational gaming. Therefore these two areas can be clubbed for research on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). Many facets of story-telling and educational gaming emulate real life processes, which can be represented either as complex story graphs or as interleaved sub-problems.

While the integration of learning and gaming provides a great opportunity, several motivational challenges must also be addressed to ensure successful realization. Non-linear digital stories are an ideal starting point for the creation of educational games, since each story addresses a certain problem, so that the story recipient can benefit from other users experiences. This leads to the development of more realistic stories providing the kernel for non-trivial educational videogames. These stories cover the instructional part of an educational game, while the game adds the motivation and engagement part.

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers, experts and practitioners from the domains of non-linear digital interactive story-telling and educational gaming to share ideas and knowledge. There is a great amount of separate research in these two fields and the celebration of this workshop will allow the participants to discover and leverage potential synergies.

Workshop Topics
===============

Workshop topics include, but are not limited to:

* Theories in story-telling and games
* Story-telling and educational game design paradigms
* Augmented story-telling and gaming
* Story-telling and educational gaming with social software
* Mobile story-telling and educational gaming
* Cross-media/transmedia story-telling and gaming
* Computer gaming for story-telling (Game design for narrative architectures)
* Multimedia story and game authoring
* Story-telling for creating educational game content
* Story-telling and educational gaming applications

Important Dates
===============

October 8, 2010: Paper Submission
October 22, 2010: Notification of Acceptance
November 12, 2010: Camera Ready Submission
December 8-10, 2010: Workshop Date

Submissions
===========

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers (max. 10 pages) or work-in-progress as short papers (max. 5 pages) according to the Springer LNCS format. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed for originality, significance, clarity and quality. Accepted papers will be published online as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, ISSN 1613-0073.

To submit your paper please use the STEG submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=steg10

Organizers
==========

Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Emmanuel Stefanakis, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece
Stephan Lukosch, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
David Farrell, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Dominik Renzel, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Program Committee
=================

Alev Elci (Eastern Mediterranean University, Magusa, North Cyprus)
Amanda Gower (British Telecommunications plc, UK)
Anna Hannemann (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
Bailing Zhang (Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia)
Baltasar Fernández Manjón (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Carlos Delgado Kloos (Carlos III University, Spain)
Carsten Ullrich (Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China)
Christian Guetl (Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media (IICM), Graz University of Technology, Austria)
Cord Hockemeyer (University of Graz, Graz, Austria)
Eeva Nygren (University of Eastern Finland, Finland)
Georg Thallinger (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
Harald Kosch (University of Passau, Germany)
Helen Ashman (University of South Australia, Australia)
Jose Luis Sierra (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Manuel Fradinho (Cyntelix, Ireland)
Marc Spaniol (MPI, Saarbruecken, Germany)
Mathias Lux (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
Michael Granitzer (Know Center, Graz, Austria)
Michael Hausenblas (DERI, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland)
Michael D. Kickmeier-Rust (University of Graz, Graz, Austria)
Nalin Sharda (Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia)
Pablo Moreno-Ger (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
Ralf Klamma (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
Romulus Grigoras (ENSEEIHT, France)
Ronan Champagnat (La Rochelle University, La Rachelle, France)
Stamatia Dasiopoulou (ITI Thessaloniki, Greece)
Stefan Göbel (TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany)
Vincent Charvillat (ENSEEIHT, France)
Werner Bailer (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
Wolfgang Gräther (Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany)

Workshops STEG'10 / CICW'10 / WGLBWS'10 / IWKDEWL'10 at ICWL 2010

2010-09-07T12:41:00.000+02:00

Call For Papers (CFP) of Workshops (STEG'10 / CICW'10 / WGLBWS'10 / IWKDEWL'10)

December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China
In conjunction with
The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

Workshop 1 : Third Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'10)

Workshop 2 : 2010 International Workshop on Cognitive-based Interactive Computing and Web Wisdom (CICW'10)

Workshop 3 : 2010 International Workshop on WebGIS and Location Based Web Service (WGLBWS'10)

Workshop 4 : 2010 International Workshop on Knowledge and Data Engineering in Web-based Learning (IWKDEWL'10)

*****************************

Workshop 1 : STEG'10

*****************************

Third Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'10)
December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China

http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg10

In conjunction with The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

Stories and story-telling are cultural achievements of significant relevance even in modern times. Nowadays, story-telling is being enhanced with the convergence of sociology, pedagogy, and technology. Recently, computer gaming is also deployed for educational purposes and has proved to be an effective approach to mental stimulation and intelligence development. Many conceptual similarities and some procedural correlation exist between story-telling and educational gaming. Therefore these two areas can be clubbed for research on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). Many facets of story-telling and educational gaming emulate real life processes, which can be represented either as complex story graphs or as interleaved sub-problems.

While the integration of learning and gaming provides a great opportunity, several motivational challenges must also be addressed to ensure successful realization. Non-linear digital stories are an ideal starting point for the creation of educational games, since each story addresses a certain problem, so that the story recipient can benefit from other users?? experiences. This leads to the development of more realistic stories providing the kernel for non-trivial educational videogames. These stories cover the instructional part of an educational game, while the game adds the motivation and engagement part.

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers, experts and practitioners from the domains of non-linear digital interactive story-telling and educational gaming to share ideas and knowledge. There is a great amount of separate research in these two fields and the celebration of this workshop will allow the participants to discover and leverage potential synergies.

Workshop topics

- Theories in story-telling and games
- Story-telling and educational game design paradigms
- Augmented story-telling and gaming
- Story-telling and educational gaming with social software
- Mobile story-telling and educational gaming
- Cross-media/transmedia story-telling and gaming
- Computer gaming for story-telling (Game design for narrative architectures)
- Multimedia story and game authoring
- Story-telling for creating educational game content
- Story-telling and educational gaming applications

Registration

Scientific researchers and industry partners within the story-telling and educational gaming domain are invited to participate in STEG'10. Please use the ICWL10 conference website to register: http://www.hkws.org/conference/icwl2010/registration.html
Early bird registration: Nov 15, 2010

Submissions

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers (max. 10 pages) or work-in-progress as short papers (max. 5 pages) according to the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/lncs). For camera-ready format instructions, please see "For Authors" instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed for originality, significance, clarity and quality. Accepted papers will be published online as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, ISSN 1613-0073.
To submit your paper please use the STEG submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=steg10

Important dates

Paper Submission: September 24, 2010
Notification of acceptance: October 22, 2010
Camera Ready Submission: November 12, 2010
Workshop date: December 8-10, 2010

Organisers

Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Emmanuel Stefanakis, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece
Stephan Lukosch, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
David Farrell, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Dominik Renzel, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Program Committee
Alev Elci, Eastern Mediterranean University, Magusa, North Cyprus
Amanda Gower, British Telecommunications plc, UK
Anna Hannemann, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Ansgar Scherp, UC Irvine, CA, USA
Armin Weinberger, LMU, Munich, Germany
Bailing Zhang, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Baltasar Fern??ndez Manj??n, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Carlos Delgado Kloos, Carlos III University, Spain
Christian Guetl, Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media (IICM), Graz University of Technology, Austria
Cord Hockemeyer, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Dietrich Albert, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Daniel Burgos, ATOS Origin, Spain
Dominik Renzel, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Emmanuel Stefanakis, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece
Georg Thallinger, Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria
Griff Richards, Athabasca University, Canada
Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
Hermann Maurer, Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media (IICM), Graz University of Technology, Austria
Irma Lindt, Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany
Jose Luis Sierra, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Kinshuk, Athabasca University, Canada
Lionel Brunie, INSA de Lyon, France
Marc Spaniol, MPI, Saarbr??cken, Germany
Marius Preda, Institut National des T??l??communications, France
Martin Haller, TU Berlin, Germany
Michael Granitzer, Know Center, Graz, Austria
Michael Hausenblas, Joanneum Research, Austria
Nalin Sharda, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Pablo Moreno-Ger, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Peter Schallauer, Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria
Raphaël Troncy, CWI, Netherlands
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Richard Chbeir, LE2I Laboratory (UMR - CNRS) - Bourgogne University, France
Romulus Grigoras, ENSEEIHT, France
Stamatia Dasiopoulou, ITI Thessaloniki, Greece
Stefan Göbel, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Vedran Sabol, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Victor Manuel Garcia-Barrios, University of Technology Graz, Austria
Vincent Charvillat, ENSEEIHT, France
Vincent Oria, NJIT, USA
Werner Bailer, Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria
Werner Klieber, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Wolfgang Gräther, Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany
Wolfgang Prinz, Fraunhofer FIT, St. Augustin, Germany
Zinayida Petrushyna, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

*****************************

Workshop 2 : CICW'10

*****************************

2010 International Workshop on Cognitive-based Interactive Computing and Web Wisdom (CICW'10)
December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China

http://iic.shu.edu.cn/icwl2010/workshop/cicw2010/
In conjunction with The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

Recent years, many new theories and technologies for Web Wisdom have made the Web much wiser. Among these technologies, Cognitive-based Interactive Computing is one of the newest directions of Web Wisdom and should be paid more attention to. Interaction is more effective than algorithm in dealing with the mass Web resources and providing better services, for Interactive Computing (IC) promotes the understanding and knowledge fusion between human and Web during the interactive process of human and web. Cognitive Informatics (CI) is an emerging discipline that studies the natural intelligence and internal information processing mechanisms of the brain, as well as the processes involved in perception and cognition. So Cognitive-based Interactive Computing takes advantage of Interactive theory and Cognitive theory and promotes WI to a great extent.

