Marco Furini

Bio: Marco Furini is an academic researcher from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social media & The Internet. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 100 publications receiving 3493 citations. Previous affiliations of Marco Furini include University of Eastern Piedmont & University of Bologna.

Augmenting social media accessibility

Abstract: The popularity of social media is affecting society as they are changing the way communication, collaboration, interaction, and information are produced and consumed. A part of the society (e.g., the one more technologically advanced) takes advantage of social media, whereas another part of society (e.g., old or people with different abilities) is left out from the so-called social media revolution. In this paper we propose an architecture that aims at augmenting social media accessibility. The proposed architecture, named SOMFA (SOcial Media For All), finds, gets, transforms, and enriches social media contents for a presentation over TV sets, so that people with technological, sociological, or physical limitations may enjoy social media and may participate to the social media revolution.

Automated Generation of User-Tailored and Time-Sensitive Music Playlists

Abstract: Streaming music platforms have changed the way people listen to music. Today, we can access to millions of songs with a simple internet-connected device. The drawback is that the selection of what to listen is a long, tedious, ant time-consuming process. This is why, nowadays, we choose playlists instead of songs. Unfortunately, since there are thousands of playlists, the selection process can once again be long, tedious, and time-consuming. In this paper, we design a system to facilitate the listening and discovering of new music. The system automatically generates user-tailored and time-sensitive music playlists and proposes a single playlist to play when the user accesses to a music platform. The system understands the user’s listening habits by analyzing the low-level features of songs recently played by the user and by using two different clustering algorithms. A novel designed method uses these data to produce a playlist that expands the user’s musical knowledge keeping in mind that a good playlist must contain a mix of new and known music and artists. An implementation based on the Spotify API proved the effectiveness of the approach and showed that the proposal might provide benefits to both users (no time wasted to select what to play) and to music platforms (playing of music that otherwise would remain unknown to users).

From digital audiobook to secure digital multimedia-book

Abstract: Portable devices and wireless connections are creating a new scenario in which digital information is entering our lives in a massive way. In this article we consider MP3 audiobook applications and propose an approach to completely restyle the applications to the current mobile and multimedia scenario. Our mechanism introduces multimedia contents (images and text) into the audiobook application and synchronizes them with the MP3 audio stream. Multimedia contents are protected by a security system that ensures perfect audio quality and full access to multimedia contents only to a legal user. A distribution architecture and a player that use the proposed mechanism are also presented.

Towards Tweet Content Suggestions for Museum Media Managers

Abstract: Cultural Heritage institutions are embracing social technologies in the attempt to provide an effective communication towards citizens. Although it seems easy to reach millions of people with a simple message posted on social media platforms, media managers know that practice is different from theory. Millions of posts are competing every day to get visibility in terms of likes and retweets. The way text, images, hashtags and links are combined together is critical for the visibility of a post. In this paper, we propose to exploit machine learning techniques in order to predict whether a tweet will likely be appreciated by Twitter users or not. Through an experimental assessment, we show that it is possible to provide insights about the tweet features that will likely influence its reception/recommendation among readers. The preliminary tests, performed on a real-world dataset of 19, 527 museum tweets, show promising accuracy results.

Do Conversational Interfaces Kill Web Accessibility

Abstract: Conversational interfaces are making web accessibility studies obsolete. Long-time has passed since the introduction of graphical interfaces. They revolutionized the way people used the computer. The desktop metaphor popularized and made easy access to the software but did not consider the specific needs of people with some form of sight and/or motion impairments. Accessibility, at that time, was a minor issue. The web changed everything and empathized the need to include people. Researchers from around the world began working on accessibility, which is still an issue on the agenda of many scientific labs. Despite this, we observe that today, with the diffusion of conversational interfaces, there is less need to bother about colors, fonts, size and many other visual features. Indeed, people might access to web contents through voice interaction. No need to see the graphic interface or to use input devices requiring the use of hands. The voice is everything you need, and accessibility has never been easier. Conversational interfaces are about to revolutionize accessibility and in this provocative paper, we show benefits, problems, and open issues that happen when these interfaces meet accessibility requirements.

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

How to… home page

Abstract: Home PURPOSE OF THE CENTER: To develop the center to address state-of-the-art research, create innovating educational programs, and support technology transfers using commercially viable results to assist the Army Research Laboratory to develop the next generation Future Combat System in the telecommunications sector that assures prevention of perceived threats, and Non Line of Sight/Beyond Line of Sight lethal support.

Intelligent distributed surveillance systems: a review

Abstract: This survey describes the current state-of-the-art in the development of automated visual surveillance systems so as to provide researchers in the field with a summary of progress achieved to date and to identify areas where further research is needed. The ability to recognise objects and humans, to describe their actions and interactions from information acquired by sensors is essential for automated visual surveillance. The increasing need for intelligent visual surveillance in commercial, law enforcement and military applications makes automated visual surveillance systems one of the main current application domains in computer vision. The emphasis of this review is on discussion of the creation of intelligent distributed automated surveillance systems. The survey concludes with a discussion of possible future directions.