Shoulder-surfing-using direct observation techniques, such as looking over someone's shoulder, to get passwords, PINs and other sensitive personal information-is a problem that has been difficult to overcome. When a user enters information using a keyboard, mouse, touch screen or any traditional input device, a malicious observer may be able to acquire the user's password credentials. We present EyePassword, a system that mitigates the issues of shoulder surfing via a novel approach to user input. With EyePassword, a user enters sensitive input (password, PIN, etc.) by selecting from an on-screen keyboard using only the orientation of their pupils (i.e. the position of their gaze on screen), making eavesdropping by a malicious observer largely impractical. We present a number of design choices and discuss their effect on usability and security. We conducted user studies to evaluate the speed, accuracy and user acceptance of our approach. Our results demonstrate that gaze-based password entry requires marginal additional time over using a keyboard, error rates are similar to those of using a keyboard and subjects preferred the gaze-based password entry approach over traditional methods.

Using gaze information as a form of input poses challenges based on the nature of eye movements and how we humans use our eyes in conjunction with other motor actions. In this paper, we present three techniques for improving the use of gaze as a form of input. We first present a saccade detection and smoothing algorithm that works on real-time streaming gaze information. We then present a study which explores some of the timing issues of using gaze in conjunction with a trigger (key press or other motor action) and propose a solution for resolving these issues. Finally, we present the concept of Focus Points, which makes it easier for users to focus their gaze when using gaze-based interaction techniques. Though these techniques were developed for improving the performance of gaze-based pointing, their use is applicable in general to using gaze as a practical form of input.

Event broker networks -scalable versions of the publish-subscribe paradigmact as peer-to-peer overlays on broker nodes. Various frameworks support different overlay topologies and routing schemes for event dissemination, but attention is now turning to the nonfunctional attributes (such as quality of service) of such systems. Although many research efforts are starting to address the need for adaptation and QoS, no taxonomies or comprehensive surveys of adaptive middleware, which provide support for service guarantees, exist yet. To tackle this knowledge gap, the authors examine existing event-based middleware efforts, focusing on quality of service and adaptation. Middleware for event broker networks (EBNs) both alleviates the issues related to underlying platform heterogeneity and provides a uniform application interface. A common service interface that such middleware provides is publish-subscribe, 1 a paradigm in which producers publish information and consumers subscribe to it. In EBNs, information of interest is encapsulated in events; on such networks, middleware stores and manages subscriptions as well as routes events. This model's fully decoupled nature in terms of time, space, and synchronization 1 makes it highly suitable for large-scale distributed applications. Middleware for event broker networks is also known as eventdissemination middleware (EDM).To disseminate events, an EBN overlay network 2 uses a subset of the underlying existing physical network (an overlay link itself is virtual but could consist of several physical links to the underlying network). Therefore, middleware must execute on each overlay node that has to work cooperatively to accomplish its functions. Such event-based architectures appear in various domains, many of which themselves require quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees from the underlying infrastructure. However, our survey of existing efforts in research-and-industrybased event dissemination middleware indicates significant gaps in efforts to address these needs; in fact, we found that few middleware options 3-5 provide support for nonfunctional service guarantees. Because a comprehensive survey of current options doesn't yet exist, this article offers a review of existing event-based systems, classified with a taxonomy of adaptive, event-based middleware that provides QoS guarantees. Middleware ArchitectureAs Figure 1 shows, event-based middleware has a layered architecture. The core comprises mandatory functional features, such as the event model, the subscription scheme used to disseminate events, and the overlay routing substrate. The layer on top of the core forms a set of optional services -that is, the nonfunctional QoS guarantees the middleware provides, such as reliability, delivery semantics, message ordering, security, and fault tolerance. QoS guarantees are orthogonal to middleware-supported core functions; the middleware's ability to reconfigure itself to ensure and maintain a QoS agreement is its adaptability, which can result in changes to the core's subs...

We present several gaze-enhanced scrolling techniques developed as part of continuing work in the GUIDe (Gaze-enhanced User Interface Design) project. This effort explores how gaze information can be effectively used as input that augments keyboard and mouse. The techniques presented below use gaze both as a primary input and as an augmented input in order to enhance scrolling and panning techniques. We also introduce the use of off-screen gaze-actuated buttons which can be used for document navigation and control.

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