Comparing scanning behaviour in web search on small and large screens

ABSTRACTBandwidth is still a limiting factor for the Quality of Service (QoS) of mobile communication applications. In particular, for Voice over IP the QoS is not yet as good as for common, well-engineered, public-switched telephone networks. Multisensory communication has been identified as a possibility to moderate this limitation. One of the strengths of mobile video technology lies in its combination of visual and auditory modalities. However, one of the most salient features of mobile video applications is its small screen size. To test the potential of multimodal synergy for mobile devices, we assessed to what extent small screens affect multimodal synergy. This potential was assessed in an experiment with 54 participants, who conducted a standardised video-listening test for three talking-heads videos with a signal-to-noise ratio of –9 dB. The videos were presented on three different screen sizes, whilst keeping the video and auditory signals equal. Compared to a ground truth based on 359 participants, intelligibility was found to be significantly higher when using a large screen than when using a small screen. This indicates that mobile video technology has the potential for a significant multimodal synergy to which screen size is a substantial constraint. To optimally benefit from their multimodal potential, we offer suggestions on how to increase the effective screen size for small screen (e.g. mobile) devices and applications through elaborating the most relevant (visual) features. We conclude that knowledge about human sensory processing can alleviate the identified constraint and maximise the potential QoS of mobile video technology.

This paper has described specialized zooming tools on mobile devices with designing and developing basic geometric and semantic zooming methods in order to increase the usability of the device. Based on three zooming methods, we created new zooming tools for the device by describing the detail prototype and implementation of these applications were introduced in this paper. However, we have problems because the tools were designed for the PDA simulation program in a desktop computer. So, we do not know how many different results exist between the application program and the real physical device. Especially, in terms of hardware, the current PDA does not have enough pixels, so users could potentially encounter broken characters when the magnifying glass is used. Although these zooming tools are not substantially implemented in commercial PDAs, it will be used for new interfaces in mobile devices by supporting various zooming functions. We look forward to continuing the research and development of this tool according to the future development of the PDA’s hardware performance and elements. Therefore, the biggest contribution of this paper is the creation of zooming tools on PDAs by encouraging the development of practical zooming methods over theoretical methods.

Media entertainment is situated predominately on large screens, with content that is designed to take advantage of the large screen platform. While developments in media technology are generating progressively smaller, more personalised distribution platforms, onto which the transfer of large screen content is currently performed. Mobile gaming, mobile film, and mobile television content viewing are increasingly marketed as extensions to traditional distribution means. Given the drastically different viewing and distribution mediums of the large and small screens, it is useful to investigate the effectiveness of this practice on the reception of content and audience viewing experience. Results showed that while basic understanding was not lost on a small-screen viewing platform, a significant reduction of overall experience was noted.

Mobile devices have made the world a small place. They are also being used widely, to access the Web. However, because most available web pages are designed for desktop PC in mind, it is inconvenient to browse these large web pages on a mobile device with a small screen. With the enormous increase in mobile users since last decade, to such an extent that it even exceeds the number of desktop users in many developing countries, it becomes crucial to design systems for Web Manipulation, there by providing easier and greater accessibility and device independence. In this paper, we propose a new browsing technique to facilitate efficient web access and provide a better user experience on a device with rather small screen as compared to the usual desktop. It also proposes a novel technique to handle multimedia content, especially the images and video on a web page. In order to solve the problem of incomplete tags in HTML, an equivalent XML is generated for the desired webpage. For efficient browsing, the web page is represented as a multi level hierarchy, with the index of major sections on the first level and the sections indexed again in to sub-sections on the second level and so on, until we reach sub-sections that can be represented as sub-pages that fit in the small screen. We also propose an efficient algorithm for navigating through the sub-pages, thereby providing better user experience. The proposed technique provides better and efficient web browsing on mobile small displays up to user satisfaction.

