http://hdl.handle.net/10197/855 2013-06-19T17:14:50Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4363 The Demonstration of the Reviewer's Assistant Dong, Ruihai; Schaal, Markus; O'Mahony, Michael P.; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry User generated reviews are now a familiar and valuable part of most e-commerce sites since high quality reviews are known to influence purchasing decisions. In this demonstration we describe work on the Reviewer's Assistant (RA), which is a recommendation system that is designed to help users to write better quality reviews. It does this by suggesting relevant topics that they may wish to discuss based on the product they are reviewing and the content of their review so far. ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys '12), Dublin, Ireland, 9-13 September, 2012 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4362 Bogtrotters in Space Carr, Dominic; Russell, Sean E.; Pete, Balazs; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem This is the fourth year in which a team from University College Dublin has participated in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest. This paper describes the system that was created to participate in the contest, along with observations of the team’s experiences in the contest. The system itself was built using the AF-TeleoReactive and AF-AgentSpeak agent programming languages running on the Agent Factory platform. Unlike in previous years where a hybrid control architecture was used, this year the system was implemented using only agent code and associated actions, sensors, modules and platform services. In Proceedings of Programming Multi-Agent Systems, 00, 2012 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3913 A Case Study of Collaboration and Reputation in Social Web Search. McNally, Kevin; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Coyle, Maurice; Briggs, Peter; Smyth, Barry Although collaborative searching is not supported by mainstream search engines, recent research has high- lighted the inherently collaborative nature of many web search tasks. In this paper, we describe HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com), a collaborative web search framework that is designed to complement mainstream search engines. At search time, HeyStaks learns from the search activities of other users and leverages this information to generate recommendations based on results that others have found relevant for similar searches. The key contribution of this paper is to extend the HeyStaks social search model by considering the search expertise, or reputation, of HeyStaks users and using this information to enhance the result recommendation process. In particular, we propose a reputation model for HeyStaks users that utilises the implicit collaboration events that take place between users as recommendations are made and selected. We describe a live-user trial of HeyStaks that demonstrates the relevance of its core recommendations and the ability of the reputation model to further improve recommendation quality. Our findings indicate that incorporating reputation into the recommendation process further improves the relevance of HeyStaks recommendations by up to 40%. 2011-10-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3912 Retail in the Digital City Keegan, Stephen; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); O'Grady, Michael J. Conventional high street retailers face a multitude of challenges if they are to survive and thrive. Some of these difficulties arise from structural and economic issues; others may be sociological and demographic. However, to thrive, retailers must be perceived as being competitive, and must adopt innovative and invigorating strategies to maximise the potential of their situations while offsetting the limitations. In this paper, it is proposed that a judicious combination of low-cost Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) could enable small retailers harness the benefits  of  the  information society and provide services congruent with the digital city concept. As an illustration of the issues involved, pertinent results from a systematic end-user evaluation of Easishop are discussed. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3911 The Ambient Digital Library O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) Conventional digital libraries increasingly support remote access from mobile devices. However, the archetypical mobile user differs from the conventional user in a number of aspects; of these the most important is context. Synonymous with mobile computing is the context concept, and factoring the availability of select contextual elements into the design of digital libraries offers significant opportunities for adapting and personalising services for the mobile computing community. This paper proposes the Ambient Digital Library as a construct for integrating digital content, contextual parameters and user models. In this way, a digital library may be made more accessible to a broader category of mobile user. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3910 Introducing social networks and brain computer interaction Bourke, Steven; Healy, Graham; Smeaton, Alan F.; Smyth, Barry It is well known that the brain generates electrical patterns of activity in response to visual stimuli such as faces or any- thing that captures attention in a significant way. Signals of this type can be detected using an EEG (Electroencephalograph) system where we attach electrodes to the scalp and we amplify the detected signals and use a computer to capture them in real time. In this paper we examine the role that automatic sensing of brain activity may have on how users interact with interactive applications like Facebook. This offers a new opportunity for implicit feedback into such systems and in our work we focus on social networking applications. We demonstrate some of these implicit responses with experimental data captured while a user searched Facebook for photos of friends while being connected to an EEG. Finally, we discuss the implications that this kind of automatic implicit feedback may have on future design of such systems. iHCI 2012: Irish Human Computer Interaction Conference 2012, Galway, June 20 - 21 2012-06-21T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3874 Automatic Detection of Tackles in Elite Level Rugby Union Kelly, Daniel; Coughlan, Garrett; Green, Brian; Caulfield, Brian Elite rugby union teams currently employ technology in order to monitor and evaluate the physical demands of training and games on their players. Tackling has been shown to be the most common cause of injury in rugby union (Fuller et al. (2007a), Garraway et al. (1999)). However, current player monitoring technology does not effectively evaluate player tackling measurements. Sensing devices, currently being used by elite rugby union teams, contain a GPS receiver and a 3-axis accelerometer. GPS has been utilized to measure player speed and distance. Accelerometers, on the other hand, have an under-utilized potential to analyse body impact and collisions. Presented at the IRFU Sports Medicine Conference: Injury Prevention in Rugby Union, May 17th-19th, 2012 in the AVIVA Stadium, Dublin 2012-05-17T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3790 A Self-adaptive Unifying Mechanism For Autonomous Energy Management In Wireless Sensor Networks Xu, Lina; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem; Murdoch, Olga 4th Workshop on Adaptive and Reconfigurable Embedded Systems APRES 2012. Beijing, China, April 16 2012 2012-04-16T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3788 Towards Holistic Activity Modeling and Behavioral Analyses Wan, Jie; O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) As the age profile of many societies continues to increase, supporting health, both mental and physical, is of increasing importance if independent living is to be maintained. Sensing and, ultimately, recognizing activities of daily living has been perceived as a prerequisite for detecting tasks that people avoid or find increasingly difficult to perform, as well as being indicators of certain illnesses. To date, extensive research efforts have been made on activity monitoring, recognition and assistance in indoor scenarios, frequently through smart home initiatives. However, the scenarios outside of the home have not received a similar degree of attention from the research community. This paper advocates a need for platforms that enable activity recognition in a range of environments, thus enabling the construction of more complex yet realistic activity models and behavior patterns. The design of a prototype supporting an integrated approach to sensor data capture and activity model construction is proposed. The application domain is that of dementia. 