Jacek Brzezinski

Moderating Effects of Task Type on Wireless Technology Acceptance

The technology acceptance model (TAM) is one of the most widely used models of information technology (IT) adoption. According to TAM, IT adoption is influenced by two perceptions: usefulness and ease of use. In this study, we extend TAM to the mobile commerce context. We categorize the tasks performed on wireless handheld devices into three categories: (1) general tasks that do not involve transactions and gaming, (2) gaming tasks, and (3) transactional tasks. We propose a unified conceptual model for wireless technology adoption. In this model, task type moderates the effects of four possible determinants: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived playfulness, and perceived security. We postulate that, under the mobile context, user intention to perform general tasks that do not involve transactions and gaming is influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, user intention to play games is affected by perceived playfulness, and user intention to transact is influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived security. A survey was conducted to collect data about user perception of 12 tasks that could be performed on wireless handheld devices and user intention to use wireless technology. Multiple regression analyses supported the proposed research model.

Autonomous Agents as Synthetic Characters

Humans are social creatures. Much of our intelligence derives from our ability to manipulate our environment through collaborative endeavors. Most extant computer programs and interfaces do little to take advantage of such manifestly human talents and interests, leaving broad avenues of human-computer communication unexplored. Although it is still considered controversial, there are many who believe the harnessing of social communication to be rich in possibilities for modern software. In this article, we look at a number of autonomous agent systems that embody their intelligence at least partially through the projection of a believable, engaging, synthetic persona. Among other topics, we touch briefly on samples of research that explore synthetic personality, representations of emotion, societies of fanciful and playful characters, intelligent and engaging automated tutors, and users projected as avatars into virtual worlds.

Story-morphing in the affective reasoning paradigm: generating stories semi-automatically for use with “emotionally intelligent” multimedia agents

A hollow fiber membrane-type fluid separation apparatus useful for selective separation of fluids in various techniques such as gas permeation, liquid permeation, dialysis, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, etc., which comprises at least one pair of unit structures which are arranged uniaxially in series within a cylindrical pressure vessel, said pair of unit structures comprising a pair of cylindrical hollow fiber assemblies having a selective permeability, a means for collecting permeated fluid, which is held between side tube sheets provided each at a terminal of the pair of cylindrical hollow fiber assemblies and is capable of collecting the fluid which passes through the side tube sheet, a permeation fluid pipe for taking out the permeated fluid, which penetrates perpendicularly the means for collecting a permeated fluid at the center, and a fitting means provided with a passageway for passing a concentrated fluid being not permeated, said passageway being arranged at around central region of the means for collecting a permeated fluid so as to surround the permeation fluid pipe.

A Study of the Feasibility and Effectiveness of Dual-Modal Information Presentations

Multimodal interfaces with both visual and auditory output are becoming important, especially for applications using small-screen displays and for user access under mobile conditions. The research presented here investigated the feasibility of simultaneously presenting distinct textual information through both visual and auditory channels by examining two multimodal interfaces with irrelevant or relevant auditory information. These interfaces were intended to study two problems: (a) Can users attend to and process additional information delivered through the auditory channel during a typical Web-browsing process, and (b) what are the effects of information overlap between the visual and auditory channels? Controlled experiments were conducted to evaluate these two questions. The findings suggest that users can attend to auditory information while visually browsing textual information and that information overlap may reduce distraction. These findings have implications for the design of multimodal interfaces for small-screen mobile applications.

Book Review: The Handbook of Data Mining by N. Ye

The Handbook of Data Mining is an impressive collection from 28 contributors. The book is an excellent source for those who are looking for data mining publications but don’t want to be limited to a typical length of a conference paper. Authors were given plenty of space to describe the ideas extensively with substantial examples and case studies. The audience that would benefit the most from reading this book will have an advanced background in data mining or statistics. This book would make an excellent text book for an advanced “Topics in Data Mining” course where selected algorithms and methods could be researched based on the included papers and extensive list of references. The book would also be helpful for users of data mining solutions who need to gain a more in-depth knowledge into how selected algorithms work and how to apply these algorithms to solve their problems. Also, developers of data mining solutions will find many useful chapters with essential formulas and pseudo code. However, the algorithms featured in this book may not be discussed at a level that would solve all implementation problems and supplemental materials would be necessary. Papers published in this book are organized into three major sections on methodologies, management of data mining, and applications of data mining. The Methodologies section is geared toward theoretical aspects of algorithms and constitutes the largest section of this book. The section devotes a significant amount of space to several major data mining algorithms for learning classification models, unsupervised learning, data mining for anomaly detection, mining sequential patterns, as well time series. There are several chapters that focus on methodology aspects of data mining tasks. Readers should be aware that papers preINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 18(2), 233–234 Copyright