Intelligent Virtual World: Technologies and Applications in Distributed VirtuaI Environment -- Contents -- Preface -- Part I: Intelligent Content Analysis, Retrieval and Virtual World -- Chapter 1: Metadata-Mediated Browsing and Retrieval in a Cultural Heritage Image Collection D.V. Sreenath, W.I. Grosky and F. Andres -- INTRODUCTION -- METADATA -- METADATA-MEDIATED BROWSING -- Data Model -- IMPLEMENTATION OF OUR SYSTEM -- Requirements -- Design Criteria -- Architecture -- The Semcon Database -- Virtual Tuples -- RESULTS -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 2: Shape Analysis and Retrieval of Multimedia Objects M.H. Safar -- INTRODUCTION -- APPLICATIONS -- QUERY TYPES -- Full Match -- Approximate Match -- Match with a Specified Transformation -- Match with Unspecified Transformation -- Partial Match -- IMAGE FEATURES (SHAPE SIMILARITY MEASURES) -- SHAPE DESCRIPTION TECHNIQUES -- SlMILARlTY MEASURES -- INDEX STRUCTURES -- PAM -- SAM -- The Tree-Based Indexing Methods -- Index Evaluation Parameters -- EVALUATION FRAMEWORK -- cost -- Retrieval Accuracy -- Noise Sensitivity -- Boundary Points Sensitivity -- Support of Different Query Types -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 3: Perceptual Consistency for Image Retrieval W.K. Leow -- INTRODUCTION -- OVERVIEW OF PERCEPTUAL CONSISTENCY -- COLOR -- Color Spaces and Color Differences -- Color Histograms and Dissimilarity -- TEXTURE -- Texture Features and Dissimilarity -- Perceptual Texture Models -- Mapping Computational Features -- Incremental Perceptual Space -- BEYOND SINGLE FEATURE -- Training Stage -- Retrieval by Category -- Retrieval by Example -- CONCLUSION -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENT -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 4: Rendering with Inverse Concentric Mosaics L. Wang, S.B. Kang and H.-Y. Shum -- INTRODUCTlON -- Viewing objects using IBR -- Concentric Mosaics -- Outline of paper -- OBJECT-BASED ICM.

Creating the Inverse Concentric Mosaics -- Generating novel views -- DEPTH CORRECTION -- Infinite depth correction -- Constant depth correction -- RENDERING RESULTS -- DISCUSSION -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Part II: QoS and Real-time Delivery of Multimedia Data -- Chapter 5: MuItimedia Broadcasting Techniques: Present Approaches and New Trends B. Furht, R. Westwater and J. Ice -- INTRODUCTION -- PRESENT APPROACHES IN DATA BROADCASTING OVER THE INTERNET -- IP UNICAST -- IP MULTICAST -- Multicast Routing -- INTERNET BROADCAST BASED ON IP SIMULCAST -- BASIC PRINCIPLES OF IP SIMULCAST -- THE IP SIMULCAST PROTOCOL -- ANALYSIS OF THE IP SIMULCAST ALGORITHM -- Jitter Buffering -- Retry Buffering -- COMPARISON WITH OTHER APPROACHES -- APPLICATIONS -- IMPLEMENTATION -- SUMMARY -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 6: On IP Traffic Monitoring D. Wei and N. Ansari -- INTRODUCTION -- THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND IP TRAFFIC MONITORING -- IP TRAFFIC PATTERN, MODELING AND CHARACTERISTICS -- INFRASTRUCTURE AND METHODOLOGY OF IP TRAFFIC MEASUREMENT -- FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON IP TRAFFIC MONITORING -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 7: Networked Multimedia Information Management for QoS-Sensitive Info-sphere W. Lee, R. Harinath, J. Srivastava, D. Su, J. Richardson and M. Foresti -- INTRODUCTlON -- Project Background and Objectives -- Technical Approach -- Accomplishments -- Active View Management -- Block-Based Programming Infrastructure -- Application Development Tools -- Multimedia Object Management -- Distributed Resource Management -- Demonstration Application -- ACTIVE VIEWS AND BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING -- Block-Based Programming in Presto -- Active Views -- Using Commercial Off-the Shelf (COTS) Products -- Other Issues -- Summary -- APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOLS -- Integrated Toolkit Environment -- Programming Model -- Requirement Specification of PDT -- Design Issues.