The objective of the workshop is to invite authors to submit original manuscripts that demonstrate and explore current advances in all aspects of Web Intelligence (especially the aspect of Cognitive-based Interactive Computing). The workshop solicits novel papers on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

- Cognitive-based Interactive Computing Model and Algorithm
- Cognitive-based User Profile and Web Personalization Techniques
- Cognitive-based Web Mining and Information Retrieval
- Theories and Practices of World Wide Wisdom Web (W4)
- Data Link and Semantic Link
- Cognitive Models and Computational Models for W4
- Web Knowledge Organization and Fusion
- Interactive Web-based Learning
- Web Knowledge Flow
- Theories of Small-World Web
- Web-based Cooperation model
- Intelligent Web Searching and Services

Submission Requirements

To submit your paper please use the CICW submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cicw10. Papers for submissions should be formatted in single column of no more than 10 pages in single spacing according to the Springer LNCS Authors Guideline. Papers should be submitted in PDF format for review. All papers will be reviewed by two or three PC members.

Publication of Papers
All accepted papers will be published as a separate volume in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), which will be indexed by EI. In order to give the authors an opportunity to revise their papers in the light of the feedback they might receive during the discussions of their papers upon presentation of their works, all accepted workshop papers will be published as a second post-proceeding volume after the meeting.

Important Dates
Deadline for Paper Submission: September 27, 2010
Notification of Acceptance: October 25 , 2010
Camera Ready Copies: November 10 , 2010
Workshop author registration deadline: November 1 , 2010

Program Committee Co-Chairs:
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Yingxu Wang, Univeristy of Calgary, Canada
Xiao Wei, Shanghai University, China

Program Committee
Farhad Arbab,Leiden University,Netherlands
Feiyue Ye, Shanghai University, China
Jan van Leeuwen,Universiteit Utrecht,Netherlands
Lizhe Wang, Indiana University, USA
Ronald R. Yager, Iona College, USA
Stephane Bressan, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Styliani K. Loizou, University of Leeds,UK
Wanchun Dou, Nangjing University , China
Wolfgang Nejdl, U Hannover, Germany
Wu Zhang, Shanghai University, China
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Xiao Wei, Shanghai University, China
Yingxu Wang, Univeristy of Calgary, Canada
Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
......
Contact
For more information about CICW'10 , please send an email to cicw10@easychair.org

**********************************

Workshop 3 : WGLBWS'10

**********************************

2010 International Workshop on WebGIS and Location Based Web Service (WGLBWS'10)
December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China

http://iic.shu.edu.cn/icwl2010/workshop/wglbws2010/

In conjunction with The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

With the development of Internet and mobile communication, WebGIS and Location Based Service(LBS) have become a vibrant and rapidly evolving application area. Location-based services are often used via Web browsers and are in this case considered as a particular type of Web services. WebGIS can also be constructed via Web services. These represent a novel challenge for WebGIS and LBS. This workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers, practitioners and developers from different background areas such as service computing, cloud computing and GIS area to exchange the latest experience, research ideas and synergic research and development on fundamental issues and applications about WebGIS and LBS in service and cloud computing environments. The workshop solicits high quality research results in all related areas.

Topics
The objective of the workshop is to invite authors to submit original manuscripts that demonstrate and explore current advances in all aspects of WebGIS and LBS in service and cloud computing environments. The workshop solicits novel papers on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

- Service based WebGIS and applications
- Information Management in WebGIS
- Application of Web 2.0 in WebGIS
- Value-Added Services in WebGIS
- Algorithm based service computing
- Model based service computing
- Application based service computing
- Principles and Methodologies of LBS
- Data Management in LBS
- Commercial Model of LBS
- LBS Platforms and Tools
- Web Service Based LBS and Its Applications
- LBS and Social Network
- LBS within 3G Wireless Communication Network
- Novel Applications of LBS
- LBS and WebGIS
- WebGIS based mobile learning

Submission Requirements
To submit your paper please use the WGLBWS'10 submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wgblws10 . Papers for submissions should be formatted in single column of no more than 10 pages in single line spacing according to the Springer LNCS Authors Guideline. Papers should be submitted in PDF format for review. All papers will be peer reviewed by two or three pc members.

Important Dates
Deadline for Paper Submission:September 25, 2010
Notification of Acceptance: October 23, 2010
Camera Ready Copies due: November 8, 2010
Workshop author registration deadline: November 1 , 2010

Program Committee Co-Chairs
Jianxun Liu, Hunan University of Science and Technology, China

Program Committee
Shah Asaduzzaman, Carleton University, Canada
Jian Cao Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Tao Hu Hainan University, China
Jin Liu, Wuhan University, China
Jian Lin, Hunan University of Science and Technology, China
Tianming Liu, Georgia University, USA
Xitong Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Xiangfeng Luo, Shanghai University, China
Chunjie Zhou, Ren Ming University of China, China
......
Contact
For more information about WGLBWS'10 , please send an email to conf.ljx@gmail.com

************************************
Workshop 4 : IWKDEWL'10

************************************

2010 International Workshop on Knowledge and Data Engineering in Web-based Learning (IWKDEWL'10)
December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China

http://iic.shu.edu.cn/icwl2010/workshop/iwkdewl2010/

In conjunction with The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

As computer systems become increasingly large and complex, we are seeing more sophisticated techniques being developed to support e-learning especially in the area of knowledge and data engineering. The rapid development of Web-based learning and new concepts such as virtual classrooms, virtual laboratories and virtual universities introduces many new challenging issues to be addressed. This conference aims at providing an in-depth study of the technical, pedagogical, as well as management issues of Web-based learning. On the technical side, we need to develop effective e-technologies for supporting distance education. On the learning and management side, we need to consider issues such as new styles of learning and different system set-up requirements. Finally, the issue of standardization of e-learning systems should also be considered. IWKDEWL'10 aims at bringing together researchers, educators, technologists and implementers of Web-based learning from around the world to discuss the state of the art in this area.

SCOPE AND INTERESTS
IWKDEWL'10 is the First International Workshop on Knowledge and Data Engineering in Web-based Learning, in conjunction with The 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010).
In this Workshop, we call for original papers describing novel knowledge and data engineering techniques that support e-learning. Preference will be given to papers that include an evaluation of users?? experience in using the proposed methods. Areas of interests include, but are not limited to:

- Semantic Web technology for e-learning
- Data modeling (e.g., XML) for efficient management of course materials
- Searching and indexing techniques to support effective course notes retrieval
- User-centric e-learning systems and user interaction management
- Profiling techniques to support grading and learning recommendation
- Data and knowledge base support for pervasive e-learning
- Course material analysis and understanding
- Automatic generation of questions and answers
- Knowledge mining in web-based learning environments
- Collaborative communities for e-learning

PAPER SUBMISSION
Prepare your paper in PDF file with no more than 10 pages in single line spacing according to the Springer LNCS Authors Guideline (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0) . Submit your paper(s) at the website: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iwkdewl10 . Each submission should be regarded as an undertaking that, if the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors must attend the workshop to present the paper, in order for the paper to be included in workshop proceedings.

PUBLICATION
All accepted papers will be published as a separate volume in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), which will be indexed by EI. In order to give the authors an opportunity to revise their papers in the light of the feedback they might receive during the discussions of their papers upon presentation of their works, all accepted workshop papers will be published as a second post-proceeding volume after the meeting. Selected papers will be published in special issues of some top international journals.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: September 26, 2010
Notification of acceptance: October 18, 2010
Final manuscript due: October 30, 2010
Workshop author registration deadline: November 1, 2010

GENERAL CHAIR
Bo Yang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China

PROGRAM CHAIRS
Lixin Jia, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Xinzheng Niu, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China
Tao Li, Florida International University, USA

PROGRAM VICE CHAIRS
Jin Liu, Wuhan University, China
Bo Xu, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

STEERING CHAIRS
Philip S. Yu, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Peter Scheuermann, Northwestern University, USA
Ling Feng, Tsinghua University, China

......

FURTHER CONTACTS
For any queries, please contact Xinzheng Niu (xinzhengniu@126.com ).

