Jan Newmarch

A location-aware, service-based audio system

With the development of computer-based location tracking systems and sensor systems a large amount of contextual information is available to the application developer. Information such as the location and motion paths of users and physical objects, and the ambient noise and temperature of the surrounding environment can be used to tailor a users experience with an application, to best suit their requirements. This paper introduces a location-aware audio streaming application that utilizes a networked multimedia architecture. This architecture facilitates the advertisement, discovery and connectivity of audio services. The streaming application uses both the users current location, and the location of surrounding active loudspeakers to determine the best output device to use.

Profile-based digital identity management — a better way to combat fraud

Identity and data matching are often utilised to combat identity crime and fraud. An accurate client profile that provides a unique identity and a true description of its associated business activities has become an increasing concern for service providers. There is a need for improved profile-based identity management. This paper identifies key risks, challenges, potential improvements which service providers in both the public and private sectors may find applicable. It proposes an enterprise architectural approach to profile-based identity management.

Grouping verifiable content for selective disclosure

This paper addresses the issue of selective disclosure of verifiable content. It extends previous work relating to Content Extraction Signatures [21] to implement a more complex structure that encodes a richer, more flexible fragment extraction policy, which includes fragment grouping. The new extraction policy enables the signer to specify both optional and mandatory fragment associations (or groupings) for verifying extracted content.

W3 trust-profiling framework (W3TF) to assess trust and transitivity of trust of web-based services in a heterogeneous web environment

The growth of eCommerce is being hampered by a lack of trust between providers and consumers of Web-based services. While researchers in many disciplines have addressed Web trust issues, a comprehensive approach has yet to be established. This paper proposes a conceptual trust-profiling framework through a range of new user-centred trust measures. W3TF is a generic form of trust assessment that can help build user confidence in an eCommerce environment. It incorporates existing measures of trust (such as Public Key Infrastructure), takes account of consumer perceptions by identifying trust attributes, and uses Web technology (in the form of metadata), to create a practical, flexible and comprehensive approach to trust assessment.

An architecture for component evolution

In an evolving object oriented system individual components may change. A system built out of such components needs to be able to use the most recent versions of these components no matter what their source. This paper presents an architecture in which an application will select the most appropriate component version from a variety of sources, including network discovery. The architecture is based on the dynamic class loading mechanisms of Java. It succeeds where current techniques fail due to lack of interoperability and inability to adapt to dynamic environments. The architecture allows an application to dynamically load components from a variety of sources including, local disk, remote service, and personalised techniques. It chooses the most appropriate component by using version control information. Security policies may be used to restrict the actions of components and the policies can be refined as new components are loaded. This ensures that an application can run with zero configuration but be continually updated in a safe manner. We have built a prototype system and show by example how this can he used by a home gateway to allow software upgrades with zero home configuration.

JINI/J2EE bridge for large-scale IP phone services

Current IP phone architectures which bring phone services to a distributed open environment are relatively static and do not scale well. An IP phone environment should be more dynamic. Using Jini to be middleware for IP phone services will make the IP phone environment more portable, easier to deploy and straightforward to extend. However, many global applications with complex business logic and potentially thousands of concurrent users are developed on J2EE compliant platforms. On the one hand, J2EE is a framework to support large-scale systems while Jini is for small to medium-scale applications. On the other hand, J2EE provides a centralized service whereas Jini offers loosely-coupled federations with dynamic administration. We propose an architecture called JINI/J2EE bridge for marrying these two technologies, and allowing J2EE applications to be accessed by Jini.

Using Ajax to Track Student Attention

Tracking the behaviour of users of online learning systems is an important issue, but current techniques have not been able to give deep views on what users do with Web-based learning systems. This paper shows how the use of Ajax can provide a richer model of how users interact with Web systems. In this paper, the authors will discuss a case study used to better track behaviours of online learning systems and how Ajax improves this understanding of user interactions.

Bridging between Middleware Systems: Optimisations Using Downloadable Code

There are multiple middleware systems and no single system is likely to become predominant. There is therefore an interoperability requirement between clients and services belonging to different middleware systems. Typically this is done by a bridge between invocation and discovery protocols. In this paper we introduce three design patterns based on a bridging service cache manager and dynamic proxies. This is illustrated by examples including a new custom lookup service which allows Jini clients to discover and invoke UPnP services. There is a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of each pattern.