Abstract
As the social character of the Web grows stronger, online multimedia resources become more tangled, exhibiting multiple and complex relationships. Often, these relationships are not easily spotted by search engines because they are not explicit. Still, when searching for content, users would certainly appreciate to receive results indicating all resources that are somehow related to their topic of interest without having to explicitly request for it. In spite of this trend, current technology for declaring and describing resources on the Internet as well as their inter-relationships is very much fragmented and the most commonly used standards, such as HTML, do not offer adequate functionality. While the goal of the MPEG-21 standard is to provide an all encompassing, universal and standard way to perform the declaration of digital resources, the work being developed in the IST CONVERGENCE project has shown that this standard, (specifically its part 3, Digital Item Identification), also has a limited ability to specify relationships between digital resources. This document presents a proposed extension to MPEG-21 Digital Item Identification, which enables it to support a uniform, semantically expressive and precise specification of the relationships between MPEG-21 digital items, rendering it a much more effective tool for a ubiquitous representation and interconnection of digital resources. © 2011 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
This article presents a platform designed for context-aware and digital rights management-enabled content adaptation based on MPEG-21's Digital Item Adaptation scheme and a unique profiling approach.

Abstract
The goal of this paper is to report on the design of a novel content-centric future Internet platform that can support added value services incorporating mobility, context awareness and enhanced security and privacy. We present the proposed platform together with a use case study, dealing with the provision of added-value health services, consisting in the safe and accurate management of medicine prescriptions. Both the design of the platform and the use case are the results of work performed in the context of the European Research project Convergence [1]. © 2011 IIMC.

Abstract
ATM, the Asynchronous Transfer Mode cell-based switching technique, was finally recognized in 1992 by the relevant International standardization entities, as the switching and multiplexing solution for implementing the future Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (B-ISDN). Because of its service-independent characteristics. ATM will provide B-ISDN with capabilities for integrated support of a wide range of services in a very flexible and efficient way. Transmission of multimedia services in the B-ISDN is currently being addressed by several Study Groups of ITU-T and ETSI. In addition to identifying the required network capabilities and to defining the functional model of multimedia services in the B-ISDN, the possible alternatives for performing the multiplexing operation of the different components of a multimedia application are also being evaluated. The MPEG2 standard (ISO/IEC 13818), which is now in its final phase of specification, is being accepted worldwide as the appropriate coding technique to implement almost all types of video applications and multimedia services involving good-quality fullmotion video. It seems therefore important to evaluate the alternatives for performing the multiplexing operation of the elementary components of an MPEG2-based multimedia application over ATM networks. In fact, different Study Groups of both ITU-T and ETSI, as well as the ATM Forum, are now evaluating alternatives for. mapping MPEG2 streams into ATM cells.

Abstract
This paper proposes a framework for a virtual classroom application based on a Virtual Collaboration System (VCS), which is being developed under the VISNET II Network of Excellence (NoE)1, and discusses adaptation technologies that enable seamless access to classroom sessions while intellectual property and digital rights are managed. The proposed virtual classroom framework enables academic institutions to conduct their collaborative lecture series, to which registered students will be able to attend remotely and interactively over the Internet. Furthermore, the general public may also follow the classroom sessions under certain restrictions imposed by the participating institutions. In order to facilitate seamless access to a heterogeneous audience that is composed of users with various preferences and privileges accessing the classroom sessions over different network infrastructures and using terminal devices with diverse capabilities, context-aware content adaptation is required to meet constraints imposed by the usage context and enhance the quality of the user experience. Thus, this paper describes the concepts and functionalities of a context-aware content adaptation platform that suits the requirements of such multimedia application scenarios. This platform is able to consume low-level contextual information to infer higher-level contexts, and thus decide the need for and type of adaptation operations to be performed upon the content. In this way, it is aimed to meet usage constraints while also satisfying restrictions imposed by the Digital Rights Management (DRM) to govern the use of protected content.