CfP: STEG 2010

2010-07-26T12:28:00.002+02:00

Third Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'10)

December 8-10, 2010, Shanghai, China

URL: http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg10

In conjunction with the 9th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2010)

While the integration of learning and gaming provides a great opportunity, several motivational challenges must also be addressed to ensure successful realization. Non-linear digital stories are an ideal starting point for the creation of educational games, since each story addresses a certain problem, so that the story recipient can benefit from other users’ experiences. This leads to the development of more realistic stories providing the kernel for non-trivial educational videogames. These stories cover the instructional part of an educational game, while the game adds the motivation and engagement part.

Workshop topics

Theories in story-telling and games
Story and game design paradigms for Web-based Learning
Augmented story-telling and gaming
Story-telling and educational gaming with social software
Mobile story-telling and educational gaming
Cross-media/transmedia story-telling and gaming
Computer gaming for story-telling (Game design for narrative architectures)
Multimedia story and game authoring
Story-telling and educational gaming applications

Registration

Scientific researchers and industry partners within the story-telling and educational gaming domain are invited to participate in STEG'10. Please use the ICWL10 conference website to register:

http://www.hkws.org/conference/icwl2010/registration.html

Early bird registration: Nov 15, 2010

Submissions

To submit your paper please use the STEG submission website hosted at easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=steg10

Important dates

Paper Submission: September 24, 2010
Notification of acceptance: October 22, 2010
Camera Ready Submission: November 12, 2010
Workshop date: December 8-10, 2010

Organisers

CfP: PerCoSC 2011

2010-07-21T14:23:00.002+02:00

The First IEEE PerCom Workshop on Pervasive Communities and Service Clouds
(PerCoSC 2011)
Held in conjunction with 9th Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications 2011 (PerCom 2011), March 21, 2011, Seattle, USA
URL: http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/PerCoSC2011/
email: percosc2011@dbis.rwth-aachen.de

The First IEEE PerCom Workshop on Pervasive Communities and Service Clouds aims to offer researchers, Ph.D. students, and practitioners a forum to present and discuss research advances and challenges related to cloud computing support for pervasive communities. The workshop thus aims to enable the sharing of insights and experiences related to the development and use of cloud computing technologies, often called service clouds, for supporting pervasive communities. Pervasive communities are user communities that are enabled by pervasive computing technologies. Service clouds denote the totality of cloud computing services, applications, platforms, and infrastructure that comply with the service-oriented architecture paradigm.
Pervasive community services deal with data sensed and collected from the users’ physical environments via networked mobile devices. Hence, they support data exchange, communication, and collaboration among mobile users. Pervasive communities of users with mobile devices and network connections have been increasing. Thus, the pervasive technologies to support pervasive communities face new requirements, e.g., related to mobility support, context-awareness, spatiotemporal intelligence, connectivity to communities, information sharing, collaboration, pervasive interaction, and privacy and security issues. However, the computational capabilities of mobile devices remain limited, when faced with pervasive communities who share large data volumes. Cloud computing technologies offer computational resources on a pay-per-use basis and are capable of abstracting technical details from the mobile devices. These technologies thus hold the potential for enabling pervasive community services with varying computing requirements in a cost-effective and scalable manner. Indeed, service clouds may envision future pervasive computing and enables innovative pervasive community services and applications.

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not restricted to the following topics:
• cloud computing (services, platforms, infrastructure, and standards etc.) for pervasive communities
• cloud computing for pervasive technologies
• user-targeted pervasive, mobile and context-aware services and applications
• location-based, temporal, or spatiotemporal services and applications
• software architectures for cloud computing and pervasive computing
• data modeling and management for cloud computing and pervasive communities
• social software and Web 2.0 in cloud computing and pervasive computing
• augmented reality for pervasive communities
• security and privacy in cloud computing and pervasive communities

Submission

Authors are invited to submit papers limited to 6 pages formatted in accordance with the IEEE Computer Society author guidelines. The submission system EDAS will be open soon.

Important Dates

• October 31, 2010 Deadline for workshop paper submission
• January 7, 2011 Notification of acceptance
• January 28, 2011 Deadline for camera ready papers
• March 21, 2011 PerCom 2011

Workshop Organizers

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Christian S. Jensen, University Aalborg, Denmark
Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dejan Kovachev, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Preliminary Program Committee

Christian Bischof, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Daniel Catrein, Ericsson Eurolab, Germany
Vincent Charvillat, ENSEEIHT, France
Chang Wen Chen, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Michael Granitzer, Know Center Graz, Austria
Wolfgang Gräther, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Tim Hussein, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Antony D. Joseph, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
Wei-Shinn Ku, Auburn University, USA
Wang-Chien Lee, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Mathias Lux, Klagenfurt University, Austria
Vincent Oria, New Jersey's Science & Technology University, USA
Marc Spaniol, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Germany
Marcus Specht, Open University of the Netherlands, the Netherlands
Markus Strohmaier, Know Center Graz, Austria
Christian Timmerer, Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria
Goce Trajcevski, Northwestern University, USA
Mark Vorwerk, Ericsson Eurolab, Germany
Weichao Wang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Felix Wolf, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

CfP: WIMA 2010

2010-06-28T14:36:00.001+02:00

Workshop on Interactive Multimedia Applications (WIMA)
======================================================
held as special session in conjunction with
USAB 2010: HCI in Work & Learning, Life & Leisure

November 4th-5th 2010
Klagenfurt, Austria

URL: http://tinyurl.com/wima2010

Multimedia applications have become ubiquitous lately. People record and
watch videos on mobile and stationary devices, they use non linear video
editors, and they share and organize their personal multimedia archives.
Lots of research has been done on the technical aspects of multimedia,
like streaming, presentation, transcoding, adaptation and content based
retrieval and analysis. But handling multimedia is an interactive
process and users have to be taken into account. Even consumption is
often accompanied with communication, non linear browsing and search.
This interactivity in multimedia applications is a challenging yet very
promising topic as especially in multimedia applications people more
often accept innovative ideas and fundamental changes more easily.

This workshop should bring together researchers and practitioners from
the fields of Multimedia and Human-Computer Interaction research (HCI).
In this workshop we aim to discuss recent scientific advances and also
first results of greenhouse work in the field of interactive multimedia
applications. We also encourage the submission of papers presenting
studies on interactivity in multimedia systems or discussing the
development of applications in this field.

Topics of interest
==================

Topics include the aspects of interactivity in the following fields:

* Multimedia Retrieval, Browsing & Navigation
* User Intentions in Multimedia Search, Annotation & Production
* Multimedia Production and Post-Production
* Multimedia in Specialized Domains (e.g. Medical Scenarios, Sports,
Security, etc.)
* Image, Audio and Video Analysis
* Mobile Multimedia Applications
* Multimedia on the Web
* Social Multimedia
* Multimedia Management and Databases
* Distributed Multimedia Systems

We also encourage the submission of greenhouse work and preliminary
results to be discussed in the workshop.

Submission
==========
Authors are invited to submit papers in the following categories:

* Full papers (14-20 pages)
* Short papers (6-14 pages)
* Posters (4 pages)

All papers have to be formatted according to the Springer LNCS Style.
Submission is handled by easychair, see http://tinyurl.com/wima2010 for
details.

Important Dates
===============
* July 11, 2010 EXTENDED Deadline for Paper Submission
* July 30, 2010 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection
* August 22, 2010 Camera-Ready Deadline
* Nov 4 & 5, 2010 USAB 2010: HCI in Work & Learning, Life & Leisure

Program Committee
=================
* Christian Timmerer, Klagenfurt University, AT
* Dalibor Mitrovic, TU Wien, AT
* Frank Hopfgartner, International Computer Science Institute, USA
* Harald Kosch, University of Passau, DE
* Mario Döller, University of Passau, DE
* Markus Strohmaier, Graz University of Technology, AT
* Martha Larson, TU Delft, NL
* Oge Marques, Florida Atlantic University, US
* Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen, DE
* Tao Mei, Microsoft Research Asia, P.R. China
* Vincent Charvillait, ENSEEIHT Toulouse, FR
* Werner Bailer, Joanneum Research, AT
* Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen, DE
* Yu Cao, California State University of Fresno, US

Workshop Chairs
===============
* Klaus Schöffmann, Klagenfurt University, AT
* Laszlo Böszörmenyi, Klagenfurt University, AT
* Mathias Lux, Klagenfurt University, AT

For further questions please contact the program chairs at
wima2010@itec.uni-klu.ac.at

The Image of New York City – Salute to Frank Lloyd Wright

2010-06-12T10:34:00.018+02:00

By the end of May 2010 I attended the 11th MDM Conference in Kansas City. Right after the conference I flew to New York City to visit one of my best friends Awen, and to visit the amazing NYC. It was a cloudy Thursday, while the sun came out sometimes shortly. Without sunshine NYC was still struck me as one of the most amazing, fabulous, and impressive cities.
Besides the landmarks like Statue of Liberty, any building on the corner could become another landmark of NYC. The city is a live museum of modern and contemporary architecture. Actually, USA is the cradle of modern architecture. Two of the three most important architects of modernism from Europe went to the States in 1930s, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. Only Le Corbusier lived in Europe. Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the greatest modern architects from the States. If the number counts, 3 of those 4 are from Europe, while 3 of those 4 have lived in USA in the end. To trace Frank Lloyd Wright seems to be somehow one of my goals at traveling to the states, since I happened to visit his Robbie House in Chicago in the spring of 2005.