6th International workshop on Ubiquitous health and wellness (UbiHealth 2012), in the Pervasive 2012 Conference, Newcastle UK 2012-06-18T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3763 Sensor Web Interaction O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Muldoon, Conor; O'Grady, Michael J.; Collier, Rem; Murdoch, Olga; Carr, Dominic Ubiquitous sensing fuses the concepts of intelligent systems with ubiquitous computing in the development of novel sensor web applications, whereby the interaction of multiple disparate autonomous artefacts is a key requirement. In this paper, we present SIXTH, which is a middleware infrastructure for Ubiquitous Sensing that facilitates, and supports, the development and deployment of Sensor Web applications. SIXTH has been designed to be extensible, with provisions for user definable data retention policies, custom sensor data representations, and custom sensor node representations, whilst still providing a rich set of default behaviours. Within SIXTH, support is provided for the development and interaction of applications that incorporate both physical and cyber (virtual server side) sensors. With a view to supporting intelligent, in network, interaction policies, whereby sensor nodes must negotiate and coordinate their behaviour, the system has been designed to operate in conjunction with Agent Factory Micro Edition (AFME). AFME is a minimised footprint intelligent agent platform designed for resource constrained devices. It is based on the standard Agent Factory platform, which was developed for desktop machines, and is representative of a class of agent systems, which are referred to as Agent Oriented Programming frameworks. The paper discusses a ubiquitous mapping application that was developed using the middleware. 2012-04-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3760 Embedding Agents within Ambient Intelligent Applications O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem; Dragone, Mauro; O'Grady, Michael J.; Muldoon, Conor; De J. Montoya, Alcides This chapter reflects upon the challenges that confront the deployment of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) applications. Ambient Intelligence demands that everyday artefacts be imbued with intelligent reasoning capabilities together with the capacity for collaborative intelligent behaviour. Traditional ambient devices do not provide the requisite computational platform to support such requirements. With the ongoing developments of ubiquitous devices, however, the situation is changing. This chapter discusses a software stack, which supports the needs of ambient applications that incorporate embedded intelligence. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3759 Generating recommendations for consensus negotiation in group personalization services Salamó, Maria; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry There are increasingly many personalization services in ubiquitous computing environments that involve a group of users rather than individuals. Ubiquitous commerce is one example of these environments. Ubiquitous commerce research is highly related to recommender systems that have the ability to provide even the most tentative shoppers with compelling and timely item suggestions. When the recommendations are made for a group of users, new challenges and issues arise to provide compelling item suggestions. One of the challenges a group recommender system must cope with is the potentially conflicting preferences of multiple users when selecting items for recommendation. In this paper we focus on how individual user models can be aggregated to reach a consensus on recommendations. We describe and evaluate nine different consensus strategies and analyze them to highlight the benefits of group recommendation using live-user preference data. Moreover, we show that the performance is significantly different among strategies. 2012-06-17T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3758 Automatic detection of collisions in elite level rugby union using a wearable sensing device Kelly, Daniel; Coughlan, Garrett; Green, Brian; Caulfield, Brian Elite rugby union teams currently employ the latest technology to monitor and evaluate the physical demands of training and games on their players. Tackling has been shown to be the most common cause of injury in rugby union, yet current player monitoring technology does not effectively evaluate player tackling measurements. Currently, to evaluate measurements specific to player tackles, a time-consuming manual analysis of player sensor data and video footage is required. The purpose of this work is to investigate tackle modeling techniques which can be utilised to automatically detect player tackles and collisions using sensing technology already being used by elite international and club level rugby union teams. This paper discusses issues relevant to automatic tackle analysis, describes a technique to detect tackles using sensing data and validates the technique by comparing automatically detected collisions to manually labeled collisions using data from elite club and international level players. The results of the validation show that the system is able to consistently identify collisions with very few false posi- tives and false negatives, achieving a recall and precision rating of 0.933 and 0.958, respectively. The aim is that the automatically detected tackles can provide coaching, medical and strength and conditioning staff with objective tackle-specific measurements, in real time, which can be used in injury prevention and rehabilitation strategies. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3757 Sensing the sensor web Wan, Jie; O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) The maturity of pervasive computing and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) enables the development of smart environments in many scenarios, including surveillance and environmental monitoring. Extensive research efforts are being undertaken in sensor perception, data capture, management and interpretation. Such developments are a prerequisite for paradigms such as pervasive sensing and crowd-sourcing services. For mobile users, the issues of dynamic sensor discovery, data interpretation and visualization must be addressed if such services are to be realized in practice. This paper explores the genesis of a generic framework for heterogeneous sensor access and data visualization in remote contexts. Paper presented at Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PERCOM Workshops) 2012, 19th March, Lugano, Switzerland 2012-03-19T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3756 Enabling Intelligence on a Wireless Sensor Network Platform O'Grady, Michael J.; Angove, Philip; Magnin, W; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); O'Flynn, Brendan; Barton, John; O'Mathuna, Cian Conventional Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) usually adopt a centralised approach to data processing and interpretation primarily due to the limited computation and energy resources available on sensor nodes. These constraints limits the potential of intelligent techniques to data analy- sis and such activities on the centralised host. In contrast, Intelligent WSNs (iWSNs) will be significantly more powerful thus enabling the harnessing of intelligent techniques for diverse purposes. One such purpose is the practical realisation of smart environments, and facilitating mobility and interaction with the inhabitants of such environments. As a step in this direction, this paper presents the design of an iWSN sensor node platform that enables the hosting of lightweight Artificial Intelligence (AI) frameworks whilst enabling the ubiquitous energy constraints be quantified, mitigated and managed. Paper presented at Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 10th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 28th of March, Salamanca, Spain 2012-03-08T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3755 Browsing the Sensor Web : Pervasive Access for Wide-area Wireless Sensor Networks Wan, Jie; O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Colakov, Todor Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are almost exclusively regarded as data gathering entities. Various sensed data elements are captured and routed back to a central server for processing, visualization and interpretation. However, it can be realistically conjectured that scenarios will increasingly emerge that demand a facility for ad-hoc interaction with individual sensor nodes. Moreover, such interaction will occur in the physical environment in close proximity to where the sensor node is physically located. In this paper, the need for in-situ ad-hoc interaction is motivated. A methodology for facilitating such interaction is presented, and the implementation of a sensor browser is described. Paper presented at Sensornets 2012, 1st International Conference on Sensor Networks, 24-26 February, 2012, Rome, Italy 2012-02-24T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3746 Mining the Real-Time Web: A Novel Approach to Product Recommendation Garcia Esparza, Sandra; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry Real-time web (RTW) services such as Twitter allow users to express their opinions and interests, often expressed in the form of short text messages providing abbreviated and highly personalized commentary in real-time. Although this RTW data is far from the structured data (movie ratings, product features, etc.) that is familiar to recommender systems research, it can contain useful consumer reviews on products, services and brands. This paper describes how Twitter-like short-form messages can be leveraged as a source of indexing and retrieval information for product recommendation. In particular, we describe how users and products can be represented from the terms used in their associated reviews. An evaluation performed on four different product datasets from the Blippr service shows the potential of this type of recommendation knowledge, and the experiments show that our proposed approach outperforms a more traditional collaborative-filtering based approach. 2012-05-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3662 Facilitating ubiquitous interaction using intelligent agents Campbell, Abraham G.; Collier, Rem; Dragone, Mauro; Gorgu, Levent; Holz, Thomas; O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Sassu, Antonella; Stafford, John W. Facilitating intuitive interaction is a prerequisite for the ubiquitous computing paradigm in all its manifestations. How to achieve such interaction in practice remains an open question. Such interfaces must be perceived as being intuitive across a variety of contexts, including those of the hosting devices. Indeed, the heterogeneity of the device population raises significant challenges. While individual devices and the interaction modalities supported by, each satisfy the requirements of individual domains, integrating diverse devices such that the user experiences is perceived as consistent and intuitive is problematic. This chapter discusses and illustrates how intelligent agents may be harnessed for integrating a range of diverse interface and interaction modalities such that the ubiquitous user interface concept may be validated. 2012-01-19T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3611 COPOLAN : non-invasive occupancy profiling for preliminary assessment of HVAC fixed timing strategies Schoofs, Anthony; Delaney, Declan T.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Ruzzelli, Antonio G. Nowadays, control of heating, cooling and ventilation equipment operation is mainly achieved via timers with fixed setback schedules, configured using experience and standard models of space occupancy. Applying generic timing strategies is however rarely optimal. Sensor-based systems offer a solution for dynamic control of equipment operation using real-time space occupancy input, but both deployment time and cost constraints hinder their integration if savings and return on investment are uncertain. This work introduces COPOLAN, a tool that correlates power consumption pat- terns and computers’ VLAN activity. Utilising computers’ VLAN activity auditing is key to obtain the power state of employees’ computer equipment over time, a prime indicator of employees’ presence within a building. At low cost and non-invasively, COPOLAN uncovers misalignment and pro- duces ground for (1) determining opportunities of improv- ing HVAC timing strategies and (2) helping decision making prior to integrating new equipment such as sensor-based systems. COPOLAN has been experimented on within a University department, where misalignment between power consumption and space occupancy patterns have highlighted 10 % energy saving opportunities. BuildSys 2011, 3rd ACM Workshop On Embedded Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficiency In Buildings, Seattle, USA, 1 November 2011 2011-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3547 Debugging low-power and lossy wireless networks : a survey Schoofs, Anthony; Ruzzelli, Antonio G.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) Recent economic and technical advances in wireless communication have allowed the deployment of low-power and lossy wireless networks—LowPANs, potentially comprised of a large number of nodes to serve new types of applications. However, the resource-constrained nature of microsensor platforms together with the unreliability and low-bandwidth of low-power and lossy wireless links have increased the risk and occurrence of network failures. Unlike with traditional wireless networks and controlled pre-deployment simulations and laboratory setups, likely events such as node crashes, inefficient networking and environmental interferences can potentially freeze a network post deployment. A survey of existing tools and related work in debugging LowPANs is presented, to provide a comprehensive state of the art of debugging tools and techniques. We divide debugging tools in two categories, pre-deployment tools and post-deployment tools, and evaluate their performance and limitations. From this study, we discuss the challenges in debugging LowPANs, providing the main issues and requirements that LowPANs’ specific constraints impose on debugging tools, to help developers choose the appropriate tool for specific needs. 