PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem, wherein it is impossible for an electronic content information provider to provide commercially secure and effective method, for a configurable general-purpose electronic commercial transaction/distribution control system. SOLUTION: In this system, having at least one protected processing environment for safely controlling at least one portion of decoding of digital information, a secure content distribution method comprises a process for encapsulating digital information in one or more digital containers; a process for encrypting at least a portion of digital information; a process for associating at least partially secure control information for managing interactions with encrypted digital information and/or digital container; a process for delivering one or more digital containers to a digital information user; and a process for using a protected processing environment, for safely controlling at least a portion of the decoding of the digital information. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a423264.pdf

Systems and Methods for Secure Transaction Management and Electronic Rights Protection

A novel system for the location of people in an office environment is described. Members of staff wear badges that transmit signals providing information about their location to a centralized location service, through a network of sensors. The paper also examines alternative location techniques, system design issues and applications, particularly relating to telephone call routing. Location systems raise concerns about the privacy of an individual and these issues are also addressed.

/pdf/the-active-badge-location-system-44oiw0tff2.pdf

The active badge location system

We present a system for interactively browsing and exploring large unstructured collections of photographs of a scene using a novel 3D interface. Our system consists of an image-based modeling front end that automatically computes the viewpoint of each photograph as well as a sparse 3D model of the scene and image to model correspondences. Our photo explorer uses image-based rendering techniques to smoothly transition between photographs, while also enabling full 3D navigation and exploration of the set of images and world geometry, along with auxiliary information such as overhead maps. Our system also makes it easy to construct photo tours of scenic or historic locations, and to annotate image details, which are automatically transferred to other relevant images. We demonstrate our system on several large personal photo collections as well as images gathered from Internet photo sharing sites.

Photo tourism: exploring photo collections in 3D

There are billions of photographs on the Internet, comprising the largest and most diverse photo collection ever assembled. How can computer vision researchers exploit this imagery? This paper explores this question from the standpoint of 3D scene modeling and visualization. We present structure-from-motion and image-based rendering algorithms that operate on hundreds of images downloaded as a result of keyword-based image search queries like "Notre Dame" or "Trevi Fountain." This approach, which we call Photo Tourism, has enabled reconstructions of numerous well-known world sites. This paper presents these algorithms and results as a first step towards 3D modeling of the world's well-photographed sites, cities, and landscapes from Internet imagery, and discusses key open problems and challenges for the research community.

/pdf/modeling-the-world-from-internet-photo-collections-2xqc3i51z3.pdf

Modeling the World from Internet Photo Collections

A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.

Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network

We offer an overview of current Web search engine design. After introducing a generic search engine architecture, we examine each engine component in turn. We cover crawling, local Web page storage, indexing, and the use of link analysis for boosting search performance. The most common design and implementation techniques for each of these components are presented. For this presentation we draw from the literature and from our own experimental search engine testbed. Emphasis is on introducing the fundamental concepts and the results of several performance analyses we conducted to compare different designs.

Searching the Web

Though data analysis tools continue to improve, analysts still expend an inordinate amount of time and effort manipulating data and assessing data quality issues. Such "data wrangling" regularly involves reformatting data values or layout, correcting erroneous or missing values, and integrating multiple data sources. These transforms are often difficult to specify and difficult to reuse across analysis tasks, teams, and tools. In response, we introduce Wrangler, an interactive system for creating data transformations. Wrangler combines direct manipulation of visualized data with automatic inference of relevant transforms, enabling analysts to iteratively explore the space of applicable operations and preview their effects. Wrangler leverages semantic data types (e.g., geographic locations, dates, classification codes) to aid validation and type conversion. Interactive histories support review, refinement, and annotation of transformation scripts. User study results show that Wrangler significantly reduces specification time and promotes the use of robust, auditable transforms instead of manual editing.

/pdf/wrangler-interactive-visual-specification-of-data-45jb35e7ux.pdf

Wrangler: interactive visual specification of data transformation scripts

Though data analysis tools continue to improve, analysts
still expend an inordinate amount of time and effort manipulating
data and assessing data quality issues. Such “data
wrangling” regularly involves reformatting data values or
layout, correcting erroneous or missing values, and integrating
multiple data sources. These transforms are often difficult
to specify and difficult to reuse across analysis tasks,
teams, and tools. In response, we introduce Wrangler, an
interactive system for creating data transformations. Wrangler
combines direct manipulation of visualized data with
automatic inference of relevant transforms, enabling analysts
to iteratively explore the space of applicable operations
and preview their effects. Wrangler leverages semantic data
types (e.g., geographic locations, dates, classification codes)
to aid validation and type conversion. Interactive histories
support review, refinement, and annotation of transformation
scripts. User study results show that Wrangler significantly
reduces specification time and promotes the use of robust,
auditable transforms instead of manual editing.

Wrangler: Interactive Visual Specificationof Data Transformation Scripts

We developed two photo browsers for collections with thousands of time-stamped digital images. Modern digital cameras record photo shoot times, and semantically related photos tend to occur in bursts. Our browsers exploit the timing information to structure the collections and to automatically generate meaningful summaries. The browsers differ in how users navigate and view the structured collections. We conducted user studies to compare the two browsers and an un-summarized image browser. Our results show that exploiting the time dimension and appropriately summarizing collections can lead to significant improvements. For example, for one task category, one of our browsers enabled a 33% improvement in speed of finding given images compared to the commercial browser. Similarly, users were able to complete 29% more tasks when using this same browser.

/pdf/time-as-essence-for-photo-browsing-through-personal-digital-f21fig8s5h.pdf

Time as essence for photo browsing through personal digital libraries

Organizations rely on data analysts to model customer engagement, streamline operations, improve production, inform business decisions, and combat fraud. Though numerous analysis and visualization tools have been built to improve the scale and efficiency at which analysts can work, there has been little research on how analysis takes place within the social and organizational context of companies. To better understand the enterprise analysts' ecosystem, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 35 data analysts from 25 organizations across a variety of sectors, including healthcare, retail, marketing and finance. Based on our interview data, we characterize the process of industrial data analysis and document how organizational features of an enterprise impact it. We describe recurring pain points, outstanding challenges, and barriers to adoption for visual analytic tools. Finally, we discuss design implications and opportunities for visual analysis research.

/pdf/enterprise-data-analysis-and-visualization-an-interview-3wf51rl7lp.pdf

Andreas Paepcke

Papers

Searching the Web

Wrangler: interactive visual specification of data transformation scripts

Wrangler: Interactive Visual Specificationof Data Transformation Scripts

Time as essence for photo browsing through personal digital libraries

Enterprise Data Analysis and Visualization: An Interview Study