Digital signage networks are a newly emerging form of public space electronic media technology that offer significant advantages over traditional signage and enables a narrowcasting model. Due in part to the decreasing price of gas plasma, and other display technologies, digital signage networks are now rapidly growing in popularity and prevalence. Augmenting digital signage with wireless LAN technology enhances the narrowcasting model by enabling consumers to interact with the narrowcaster to obtain additional information from particular narrowcasters, e.g., advertisers, of interest. When explicitly permitted by the consumer, this enables the narrowcaster to obtain more information about the consumer. We describe the cost reduction and increased effectiveness of advertising that is displayed and managed using digital signage networks as opposed to traditional signage. We present an enhanced narrowcasting model created by augmenting the network with wireless LAN technology. We describe several scenarios where a system based on the model enables novel interaction between the narrowcaster and consumer. These features provide new support for mobile commerce. We then propose an architecture that implements the enhanced narrowcasting model that we have implemented in our system prototype.

Digital signage networks are a newly emerging form of multimedia advertising technology that is rapidly growing in popularity but has received little attention in multimedia literature. In this paper we motivate the cost reduction and increased effectiveness of advertising that is displayed and managed using digital signage networks as opposed to traditional signage. As an example, we describe a method for customizing advertising messages for particular demographics in different locations using dynamically configurable multimedia. We describe a partially automated intermediary, namely the digital signage exchange, which forms a virtual marketplace for the purchase and sale of multimedia advertising on the digital signage network.

Since the late 1990's significant work has been performed towards developing advertising and marketing technologies based on the Internet. Many of these techniques promise to allow organizations to market to customer segments with a size of one, i.e., provide tailored advertising and customer service to each individual customer. Both the Internet, and also the customer's workstation or PDA, are utilized for banner advertisements, email marketing, pop-up browser windows and mechanisms for state retention to simplify the user's buying experience (cookies).

Many computer science departments offer a course that features a software development project where students work as part of a team. An objective of this type of course is to simulate an industrial development environment thereby allowing students to experience some of the dynamics that they will encounter after completion of their study. The accuracy of the simulation can be improved, and hence the educational experienced enhanced, by the incorporation of industry participation directly into the course. Difficulties in organising and administering the project in the context of industry participation can occur in practice, which serve to deter the incorporation. This paper motivates industry participation in a team project course by identifying the potential benefits for the students, some of which are implicit, and also those for the industry sponsor, lecturer and host academic institution. A methodology for incorporating industry participation, which can be employed to overcome the difficulties in achieving these benefits, is presented. A model for administering a team project course in the context of industrial participation, which includes the use of an intranet as an enabling technology, is also described. The methodology and model, which have been employed successfully, can be utilised to improve the quality of the educational experience resulting from team project software development courses.

Most contemporary fourth-generation languages (4GL) are tightly coupled with the database server, and other subsystems, that are provided by the vendor. As a result organizations that wish to change database vendors are typically forced to rewrite their applications using the new vendor's 4GL. The anticipated cost of this redevelopment can deter an organization from changing vendors, hence denying it the benefits that would otherwise result, e.g., the exploitation of more sophisticated database server technology. If tools existed that could reduce the rewriting effort, the large upfront cost of migrating the organization's applications would also be reduced, which could make the transition economically feasible. The ITOC project is part of a large collaborative research initiative between the Centre for Software Maintenance at the University of Queensland and Oracle Corporation. The objective of this project is to design and implement a tool that automatically recovers both the application structure and the static schema definition of 4GL information system applications. These recovered system components are transformed into constructs that populate Oracle's Designer 2000 CASE repository. An essential component of the ITOC process is to determine the relationships between different columns in the database and between references to those columns and fields that appear within the user interface. This in turn requires analysis of data flow between variables in the 4GL programs. While data flow analysis has been applied in many applications, for example, code optimization and program slicing, this paper presents the results of using data flow analysis in the construction of a novel design recovery tool for 4GL-based information.

Most contemporary fourth generation languages (4GL) are tightly coupled with the database, and other subsystems, that are provided by the vendor. As a result, organisations that wish to change database vendors are typically forced to rewrite their applications using the new vendor's 4GL. The anticipated cost of this redevelopment can deter an organisation from changing vendors, hence denying it the benefits that would otherwise result, e.g., the exploitation of more sophisticated database technology. If software reengineering tools existed that could reduce the rewriting effort, the large upfront cost of migrating the organisation's applications would also be reduced, which could make the shift economically feasible. The paper describes several approaches for migrating 4GL based information system applications. These approaches were developed as part of an industry sponsored research project to construct a "real world" software re-engineering toolset. Semantic issues identified during the preliminary design of the toolset are addressed. These issues are instantiated using examples from the project. The application of knowledge based software re-engineering technology, which facilitates the implementation of the toolset, is also described.

Active database systems react to pre-defined situations automatically without user intervention.The system to detect events and evaluate conditions for a prototype active deductaue database.