2011-03-24T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3510 Combining sensor selection with routing and scheduling in wireless sensor networks Muldoon, Conor; Trigoni, Niki; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) In wireless sensor networks, determining the set of locations to activate sensors, such that the amount of information received is maximised, is an important task. With the model driven approach to sensor networks, a considerable amount of research has been conducted into the sensor selection problem, whereby informative locations to activate sensors are determined through the use of Gaussian Processes. Current approaches to sensor selection, however, do not take bandwidth constraints into consideration. When bandwidth is limited, the amount of time required to realise a given set of communication requests, in terms of rout- ing and scheduling, must be accounted for. Traditionally, in wireless sensor networks, sensor selection, routing, and scheduling are considered separately. These three processes, however, are highly coupled and the overall utility of the data collection process, in terms of the amount of information it produces, can be improved by integrating them. In this paper, we present two approaches to combining routing, scheduling, and sensor selection such that they inform each other so as to improve the performance of the network in the bandwidth limited case. Paper presented at the 8th International Workshop on Data Management for Sensor Networks (DMSN’11)‚ held in conjunction with the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB)‚ Seattle, USA, 29 August 2011 2011-08-29T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3509 A multi-criteria evaluation of a user generated content based recommender system Garcia Esparza, Sandra; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry The Social Web provides new and exciting sources of information that may be used by recommender systems as a complementary source of recommendation knowledge. For example, User-Generated Content, such as reviews, tags, comments, tweets etc. can provide a useful source of item information and user preference data, if a clear signal can be extracted from the inevitable noise that exists within these sources. In previous work we explored this idea, mining term-based recommendation knowledge from user reviews, to develop a recommender that compares favourably to conventional collaborative-filtering style techniques across a range of product types. However, this previous work focused solely on recommendation accuracy and it is now well accepted in the literature that accuracy alone tells just part of the recommendation story. For example, for many, the promise of recommender systems lies in their ability to surprise with novel recommendations for less popular items that users might otherwise miss. This makes for a riskier recommendation prospect, of course, but it could greatly enhance the practical value of recommender systems to end-users. In this paper we analyse our User-Generated Content (UGC) approach to recommendation using metrics such as novelty, diversity, and coverage and demonstrate superior performance, when compared to conventional user-based and item- based collaborative filtering techniques, while highlighting a number of interesting performance trade-offs. Presented at the 3rd Workshop on Recommender Systems and the Social Web (RSWEB-11), 5th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, Chicago, IL, USA, 23-27 October 2011 2011-10-23T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3508 Power to the people : exploring neighbourhood formations in social recommender systems Bourke, Steven; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry The explosive growth of online social networks in recent times has presented a powerful source of information to be utilised in personalised recommendations. Unsurprisingly there has already been a large body of work completed in the recommender system field to incorporate this social in- formation into the recommendation process. In this paper we examine the practice of leveraging a user’s social graph in order to generate recommendations. Using various neighbourhood selection strategies, we examine the user satisfaction and the level of perceived trust in the recommendations received. Paper presented at RecSys-11, Chicago IL, USA, October 23-27, 2011 2011-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3507 Models of web page reputation in social search McNally, Kevin; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry To date web search has been a solitary experience for the end-user, despite the fact that recent studies highlight the potential for collaboration that is inherent in many search tasks and scenarios. As a result, researchers have begun to explore the potential for a more collaborative approach to web search, one in which the search actions of other users can influence the results returned. In this context, the expertise of other users plays an important role when it comes to ensuring the quality of recommendations that arise from their actions. The reputation of these users is important in collaborative and social search tasks, much as relevance is vital in conventional web search. In this paper we examine this concept of reputation in collaborative and social search contexts. We describe a number of different reputation models and evaluate them in the context of a particular social search service. Our results highlight the potential for reputation to improve the quality of recommendations that arise from the activities of other searchers. Paper presented at the Third IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom2011), MIT, Boston, USA, 9-11 October 2011 2011-10-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3506 Pervasive computing technologies for healthcare O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); O'Donoghue, John The conference series on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare is one of the leading fora for research dissemination in this space. In May 2011, the most recent event took place in Ireland. A brief overview of the conference is now presented. 2011-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3505 Real-time recognition and profiling of appliances through a single electricity sensor Ruzzelli, Antonio G.; Nicolas, C.; Schoofs, Anthony; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) Sensing, monitoring and actuating systems are expected to play a key role in reducing buildings overall energy consumption. Leveraging sensor systems to support energy efficiency in buildings poses novel research challenges in monitoring space usage, controlling devices, interfacing with smart energy meters and communicating with the energy grid. In the attempt of reducing electricity consumption in buildings, identifying individual sources of energy consumption is key to generate energy awareness and improve efficiency of available energy resources usage. Previous work studied several non-intrusive load monitoring techniques to classify appliances; however, the literature lacks of an comprehensive system that can be easily installed in existing buildings to empower users profiling, benchmarking and recognizing loads in real-time. This has been a major reason holding back the practice adoption of load monitoring techniques. In this paper we present RECAP: RECognition of electrical Appliances and Profiling in real-time. RECAP uses a single wireless energy monitoring sensor easily clipped to the main electrical unit. The