Of growing interest in the area of improving the search experience is the collection of implicit user behavior measures (implicit measures) as indications of user interest and user satisfaction. Rather than having to submit explicit user feedback, which can be costly in time and resources and alter the pattern of use within the search experience, some research has explored the collection of implicit measures as an efficient and useful alternative to collecting explicit measure of interest from users.This research article describes a recent study with two main objectives. The first was to test whether there is an association between explicit ratings of user satisfaction and implicit measures of user interest. The second was to understand what implicit measures were most strongly associated with user satisfaction. The domain of interest was Web search. We developed an instrumented browser to collect a variety of measures of user activity and also to ask for explicit judgments of the relevance of individual pages visited and entire search sessions. The data was collected in a workplace setting to improve the generalizability of the results.Results were analyzed using traditional methods (e.g., Bayesian modeling and decision trees) as well as a new usage behavior pattern analysis (“gene analysis”). We found that there was an association between implicit measures of user activity and the user's explicit satisfaction ratings. The best models for individual pages combined clickthrough, time spent on the search result page, and how a user exited a result or ended a search session (exit type/end action). Behavioral patterns (through the gene analysis) can also be used to predict user satisfaction for search sessions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to carry out a survey in order to better understand the nature of handheld mobile computing use by academic library users and to determine whether there is a significant demand for using the library services with these small screen devices.Design/methodology/approachA survey is created to measure whether people want to access an OPAC with a small screen. Additionally, through open‐ended questions, the survey attempts to gain a broader understanding of handheld mobile computing's impact on, and implications for, the services provided by academic libraries.FindingsA total of 58.4 percent of respondents who own a web‐enabled handheld device indicate that they would use small screen devices, such as PDAs or web‐enabled cell phones to search a library OPAC.Originality/valueThe increasing prevalence of handheld mobile computing devices such as PDAs and web‐enabled cell phones warrants investigation as to its impact on libraries. This study examines an academic library user population and the potential demand for using the library's catalog with handheld mobile computing devices

This research focuses on what users know about search engine optimization (SEO) and how well they can identify results that have potentially been influenced by SEO. We conducted an online survey with a sample representative of the German online population (N = 2,012). We found that 43% of users assume a better ranking can be achieved without paying money to Google. This is in stark contrast to the possibility of influence through paid advertisements, which 79% of internet users are aware of. However, only 29.2% know how ads differ from organic results. The term ‘search engine optimization’ is known to 8.9% of users but 14.5% can correctly name at least one SEO tactic. Success in labelling results that can be influenced through SEO varies by search engine result page (SERP) complexity and devices: participants achieved higher success rates on SERPs with simple structures than on the more complex SERPs. SEO results were identified better on the small screen than on the large screen. 59.2% assumed that SEO has a (very) strong impact on rankings. SEO is more often perceived as positive (75.2%) than negative (68.4%). The insights from this study have implications for search engine providers, regulators, and information literacy.

Wes Britton'sSpy Television(2004) was an overview of espionage on the small screen from 1951 to 2002. HisBeyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film(2004) wove spy literature, movies, radio, comics, and other popular media together with what the public knew about actual espionage to show the interrelationships between genres and approaches in the past century.Onscreen and Undercover, the last book in Britton's Spy Trilogy, provides a history of spies on the large screen, with an emphasis on the stories these films present. Since the days of the silent documentary short, spying has been a staple of the movie business. It has been the subject of thrillers, melodramas, political films, romances, and endless parodies as well. But despite the developing mistrust of the spy as a figure of hope and good works, the variable relationship between real spying and screen spying over the past 100 years sheds light on how we live, what we fear, who we admire, and what we want our culture—and our world—to become. Onscreen and Undercoverdescribes now forgotten trends, traces surprising themes, and spotlights the major contributions of directors, actors, and other American and English artists. The focus is on movies, on and off camera. In a 1989 National Public Radio interview, famed author John Le Carre said a spy must be entertaining. Spies have to interest potential sources, and be able to draw people in to succeed in recruiting informants. In that spirit, Wes Britton now offersOnscreen and Undercover.

