Advisor:
Robert Glushko

Organizations that wish to decentralize their information processing have significant hurdles to overcome. When information processing is centralized, it is relatively easy to enforce organizational policies for creating and updating records because few individuals actually touch or update core information systems. Decentralizing this type of process increases an information system's user base (and value) but dramatically increases the complexity of enforcing organizational policies. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has been an effective solution for decreasing the complexity of managing large numbers of users.

Applying RBAC within individual information systems is relatively straight forward. However, applying RBAC across multiple relying applications to discrete pieces of information such as a social security or credit card number is not an easy task. A decentralized information processing system must allow fine grained access control over the organization's information.

We use W3C XML Schema (WXS), the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), and web services to enable organizations to define fine-grained (data level) access control policies in a network of distributed applications. Information rules and policies are expressed separately and transparently merged to dynamically generate user interfaces that enforce the appropriate policies when sensitive data items are to be captured or displayed.

Advisor:
Marc Davis

See live music! Org is an information organization and retrieval system that facilitates intuitive annotation and browsing of live audio media collections. The faceted nature of Org's classification engine coupled with traditional relational capabilities enables simple, yet robust metadata management. This hybrid approach empowers people to quickly and easily find the content they desire. Org's unique system design and feature-set synthesizes a broad range of information management concepts taught at SIMS to satisfy the real-world needs of the live music community.

Advisor:
Marti Hearst

Bear Ride is an interactive online environment where UC Berkeley students who are interested in carpooling can sign up and be matched with other members of the community who meet certain criteria.

Advisor:
AnnaLee Saxenian

Development professionals are from a variety of academic disciplines including Economics, Environmental Planning, Social Policy, and a variety of Engineering fields. The interdisciplinary nature of this field makes research difficult, a fact further exacerbated by the separation of field practitioners from academic researchers. Although there are existing databases of information that are publicly accessible, they are optimized for internal usage by the development organizations that created them. More importantly, these products do not adequately allow users to add their input on the existing information. Thus, there is a critical gap between the tools available to users and the collaborative nature of effective development work. The Collaboration Repository is a system that combines the best features from existing development websites to create a user-inclusive product. The aim of our final project is to allow users to have a centralized location where they can share ideas and opinions on development projects and documents. It will be easy to use and support commenting, peer reviews, and discussions on projects and documents. These features and the ease of use of the system should encourage user participation and build a critical mass of site contributors and content.

Advisor:
Ray Larson

The iars-bears project involves the design, development, and implementation of a web-based application called CalStARS (Cal Student-Athlete Record System) which will collect, store, and report on student-athlete data electronically and replace the current paper-based system. The application will be used by the Compliance Office of the Intercollegiate Athletics & Recreational Sports (IARS) Department, which provides athletic opportunities and support services for about 1,000 student-athletes competing in intercollegiate sports.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

There are many calendars on the UC Berkeley campus that post events of interest to other departments or organizations. However, there is currently no automated way to share event information among these numerous calendars. Our solution is an event sharing system, the UC Berkeley Calendar Network, which is based on an "event" data model created by analyzing 23 disparate UC Berkeley campus calendars. Because of the wide range of technical needs and expertise of current campus calendars, we have designed two approaches by which different types of campus calendars can share event information with each other. For "low-tech" calendar owners we have created a centralized repository to store event information, as well as a Calendar Management Tool. This tool will allow calendar owners to both manage event information and create a customized, web-based calendar which will integrate smoothly into their current website by reproducing the website's look and feel. For "high-tech" calendar owners who have specialized web development needs, or a need to maintain their own repository of event information, we outline a process by which they can send event information to, or pull information from the centralized event repository using an XML document.

Advisor:
Ray Larson

The Healthy Communities Network System is a web-based knowledge management information system that offers an easy to understand dashboard view of a community's quality of life. It serves as a tool that tracks community health issues, promotes sharing of community information and best practices, and helps people get involved in making community decisions. The system will serve as a set of templates that can be leveraged and customized by local communities while the underlying system remains centrally maintained.

Advisor:
Ray Larson

These days, it is possible to get on any number of sites and search for an apartment in a far away city. However, what you get in these places is simply an address. It gets difficult to tell if the area is, for example, the good or bad part of town, or if it's within walking distance of the supermarket, or if the bus line that runs all night passes anywhere near it.

Enter the Neighborhood Project. The goal for the project is to provide information that allows somebody to know what amenities are in their neighborhood and provide a way for residents of said neighborhood to share their knowledge.