S.R. Guggenheim Museum is the last masterpiece of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. It is really a pity that the museum was opened six months after Wright’s death. How did a 92-year old man think of lives in his last period of life? What kind of architectural work he liked to leave to the public? Was it to save the last to best? Getting off the subway line C at West 86th Street, I walked along the big lake in Central Park on the late afternoon. As I was approaching the east part of the city, I could almost see Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from some view points. It is bigly-round, outstanding white, thus, remarkable. The air in Central Park was fresh, the walk was delighting, and I was like a sincere pilgrim.

I had imagined S.R. Guggenheim Museum for many times since many years. It would look outstanding and unbalanced with its partial reverse white cylinder. It would look huge and upscale on a narrow NYC street. It would look like a strange snail. It would look … But at that time when I came to stand in front of it, I lost all my words. It is beyond any of my imaginations.

S.R. Guggenheim Museum Building is complete due to the repeated round motif. Many round elements are applied in different sizes by the architect, from the main cylinder to detailed window frame. It is elegant, because of the simpleness. Only round and square elements are in use. It is demure due to the white cement façade with merely a few windows. The sculptural essential is just a featured part beside stars in urban spaces. This reduces the contrast to the environment somehow. It also makes the museum actually fit the environment on the Fifth Avenue much better. But it is not perfect, as many architectural critics have pointed out its sharp contrast to the typical Manhattan box buildings. The supplementary adjoining rectangular tower built in 1992 gives a good foundation of the old part. It makes the museum fit the street view better, while the other color than white does not influence the completeness of Wright’s masterpiece. The old part was not standalone any more, but got a steady background to lean. The museum is a compromise, because Wright gave up adopting his favorite red color for the façade. That kind of red façade does not belong to New York City’s color palette. The museum is even a little “insane”. A cylinder is not a good and appropriate form for museum design at all, because it is hard to display paintings on its curve interior walls. However, who cares these details except the curators?

What does Robbie House in Campus of Chicago University look like which was built a good half century before S.R. Museum? I found out some old photos from my last US trip. It looks like a kind of classical style. In the fact, it is not. It stretches to each direction and looks lower than its actual hight, in order to have a better dialogue with the ground. Frank Lloyd Wright never built a building without his stubborn innovation, whatever a big or a small innovation point. He was a great architect paving a revolutionary way.

The museum was close shortly before 6 pm. I was not able to go inside. But I got a Lego model of it with 280 pieces. I am making my Lego masterpiece of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

CfP: MONET'10

2010-06-11T13:13:00.002+02:00

Fifth International Workshop on MObile and NEtworking Technologies for social applications (MONET'10) will take place in Crete, Greece, Oct 25-29, 2010.

Proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag. The best papers of the workshop, opportunely extended, will be selected for a special issue on an international journal.

The aim of the workshop is to gather researchers, from academia and industry, and practitioners to discuss about new mobile and networking technologies, to identify challenging problems that appear in social applications of those technologies and to show results and experiences realized by researchers. The workshop will be organized in a way to stimulate interaction among the participants. Shorter position papers may be presented from researchers of all backgrounds, in particular social-mobile technologies, information networking, human-computer interaction, security and privacy.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Topics of interest to this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Social networking technologies
• Social network analysis
• Mobile Social networks
• Social media technologies
• Semantic web
• Mobile and network security and privacy
• Web and mobile accessibility
• knowledge Sharing and management
• Human-computer interaction
• Multi-modal applications
• Online communities and Social Computing
• Wireless technologies and services
• Mobile applications and services
• Mobile social services
• Mobile business services
• Future mobile applications

IMPORTANT DATES
Abstract Submission Deadline: Jun 15
Paper Submission Deadline: Jun 30
Acceptance Notification: Jul 30
Camera Ready Due: Aug 13
Registration Due: Sep 3

UMIC Workshop on Future Mobile Applications - Program

2010-02-18T22:23:00.003+01:00

The workshop program is also downloadable in PDF from the Workshop Web site.

09:00
Welcome to UMIC Workshop on Future Mobile Applications
Yiwei Cao and Wolfgang Gräther, RWTH Aachen and Fraunhofer FIT
09:15
Mobile Device as a Smart Metering Display (with Demo)
Oleksandr Lobunets, Fraunhofer FIT
09:45
ideaPitch - A Spatial Tool for Notes (with Demo)
Nils Jeners, Fraunhofer FIT
10:15
Mobile Cloud Computing
Dejan Kovachev, RWTH Aachen
10:40
Coffee Break
11:00
Mobile Informal Learning
Christian Glahn and Dirk Börner, Open University Netherlands
11:30
Augmented Reality for Mobile Learning: information feeds
versus designing scenarios
Stefaan Ternier, Open University Netherlands
12:00
Resource Annotation and Delivery for
Mobile Augmented Reality Services
Martin Memmel, Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz
12:30
Lunch Break
13:30
Open API Platform (with Demo)
Johannes Willig, Ericsson Eurolab
14:00
Service Composition (with Demo)
Konstantinos Vandikas, Ericsson Eurolab
14:30
Virtual Campfire iNMV – Storytelling on the iPhone (with Demo)
Yiwei Cao and Xi Chen, RWTH Aachen
15:00
iBSCW - BSCW applications on the iPhone (with Demo)
Wolfgang Gräther, Fraunhofer FIT
15:30
Coffee Break & Demos
16:15
Discovery and Interaction in Ubiquitous Environments
Marc Jentsch and René Reiners, Fraunhofer FIT
16:45
Supporting Mobile Maintenance in Construction Industry
Anne-Kathrin Braun, Fraunhofer FIT
17:15
Discussion and Further Steps
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen

UMIC Workshop on Future Mobile Applications - Call For Presentation/Demo/Participation

2010-02-12T23:40:00.008+01:00

UMIC (Ultra Highspeed Mobile Information and Communication) is a research cluster established under the German Federal and State Government Excellence Initiative, focusing on the research and realization of future mobile applications and systems through interdisciplinary and academic-industrial collaborations.

The one-day UMIC workshop aims to bring together researchers and PhD students involved in the rapidly increasing field of mobile applications. The workshop provides a forum for academics and practitioners to share knowledge and experience, explore future scenarios, directions and application domains of innovative research, and discuss the challenges and solutions for developing new mobile systems and applications. The workshop also aims at establishing a research community across universities and research institutions for further knowledge sharing and long-term collaboration.

The equipment of mobile phones with embedded camera, GPS, and other sensors greatly influenced the application area and the development of mobile applications. The benefits from the emerging mobile technologies include enhanced flexibility and mobility for end-users, improved productivity for learning, working, and common life, increased social interactivities through personal mobile devices and the availability of context information (such as location and time). However, different considerations need to be addressed in developing applications for mobile devices, like the demand for more resources for real-time context information processing, higher interactivity for better user and community experiences, and improved usability and sociability.

Promising solutions or methodologies are mobile cloud computing, mobile social software and augmented realities. Mobile cloud computing unlocks computing resources and data storage from devices and opens new classes of applications that didn’t seem to be possible previously. Over the past years social software has seen a huge explosion in usage and is now taking its first significant steps towards mobility. The interplay between mobile technologies, sensor/contextual data, cloud services and social computing generates new and exciting research questions on new challenges, utilization of context, location and other sensor data, innovative next generational mobile applications.

The workshop topics include, but are not limited to:

Scenarios and requirement engineering for next generation mobile applications
Software architectures for mobile systems
Mobile social software and mobile Web 2.0
Data management for mobile applications
Mobile multimedia
Mobile Web services
Mobile learning
Mobile gaming and other forms for entertaining
Mobile applications for sensor networks
Context-aware, location-based and mobile sensing applications
Augmented Reality
Mobile cloud computing programming model
Mobile application development standards e.g. Open Mobile Alliance
Mobile usability
Quality of service for mobile community information systems
Innovative cross-platform mobile applications (Android, iPhone, iPad, and Symbian etc.)
Security and privacy in mobile systems
Native applications vs. mobile Web applications - HTML5
Smart object applications (RFID and QRcodes etc.)

Workshop presentations and demos:

Presentation: 30 minutes
Presentation + demo: 45 minutes
An additional demo session will take place for all demos

Workshop Organization Teams:

Links:
http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/cms/events/umic-workshop-on-future-mobile-applications

Call For Paper: U-Media 2010

2009-12-08T23:43:00.002+01:00

Call for Paper to the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Ubi-media computing is available online. The conference will be held in Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China, July 5-6, 2010.

