Pervasive Multimedia Research Articles

Guest Editorial: Pervasive Multimedia Computing—Systems Applications and Services

The advent of techniques in pervasive computing has affected human life that freely uses Internet environment, and advances in ubiquitous networks, telecommunications, and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia smart devices—such as laptops, iPods, personal digital assistants (PDA), and cellular telephones—have stimulated the development of intelligent pervasive multimedia applications. These key technologies are creating a multimedia revolution that will have significant impact across a wide spectrum to consumer, business, healthcare, and governmental domains. Yet, many challenges remain, especially when it comes to efficiently indexing, mining, querying, searching, and retrieving multimedia data. This special issue attempts to offer an open discussion in the realm of pervasive multimedia computing, including efficient delivery and distribution of multimedia content, applications, and services over the wired and wireless networks as well as multimedia QoS support for such networks. This issue also interests in looking at service architectures, protocols, and standards for multimedia communications along with the related security issues, such as secure multimedia information sharing. Finally, this issue expects to explore works on novel applications Multimed Tools Appl (2016) 75:14015–14017 DOI 10.1007/s11042-016-3826-z

Advances in Smart and Intelligent Multimedia Platforms for Pervasive Computing

Recent advances in various computing and telecommunication fields, along with the proliferation of multimedia-capable mobile devices, such as laptops, portable media players, personal digital assistants, and smart phones, have stimulated the development of pervasive multimedia services/applications. These upcoming services and applications essentially require a smart and intelligent platform that is able to provide noble development and operation tools for accommodating the pervasive system, applications, and services. This special issue presents original research papers addressing research challenges in all areas of smart and intelligent multimedia platform for pervasive systems, applications, and services. This issue consists of eleven papers, which are briefly discussed as follows. The openness of the Android system allows user to choose the various online markets. Since such openness also invokes critical threats, such as malware and illegal use, several markets have deployed strong authentication techniques. However, such methods are also an inconvenience to legal users. Therefore, in BAuthentication of Mobile Application through Various Local Distributors^(10.1007/s11042-013-1520-y), the author proposes the concept of an authentication model that makes purchased application available in most cases. The paper entitled BAn interactive pervasive whiteboard based on MVC architecture for ubiquitous collaboration^(10.1007/s11042-013-1458-0) presents the whiteboard application on 3G and Wi-Fi Android platform based mobile devices, based on MVC (Model View Controller) architecture for ubiquitous collaboration and also presents interaction and usability study with multiple users using small-sized devices, mid-sized devices, and large-sized device to show how disparate access devices and networking have an effect on software design of shared applications in an ubiquitous collaboration system. In BNetwork SecurityCamera System and itsApplication forConsumer Electronics inUbiquitous Environment^(10.1007/s11042-013-1442-8), the authors present a network security camera system and its application to provide visual information to consumer electronics devices in an ubiquitous Multimed Tools Appl (2015) 74:1537–1539 DOI 10.1007/s11042-015-2486-8

The disclosure of evaporating digital trails respecting the combinations of Gmail and IE for pervasive multimedia

Unquestionably, the proliferation of mobile devices has dominated the main streams in contemporary ubiquitous wireless networks. Unfortunately, the misappropriating of those state-of-the-art gadgets has resulted in unprecedented information security issues in next generation cyberspace security arena. This paper illustrates the essence of generic procedures to provide the probative digital evidences for a typical Gmail Chat session in connection with the IE browser under different scenarios. When the computer-related information security issues arise with regard to the company, the corporate information incident response team should be able to disclose and preserve the evaporating digital trails following the right procedures to avoid the volatile characteristics in their natures. Furthermore, the design of the experiments of the paper identifies four cases to demonstrate the feasibility, availability, reliability, and traceability among them, which are essential for the corporate information security staffs to seriously consider when mushrooming cyber crimes are unknowingly and hastily burgeoning in an unparalleled manner. The organizations might have to scrutinize the negligible digital trails with cognitive expertise instead of entirely relying on law enforcement agencies from the public sectors due to the time constraints as well as publicity concerns or the minor computing resource policy violation unwarily occurred by the employees accordingly.

The design and implementation of a future Internet live TV system over 4G networks

The emerging 4G (fourth generation) networks featuring wider coverage, higher transmission bandwidth and easier deployment have a desirable potential to serve ubiquitous and pervasive multimedia applications in creating new user-centric communication services. However, the practical implementation of 4G network to demonstrate such potential, especially for delivering real-time and high-quality video services, is scarce. This paper therefore provides the design and implementation of a future Internet live TV system over 4G networks to achieve cost-effectiveness, instead of using expensive satellite news gathering (SNG) vehicle and costly satellite transmissions in traditional TV stations. To effectively provide live TV services, we apply not only the hybrid duplex modes but also the port-based VLAN on the deployed networks for maximizing bandwidth, minimizing signal interference, and guaranteeing QoS of differentiated services. Performance metrics are applied to demonstrate that the proposed solution is cost-effective and is feasible for live TV services in future Internet.

A hybrid domain enhanced framework for video retargeting with spatial–temporal importance and 3D grid optimization

Recently, a ubiquitous video access is highly demanded for online video applications. One big challenge is that video service needs to adapt different device capabilities. Pervasive multimedia devices require an accurate and user comfort video retargeting. Letting users see their preferred content accurately directly affects their comforts. User preferences on video contents are different in various video domains. In this paper, we present a hybrid framework of video retargeting with a domain enhanced spatial–temporal grid optimization. First, we parse videos from low-level features to high-level visual concepts, combining with visual attention for an accurate importance description. Second, a semantic importance map is built up representing the spatial importance and temporal continuity, which is incorporated with a 3D rectilinear grid scaleplate to map frames to a target display, thereby keeping the aspect ratio of semantically salient objects as well as the perceptual coherency. Extensive evaluations are made on five typical video genres, i.e. sports, advertisements, lecture, news and surveillance. The comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches on both images and videos have demonstrated the advantages of the proposed approach.