energy monitoring unit transmits energy data wirelessly to a local machine for data processing and storage. The RECAP system consists of three parts: (1) Guiding the user for profiling electrical appliances within premises and generating a database of unique appliance signatures; (2) Using those signatures to train an artificial neural network that is then employed to recognize appliance activities (3) Providing a Load descriptor to allow peer appliance benchmarking. RECAP addresses the need of an integrated and intuitive tool to empower building owners with energy awareness. Enabling real-time appliance recognition is a stepping-stone towards reducing energy consumption and allowing a number of major applications including load-shifting techniques, energy expenditure breakdown per appliance, detection of power hungry and faulty appliances, and recognition of occupant activity. This paper describes the system design and performance evaluation in domestic environment. Paper presented at Sensor Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON), 2010 7th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, 21-25 June, 2010 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3480 Agent factory : a framework for prototyping logic-based AOP languages Russell, Sean E.; Jordan, Howell; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of AOP languages. While these can mostly be characterized as logic-oriented languages that map sit- uations to courses of action, they are based on a variety of concepts, resulting in obvious differences in syntax and semantics. Less obviously, the development tools and infrastructure - such as environment integration, reuse mechanisms, debugging, and IDE integration - surrounding these languages also vary widely. Two drawbacks of this diversity are: a perceived lack of transferability of knowledge and expertise between languages; and a potential obscuring of the fundamental conceptual differences between languages. These drawbacks can impact on both the languages’ uptake and comparability. In this paper, we present a Common Language Framework that has emerged out of ongoing work on AOP languages that have been deployed through Agent Factory. This framework consists of a set of pre-written components for building agent interpreters, together with a set of tools that can be easily adapted to different AOP languages. Through this framework we have been able to rapidly prototype a range of different AOP languages, one of which is presented as a case study in this paper. Presented at the 9th German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies, Berlin, Germany, 6-7 October 2011 2011-10-06T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3479 From bogtrotting to herding : a UCD perspective Russell, Sean E.; Carr, Dominic; Dragone, Mauro; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem This is the third year in which a team from University College Dublin has participated in the Multi Agent Contest. This paper describes the system that was created to participate in the contest, along with observations of the team’s experiences in the contest. The system itself was built using the AF-TeleoReactive and AF-AgentSpeak agent programming languages running on the Agent Factory platform. A hybrid control architecture inspired by the SoSAA strategy aided in the separation of concerns between low-level behaviours (such as movement and obstacle evasion) and higher-level planning and strategy. 2011-06-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3478 Evaluating user reputation in collaborative web search McNally, Kevin; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry Often today’s recommender systems look to past user activity in order to influence future recommendations. In the case of social web search, employing collaborative recommendation techniques allows for personalization of search results. If recommendations arise from past user activity, the expertise of those users driving the recommendation process can play an important role when it comes to ensuring recommendation quality. Hence the reputation of users is important in collaborative and social search tasks, in addition to result relevance as traditionally considered in web search. In this paper we explore this concept of reputation; specifically, investigating how reputation can enhance the recommendation engine at the core of the HeyStaks social search utility. We evaluate a number of different reputation models in the context of the HeyStaks system, and demonstrate how incorporating reputation into the recommendation process can enhance the relevance of results recommended by HeyStaks. Presented at the 3rd Workshop on Recommender Systems and the Social Web (RSWEB-11), 5th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, Chicago, IL, USA, 23-27 October 2011. 2011-10-23T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3477 Finding useful users on twitter : twittomender the followee recommender Hannon, John; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry This paper examines an application for finding pertinent friends (followees) on Twitter. Whilst Twitter provides a great basis for receiving information, we believe a potential downfall lies in the lack of an effective way in which users of Twitter can find other Twitter users to follow. We apply several recommendation techniques to build a followee recommender for Twitter. We evaluate a variety of different recommendation strategies, using real-user data, to demonstrate the potential for this recommender system to correctly identify and promote interesting users who are worth following. Presented at the 33rd European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR-11), DCU, Dublin, Ireland, April, 18-21, 2011 2011-04-21T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3471 Recommending case bases : applications in social web search Saaya, Zurina; Smyth, Barry; Coyle, Maurice; Briggs, Peter For the main part, when it comes to questions of retrieval, the focus of CBR research has been on the retrieval of cases from a repository of experience knowledge or case base. In this paper we consider a complementary retrieval issue, namely the retrieval of case bases themselves in scenarios where experience may be distributed across multiple case repositories. We motivate this problem with reference to a deployed social web search service called HeyStaks, which is based on the availability of multiple repositories of shared search knowledge, known as staks, and which is fully integrated into mainstream search engines in order to provide a more collaborative search experience. We describe the case base retrieval problem in the context of HeyStaks, propose a number of case base retrieval strategies, and evaluate them using real-user data from recent deployments. Paper presented at the International Conference on Case Based Reasoning (ICCBR-11), Greenwich, London, UK, 12-15 September, 2011 2011-09-15T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3470 SimpleFlow : enhancing gestural interaction with gesture prediction, abbreviation and autocompletion Bennett, Mike; McCarthy, Kevin; O'Modhrain, Sile; Smyth, Barry Gestural interfaces are now a familiar mode of user interaction and gestural input is an important part of the way that users can interact with such interfaces. However, entering gestures accurately and efficiently can be challenging. In this paper we present two styles of visual gesture autocompletion for 2D predictive gesture entry. Both styles enable users to abbreviate gestures. We experimentally evaluate and compare both styles of visual autocompletion against each other and against non-predictive gesture entry. The best perform- ing visual