Topics include

Ubi-media Infrastructure

Heterogeneous Ubi-media Infrastructure
Ubiquitous Sensor Networks / RFID
New Ubi-media Devices
Multimedia Embedded Systems
Ubi-media Storage and Indexing
3G and Advanced Communication Techniques
Cross-Network Communication Techniques

Ubi-media Middleware

Context-Aware Multimedia
Cross-Network Media Server
Computational Intelligences in Ubi-media
Semantic Web and Knowledge Grid
Ubi-media Content Protection and Security
Privacy and Security in Ubiquitous Environments

Ubi-media Human-Computer Interaction

Plasticity of User Interfaces
Dynamic composition of User Interfaces
Multimodal interaction
Social networks

Ubi-media Applications

Ubi-media for Education
Ubi-media for Commerce
Ubi-media for Games
Ubi-media for Health Care
Ubi-media for Smart Home
Ubi-media for Citizens and E-Government

JTEL Winter School on Advanced Learning Technologies 2010

2009-12-08T23:35:00.004+01:00

For the Interest Groups on Technology Enhanced Learning:
The JTEL Winter School brings interdisciplinary doctoral researchers together in order to provide intense research training and to foster cross-domain collaboration. The event will engage participants in high-level courses and workshops with leading scientists. These workshops and lectures focus on theoretical, methodological, educational, and technological issues of relevance to TEL research, providing space for interaction, group work, and informal discussions. Doctoral students will also be expected to present their own research for constructive feedback from other participants of the Winter School.

Deadline for applications: 14 December 2009

More information

Call For Paper: Mobile Learning 2010

2009-11-11T23:03:00.002+01:00

Call for Paper for IADIS Mobile Learning 2010 is open. The conference focus will be User Created Content & Mobile Technologies: From Consumers to Creators bypassing the Learning Opportunity? This is the connecting point from e-Learning to social software.
Important dates:
Paper submission: Dec. 4, 2009
Notification: Jan. 6, 2010
Conference dates: Mar. 19-21, 2010, Porto, Portugal
Topics include:
• Pedagogical approaches and theories for mLearning
• mLearning in formal educational institutions
• Integrating mLearning with broader educational scenarios
• Informal and lifelong mLearning
• Learner mobility & transitions across physical, conceptual, social space and technologies
• User Studies in mLearning
• Mobile social media & user generated content
• Enabling mLearning technologies, applications & uses
• Evaluation and evaluation methodologies for mLearning
• Tools, technologies and platforms for mLearning
• Mobile Web 2.0 applications for mLearning
• Mobile game-based learning

Call For Paper: SeMuDaTe2009

2009-09-04T23:37:00.004+02:00

10th International Workshop of the Multimedia Metadata Community will be held in conjuction with the 4th International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies (SAMT2009), December 2-4, 2009 in Graz Austria. The series of workshops have been held regularly to bring international researchers and application developers to share knowledge of multimedia semantics, multimedia processing, multimedia metadata standards such as MPEG-7 and MPEG-21, and multimedia applications. They have been organized by members of the Multimedia Metadata Community. I attended the 9th International Workshop of the Multimedia Metadata Community (WMM2009) in Toulouse, France in March 2009. The proceedings are published in the CEUR Workshop site with a special focus on context-aware mobile multimedia services.

Topics of interest are how multimedia metadata standards and multimedia ontologies are mapped or integrated into databases, how multimedia query languages are built, and how semantic queries are optimized and processed. Moreover, we are interested how multimedia data services are conceived to ensure interoperability, how to improve security and reliability of access and storage of multimedia data and metadata. Adaptation of multimedia, semantic enrichment of multimedia and bridging of media breaks are typical examples of advanced multimedia database services.

Important dates: submission deadline will be September 22, 2009.

ICWL'09 Program online

2009-08-10T19:53:00.005+02:00

Niels and I have finished our ICWL Program in PDF finally. We just extended the program created by Marc, by adding the social program, venue information, and a welcome message from the General Chair Prof. Jarke. A detailed travel information file is also available at the ICWL'09 Web site. The proceedings - Advances in Web Based Learning - ICWL 2009: 8th International Conference, Aachen, Germany, August 19-21, 2009, Proceedings: 5686 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Information Systems and) (Paperback) edited by Ralf, Marc and the others - has also been published by Springer. We are looking forward to all participants at ICWL'09 taking place in Building Super C at RWTH Aachen University next week.

Hackesche Höfe and Hackescher Markt, Berlin

2009-08-08T01:02:00.008+02:00

As I attended the conference Intercarto Intergis 12 (2006) in Berlin, we were very lucky to have a nice conference organizer, Mr. Horst Kremer, who took us to many interesting places in Berlin as a local guider. I was struck by the Hackesche Höfe (Hacke’s Courtyards), which is located just at the Hackescher Markt (Hacke’s Market) at the subway station stop with the same name. It is the No. 1 sightseeing in Berlin from the locales’ viewpoint. Usually for the tourist, Brandenburg Tor and the others might be more famous worldwide. So I missed the courtyard, as we visited Berlin in 2003 for the first time.
What’s the special that makes the “Berliner” so proud of their Hackesche Höfe? It must be easy for each Chinese originally from Shanghai, if I say Hackesche Höfe is just another Xintiandi (新天地). There must also be similar places in other cities in China.
Hackesche Höfe contains 8 courtyards in all. The façades are diverse and colorful. Diversity is shown in the different façade building material ranging from mosaic bricks to common bricks, in the different colors used in one façade. This wall is in blue and white, while its neighbor wall is in orange. The architectural style is also a mixture. The German architect August Endell is an Art Nouveau architect who also studied philosophy and psychology. This expertise and academic backgrounds are quite special for architects. Maybe, this is why his design can still attract so many people 100 years later. Hackesche Höfe was opened in 1906. The idea is to have a common outdoor salon for many companies, clubs, as well as residential parts in this building complex. So people can share the courtyards to get certain atmosphere to have some events in common. This idea is still advanced, like many lofts in the office-shopping buildings and Xintiandi. It also proves that advanced ideas are based on the modernism principle “form follows function”. Since the courtyards are for the sharing purpose, they should have the versatility to meet preferences of enterprisers, businessmen, artists, and habitants. August Endell also applied Neo-baroque roofs and Egyptian Obelisks. However, at my first impression, Hackesche Höfe has the Art Déco style, though Art Déco was in fashion nearly 20 later than it was built. Maybe I was just impressed by the vertical lines on the façades.
Hackescher Markt has a longer history with the first document about 1672. It was a new center for barn areas in old Berlin. Later on, it developed to a commercial center with many Jew residents. After the World War II, it lost its prosperity in East Berlin, though it has been a German cultural heritage piece since 1972. The renovation work started in 1993 after the reunion of Germany. Since then it is a favorite place in Berlin with restaurants, cafés, galleries, workshops, and still flats. The immobile price in that area also becomes one of the most expensive areas, Just like Xintiandi.
There are still some differences between Xintiandi and Hackesche Höfe. Hackesche Höfe has just succeeded its original use function after the WWII and DDR break, while Xintiandi was redesigned to create such an entertaining environment with the old Shikumen (石库门 or “stone gates”) which was original designed only for living. It was stated in Wikipedia that Hackescher Markt was once Marx-Engels-Forum. But I don’t think. It is true that Xintiandi has an important historic memorial building in the neighborhood. Both have many new elements after the renovation. I assume some glass façades in Hackescher Markt might not be from 1906, but be built lately.

Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

2009-07-21T01:07:00.010+02:00

I am very glad that several of my best friends are coming to visit me this year. The first group – Ah-V and her family, my best friend I made since I was born, are coming by the end of August. I am motivated to update my blog by writing some city sightseeing. So I start with Berlin, one of my favorite cities in Europe, which Ah-V will visit. This afternoon I video phoned my best college friend Sheep, who has just arrived in Philadelphia as a visiting researcher at the Pennsylvania University. She is going to Washington, D.C. to visit our common best friend in the coming days. One stop must be I. M. Pei’s East Building of National Gallery of Art. I am jealous of her and would like to recap my visits to German History Museum in Berlin.

Deutsches Historisches Museum is located at a corner and a little hidden from the Boulevard Unter den Linden, as an extension of the existing museum building in new classical style after German Reunion. It should be the first architecture of 贝聿铭 in Germany. I discovered it by chance as I visited Berlin for the first time, because it could be recognized at first glance. The museum was already closed at that time and I went there additionally on the other morning and took a lot of non-digital pictures then. The common elements that Mr. Pei uses in most of his architecture are exposed in a more elegant way. It is a small museum in comparison to Mr. Pei’s other museum designs and is just located on a small street. So it is difficult to take a photo of the whole view from the narrow street. However, it does highlight its uniqueness and elegance. Mr. Pei applies a glass spiral cone at the building entrance which gives the simple geometry building some smartish flavor. Inside it is just a small rest area for visitors who can also experience the orchestrating of light and shadows in sunshine. The indoor space is free flowing with escalators, staircases and flyovers. The front huge curve glass walls make a composition of light and shadows on the concrete slabs and walls. Concrete slabs are indispensible in order to project the light and shadows from the transparent glasses. So it is somehow boring to construct buildings with only glasses or with only concrete slabs. Light and shadows make the architectural experiences changing at different daytime.