Advisor:
Marti Hearst

Our team has developed a tool that allows users to obtain road traffic forecasts for a specified time of travel. Caltrans road sensors placed along highways throughout the Bay Area provide a rich source of up-to-the-minute traffic information. Using an extensive database of historical highway speeds, Road Sage provides traffic congestion-aware routing and estimated travel time forecasts. Optimal route information is then visually displayed to users utilizing web-based geographic information system (GIS) tools.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

The UC Berkeley IT System Map is a resource for campus IT staff to view their systems and data elements in the context of the university's enterprise information architecture. The System Map is a dynamic visual representation of systems in the university and the import and export connections between those systems, as well as a central repository for system metadata information.

Advisor:
Pamela Samuelson

We will discuss P2P software called Trifecta that enables users to make fair use of copyrighted sound recordings encoded in computer media files (e.g. MP3). Copyright has traditionally served as both an economic incentive to encourage the creation and dissemination of literary and artistic works, and a regulatory structure enabling the public to gain access to the results of authors' original work. Maintaining such a delicate balance between authors and the public helps to promote the advance of knowledge and culture by stimulating its pursuit. Digital media, networked computers and P2P file sharing applications have posed new dilemmas to copyright because reproducing and distributing copyrighted works in digital formats are such trivial tasks for average users, as demonstrated by the recent popularity of P2P software used by millions to download music. However, it is possible to develop software that allows users to harness the convenience of P2P file sharing while still remaining within the boundaries of copyright law. Trifecta allows users to lend and stream sound recordings to friends and other personal acquaintances, two uses that we maintain are fair because private, noncommercial sharing and performance are consistent with the rights afforded to consumers by the first sale doctrine and the right of private performance.

Advisor:
Ray Larson

China, already the world's largest consumer market, is now on the fast-track to supplying home-grown innovation to global markets. Foreign companies and returning Chinese are hoping to enter this lucrative space by forming strategic alliances with Chinese firms or establishing regional offices in China. Understanding the network of company relationships and industry dependencies is crucial to successful business transactions in China.

Many online textual sources currently exist for this information market -- research databases (Ovum), industry analyst portals (IDC), and financial sites (Yahoo!Finance). Yet these sources provide massive quantities of data that are tedious to sort through. Mapping China is a dynamic, web-based information infrastructure that helps users quickly understand industry landscapes through interactive data visualizations. We demonstrate the capabilities of our tool by mapping the relationships in China's wireless telecommunications industry.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

As U.C. Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) ends its seventh academic year, an opportune time presents itself to evaluate SIMS in the context of its mission and student body. The SIMS Corpus project team initially set out to create a data model representative of the SIMS domain, but this proved to be more of a strategic and research oriented exercise than originally anticipated. In order to classify SIMS' academic resources (i.e. identity, courses, and degree tracks), consensus was required about the current nature and value of the SIMS experience. Instead of developing a data model which supported a transient view of SIMS, focus was placed on identifying the points of greatest convergence and divergence amongst SIMS stakeholders. Hopefully, the project findings will help spur the development of a shared vision for SIMS and serve as a foundation for future projects--including the development of a SIMS data model.

Advisor:
Marc Davis

Zooke is a solution which attempts to help alleviate the problem of media asset management. By leveraging point of capture metadata available on mobile devices, as well as a community of networked users, Zooke provides a platform for users to annotate images. By distributing the annotation process among the community, the annotation burden is alleviated and lessened for each individual, thus making it more likely that each user will participate in the process and collectively more images will become annotated. Zooke uses game play as incentive and motivation for users to engage in this annotation process, yet allows the process and annotation goal itself to remain transparent to the user. The game, instead, presents a compelling way for users to creatively explore and share their own real-life worlds with a community of engaged individuals. By bringing the user's world into the game, we create a rich imagery-centric interaction exploring social actions of individuals and communities and also create a reusable repository of user-verified annotated images for future use and distribution by media management and retrieval applications (i.e. enhanced consumer photo sharing applications, eased management of media assets for media designers, improved search for image queries).

Advisor:
Ray Larson

Online discussion forums are expensive and costly to manage, which has stalled technological advancement in this area of social software. This project outlines a management approach that rejects the standard wisdom for online community development and enforces a policy set that would typically be expected to fail. Instead, after two years of operation, the approach has resulted in minimal administrative costs, high user satisfaction rates, sustainable growth and a profitable business. The presentation includes a discussion of the management approach and user surveys.

Advisor:
Michael Buckland

This project proposes a means for specifying data related to named time periods, such as "Weimar" or "Elizabethan." Such terms can be ambiguous and imprecise. For example, neolithic ruins in China and in South America are from different periods, and the begin and end dates are uncertain. The ideas of the Italian Renaissance moved through Europe at different times, so that the Renaissance in France and the Renaissance in the Netherlands are not the same. Even referring strictly to the Italian Renaissance, limiting usage to reflect only a period in music or only a period in fine arts can also change the dates associated with the period name. Using specifications developed for geographical gazetteers as a starting point, I have developed a content specification for time period directories, including a thesaurus of time period categories (such as a period of rule or a cultural movement), and have implemented a prototype directory.