autocompletion is referred to as SimpleFlow. Our findings establish that users of SimpleFlow take significant advantage of gesture autocompletion by entering partial gestures rather than whole gestures. Compared to non- predictive gesture entry, users enter partial gestures that are 41% shorter than the complete gestures, while simultaneously improving the accuracy (+13%, from 68% to 81%) and speed (+10%) of their gesture input. The results provide insights into why SimpleFlow leads to significantly enhanced performance, while showing how predictive gestures with simple visual autocompletion impacts upon the gesture abbreviation, accuracy, speed and cognitive load of 2D predictive gesture entry. Paper presented at Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2011, 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011 2011-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3457 Agent Factory: a framework for prototyping logic-based AOP languages Russell, Sean; Jordan, Howell; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Collier, Rem Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of AOP languages. While these can mostly be characterized as logic-oriented languages that map situations to courses of action, they are based on a variety of concepts, resulting in obvious differences in syntax and semantics. Less obviously, the development tools and infrastructure - such as environment integration, reuse mechanisms, debugging, and IDE integration surrounding these languages also vary widely. Two drawbacks of this diversity are: a perceived lack of transferability of knowledge and expertise between languages; and a potential obscuring of the fundamental conceptual differences between languages. These drawbacks can impact on both the languages’ uptake and comparability. In this paper, we present a Common Language Framework that has emerged out of ongoing work on AOP languages that have been deployed through Agent Factory. This framework consists of a set of pre-written components for building agent interpreters, together with a set of tools that can be easily adapted to different AOP languages. Through this framework we have been able to rapidly prototype a range of different AOP languages, one of which is presented as a case study in this paper. Paper presented at MATES 2011, the 9th German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies October, 6th-7th, 2011. Berlin, Germany 2011-10-06T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3453 Further experiments in micro-blog categorization Garcia Esparza, Sandra; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry Since the creation of Twitter in 2008, micro-blogging services have received a lot of attention among users who wish to share news items, opinions and information with friends and colleagues. However, these services typically provide for only limited organisation of content, with the main ranking criterion being post time with perhaps some basic message filtering accommodated. Given the substantial and increasing volume of posts that micro-blogging services attract, there is a clear need to assist users when it comes to effectively consuming this content. In this regard, categorisation offers one approach to organise content by grouping related messages together. In this paper we present a study in the recommendation of categories for short-form messages in order to provide for better search and message filtering. In particular, we present an index-based approach where real-time web data can be used as a source of knowledge for category recommendation. Further, we evaluate our approach on two different micro-blogging datasets and results show that micro-blog messages in sufficient quantities provide a useful recommendation signal for category recommendation. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3452 Lowering the bar for robotic development : driver generation for ubiquitous robotic systems Treanor, Jennifer; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) Robotics has developed, technologically, to a level where it becomes a field of both interest and importance to other disciplines, either as a proof-of-concept or demonstrative tool, or else as the main focus for implementation of theories. This is particularly evident in the areas of computational and theoretical cognitive science where, despite this progress, robotics remains sufficiently inaccessible to non-specialists as to dissuade its use. This is due in no small part to the issue of code re-usability across differing hardware platforms and the lack of low-level support for developing suitable drivers for the main robotics development tools. To address this issue, this work presents ACorDE: Autonomous Control Development Environment. This development environment takes in data pertaining to the robotic platform and generates suitable driver and behavioural code in a standardised format. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3451 The pursuit of happiness : searching for worthy followees on twitter Hannon, John; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry We are living in an age of information overload, where it can be difficult to define which information is relevant and important to the end user at a point in time. In this paper, we introduce a solution to apportioning this constant flow of information by going to the source of the content, namely the producers. This paper examines an application for searching for pertinent friends on the popular microblogging service, Twitter1 and our approach to curtail the cold start problem that new users of the service face. We introduce our search technology which is capable of finding the producers of wanted content and suggest connecting to them as followees on Twitter. We also prove the usefulness of this technology through the results of a live user experiment carried out on these cold start users. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3450 Recommending search experiences Saaya, Zurina; Smyth, Barry; Coyle, Maurice; Briggs, Peter In this paper we focus on a multi-case case-based reasoning system to support users during collaborative search tasks. In particular we describe how repositories of search experiences/knowledge can be recommended to users at search time. These recommendations are evaluated using real-world search data. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3449 Modeling user and result reputation in collaborative web search McNally, Kevin; O'Mahony, Michael P.; Smyth, Barry Employing collaborative recommendation techniques allows for personalization of search results in social web search. If recommendations arise from past user activity, the expertise of those users driving the recommendation process can play an important role when it comes to ensuring recommendation quality. Hence the reputation of users is important, in addition to result relevance as traditionally considered in web search. In this paper we explore this concept of reputation; specifically, investigating how reputation can enhance the recommendation engine at the core of the HeyStaks social search utility. We evaluate a number of different reputation models in the context of the HeyStaks system, and demonstrate how incorporating reputation into the recommendation process can enhance the relevance of results recommended by HeyStaks. