2009 Theme

The theme for ODCSSS 2009 "Technologies for bridging the digital-physical divide: sensing the environment". Each ODCSSS student is engaged in a research project with a faculty member and mentor which provides them an opportunity to experience research. The selection of interns is highly competitive but we encourage anyone interested in research who is eligible to apply.

Integration of Facebook with the VidAs video distribution platform

The Performance Engineering Lab (PEL) in UCD is developing a P2P video distribution platform for large scale distribution of large content libraries – this system is called VidAs. A nice addition to such a system would be to integrate it with Facebook – this will be the focus of the proposed work.

The specific capabilities to be realized then, are the following:

  • Develop mapping between Facebook ID and VidAs user ID;
  • Enable connected Facebook users to see what each other is watching at any particular time;
  • Enable connected Facebook users to see short history of what each other has watched;
  • Identify popular content which is being watched by many users who are connected;
  • Facilitate access to such content by developing interface with the VidAs system.

There will be a number of components to the work:

  • Develop Java based capability which will permit sharing of information from VidAs system into Facebook;
  • Develop Facebook application which will render this information via Facebook API;
  • Develop J2ME application which can run on Set Top Box and display information available via Facebook

How does the project you are proposing fit within the broad theme of "Technologies for Social Connectedness".

The project will enable groups of users (typically friends or families) to remotely share video viewing habits, thus facilitating a greater social connectedness.

Supervisors and Mentors:
Primary supervisor – Dr. John Murphy
Secondary supervisor – Dr. Seán Murphy/Dr. Hamid Nafaa