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Digital images can be analyzed at wide range of levels going from pixel arrangement to semantics. As a consequence, finding a visual complexity estimator is a difficult task. In this article we propose a definition of attention based perceptual complexity. We study the performance of human eye movements and of different models of computational attention against a ground-truth of image complexity based on the observation time of an image description task. The results obtained show that besides its lack of semantic processing, attentional behavior is a good estimator of image complexity.

Open environments like the Internet or corporate intranets enable a large number of interested enterprises to access, filter, process, and present information on an as-needed basis. These environments support modern applications, such as virtual enterprises and inter-organizational workflow management systems, which involve a number of heterogeneous resources, services, and processes. However, any execution of a virtual enterprise system would yield to disjoining and error-prone behavior without appropriate techniques to coordinate the various business processes. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a flexible agent-based framework for supporting the coordination of virtual enterprises and workflow management systems. The paper also shows how an agent coordination infrastructure, which is explained by social constraints, can impact on the engineering of highly dynamic virtual enterprises and workflow management systems by presenting a simple case study.

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The development of technologies of multimedia, linked to that of Internet and democratization of high speed, has made henceforth E-learning possible for learners being in virtual classes and geographically distributed. One benefit to taking course online is that the online course structure is typically more student focused than teacher centered and encouraging more active participation by students in collaborative learning activities. The quality and quantity of asynchronous and synchronous communications are the key elements for Elearning success. A potential problem that has received little exploration is student's feeling of isolation. It is important to have a propitious supervision to breaking down learner feeling isolation in E-learning environment. This feeling of isolation is among the main causes of loss and high rates of dropout in E-learning. It impacts on their levels of participation, satisfaction and learning. To overcome this feeling of isolation, we aim, by this research, to provide the trainer and each learner with an environment allowing them to behave as if being face to face; in other words, to approach the pedagogy of classroom teaching. Our contribution to reduce the feeling of isolation is to ensure the presence of the teacher in the educational tools. These tools aim to establish a real dialogue with the learner, forcing him to take an active part in their learning. Among the tools we offer, video conference Openmeeting integrated in Moodle providing the possibility of using the notion of class and whiteboard, the indicator of motivation quantification tool based hand gesture that we developed and finally social networks web 2.0 like Facebook, youtube, twitter… to promote collaboration, sharing and communication of the learner with his peers.