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3448 Using social ties in group recommendation Bourke, Steven; McCarthy, Kevin; Smyth, Barry The social web is a mass of activity, petabytes of data are generated yearly. The social web has proven to be a great resource for new recommender system techniques and ideas. However it would appear that typically these techniques are not so social, as they only generate recommendations for a user acting alone. In this paper we take the social graph data and preference content (via Facebook) of 94 user study participants and generate social group recommendations for them and their friends. We evaluate how different aggregation policies perform in deciding the final group recommendation. Our findings show that in an offline evaluation an aggregation policy which takes into consideration social weighting outperforms other aggregation policies. Paper presented at the 22nd Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2011), University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 31 August - 2 September, 2011 2011-08-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3447 Demo abstract : appliance load monitoring by power load disaggregation Schoofs, Anthony; Sintoni, Alex; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Ruzzelli, Antonio G. Appliance load monitoring systems are designed to disaggregate the power load of a building in order to estimate the nature of individual loads, providing a real-time fine-grained recognition of active appliances. Monitoring non-intrusively appliances’ contributions to a given load enables a wide range of applications, ranging from electricity bill decomposition to accurate electricity user profiling. This work demonstrates a real implementation of such appliance load monitoring system. An intuitive graphical user interface is proposed to drive the system setup for profiling appliances’ signatures and for visualising the monitoring output. Paper presented at the 2010 7th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON), 21-25 June, 2010, Boston, Massachusetts 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3446 Recognising and recommending context in social web search Saaya, Zurina; Smyth, Barry; Coyle, Maurice; Briggs, Peter In this paper we focus on an approach to social search, HeyStaks that is designed to integrate with mainstream search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. HeyStaks is motivated by the idea that Web search is an inherently social or collaborative activity. Heystaks users search as normal but benefit from collaboration features, allowing searchers to better organise and share their search experiences. Users can create and share repositories of search knowledge (so-called search staks) in order to benefit from the searches of friends and colleagues. As such search staks are community-based information resources. A key challenge for HeyStaks is predicting which search stak is most relevant to the users current search context and in this paper we focus on this so-called stak recommendation issue by looking at a number of different approaches to profling and recommending community-search knowledge. Paper presented at the International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP-11). Girona, Spain. 11-15 July, 2011 2011-07-11T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3196 A mobile gateway for remote interaction with wireless sensor networks Angove, Philip; O'Grady, Michael J.; Hayes, Jer; O'Flynn, Brendan; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Diamond, Dermot Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) almost invariably support a centralised network management model. Though the data gathering function is conducted remotely, such data is usually routed via data sinks to central servers for processing, storage, visualisation and interpretation. However, the issue of supporting remote access to WSNs and individual sensor nodes whilst in their physical environment has not been viewed as a priority. It is envisaged that this situation will change as WSNs proliferate in a range of domains, and the potential for supporting innovative revenue-generating services manifest themselves. As a step towards realising such access, a mobile gateway has been designed and implemented. This gateway supports Zigbee as this is the predominant protocol supported by WSNs. Furthermore, it also supports Bluetooth, thereby facilitating interaction with conventional mobile devices. The gateway is programmable according to the needs of arbitrary services and applications. 2011-06-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3195 MiRA - mixed reality agents Holz, Thomas; Campbell, Abraham G.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Stafford, John W.; Dragone, Mauro; Martin, A. (Alan) In recent years, an increasing number of Mixed Reality (MR) applications have been developed using agent technology—both for the underlying software and as an interface metaphor. However, no unifying field or theory currently exists that can act as a common frame of reference for these varied works. As a result, much duplication of research is evidenced in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this important gap by outlining ‘‘for the first time’’ a formal field of research that has hitherto gone unacknowledged, namely the field of Mixed Reality Agents (MiRAs), which are defined as agents embodied in a Mixed Reality environment. Based on this definition, a taxonomy is offered that classifies MiRAs along three axes: agency, based on the weak and strong notions outlined by Wooldridge and Jennings (1995); corporeal presence, which describes the degree of virtual or physical representation (body) of a MiRA; and interactive capacity, which characterises its ability to sense and act on the virtual and physical environment. Furthermore, this paper offers the first comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of MiRA research and places each project within the proposed taxonomy. Finally, common trends and future directions for MiRA research are discussed. By defining Mixed Reality Agents as a formal field, establishing a common taxonomy, and retrospectively placing existing MiRA projects within it, future researchers can effectively position their research within this landscape, thereby avoiding duplication and fostering reuse and interoperability. 2011-04-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3194 Coordinated intelligent power management and the heterogeneous sensing coverage problem Tynan, Richard; Muldoon, Conor; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); O'Grady, Michael J. One of the most important factors to be considered when developing an application for a wireless sensor network (WSN) is its power consumption. Intelligent power management (IPM) for a WSN is crucial in maximizing the operational longevity. An established regime for achieving this is through the opportunistic hibernation of redundant nodes. Redundancy, however, has various definitions within the field of WSNs and indeed multiple protocols, each operating using a different definition, coexist on the same node. In this paper, we advocate the use of an MAS as an appropriate mechanism by which different stake-holders, each desiring to hibernate a node in order to conserve power, can collaborate. The problem of node hibernation for the heterogeneous sensing coverage areas is introduced and the manner by which it can be solved using ADOPT, an algorithm for distributed constraint optimization, is described. We illustrate that the node hibernation strategy discussed here is more useful than the traditional stack-based approach and motivate our discussion using IPM as an exemplar. 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3193 PI : perceiver and interpreter of smart home datasets Ye, Juan; Stevenson, Graeme; Dobson, Simon; O'Grady, Michael J.