Expert survey on priorities for the information society in the Caribbean

An on-line survey of experts was conducted to solicit their views on policy priorities in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Caribbean. The experts considered the goal to “promote teacher training in the use of ICTs in the classroom” to be the highest priority, followed by goals to “reduce the cost of broadband services” and “promote the use of ICT in emergency and disaster prevention, preparedness and response.” Goals in the areas of cybercrime, e-commerce, egovernment, universal service funds, consumer protection, and on-line privacy rounded out the top 10. Some of the lowest ranked goals were those related to coordinating the management of infrastructure changes. These included the switchover for digital terrestrial television (DTT) and digital FM radio, cloud computing for government ICT, the introduction of satellite-based internet services, and the installation of content distribution networks (CDNs). Initiatives aimed at using ICT to promote specific industries, or specific means of promoting the digital economy, tended toward the centre of the rankings. Thus, a general pattern emerged which elevated the importance of focusing on how ICT is integrated into the broader society, with economic issues a lower priority, and concerns about coordination on infrastructure issues lower still.

Digital surface model, hillshade and orthophoto of the world's largest fossil oyster reef, links to GeoTIFFs

The world's largest fossil oyster reef, formed by the giant oyster Crassostrea gryphoides and located in Stetten (north of Vienna, Austria) is studied by Harzhauser et al., 2015, 2016; Djuricic et al., 2016. Digital documentation of the unique geological site is provided by terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) at the millimeter scale. Obtaining meaningful results is not merely a matter of data acquisition with a suitable device; it requires proper planning, data management, and postprocessing. Terrestrial laser scanning technology has a high potential for providing precise 3D mapping that serves as the basis for automatic object detection in different scenarios; however, it faces challenges in the presence of large amounts of data and the irregular geometry of an oyster reef. We provide a detailed description of the techniques and strategy used for data collection and processing in Djuricic et al., 2016. The use of laser scanning provided the ability to measure surface points of 46,840 (estimated) shells. They are up to 60-cm-long oyster specimens, and their surfaces are modeled with a high accuracy of 1 mm. In addition to laser scanning measurements, more than 300 photographs were captured, and an orthophoto mosaic was generated with a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 0.5 mm. This high-resolution 3D information and the photographic texture serve as the basis for ongoing and future geological and paleontological analyses. Moreover, they provide unprecedented documentation for conservation issues at a unique natural heritage site.

Roles and Responsibility of Digital Engagement Managers in Art Museums

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Digital Activism: How Social Media Prevalence has Impacted Modern Activism

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Online Video as a Tool for Planning Education and Engagement: A Content Analysis of U.S. City Planning Departments’ YouTube Channels

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Think global, act global: Corporate content streaming and Australian media policy

Australia ’s media policy agenda has recently been dominated by debate over two key issues: media ownership reform, and the local content provisions of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement. Challenging the tendency to analyse these issues separately, the article considers them as interlinked indicators of fundamental shifts occurring in the digital media environment. Converged media corporations increasingly seek to achieve economies of scale through ‘content streaming’: multi-purposing proprietary content across numerous digitally enabled platforms. This has resulted in rivalries for control of delivery technologies (as witnessed in media ownership debates) as well as over market access for corporate content (in the case of local content debates). The article contextualises Australia’s contemporary media policy flashpoints within international developments and longer-term industry strategising. It further questions the power of media policy as it is currently conceived to deal adequately with the challenges raised by a converging digital media marketplace.

Creating an authentic aural experience in the digital songlines game engine: Part of a contextualised cultural heritage knowledge toolkit

Digital Songlines is an Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the areas of effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery capabilities that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities in remote areas of the Australian ‘outback’. It investigates how players in a serious gaming sense can experience Indigenous virtual heritage in a high fidelity fashion with culturally appropriate interface tools. This paper describes a 3D ambient audio quilt designed and implemented specifically for the Digital Songlines software, which is built using the Torque Game Engine. The audio quilt developed provides dynamic ambient fauna and flora sound effects to represent the varying audio environment of the landscape. This provides an authentic contextualised interesting aural experience that can be different each time a location is entered. This paper reports on completed and ongoing research in this area.