Triangle motif is one of favorite elements of I. M. Pei, which is repeated in this museum to enhance the flowing ambience. Besides, a large circle opening is used together with the flyovers, which is quite traditional Chinese. It symbolizes completeness and perfectness. Thus, the circle opening as well as the smooth glass and wall curves are re-lived by the triangles everywhere on the one hand. On the other hand, they smooth the potential visual conflicts caused by the triangles. Mr. Pei is good at using contrast. However, visitors can feel a kind of modesty and amiability and close interaction between human and architecture. The architectural details are elaborated as well. For example, the handrails are engraved in the concrete walls, so that no other material is needed. The pureness, the simplicity, and the delight make German History Museum a masterpiece of modern architecture indeed. If Berlin is visited, a visit to the museum is worthwhile.

ICWL 2009 - Call for Participation

2009-07-15T12:25:00.005+02:00

The 8th ICWL 2009 will be hosted by Information System and Database Technologies, RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Authors that submitted to the ICWL 2009 conference came from more than 30 countries. The program will include 2 outstanding keynote talks, plenary sessions with invited papers, technical sessions, and 4 co-located workshops. Participants will explore Aachen with its rich culture, long history, and sightseeing via the social programs. ICWL 2009 is jointly organized by Hong Kong Web Society, RWTH Aachen University, and Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science.

Keynote talks:

* "Learning in Times of Abundance: The Snowflake Effect" by Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
* "Exploiting User Generated Content to Improve Search" by Wolfgang Nejdl, University of Hannover, Germany

Invited papers:

* "Debating the wisdom of personalisation" by Helen Ashman, UniSA, Australia
* "On Social e-Learning" by Won Kim, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
* "Web-based Learning - Yes we can!" by Ulrik Schroeder, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Social Events:

* Welcome reception with live Jazz music, August 19, 2009
* Grand Banquette in the old spa house of Aachen, August 20, 2009
* Guided tour to historical Aachen, August 21, 2009

Workshops:

* STEG'09: Second Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games
* ViWo'09: Workshop on Virtual Worlds for academic, organizational, and life-long learning
* SIRTEL'09: Social Informational Retrieval for Technology Enhanced Learning
* JEM'09: Joining Educational Mathematics - Final Workshop

Ghazni will be the Islamic Cultural City 2013

2009-06-25T15:17:00.006+02:00

We have been working together with Department of Urban History at RWTH Aachen University for cultural heritage management in Afganistan and Pakistan within the German Excellence Research Cluster UMIC. The chair holder Professor Michael Jansen, also the head of Aachen Center for Documentation and Conservation (ACDC), works together with UNESCO and ICOMOS as an expert for cultural heritage conservation in the Middle East. On Tuesday I learned from Prof. Michael Jansen, that Ghazni in Afghanistan would be the Islamic cultural city of 2013. I looked for the information at our Virtual Campfire - ACIS and got some information about Ghazni.

This is what I get from ACIS:

Further Information for the site : GHAZNI
Latitude : 33°34'N Longitude : 68°27'E Province : GHAZNIDistrict : GhazniDescription (by Reference): A large urban site consisting of a vast area of mounds and ruins littered with sherds and building debris. The most conspicious remains are two elaborately decorated brick minarets or towers, both of which have only the first storey still standing, capped with modern tin roofs. Other remains are: the tomb of Sebuktegin on the hillside to the north of the minarets; the mausoleum of Shah Shahid or Muhammad Sharif Khan, a plain brick octagonal tomb, on a spur near the western minaret; the tomb of Mahmud, a modern building housing an extremely beautiful carved marble grave cover, in the village of Rauza; and the mausoleum of Abdur Razzaq, a plain brick building now used as the Museum of Islamic Art, also in Rauza. In addition, there are many elaborately carved grave stones on and near the site. Excavations have revealed two more buildings: a private house and a palace. The palace is a complex of buildings surrounding a central, marble paved courtyard. The most significant find was a long, decorated marble frieze with an inscription in Persian, 250 m long. Other finds include objects of glass, ceramic and bronze, decorative stuccos, paintings, marbles and tilework. [1] Location Description (by Reference): Ghazni Province. 136 km south of Kābul. The remains of the old city stretch eastwards between the new city and the village of Rauza [1] Period (by Reference): Ghaznavid & Ghurid, 11th-13th C. (Ceramic, documentary, stylistic, etc.); Timurid, 15th-16th C. (Stylistic). [1]

Database and Information Technologies in the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul

2009-04-06T11:38:00.002+02:00

Mr. Mohammad Zia Afshar, Deputy Minister of Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan, visited Information Systems and Database Technologies (Informatik 5) at RWTH Aachen University on April 3, 2009. He came to have a training program on database technologies at Informatik 5 in early 2006. He gave interviews and the videos were applied in Virtual Campfire. It is inspiring to hear about the progress happening everyday in the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, after good three years. The museum building was once a palace and was devastatingly damaged in the Taliban Regime. Now the National Museum of Afghanistan has been opened to the public after the relief work. Although the electricity power supply is sometimes instable and the infrastructure is still limited, there are computer terminals accessed by administrators (curators) and museum visitors. They can use computers to enquire and manage museum artifacts. Over 30 ministries for diverse administration tasks have been established in the whole country. Ministry of Information and Culture have launched its Web site. We are proud to be part of the community by hosting Bamiyan Development Community at our group.

Bamiyan Development Community

2009-02-16T22:42:00.008+01:00

Recently Niels and Martin Bachwerk have made much progress to our Bamiyan Development Community on Plone 3.
The highlights include the following new features.

User community
It is much more user-friendly to add and manage your own content to the community website and to browse recent activities (e.g. recent news and content) within the community, because
- The personal member folder has been redesigned to facilitate news, events, etc. management in a more comfortable way;
- The personal profile has been redesigned to let you share more information about your person with other members;
- The contribution policy has been changed so that now everyone can add news, events, photos and so on without having them reviewed or approved by an admin;
- An instant messaging function has been added to let you send messages to other members.

ACIS and the film of Virtual Cave
- A guest login is added to simplify the user management process. Everybody can explore the cultural heritage site at ACIS, while no editing is allowed.
- Dipl. -Ing. Georgios Toubekis starred the Virtual Cave film full of James Bond's flavor.

Nonetheless, filling a community survey is quite welcome to help us improve the community site. You need to login into Bamiyan Development Commiunity and it takes only 5 minutes.

A Real Prototype ...

2009-02-14T23:22:00.012+01:00

Would you like to learn Chinese Classical Poetry? Would you like learning Chinese by entertaining? Anyway, there are at least six reasons to read poetry stated at Dumb Little Man. It's my pleasure to present the diploma candidate GAO Yan's Web based Chinese Classical Poetry Learning Platform CCPLE (a tentative name).

You could log in with the user name "guest" and the password "guest". You could upload a Chinese Classical poem. We would be grateful for any enrichment action on the poem database. You could also play a game to learn the peom by heart. This evening, I just got to know from GAO Yan that it is also accessible on iPhones.

However, as it is stressed in this blog entry title, it is just a prototype of a six-month's diploma thesis in the computer science faculty at RWTH Aachen University. During the six months, the diploma candidate is also required to finish writing one's thesis. You could not expect a fancy bug-free Web 2.0 platform. For example, two "tricks" of using this Web site are:
1) Double click the menu bar "My Poetry", so that you will see the menu bar "All Poety" at the end of the left pannel. Otherwise, you can not see all poems in the database and select one from it to play with.
2) In the desktop Safari browser, you need to click to tab and shift at the same time to make the menu bar of the games be displayed correctly.

These bugs will be fixed as soon as possible. I just cannot help advertising this platform a little later. GAO Yan will give his final diploma presentation on Feb. 17, 2009. Dr. Ralf Klamma and I keep our fingers crossed for a successful presentation. We will submit a paper on the results to ICWL'09.

Computer Researcher Community in Sight

2009-02-11T21:35:00.006+01:00

I am just inspired by the idea posted in beamtenherrschaft: DBLP Co-Authorship Graphs of all RWTH Aachen University Computer Science Professors. I have also used the interactive tool AERCS and generated a graph to explore myself in DBLP (in one of the four sub graphs).

We are also thinking about a fancy name for the tool instead of AERCS. My spontaneous idea is CommunitySight or EventSight. :D

Call for Workshop Proposals - ICWL 2009

2009-01-19T23:26:00.002+01:00

The International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL) 2009 invites you to submit workshop proposals in the related research area. The one-day workshop will provide participants an active platform to present and discuss novel research ideas or their ongoing research results in web-based learning. More information could be found here.