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.) Pervasive healthcare systems facilitate various aspects of research including sensor technology, software technology, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Researchers can often benefit from access to real-world data sets against which to evaluate new approaches and algorithms. Whilst more than a dozen data sets are currently publicly available, their use of heterogeneous mark-up impedes easy and widespread use. We describe PI – the Perceiver and semantic Interpreter – which offers a workbench API for the querying, re-structuring and re-purposing of a range of diverse data formats currently in use. The use of a single API reduces cognitive overload, improves access, and supports integration of generic and domain-specific information within a common framework. Paper presented at Pervasive Health 2011, 5th International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, 23rd-26th May 2011 - Dublin, Ireland 2011-05-23T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3192 Orange alerts : lessons from an outdoor case study. Wan, Jie; Byrne, Caroline; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); O'Grady, Michael J. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is of particular relevance to those who may suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease or dementia, and, of course, their carers. The slow but progressive nature of the disease, together with its neurological nature, ultimately compromises the behavior and function of people who may be essentially healthy from a physical perspective. An illustration of this is the wandering behavior frequently found in people with dementia. In this paper, a novel AAL solution for caregivers, particularly tailored for Alzheimer’s patients who are in the early stage of the disease and exhibit unpredictable wandering behavior, is briefly described. Salient aspects of a user evaluation are presented, and some issues relevant to the practical design of AAL systems in dementia cases are identified. Workshop at 5th International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, 23rd-26th May 2011 - Dublin, Ireland 2011-05-23T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3191 Generating power footprints without appliance interaction : an enabler for privacy intrusion Sintoni, Alex; Schoofs, Anthony; Doherty, A.; Smeaton, Alan F.; O'Hare, G. M. P. (Greg M. P.); Ruzzelli, Antonio G. Appliance load monitoring (ALM) systems are systems capable of monitoring appliances’ operation within a building using a single metering point. As such, they uncover information on occupants’ activities of daily living and subsequently an exploitable privacy leak. Related work has shown monitoring accuracies higher than 90% ̇ achieved by ALM systems, yet requiring interaction with appliances for system calibration. In the context of external privacy intrusion, ALM systems have the following obstacles for system calibration: (1) type and model of appliances inside the monitored building are entirely unknown; (2) appliances cannot be operated to record power footprints; and (3) ground truth data is not available to fine- tune algorithms. Within this work, we focus on monitoring those appliances from which we can infer occupants’ activities. Without appliance interaction, appliances’ profiling is realised via automated capture and analysis of shapes, steady-state durations, and occurrence patterns of power loads. Such automated process produces unique power footprints, and naming is realised using heuristics and known characteristics of typical home equipment. Data recorded within a kitchen area and one home illustrates the various processing steps, from data acquisition to power footprint naming. Paper presented at the 1st HOBNET Workshop on IPv6 Sensor Networking for Smart/Green Buildings, at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems DCOSS '11, June 27 - 29, 2011, Barcelona, Spain 2011-06-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3038 A bibliometric study of video retrieval evaluation benchmarking (TRECVid) : a methodological analysis Thornley, Clare V.; McLoughlin, Shane J.; Johnson, Andrea C.; Smeaton, Alan F. This paper provides a discussion and analysis of methodological issues encountered during a scholarly impact and bibliometric study within the field of computer science (TRECVid Text Retrieval and Evaluation Conference, Video Retrieval Evaluation). The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflection and analysis of the methods used to provide useful information and guidance for those who may wish to undertake similar studies, and is of particular relevance for the academic disciplines which have publication and citation norms that may not perform well using traditional tools. Scopus and Google Scholar are discussed and a detailed comparison of the effects of different search methods and cleaning methods within and between these tools for subject and author analysis is provided. The additional database capabilities and usefulness of “Scopus More” in addition to “Scopus General” is discussed and evaluated. Scopus paper coverage is found to favourably compare to Google Scholar but Scholar consistently has superior performance at finding citations to those papers. These additional citations significantly increase the citation totals and also change the relative ranking of papers. Publish or Perish (PoP), a software wrapper for Google Scholar, is also examined and its limitations and some possible solutions are described. Data cleaning methods, including duplicate checks, expert domain checking of bibliographic data, and content checking of retrieved papers are compared and their relative effects on paper and citation count discussed. Google Scholar and Scopus are also compared as tools for collecting bibliographic data for visualisations of developing trends and, due to the comparative ease of collecting abstracts, Scopus is found far more effective. 2011-12-19T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2955 A method for monitoring reactive strength index Patterson, Matthew; Caulfield, Brian Ubiquitous motion sensors in shoes and clothing are becoming more prevalent. This new data stream opens a large opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of human movement. This paper describes the development and validation of an algorithm to calculate reactive strength index (RSI) from an accelerometer mounted at the ankle. Compared to the gold standard force-plate, the accelerometer and algorithm RSI had r = 0.98, mean difference = 0.001 m/sec and a confidence interval ranging from 0.12 to -0.11 m/sec. Difficulty in accurately identifying take-off using the accelerometer was the main source of measurement error. Paper presented at Engineering emotion : the 8th Conference of the International Sports Engineering Association, Vienna, July 12-16 2010 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2954 On using the real-time web for news recommendation & discovery Phelan, Owen; McCarthy, Kevin; Bennett, Mike; Smyth, Barry In this work we propose that the high volumes of data on real-time networks like Twitter can be harnessed as a useful source of recommendation knowledge. We describe Buzzer, a news recommendation system that is capable of adapting to the conversations that are taking place on Twitter. Buzzer uses a content-based approach to ranking RSS news stories by mining trending terms from both the public Twitter timeline and from the timeline of tweets generated by a user’s own social graph (friends and followers). We also describe the result of a live-user trial which demonstrates how these ranking strategies can add value to conventional RSS ranking techniques, which are largely recency-based. Presented at the 20th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2011, Hyderabad, India, March 28 - April 1, 2011 2011-03-28T00:00:00Z