Micke Kuwahara

Geospatial Visual Analytics of Traffic and Weather Data for Better Winter Road Management

Sapporo is a city with two million citizens that gets 6 m of snow per year. This means that winter road management is very important for sustaining economic and social activities during the winter. We believe that an exploratory and iterative analysis and visualization approach is useful to support the decision making, to improve the winter road management strategies. We propose using a huge library of tools and services, and a framework that allows users to freely federate tools and services improvisationally (“mash-up”) to create custom visualization and analysis environments and to apply these on appropriately selected data sets. Unlike conventional macro analysis approaches, we focus on micro analysis of winter road conditions. We use probe car data, speed readings etc., automatically collected from taxis and private cars. Geospatial visualization of the average speeds of all the road segments shows how different roads are affected by heavy snowfall, by snow plowing, and by snow removal. Combining geospatial visualization with knowledge discovery algorithms is a potential approach in this area. An example would be clustering the road segments based on similarity of the impact snowfall has to group roads into groups that can be maintained using similar strategies.

Advanced "Webble" Application Development Directly in the Browser by Utilizing the Full Power of Meme Media Customization and Event Management Capabilities

A meme media object, also known as a Webble, always come with a set of familiar generic behaviors together with another set of specialized ones for that particular Webble. But what if there is a need for a custom behavior or interface that was not originally intended when first created. With Webble technology, that does not need to be a problem. In this paper we will attempt to show how simple it is, due to the design and construction of Webbles, to insert new customizable behaviors in any Webble available, or control application level events and actions, all through an intuitive, user-friendly interface. We claim that within a few hours of combining generic Webble building blocks and the setting up of configurable event handlers directly in the web browser, without traditional programming, we can create any arbitrary Silver light-based web application, ready to be shared to the cloud and the world.

Visualizing Clinical Trial Data Using Pluggable Components

We describe our system for visualizing data from clinical trials. The system is intended for clinicians with little or no knowledge of statistics, data mining, etc. The system is built using pluggable components, and it is easy to add more types of visualization. Currently the system supports interactive data exploration using for instance parallel coordinates, image maps, charts, and life tables. Grouping and filtering patients or subsets of data is easy and any changes are immediately reflected in all visualization tools currently used.

Meme Media and Knowledge Federation

This paper first clarifies two major difficulties that prevents our maximum utilization of web resources; the difficulty to find appropriate ones, and the difficulty to make them work together. It focuses on the latter problem, and proposes ad hocknowledge federation technologies as key technologies for its solution. Then it reviews our groups 15 year research on meme media, as well as his 6 year research on their application to ad hocknowledge federation of web resources. Then it proposes an extension of the Web to the memetic Web. This extension is brought by the recent significant revision of the 2D meme media architecture. Finally it shows some new applications of these technologies.

The Power of Webble World and How to Utilize It

Webble World is a web-based environment where everything are Webble objects. Stand-alone objects that may be organized and manipulated freely into simple gadgets and/or complex applications, either by attaching to or detaching from, completely inside the browser with mainly standard mouse operations. All that is required by the user is a pursue of a dream and a bucket of creativity with a pinch of a mindset that views the environment as merely parts of the whole, and these parts are themselves just a bunch of smaller parts loosely connected. With that in the travel bag the journey to become a Webble application developer is afoot. Digging deep into the vast repository of Webble Objects, grab the ones that seem to fit your inner picture and start building anything from games, data analyzer systems, map visualizations, web tools, web sites, data managers and much, much more. This paper will demonstrate the structure of Webble World environment, how to access and enjoy the rich library of Webbles and applications produced during the last years and how to learn to self become a Webble World contributor.

Design, implementation and evaluation of a user generated content service for Europeana

The paper presents an overview of the user generated content service that the ASSETS Best Practice Network is designing, implementing and evaluating with the user for Europeana, the European digital library. The service will allow Europeana users to contribute to the contents of the digital library in several different ways, such as uploading simple media objects along with their descriptions, annotating existing objects, or enriching existing descriptions. The user and the system requirements are outlined first, and used to derive the basic principles underlying the service. A conceptual model of the entities required for the realization of the service and a general sketch of the system architecture are also given, and used to illustrate the basic workflow of some important operations. The planning of the user evaluation is finally presented, aimed at validating the service before making it available to the final users.

The Mindset of a Webble World Citizen: Developing Applications in a Meme Media Environment

Webble World is the latest generation of IntelligentPad implementations that is fully available online for any individual or organization interested in using it. It is a meme media objects environment that allows users to develop rich software applications for the web, even without any skills of programming, but instead with simple basic mouse operations which is used to configure and arrange these meme media objects, known as Webbles, in ways that may create various types of complex behaviors and thus form full-fledged applications. It is intended to be inviting and used by the general public as a whole, skilled programmers and their grandmas alike, as well as academics and corporations. It is a framework for learning and improving, a knowledge federation where humanity can collect their shared skills in software application development. But with this power comes the responsibility to build and develop, not just for you and a few chosen, but for the entire world at all times. In order to support a useful and open federation of meme media objects the developer must try to get into the head of every possible future user of his component, and the users need to see that Webble systems is a network of objects with little or no central control but instead a cooperation of independent parts. To fully appreciate Webble World the user need to adapt a certain mindset, and it is that mindset this paper will try to explore.

Webble World 3.0

Webble World 3.0 is the latest and most advanced and accessible of the meme media implementations, which allow users to fully participate in the process of building the next generation of the Web. Allowing the users of the World Wide Web to design and develop interactive building blocks for wrapping web resources, which then anyone may combine and use in any way imaginable. One important goal is to put the mainly passive web user in the driving seat and with this tool make him or her feel empowered to actively engage in building the web of our shared need and joy, but also to attract skilled web developers to work in a more modeled and collaborative environment.

The Webble World in the Real World

During the last one and a half year that Webble World have been officially available to the public, the number of Webbles have more than doubled and the core platform have gone through numerous iterations of additional functions and improvements of existing ones. Now at the later part of 2012, Webbles are being used and developed for a multitude of exciting projects ranging from a Cancer research and trial manager, virtual lab and e-learning environments to an online sensor data visualization dash board and a nuclear research data editor. But Webble World it is not only about the big projects, it is equally as much, if not more, about the small home-made compound Webbles and tiny tools and leisure applications for personal improvement of the web experience that anyone can do on their own; and also there, Webble World have taken many steps forward with several mini games and web content displays. And of course, at the core of all this progress lies the new primitive Webble building blocks with their generic interfaces and inspiring features that have been developed by a constantly growing group of low layer developers from many parts of the world. If Webble World is here to stay, or if it is just another step towards the final realization of the knowledge federation meme media concept and the IntelligentPad technology, only time may tell, but the fact remains that it is happening now and we are along for the ride at the front seat.