Nowadays several Computer-Aided Software Engineering environments exploit Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques in order to generate a single user interface for a given computing platform or multi-platform user interfaces for several computing platforms simultaneously. Therefore, there is a need to assess the usability of those generated user interfaces, either taken in isolation or compared to each other. This paper describes an MDE approach that generates multi-platform graphical user interfaces (e.g., desktop, web) that will be subject to an exploratory controlled experiment. The usability of user interfaces generated for the two mentioned platforms and used on multiple display devices (i.e., standard size, large, and small screens) has been examined in terms of satisfaction, effectiveness and efficiency. An experiment with a factorial design for repeated measures was conducted for 31 participants, i.e., postgraduate students and professors selected by convenience sampling. The data were collected with the help of questionnaires and forms and were analyzed using parametric and non-parametric tests such as ANOVA with repeated measures and Friedman's test, respectively. Efficiency was significantly better in large screens than in small ones as well as in the desktop platform rather than in the web platform, with a confidence level of 95%. The experiment also suggests that satisfaction tends to be better in standard size screens than in small ones. The results suggest that the tested MDE approach should incorporate enhancements in its multi-device/platform user interface generation process in order to improve its generated usability.

Phase measurement deflectometry (PMD) is an excellent method for high-precision optical surface measurement; through the simple system structure, accuracy comparable to that of interference methods can be realized. The key of PMD is to solve the ambiguity between the surface shape and normal vector. Considering all kinds of methods, the binocular PMD method is undoubtedly a method with a very simple system structure and can be easily applied to complex surfaces, such as free-form surfaces. However, this method relies on a large screen with high accuracy, which not only increases the weight of the system, but also reduces the flexibility of the system, and manufacturing errors in the large-size screen can easily become error sources. In this Letter, we have made some improvements based on the traditional binocular PMD. At first, we try to replace the large screen with two small screens to increase the flexibility and accuracy of the system. Further, we replace one small screen with a single point to simplify the system structure. Experiments show that the proposed methods not only improve the system flexibility and reduce the complexity, but can also achieve high measurement accuracy.

The visualization of comic images on a small screen is a difficult problem as the image is too large to be displayed on the screen and we do not know which areas and in which order the users want to see the image. The basic solution for the user is to look at the image in full screen without being able to see the details, or to zoom and scroll through the image, which can be quite inconvenient if the interactions have to often be repeated. Our idea is to use an eye tracker to record where the users reading a comic on paper books or large screens are looking at, to reproduce their reading behaviors with a comic visualization system and guide the users using a smaller screen through the comic.

TELEMODE – A Proposal towards Technology Enhanced Learning, Engineered with MObile DEvices

The discussion of mobile multimedia broadcasting technologies and service implementation in this chapter is limited to the broadcasting network based scheme can be received by portable or hand-held devices with a small screen. Similar to DTTB systems, digital mobile multimedia broadcasting systems are designed for high-data-throughput (to support multiple low-data-rate services) transmission through wireless channels (VHF/UHF bands in terrestrial, S- or L-band for satellite networks). The chapter summarizes the features of DVB-H, Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC)-M/H, China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB), and the new released DVB Next Generation Broadcasting System to Handheld (NGH) standards with the focus on the technical merits of reliable transmission under wireless, mobile environment and the robust reception using the portable or hand-held devices. ATSC-Mobile/Handheld (ATSC-M/H) is the standard for the DTV mobile transmission developed by the ATSC in 2007. The ATSC-M/H system shares the same RF channel of the traditional ATSC broadcast services.