Pervasive multimedia for autism intervention

There is a growing gap between the number of children with autism requiring early intervention and available therapy. We present a portable platform for pervasive delivery of early intervention therapy using multi-touch interfaces and principled ways to deliver stimuli of increasing complexity and adapt to a child’s performance. Our implementation weaves Natural Environment Tasks with iPad tasks, facilitating a learning platform that integrates early intervention in the child’s daily life. The system’s construction of stimulus complexity relative to task is evaluated by therapists, together with field trials for evaluating both the integrity of the instructional design and goal of stimulus presentation and adjustment relative to performance for learning tasks. We show positive results across all our stakeholders–children, parents and therapists. Our results have implications for other early learning fields that require principled ways to construct lessons across skills and adjust stimuli relative to performance.

Editorial: advances in multimedia and ubiquitous technologies for the new era

Recent advances in pervasive computers, networks, telecommunication, and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia-capable mobile devices, such as laptops, portable media players, personal digital assistants, and cellular telephones, have stimulated the development of intelligent and pervasive multimedia applications in a ubiquitous environment. The new multimedia standards (for example, MPEG-21) facilitate the seamless integration of multiple modalities into interoperable multimedia frameworks, transforming the way people work and interact with multimedia data. These key technologies and multimedia solutions interact and collaborate with each other in increasingly effective ways, contributing to the multimedia revolution and having a significant impact across a wide spectrum of consumer, business, healthcare, education, and governmental domains. This conference provides an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss recent progress in the area of multimedia and ubiquitous environment including models and systems, new directions, novel applications associated with the utilization and acceptance of ubiquitous computing devices and systems. We have received 41 manuscripts. After the pre-review process, 28 manuscripts were selected for the first review. Sixteen manuscripts were finally selected for this special Multimed Tools Appl (2013) 63:1–5 DOI 10.1007/s11042-012-1104-2

Pervasive multimedia guidance system for special needs passengers on public transport

This article presents a practical case of a pervasive multimedia guidance system for public transport passengers. In order to provide useful information to passengers, the system is capable of operating and adapting spontaneously to the different parts of a public transport network, using local data communication technologies. The multimedia data provided by the system are highly accessible, and adapt to the passengers' preferences, and are consequently suitable for special needs passengers. To this end, a paradigm of pervasive computing has been applied.

Recent advances and future directions in multimedia and mobile computing

1 IntroductionRecent advances in pervasive computers, networks, telecommunication, and informationtechnology, along with the proliferation of multimedia-capable mobile devices, such aslaptops, portable media players, personal digital assistants, and cellular telephones, havestimulated the development of intelligent and pervasive multimedia applications in aubiquitous environment. Due to constant changing environments, Mobile multimediaimplies considerable challenges to operators, infrastructure builders in terms of ensuringfast, reliable services and accommodating the quick growing global customer needs.This special issue aims to foster the dissemination of high quality research in any newtheory and technique and to present future directions regarding multimedia and mobilecomputing. This special issue welcomes papers focused on all topics ranging in thewide spectrum of multimedia and mobile computing with emphasis on theoreticalaspects as well as practical frameworks and implementations. Overall, the special issue

Multiple Binary Images Watermarking in Spatial and Frequency Domains

Editing, reproduction and distribution of the digital multimedia are becoming extremely easier and faster with the existence of the internet and the availability of pervasive and powerful multimedia tools. Digital watermarking has emerged as a possible method to tackle these issues. This paper proposes a scheme using which more data can be inserted into an image in different domains using different techniques. This increases the embedding capacity. Using the proposed scheme 24 binary images can be embedded in the DCT domain and 12 binary images can be embedded in the spatial domain using LSB substitution technique in a single RGB image. The proposed scheme also provides an extra level of security to the watermark image by scrambling the image before embedding it into the host image. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking method results in almost invisible difference between the watermarked image and the original image and is also robust against various image processing attacks.

Intelligent and Pervasive Multimedia Systems

Recent advances in pervasive computing and the proliferation of multimedia-capable devices have stimulated the development of intelligent and pervasive multimedia applications. This special issue provides excellent coverage of this area, including interactive multimedia education, quality control and personalization of multimedia services, peer-to-peer multimedia streaming, mobile TV, and VoIP systems.

Preface to the special issue on new achievements in pervasive and interactive multimedia systems and applications

Preface to the special issue on new achievements in pervasive and interactive multimedia systems and applications

Piecewise network awareness service for wireless/mobile pervasive computing

This paper presents a piecewise framework for network awareness service (NAS) for wireless/mobile pervasive computing. We investigate how piecewise consideration of wired and wireless elements of the framework architecture benefits service advertisement and discovery and network-awareness techniques. We also discuss scalability of the NAS framework with respect to platform computing capabilities. The framework is suitable for a wide range of computing devices, from powerful ones with multi-tasking operating systems (OS) to small ones with lightweight OS. Case studies applying the NAS framework to sensor monitoring in home networks and data streaming in pervasive multimedia computing are presented. The analytical results on the performance of the NAS framework in these case studies show that it has significant advantages over traditional network-awareness frameworks in terms of reducing wireless bandwidth consumption and saving battery energy of mobile devices.