Implementation Issues -- Proposal for Further Research -- CONTINUOUS MEDIA SERVER -- DEMONSTRATION APPLICATION: PLANNING AND MONITORING AIR COMBAT -- Application Overview -- User Interfaces -- Schema -- Transactions -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 8: Network Architectures and Protocols for Multimedia Transmissions with QoS support M. Lee, J. Lim and K. Chae -- INTRODUCTION -- QoS PROTOCOLS EVOLVED UNDER THE IP ROUTING PLATFORM -- Integrated Services (IntServ) -- DIFFERENTIATED SERVICES (DiffServ) -- INTEGRATED SERVICES OVER DIFFERENTIATED SERVICES (INTSERV OVER DIFFSERV) -- DYNAMIC TRUNK RESERVATIONS WITH AGGREGATED RSVP -- MPLS Traffic Engineering for IP QoS -- Traffic Engineering -- TRAFFIC ENGINEERING WITH THE CLASSICAL OVERLAY MODEL -- MPLS -- MPLS IN TRAFFIC ENGINEERING -- Traffic Engineering using RSVP Extensions -- Traffic Engineering using CR-LDP -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 9: Mobile Agent-Based Adaptive Multimedia Communication K. Hashimoto, Y. Shibata and N. Shiratori -- INTRODUCTION -- FLEXIBLE MULTIMEDIA SYSTEM -- Agent Configuration -- Transcoding Agent -- MULTICAST SESSION -- DYNAMIC POSITIONING -- SYSTEM DESIGN -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 10: A Component-based Software Architecture for Pervasive Computing N.M. Belaramani, Y. Chow, V.W.-M. Kwan, C.-L. Wang and F.C.M. Lau -- INTRODUCTION -- SYSTEM OVERVIEW -- Facets -- Containers -- CLIENT SYSTEM -- Structure of the Client System -- Anatomy of the Client System -- INTELLIGENT PROXIES -- Features of intelligent proxy server -- Design of intelligent proxy server -- LIGHTWEIGHT MOBILE CODE SYSTEM -- IMPLEMENTATl0N -- Client System -- Intelligent Proxies -- Lightweight Mobile Code System -- Applications -- RELATED WORK -- CONCLUSION -- Acknowledgements -- REFERENCES -- Part III: Intelligent Technologies for Distance Education.

Chapter 11: Scenario Analysis Using Petri Nets F.O. Lin -- INTRODUCTION -- OVERVIEW -- PETRI NETS MODELS -- Training Plans Petri Nets (TP-nets) -- Training Scenarios Petri Nets (TS-nets) -- AN EXAMPLE -- RELATED WORK -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 12: Synchronized Hypermedia Lecture Framework for Web-based Distance Education H.-Y. Chen -- INTRODUCTION -- THE PROPOSED WSML FRAMEWORK -- WSML Recorder -- WSML Event Server -- WSML Browser -- Multimedia Synchronization and Resynchronization -- Temporal Synchronization and Resynchronization -- Spatial Synchronization and Resynchronization -- Content Synchronization and Resynchronization -- System Implementation -- Content synchronization -- Temporal synchronization technique -- Spatial synchronization technique -- Human Perception on temporal synchronization precision -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 13: Distance Education Over the Japan Gigabit Network A. He, Z. Cheng, T. Huang, A. Koyama and J.A. DeHart -- INTRODUCTION -- RIDEE -- THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE OF RIDEE -- Material Media -- Process Model -- Component Model -- Communication Control Model -- Working Model -- Presentation. -- IMPLEMENTATION AND EXPERIMENTS -- Components for Video/Audio Transmission -- Components for Material Presentation -- Components for Computer Exercises -- Components for Floor Control -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 14: A Question-Answering System Using a Predictive Answer Indexer H. Kim, K. Kim, J. Seo and G.G. Lee -- INTRODUCTION -- PREVIOUS WORKS -- MAYA Q/A APPROACH -- Predictive Answer indexing -- Lexico-syntactic Query processing -- Answer scoring and ranking -- EVALUATION -- The Experiment Data -- Analysis of experiment results -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 15: Distance Education and E-Learning in the Digital Age: Critical Considerations Y.S. Chee -- INTRODUCTION.

DISTANCE EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING -- E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES -- E-LEARNING: ACCESS OR LEARNING? -- PEDAGOGICAL ISSUES -- INTELLIGENT AND COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUPPORTING LEARNING -- CHALLENGES FACED -- CHANGE ISSUES -- CONCLUSION -- REFERENCES -- Part IV: E-Commerce and Intelligent Agents -- Chapter 16: Intelligent Web-based E-Commerce System B. Limthanmaphon, Z. Zhang and Y. Zhang -- INTRODUCTION -- E-MARKET TRANSACTIONS, MODELS and REQUIREMENTS -- E-Commerce Transaction Phases -- E-Market Models -- Business-to-Business (B2B) -- Business-to-Consumer (B2C) -- Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) -- E-Commerce Systems Requirements -- Storage Management -- Efficient and Effective Retrieval -- The Complexity of Connectivity and Diversity of the Web Documents -- Security -- Quality Service -- INTELLIGENT WEB-BASED E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS -- The Characteristics of Intelligent E-Commerce Systems -- Intelligent E-Commerce System Architecture -- The significance of developing Intelligent Web-based E-Commerce Systems -- THE TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE Al IN E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS -- Intelligent Agents -- Agent fundamental properties -- Agents for Consumers -- Examples of Agents as Mediators in E-Commerce Systems -- Case-Based Reasoning -- Game Theory -- Fuzzy Logic -- Intelligent Systems in E-Commerce transaction phases -- AGENT-BASED NEGOTIATION MODEL -- USING CBR IN E-TRADING ACTIVITIES -- Similarity Measure -- Retrieval Process -- Adaptation -- Retaining -- CONCLUSION and FURTHER WORK -- REFERENCES -- Chapter 17: Technologies for the Enhancement of Personalization in E-Commerce Applications K.P. Hewagamage, C. Jayawardana and M. Hirakawa -- INTRODUCTION -- MODELING OF PERSONALIZATION -- CONTENT PERSONALIZATION BASED ON THE VIRTUAL AUTHORING -- Virtual Authoring -- Virtual Document Model -- Annotating -- Formatting -- Hiding -- Summarizing -- Collecting.

Term Describing.