A IMAGEM E A COMPOSIÇÃO VISUAL NA TV DIGITAL

O trabalho aborda questões sobre a produção e composição da imagem em alta definição na TV Digital HDTV. Por meio dos dados levantados na literatura específica, impressa e eletrônica, e com entrevistas com profissionais da área e observações da programação disponível em HDTV na cidade de São Paulo puderam ser analisadas as imagens e composição visual que advém com a TV Digital de alta definição e interativa. Para tanto, a produção da imagem em alta definição precisa atender a dois tipos de público: o que assiste a transmissão digital e o que ainda continuará assistindo no sistema analógico com baixa percepção para os detalhes visuais. Os resultados demonstraram duas questões fundamentais e interdependentes: as práticas de produção, materiais cenográficos e processos de composição dos elementos da imagem precisam ser atualizados segundo as novas características tecnológicas e que o processo de implantação da TV Digital no Brasil deve ser revisto, com correções de prazos e das políticas adotadas sob o risco de se atrasar todo o processo de produção de conteúdo e da imagem em alta definição para este suporte.

ESTRATÉGIAS DE COMUNICAÇÃO ORGANIZACIONAL DIGITAL: O ESTUDO DE CASO DA EMBRAPA

Com o surgimento da internet e sua posterior utilização como meio de comunicação, torna-se necessário conhecer, por meio de análise de bibliografia sobre comunicação e internet, além de observação empírica do ambiente digital, que possibilidades de melhoria nos processos de comunicação organizacional se abrem a partir da incorporação do uso da internet (mídias e redes sociais) às estratégias de comunicação das instituições. O estudo tem por finalidade analisar o processo de inserção da Embrapa no ambiente das mídias e redes sociais, quais as estratégias que adotou para se preparar para ingressar de maneira institucional nesse ecossistema e como ela utiliza-se das estratégias de comunicação organizacional digital para divulgar suas ações e fortalecer o relacionamento com seus públicos de interesse. Além disso, serão apresentados modelos de estratégias e abordada a importância do planejamento (com estabelecimento de objetivos, definição de públicos) e do monitoramento quando se pretende atuar no ambiente digital de maneira estratégica. O método consiste em um estudo de caso no qual será analisada a atuação da Embrapa na rede social Facebook, por meio de uma revisão de literatura, pesquisa documental, análise de conteúdo e entrevistas semiestruturadas.

ESTUDO DA EFICÁCIA DE ESTRATÉGIAS DE MARKETING EM PEQUENAS EMPRESAS DE INFORMÁTICA: CASE DIGITAL DATA INFORMÁTICA LTDA

Em virtude da necessidade de inovação das empresas, gerada pelas transformações tecnológicas e pela velocidade da globalização, uma tendência mundial começa a surgir: o enfraquecimento de mão de obra no setor industrial e um considerável aumento no setor de serviços. Essa realidade pressupõe a criação de várias empresas, na sua maioria, de pequeno porte, o que dá especial importância a esse estudo, pois aliado à criação de novas empresas, o seu índice de mortalidade extremamente alto indica um problema a ser investigado. Portanto, a presente pesquisa procura sugerir estratégias de marketing eficientes como fatores amenizadores desse problema, e um caminho possível para a manutenção e o desenvolvimento das pequenas empresas. Criou-se, então, um modelo para a aplicação de estratégias de marketing, específico para empresas de pequeno porte. O modelo desenvolvido neste trabalho parte de uma revisão crítica da bibliografia referente às peculiaridades das pequenas empresas, como também das práticas de marketing, e busca correlacioná -las, através de uma pesquisa descritiva no formato de estudo de caso e determinando quais as condições para o uso do marketing nas pequenas empresas, quais as estratégias compatíveis e quais as mudanças necessárias à sua prática.