For decades, the Western film has been considered a dying breed of cinema, yet filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to Ethan and Joel Coen find new ways to reinvigorate the genre. As Westerns continue to be produced for contemporary audiences, scholars have taken a renewed interest in the relevance of this enduring genre. In Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained, Lee Broughton has compiled a wide-ranging collection of essays that look at various forms of the genre, on both the large and small screen. Contributors to this volume consider themes and subgenres, celebrities and authors, recent idiosyncratic engagements with the genre, and the international Western. These essays also explore issues of race and gender in the various films discussed as well as within the film genre as a whole. Among the films and television programs discussed in this volume are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford; Django Kill; Justified; Meek’s Cutoff; Tears of the Black Tiger; Appaloosa; The Frozen Limits; and Red Harvest.Featuring a diverse selection of chapters that represent current thinking on the Western. Critical Perspectives on the Western will appeal to fans of the genre, film students, and scholars alike.

Enigmatic and Dynamic Edward R. Schmidtke Stanley Baker: A Life in Film. Robert Shail. University of Wales Press, 2008. 160 pages; $35.00. Books and documentaries that treat the careers of actors without offering intimate glimpses into their personal lives often run the risk of becoming stale and dimensionally tame. Not so for the latest literary effort of Robert Shail, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wales, who has managed to neatly and captivatingly distill the essence of the enigmatic and dynamic actor Stanley Baker in this, his second book. Tightly packed within 147 lively and well-written pages, Stanley Baker: A Life in Film offers a critical examination of the actor's substantial contributions to popular culture via the large and small screens. In a career that began in childhood and spanned three-plus decades, Baker—who was knighted in 1976 just prior to his death from lung cancer—struck out on his own in 1959, taking charge of his destiny as an actor rather than suffering the vagaries of production studios in finding interesting and financially rewarding projects, both of which, according to Shail, were Baker's personal criteria for accepting screen work. A swaggering, working class hero who drew himself out of what most would consider an impoverished upbringing while eschewing a career similar to that of his disabled mine laborer father, Baker never lost sight of his Welsh roots, returning often to his childhood home in the Rhondda valley to reconnect with "his people." It is from within this social context that Baker's trademark bold and unassuming demeanor, both off and on the screen, was forged. Baker's absence of affectations and disarming straightforwardness resonated with Americans in the 1960s, but, as Shail aptly comments, "he was also able to suggest a vulnerability and complexity which made [his] masculinity more compelling and revealing." Paving the way forward for actors such as Sean Connery and Michael Cain, Baker used his status as an outsider to garner the critical acclaim of the movie going public in the U.K., especially those from the working class, who viewed Baker as their filmic hero and, undoubtedly, saw a little bit of themselves in his on-screen personas. [End Page 82] Stanley Baker started his film career at the tender age of 15, during a chance meeting with director Sergei Nolbandov, who was scouting locations in Wales for a remote village in which to shoot Undercover, a 1943 war film. Though his schoolmates found their career in the local mines, Baker became an actor after several auditions, having been hired for the film by Michael Balcon's Ealing production company. Traveling to London by train and living in a hotel during filming, Baker fell asleep to the sonorous sounds of the blitz storming just outside his room. Though Undercover played to chilly reviews, Baker's career nonetheless took flight. Following a two and a half year stint in military service, he was selected for the role of Lieutenant Bennett in The Cruel Sea (1953) allowing Baker to apply his wartime experience to his craft. Several films were followed in quick succession, most notably The Tell-Tale Heart, (1953) Hell Below Zero, (1954) and his villainous role in Helen of Troy (1956). Shail lends his acute sense of detail to critical analyses of Baker's diverse talents, noting his early typecasting as a tough, merciless, and driven character, an image cultivated by the popular press that would ultimately provide him with the means to support "a wife, twins, a large house in Wimbledon, and a Jaguar" according to a vintage interview with Baker from the London Evening Standard. An in-depth treatment of the historic challenges issued to the movie industry by the relatively new medium of television offers a nod to the introduction of Warnercolor and Cinemascope, two format changes made by the cinema industry to enhance the movie going public's experience while simultaneously attempting to stave off the negative effects that television brought to bear on box office receipts, a real concern to all in the film industry during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Baker's critical transition from actor to producer/actor is thoroughly...