Important Dates:
Workshop Proposals Submission Deadline: March 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance: March 20, 2009
Distribution of accepted workshop CfPs: March 25, 2009
ICWL 2009 conference: August 19-21, 2009, RWTH Aachen Univsersity, Aachen, Germany

Workshop Co-Chairs:
Baltasar Fernández-Manjón Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Frederick Li Durham University, United Kingdom

CfP: SENSE'09

2008-12-05T00:56:00.004+01:00

There is around one week left before the submission deadline of SENSE09 on December 13, 2009. SENSE'09 is a workshop on Software ENgineering within Social software Environments in conjunction with the Conference on Software Engineering (SE2009), March 2-6, 2009, in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The workshop logo designed by Niels is elegant.

Gandhara – Das buddhistische Erbe Pakistans

2008-11-25T00:17:00.013+01:00

The exhibition Gandhara - the buddhist heritage of Pakistan (legends, monastaries and paradises) has been opened in the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn since last Thursday evening. Anna and I with our FIT colleagues enjoyed having attended the opening event and visiting the exponents on Gandhara cultural heritage from worldwide on November 20. Our group worked together with RWTH Aachen Center for Documentation and Conservation (ACDC) led by Prof. Dr. Michael Jansen as well as Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technologies FIT led by Prof. Dr. Matthias Jarke, both of which support this exhibition together with Gerda Henkel Stiftung and Cultural Ministry of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Gandhara was an important area connecting the west and the east in ancient times. It had a much lager geographic coverage beyond its current borders in Pakistan. Its buddhist culture had been influnced or started in the age of Alexander the Great and boomed from 1st to 5th centruries A.D. The Bamiyan Great Buddhas which were devastatingly exploded by the Taliban Regime are representive artefacts of the Gandhara heritage. A 3D reconstruction film of the Great Buddha in Bamiyan is played in the exhibition hall, technically supported by the Augmented Reality Group at FIT and by the CAVE project at RWTH Aachen University. In addition, we have hosted a community portal for Bamiyan Development since years.

Around 300 fine artefacts are on exhibition from November 21, 2008 to March 15, 2009, before they move on to Berlin and Zurich after then in 2009.

ICWL'09 is coming to Aachen

2008-11-16T23:58:00.004+01:00

The 8th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL'09) will be held in Aachen, August 19-21, 2009. It brings researchers together with interesting topics in reasearch areas of Web-based Learning, mobile learning as well as Technology Enhanced Learning. The Call for Paper is online and can also be downloaded in PDF. The important dates are:
Full Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2009
Workshop Proposals Submission Deadline: March 1, 2009
Poster Paper Submission Deadline: May 1, 2009

Call for Work in Progress Reports

2008-10-26T12:15:00.003+01:00

The PerCom work-in-progress session will be held at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2009) in Galveston, Texas, March 9-13, 2009. It aims to present and discuss emerging results, and novel research questions, approaches, and directions in the research area of pervasive computing with the paradigm that information systems at anytime anywhere.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
* Pervasive Computing and communication architectures
* Intelligent environments
* Service composition and application adaptation
* Smart devices and smart spaces
* Middleware services
* Mobile/Wireless computing systems and services
* Context aware computing
* Autonomic computing and communications
* Programming paradigms for pervasive systems
* User interfaces and interaction models
* End user programming and end user tools
* Mobile/Wireless service management and delivery
* Resource management in pervasive computing
* Trust, security and privacy issues
* Sensor networks and applications
* Pervasive service oriented architectures

Submission Deadline: November 2, 2008

Call for Participation: Developer's Day 2008

2008-10-01T22:01:00.006+02:00

The Students in our group is organizing an exciting event on Oct. 13, 2008: Developer's Day 2008. This is an annual event at Informatik 5, RWTH Aachen University since 4 years. Students are encouraged to present technologies and tools on software development. It is an event organized by students for students who want to gain knowledge beyond their regular study program. Students are invited to give talks on self-chosen topics with a length of 30-45 minutes including time for discussion. At the same time, students gain insight into academic events.
The registration is still open at http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/developersday/, on the behalf of:
General Chair: Dominik Renzel, Christian Hocken
Publicity Chair: Martin Frericks, Niels Drobek

STEG'08 Updates

2008-09-27T21:47:00.005+02:00

As I posted a CfP for the First International Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'08) several weeks ago, the workshop was held successfully in Maastricht last Tuesday. Some updates detail can be found at the Web site. A practical example of Storytelling and Technolog-Enhanced Learning is that we used Skype to present Nalin Sharda's presentation live from Melbourne, with 8-hours' time difference. In the wrap-up, Ralf drawed this graph based on a hot discussion of all participants.

My talk could be found here.

Ludwig-Erhard-Haus, Berlin

2008-07-26T23:36:00.004+02:00

Berlin is getting to be one of the most modern cities in Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin became the competition arena of renowned architects worldwide. I have not had any architecture excursions in Berlin. I took some pictures during my private and business trips and it could be nice to have some reviews in my blog.
In the most recent trip, I attended the LMC conference which was held in the Ludwig-Erhard-Haus (LEH) at Fasanenstrasse, near to the subway station of Zoologische Garten, the former central railway station of West Berlin. Ludwig-Erhard-Haus designed by the British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw was built from 1994-1998. It is opened to host conferences and other events related to economy. The economic issue is stressed, because Ludwig Erhard in his ministry as a federal chancellor first combined social economy and free market economy, which led to great economic progress in post war in Germany. It is also located beside the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw used to apply ellipse forms and curves for his architecture. LEH is featured with 15 steel beams in ellipse forms and large glass windows. There are two inside courtyards which collect sunlight for the building. Beside the courtyards six elevators are used as the main vertical transport means, because the steps are somewhat hidden, narrow, and inappropriate to the architectural scale. So you can always see awaiting people in front of the elevators. Fortunately, there are six fast elevators. There are also many irregular halls with columns in the middle of the space, so that only part of the room could be used for presentations. Electricity sockets are often missing for laptops in each room of such buildings nowadays.

An Announcement of the Final Presentation of Gaming Communities Lab

2008-07-15T18:21:00.004+02:00

The students attending our lab course Gaming Communities give their final presentations at 18:00 tomorrow in AH II at RWTH Aachen University.
At the beginning of the Summer Term 2008, students were required to propose their own projects. The three following projects were selected from all, which builds up three groups consisting of 4-5 students.
1) Civilization IV historical scenario
2) Gaming Communities on iPhone, und
3) Empirical research on gaming vs. carreer/relationships/groups
During the semester, the students made ideas concreate and realized their proposed platform by programming. Evaluation process was also carried out. Students learned the whole life cycle of software development. The lab course requires 200 hours of work load. One group has also submitted a paper to STEG 08.

CfP: CSTST'08

2008-07-03T10:26:00.003+02:00

The fifth international conference on soft computing as transdisciplinary science and technology (CSTST '08) will be held in Ergy Pontoise/Paris, 27-31 October, 2008. The paper submission deadline is 6 July, 2008. Soft computing is a new research area related to soft science. Fuzzy logic and probabilistic are part of key issues in soft computing. Soft Computing is defined in Wikipedia as:
Soft computing refers to a collection of computational techniques in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and some engineering disciplines, which attempt to study, model, and analyze very complex phenomena: those for which more conventional methods have not yielded low cost, analytic, and complete solutions. Earlier computational approaches could model and precisely analyze only relatively simple systems. More complex systems arising in biology, medicine, the humanities, management sciences, and similar fields often remained intractable to conventional mathematical and analytical methods.

Red Dot Design Museum, Essen

2008-06-28T23:53:00.007+02:00

As we had a pleasant institute excursion to Zeche Zollverein in Essen, one of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage, on May 30, I happened to discover the colocated Red Dot Design Museum. Various industrial products design, ranging from stationery, home appliance, to machinery is exhibited. The annualred dot design award is granted. The jury evaluates the competitors according to the following four principles: innovation degree, funktionality und environmental friendliness and compatibility.
In short, the red dot design principle is that design is fuction oriented, the same as the Bauhaus design theory Forms follow Function. So is the museum building: simple and unremarkable. It was built in 1930s as a boiler building for the new Shaft 12 to enhance cole mining in the Ruhr Area. The whole Shaft 12 buildings designed by Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer are of the Bauhaus style. After the last mining in 1986, the boiler building is no more needed, either. Sir Norman Foster renovate it into a museum, which maches the notorious red dot design. The most exhibits are displayed in the old industrial building, while visitors are led in the new flowing corridors started on the first floor. The corridors are actually just kind of fly-over in white slabs or in glass. Beside the corridors, there are also some exhibtion areas. Spirally, visitors can go to the forth floor which has also the smallest square. The spaces are smaller than a floor lower.
The internal spaces are communicative between the new and the old in a horizontal as well as a vertical way. Led by the fly-over, visitors have the best paths to visit all exhibits. There's no splendid spacious effects, while a dialogue between the old parts and the new one can be perceived quietly and sharply. Sir Norman Foster made it and told every visitors that museums can also be simple except for being exaggerated. It was a little warm inside, because of the closeness of the old building, maybe because of the boiler essential. With regard to the exhibits, many of them are listed in the catelogue and are available on the market.