TV Digital aberta no Brasil

O presente trabalho analisa os importantes desafios que as novas tecnologias e as transformações na sociedade pós-industrial estão impondo à TV digital brasileira e ao seu modelo de negócios. Tem como principal objetivo realizar uma reflexão sobre a viabilidade financeira das emissoras abertas com a chegada da TV digital. Para tanto, analisa o modelo de negócios anterior, da TV analógica, baseado nos comerciais de trinta segundos e como esta forma poderá ser afetada inviabilizando a estrutura de produção e distribuição de conteúdo pelas emissoras abertas digitais. Ainda, busca evidenciar demais fatores que contribuem para a migração da audiência para outras plataformas de distribuição de conteúdo, refutando o senso comum de que o acesso à internet banda larga é a principal causa da queda dos índices de audiência. Este estudo se utiliza de uma ampla bibliografia que extrapola o campo específico da Comunicação e amplia o olhar sobre a indústria televisiva aberta no Brasil, enumerando fragilidades do setor e apontando possíveis estratégias para que a televisão brasileira possa se adaptar à nova estrutura da comunicação que está se formando em nosso país.

Transmission of image data over digital networks involving mobile terminals

There is a growing demand for data transmission over digital networks involving mobile terminals. An important class of data required for transmission over mobile terminals is image information such as street maps, floor plans and identikit images. This sort of transmission is of particular interest to the service industries such as the Police force, Fire brigade, medical services and other services. These services cannot be applied directly to mobile terminals because of the limited capacity of the mobile channels and the transmission errors caused by the multipath (Rayleigh) fading. In this research, transmission of line diagram images such as floor plans and street maps, over digital networks involving mobile terminals at transmission rates of 2400 bits/s and 4800 bits/s have been studied. A low bit-rate source encoding technique using geometric codes is found to be suitable to represent line diagram images. In geometric encoding, the amount of data required to represent or store the line diagram images is proportional to the image detail. Thus a simple line diagram image would require a small amount of data. To study the effect of transmission errors due to mobile channels on the transmitted images, error sources (error files), which represent mobile channels under different conditions, have been produced using channel modelling techniques. Satisfactory models of the mobile channel have been obtained when compared to the field test measurements. Subjective performance tests have been carried out to evaluate the quality and usefulness of the received line diagram images under various mobile channel conditions. The effect of mobile transmission errors on the quality of the received images has been determined. To improve the quality of the received images under various mobile channel conditions, forward error correcting codes (FEC) with interleaving and automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes have been proposed. The performance of the error control codes have been evaluated under various mobile channel conditions. It has been shown that a FEC code with interleaving can be used effectively to improve the quality of the received images under normal and severe mobile channel conditions. Under normal channel conditions, similar results have been obtained when using ARQ schemes. However, under severe mobile channel conditions, the FEC code with interleaving shows better performance.

Towards Content-Sensitive Access to the Artefacts of the Bulgarian Iconography

his paper presents an ontological model of the knowledge about Bulgarian iconographical artefacts. It also describes content-sensitive services for access, browse, search and group iconographical objects, based on the presented ontology that will be implemented in the multimedia digital library “Virtual encyclopedia of Bulgarian iconography”.

Hardware-based and Software-based Security in Digital Rights Management Solutions

The main requirements to DRM platforms implementing effective user experience and strong security measures to prevent unauthorized use of content are discussed. Comparison of hardware-based and software- based platforms is made showing the general inherent advantages of hardware DRM solutions. Analysis and evaluation of the main flaws of hardware platforms are conducted, pointing out the possibilities to overcome them. The overview of the existing concepts for practical realization of hardware DRM protection reveals their advantages and disadvantages and the increasing demand for creation of multi-core architecture, which could assure an effective DRM protection without decreasing the user’s freedom and importing risks for end system security.

A Semantic-Oriented Architecture of a Functional Module for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in a Multimedia Digital Library

This article presents the principal results of the doctoral thesis “Semantic-oriented Architecture and Models for Personalized and Adaptive Access to the Knowledge in Multimedia Digital Library” by Desislava Ivanova Paneva-Marinova (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics), successfully defended before the Specialised Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modelling on 27 October, 2008.