Advisor:
Nancy Van House

Blog conversations occur daily across the internet, though those conversations of interest and relevance are difficult to find in a timely way, partly because search tools such as Google index information weeks after posting, and partly because the page rank algorithm means that even if a relevant post is found, the corresponding conversation between several bloggers may not be found. Even upon finding these conversations, they are difficult to see visually, either as a threaded discussion or as a cluster of comments that may occur in the main posts, or in comments below posts or via trackback. Paparazzi attempts to make clear those conversations relevant in particular topic areas, demonstrate authority of bloggers as other users have found them relevant, and to create context around those conversations by including blog authority as well as the traditional media that blogs often point to for sourcing.

Advisor:
Nancy Van House

Regular telephone service is limited in the array of functions. Current VoIP applications have not taken advantage of the technological advancements to develop new telephony services or to improve existing services to benefit consumers. Project Picasso is my collaboration with Meet2Talk.com. Project Picasso is an attempt to develop a system within the discipline of user interface design and usability testing while paying strict attention to market needs and business models. The result is Meet2Talk - a VoIP web-based application that will revolutionize the Internet telephony market through features designed to enhance human-to-human communication practices.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

There are many calendars on the UC Berkeley campus that post events of interest to other departments or organizations. However, there is currently no automated way to share event information among these numerous calendars. Our solution is an event sharing system, the UC Berkeley Calendar Network, which is based on an "event" data model created by analyzing 23 disparate UC Berkeley campus calendars. Because of the wide range of technical needs and expertise of current campus calendars, we have designed two approaches by which different types of campus calendars can share event information with each other. For "low-tech" calendar owners we have created a centralized repository to store event information, as well as a Calendar Management Tool. This tool will allow calendar owners to both manage event information and create a customized, web-based calendar which will integrate smoothly into their current website by reproducing the website's look and feel. For "high-tech" calendar owners who have specialized web development needs, or a need to maintain their own repository of event information, we outline a process by which they can send event information to, or pull information from the centralized event repository using an XML document.

Advisor:
Marti Hearst

Our team has developed a tool that allows users to obtain road traffic forecasts for a specified time of travel. Caltrans road sensors placed along highways throughout the Bay Area provide a rich source of up-to-the-minute traffic information. Using an extensive database of historical highway speeds, Road Sage provides traffic congestion-aware routing and estimated travel time forecasts. Optimal route information is then visually displayed to users utilizing web-based geographic information system (GIS) tools.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

The UC Berkeley IT System Map is a resource for campus IT staff to view their systems and data elements in the context of the university's enterprise information architecture. The System Map is a dynamic visual representation of systems in the university and the import and export connections between those systems, as well as a central repository for system metadata information.

Advisor:
Michael Buckland

This project proposes a means for specifying data related to named time periods, such as "Weimar" or "Elizabethan." Such terms can be ambiguous and imprecise. For example, neolithic ruins in China and in South America are from different periods, and the begin and end dates are uncertain. The ideas of the Italian Renaissance moved through Europe at different times, so that the Renaissance in France and the Renaissance in the Netherlands are not the same. Even referring strictly to the Italian Renaissance, limiting usage to reflect only a period in music or only a period in fine arts can also change the dates associated with the period name. Using specifications developed for geographical gazetteers as a starting point, I have developed a content specification for time period directories, including a thesaurus of time period categories (such as a period of rule or a cultural movement), and have implemented a prototype directory.

Advisor:
Robert Glushko

Organizations that wish to decentralize their information processing have significant hurdles to overcome. When information processing is centralized, it is relatively easy to enforce organizational policies for creating and updating records because few individuals actually touch or update core information systems. Decentralizing this type of process increases an information system's user base (and value) but dramatically increases the complexity of enforcing organizational policies. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has been an effective solution for decreasing the complexity of managing large numbers of users.

Applying RBAC within individual information systems is relatively straight forward. However, applying RBAC across multiple relying applications to discrete pieces of information such as a social security or credit card number is not an easy task. A decentralized information processing system must allow fine grained access control over the organization's information.

We use W3C XML Schema (WXS), the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), and web services to enable organizations to define fine-grained (data level) access control policies in a network of distributed applications. Information rules and policies are expressed separately and transparently merged to dynamically generate user interfaces that enforce the appropriate policies when sensitive data items are to be captured or displayed.