CfP: STEG '08

2008-06-26T18:33:00.003+02:00

First International Workshop on Storytelling and Educational Games (STEG '08) will be held in conjuction with the 3rd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL '08) in September 17-19 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. EC-TEL brings international communities in the research area of Technology Enhanced Learning together. STEG'08 aims to bring researchers together to present the achieved or on-going research as well as to discuss the development trends in the areas of both multimedia storytelling and computer games with regard to Technology Enhanced Learning.
Some random thoughts or questions about the topics are:
On the one hand, stories are told in kindergarten, schools, colleges, companies, in the circle of families, friends, and neighborhoods, by reporters, by actors and actresses. In the Internet, the term story has even more meaning, can also be used as a verb. What kind of media do you define as a story? How does storytelling help learning?
On the other hand, does computer games support learning? Is a classroom in Second Life more attractive and effective than the real world?
Innovative ideas, novel applications and interesting discussions in the TEL domain will be expected. If anyone that is interested in submitting a paper, the deadline of June 30.

Euro 08 for Virtual Campfire Scenario

2008-06-25T23:50:00.007+02:00

This afternoon the RWTH Aachen camera team was at our group. We "starred" together in a short introductory film for the excellence research cluster UMIC to demonstrate our Virtual Campfire scenario. This evening, German national football team beated the Turkey and is going to the finale match on Sunday.

So what might the Virtual Campfire storyboard for a multimedia non-linear story of Euro 2008 look like? (photo resource: Spiegel Online)

Langen Foundation, Hombroich

2008-06-24T23:50:00.007+02:00

I have heard of the Langen Foundation Museum located near Duesseldorf since it was about to be opened in 2004. This spring I visited it with friends in a sunny Easter Sunday. It was a little cold, however, splendid since it was the only sunny day in a long period of early spring.
A long narrow field path leads to the museum as well as the rocket station (sign: Raketenstation), which can only be droven by visitors, with green grasses and spring ambience around. Suddenly, we saw a special stone statue, then the glass cube flying on water, and cherry blossom in lines. It is the unique museum by Tadao Ando. And as usual, it is built of glass, beton slabs and water (if available), which integrates light perfectly. The outcoming rhythm of light and shadow on betons as well as in water can even make air much fresher. Simple geometry forms were composed in an interesting way, to shape interial spaces. Contasts between the static (beton) and dynamic (water), solidness (beton) and transparency (glass), white (beton) and green (grass) make a strong visual effect.
The Langen Foundation Museum mainly consists of a beton slab in C-curve with several door holes to welcome visitors in a neutral way, a beton cube in a glass cube for the exibition, and some small beton blocks for administration. All these three parts are located on a large free-style water pool and grasses organically. Surely, white gravel or sand is indispensible for as the bases, which is always used in Zen Garden to symbolize water. The main large exhibition hall is underground.
The Japanese collection was not shown, while a small Indian acient collection, Karl Lagerfeld's photography were on exhibition. Karl Lagerfeld's photos mostly show some abstract concepts or pattern in black and white. Some photos are about Zaha Hadid's mobile architecture, also in black and white. The concept is also brand new.
We went to Ratingen without visiting the Museum Island (Museuminsel) in Hombroich.

Learning World - Der Learning Management Congress (19.-20. Juni, 2008 Berlin)

2008-06-23T23:45:00.003+02:00

Letzten Donnerstag und Freitag habe ich mich zum ersten Mal am 9te Learning World - Der Learning Management Congress in Berlin beteiligt. Diese E-learning Konferenz fand in Ludwig-Erhard-Haus statt, das sich neben IHK in der Nähe von zoologischen Garten befindet. Mit dem Motto Empower Learning Innovation. Integration. Inspiration. ist Web 2.0 ein großes Thema geworden. Alle Key Note Speaker reden über Web 2.0 inklusiv Wikis, RSS, und Tagging usw. Es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass Web 2.0 stark Forschungen in der Domäne E-learning beeinflußt hat und weiter beeinfließen wird. Der 2.0 Spirit zieht immer mehr wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. Es führt auch zu Diskussion, worauf man den Wert angesichts Forschungen legen soll. Sind es die benutzerfreundlichen Benutzeroberflächer mit runden Buttons, Einsatz von Wikis und Tagging überall, oder einfach Podcasting? Der Weg zum E-learning 2.0 bzw. Enterprise 2.0 scheint doch noch lang. Zwar fehle es auf dem deutschen Markt viele Informatiker, sowohl Hochschulabsolventen als auch Ausgebilderten, so Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer. Alle Vorträge und Preisverleihungen bis auf die 10-Minuten-Präsentationen wurden aufgezeichnet und wird bald auf der Webseite veröffentlicht, indem gutes E-Learning Material das Publikum zugängig gemacht wird. Ich habe unsere Virtual Campfire in der Session 10-Minuten-Präsentationen Forschungsprototypen demonstriert. Dabei habe ich auch viele spannende Vorträge gehört.

Call for Participation 网上游戏习惯调查

2008-06-22T21:00:00.000+02:00

我们这个学期开了一个实验课程游戏社区，学生要求在这个课程上提出自己的项目提议，如何支持电子游戏迷建立网上社区。3个最有效的提议被采纳，4到5个学生一组在一个学期内完成这个项目。我和安娜的小组由斯丹芬，托比，瓦迪，和达克组成，要完成一个实践性研究电子游戏和职业，和社会关系，以及和社会群体的互动关系。欢迎热爱电子游戏的朋友来参加一个匿名的网上调查，谢谢支持！希望有机会把调查结果告诉大家！

We offer a lab course Gaming Communities this semester. Students are required to propose their own projects on how to support gaming communities innovatively. 3 best proposals among all are selected and 4-5 students are in one group to finish one project within the semester. Stephan, Tobias, Vadi and Darko advised by Anna and me are doing an empirical research about impacts of games on career, on relationships and on groups. We'll appreciate it very much, if you could finish the anonymous online survey for our research. We'd like to present you the result later.

Thinking about search engines

2006-07-30T21:19:00.000+02:00

Berners-Lee argued that part of the Semantic Web is about identifying the originator of information, and identifying why the information can be trusted, not just the content of the information itself at a conference in Boston sponsered by AAAI last Tuesday. Semantic Web could be a solution to the problem of the Internet deception through identifying the web content creators. This association between Sementic Web and author identification is also mentioned in another paper that introduces the project Flink.
This argument leads to thinking about the ontology again. If you google any keyword, you would get the first several results by ontology. You google a person, you get his/her weblog, since it collects one's most complete information. If it doesn't exist, you get one's homepage hosted in one's working place. If it doesn't exist, ... Anyway, the web sources are more heterogenous than only to search a single databases like InforZoom by A9 people search. If you google a book, you get its Amazon link and its authors blog, such as Smart Mob and Freakonomics etc. If you search for a film, you get one entry from the imdb and so on and so forth. This ontology based search is not in line with Google's PageRank method, except that for example each book metioned in a web site is linked by Amazon and each paper by a DOI etc. Certainly, each keyword has various contexts, like the typical example of "Java" for computer scientists. In this case, the temporal context can confine the ontology. Before the java language was defined and the coffee was produced, it refers certainly to the island. So before the Da Vinci Code was pictualized, the search result was a book. Google might have used this search criteria, since Google Trends has been launched and could be used to get the ontology based on temporal facts.
Ontology based search engine might strengthen the web giants such as Amazon, WikiPedia in each field. Is it good to solve the problem of the Internet deception?

Bled, Ljubljana and Begunje in Slovenia

2006-06-15T00:37:00.000+02:00

Before I began to attend the Prolearn Summer School in Bled, I joined in the fieldtrip on Sunday, 4th of June. Slovenia is not that large. It took only 2 and a half hour from Bled, which is located in the North of the country to the coast in the South. A nag en route was impossible because we met the best tour guide we have ever met. The most group members gave Sascha this esteem. He did not stop one minute to introduce Slovenia to the guests.

Tranversing the gold coast as well as the show windows in Trieste, we reached our first stop Piran, a mediaterean town. The market places and the colorful walls remind me of the squares in Rome or Florence. One colleague from Ljubljana said that she ever drove 2 hours from the capital to Piran, just to sit in a cafeteria on the sea shore for several hours.

After lunch in Strunjan, we visited the largest cave of Europe, the Postojna Cave. Sascha doesn't recommend the cave very much because it is somewhat commercialzed. He was proud of the caves he and his friends ever discovered by themselves. I could not notice the commercial issues since I have not visited any large cave since 28 years ago.

Then we visited the most important sightseeings in Ljubljana in the bus. The statue of Julia and France Preseren, the Slovenian national poet is one of the most impressive sightseeings, because Sascha had told so many of his stories and tragedy and recited his poems. The stories had almost moved every girl in the group. On the way back to Bled, Sascha did not have a lot to say, so the topic switched to the fabulous stories and conventions of his hometown, the most beautiful town with the most beautiful folks music in his opinion. In the end, we figued it out. It is Begunje.