Jutta Willamowski

Probabilistic Automatic Red Eye Detection and Correction

In this paper we propose a new probabilistic approach to red eye detection and correction. It is based on stepwise refinement of a pixel-wise red eye probability map. Red eye detection starts with a fast non red eye region rejection step. A classification step then adjusts the probabilities attributed to the detected red eye candidates. The correction step finally applies a soft red eye correction based on the resulting probability map. The proposed approach is fast and allows achieving an excellent correction of strong red eyes while producing a still significant correction of weaker red eyes

Rule-Based Transactional Object Migration over a Reflective Middleware

Object migration is an often overlooked topic in distributed object-oriented platforms. Most common solutions provide data serialization and code mobility across several hosts. But existing mechanisms fall short in ensuring consistency when migrating objects, or agents, involved in coordinated interactions with each other, possibly governed by a multi-phase protocol. We propose an object migration scheme addressing this issue, implemented on top of the Coordination Language Facility (CLF). It exploits the particular combination of features in CLF: the resource-based programming paradigm and the communication protocol integrating a negotiation and a transaction phase. We illustrate through examples how our migration mechanism goes beyond classical solutions. It can be fine-tuned to consider different requirements and settings, and thus be adapted to a variety of situations

Yaka: document notification and delivery across heterogeneous document repositories

Nowadays people have to deal with an increasing amount of information contained in electronic documents available from numerous heterogeneous, widely distributed sources. Keeping up to date with recently published material relevant to a particular topic has become a challenge in itself. The Yaka system aims at facilitating this task by providing notification and delivery services. Yaka relies on a flexible definition of subjects through intelligent wrapping of existing information sources. Users can subscribe to these subjects in order to be notified whenever new relevant documents are published. Yaka augments document notification with document meta-information obtained through a set of integrated linguistic services. From the notification message users can directly request the document content. Yaka then delivers this content, automatically transformed into the appropriate format, through a variety of delivery media. We describe the Yaka functionality, its architecture and how we deployed it within Xerox.

Resource-Based Scripting to Stitch Distributed Components

This paper proposes the Resource-Based Programming paradigm as support for the design, implementation, debugging and tuning of distributed applications. This paradigm considers components as resource managers and expresses the application logic through scriptable transactional resource manipulations. In this paper, we describe the benefits deriving from such a paradigm both from a theoritical and from a practical point of view. We first introduce the resource-based paradigm in itself and the CLF middleware [3] that implements it. We then illustrate through an example application the various advantages of using it in the context of distributed applications.

The Constraint-Based Knowledge Broker system

Summary form only given. The amount of information available from electronic sources on the World Wide Web and other on-line information repositories is highly heterogeneous and increasing dramatically. Tools are needed to extract relevant information from these repositories. The Constraint-Based Knowledge Brokers project (CBKB) at RXRC Grenoble realizes sophisticated facilities for efficient information retrieval, schema integration, and knowledge fusion. The current implementation of the CBKB research prototype involves three kinds of agents: a) users, who input queries and process answers (i.e., ranking, fusion) through a GUI; b) wrappers, capable of interrogating heterogeneous information sources, which can provide answers to elementary queries (essentially various public bibliographic catalogues available on the Web, as well as preprint archives and opera information repositories); c) brokers, which can manage complex queries (i.e., decompose a complex query, recompose the partial answers, synthesize a full answer) and which mediate between the GUI and the different wrappers. The core of the system is given by the brokers, which provide various important services such as intelligent caching, filtering and knowledge combination. Requests, intermediate information, and results are internally represented via feature constraints. Requests do not need to be fully defined; they may correspond to partial specifications of the requested information.

Colour management is a socio-technical problem

This paper describes how achieving consistent colour reproduction across different devices is a complicated matter. Although there is a technological infrastructure for managing colour across devices this is very rarely used as intended. This infrastructure has been created by modelling the problem of colour management as a wholly technical one. In this paper we illustrate the importance of understanding the management of colour as a socio-technical problem, by describing the findings of a multi-sited ethnography of designers and print shops. Our analysis of the ethnography reveals that designers build up practical, tangible, visual understandings of colour and that these do not fit with the current solution, which requires users to deal with colour in an abstract manner. This paper builds on previous research in CSCW which has considered the importance of socio-technical systems, bringing the work into a previously unexplored domain. It shows how an understanding of the social can also be central when designing technical infrastructures.

Incorporating geometry information with weak classifiers for improved generic visual categorization

In this paper, we improve the performance of a generic visual categorizer based on the ”bag of keypatches” approach using geometric information. More precisely, we consider a large number of simple geometrical relationships between interest points based on the scale, orientation or closeness. Each relationship leads to a weak classifier. The boosting approach is used to select from this multitude of classifiers (several millions in our case) and to combine them effectively with the original classifier. Results are shown on a new challenging 10 class dataset.

Agentville: Supporting Situational Awareness and Motivation in Call Centres

Call centres are high pressure work environments where agents work strictly according to shifts and time schedules. Typically, agents are grouped into teams with supervisors from whom they receive only periodic performance feedback. It is a challenge to maintain high motivation and performance amongst the agents in this environment. Agents may lack awareness of their individual status with respect to their objectives, and the performance of their team and the call center as a whole. In this chapter we describe the design of a system that we are building to provide the agents with real-time information on their work environment’s status and on potential improvements in performance, while hopefully also improving their work experience. The solution is based on the introduction in the call centre of some game mechanics whose selection and instantiation has been informed by case studies conducted by the authors.

Promoting sustainable print behavior

We have designed the Personal Assessment Tool (PAT) to promote more sustainable print behaviour in a corporate work environment. Therefore, PAT provides its users with ambient awareness on their printing habits. We have experimented PAT in our research centre and describe this experiment along with our findings and observations. PAT definitely motivated the participating users to change their print behaviour. Nevertheless it also highlighted the constrained aspects of printing in a work environment calling for organizational changes of established work processes.

‘Colour, It’s Just a Constant Problem’: An Examination of Practice, Infrastructure and Workflow in Colour Printing

Two interrelated topics that have been of enduring interest to researchers in studying cooperative work practices and the design and use of technologies to support those practices are workflow and, to a slightly lesser extent, infrastructure. Workflow systems are a classic form of technology employed to coordinate cooperative work along a process of production where different workers (potentially in different companies and locations) complete different tasks along a ‘line’ of production. The workflow and the technologies that embody or enforce it are designed to maintain adherence to procedure and coordination across time and place. The central issues surrounding the treatment of workflow in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and related disciplines have been the problem of getting workflow systems to mesh with the particularities of local flows of work among people. Since Suchman (1983, 1987), at least, there has been a presiding concern with the ways in which workflow models fail to take into account the local, embodied, non-prescriptive and emergent manner (responding to dynamic local circumstances) in which people organise their work. Workflow systems have been criticised for being designed from ‘elsewhere’ – with an inadequate, overly idealistic or abstracted understanding of the work they are meant to assist. People end up having to organise or translate (potentially after-the-fact) their work, so it fits with the workflow system or workaround or ignore the technology completely (see Bowers et al. 1995) for an example from the print industry).