HANDBOOK ON INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING Discover the latest research on crafting compelling narratives in interactive entertainment Electronic games are no longer considered "mere fluff" alongside the "real" forms of entertainment, like film, music, and television. Instead, many games have evolved into an art form in their own right, including carefully constructed stories and engaging narratives enjoyed by millions of people around the world. In Handbook on Interactive Storytelling, readers will find a comprehensive discussion of the latest research covering the creation of interactive narratives that allow users to experience a dramatically compelling story that responds directly to their actions and choices. Systematically organized, with extensive bibliographies and academic exercises included in each chapter, the book offers readers new perspectives on existing research and fresh avenues ripe for further study. In-depth case studies explore the challenges involved in crafting a narrative that comprises one of the main features of the gaming experience, regardless of the technical aspects of a game's production. Readers will also enjoy: A thorough introduction to interactive storytelling, including discussions of narrative, plot, story, interaction, and a history of the phenomenon, from improvisational theory to role-playing games A rigorous discussion of the background of storytelling, from Aristotle's Poetics to Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey Compelling explorations of different perspectives in the interactive storytelling space, including different platforms, designers, and interactors, as well as an explanation of storyworlds Perfect for game designers, developers, game and narrative researchers, academics, undergraduate and graduate students studying storytelling, game design, gamification, and multimedia systems, Handbook on Interactive Storytelling is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the deployment of compelling narratives in an interactive context.

Qualitative and Mixed Methods Data Analysis Using Dedoose (R): A Practical Approach for Research Across the Social Sciences provides both new and experienced researchers with a guided introduction to dealing with the methodological complexity of mixed methods and qualitative inquiry using Dedoose (R) software. The authors use their depth of experience designing and updating Dedoose (R) as well as their published research to give the reader practical strategies for using Dedoose (R) from a wide range of research studies. Case study contributions by outside researchers provide readers with rich examples of how to use Dedoose (R) in practical, applied social science and health settings.

This ground-breaking book distills the experience of the authors in dealing with problems in industry that can be solved by using the SELECT Perspective. A pragmatic, component-based approach for the development of enterprise systems, the SELECT Perspective comprises a unique blend of techniques, architecture, and process. Enterprise software development presents challenges of sheer scale and complexity that continue to accelerate at a terrific pace. Businesses are becoming increasingly adaptive and are calling for software that is more and more flexible. Component technology holds the promise of solving these problems, but there are some complications. For example, many organizations continue to struggle with the challenge of integrating their legacy systems with the newer technology. The approach in this book offers a streamlined set of modeling techniques based on Unified Modeling Language (UML); uses a serviced-based architecture that provides an overall design philosophy for reusable software that addresses the needs of the business, not the technology; and is a clearly defined software process that provides guidance on how to employ the knowledge base of available techniques.

This book provides important guidelines for the digital transformation process and shows how established companies in particular can use digitization for their strategic further development. It highlights developments in IT and data management, supported by AI, and analyzes how marketing, sales, HR, the corporate organization and controlling must be transformed in the digital age in order to take advantage of these new opportunities as early and comprehensively as possible. The tools offered in this book will support companies in actively shaping the change.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies (EC-Web) held in Toulouse, France, in August/September 2011.

The 25 papers accepted for EC-Web, selected from 60 submissions, are organized into eight topical sections on semantic services, business processes and services, context-aware recommender systems, intelligent agents and e-negotiation systems, collaborative filtering and preference learning, social recommender systems, agent interaction and trust management, and innovative strategies for preference elicitation and profiling.

A fresh take on financial data visualization for greater accuracy and understanding Your data provides a snapshot of the state of your business and is key to the success of your conversations, decisions, and communications. But all of that communication is lost or incorrectly interpreted without proper data visualizations that provide context and accurate representation of the numbers. In Visualizing Financial Data, authors Julie Rodriguez and Piotr Kaczmarek draw upon their understanding of information design and visual communication to show you how to turn your raw data into meaningful information. Coverage includes current conventions paired with innovative visualizations that cater to the unique requirements across financial domains, including investment management, financial accounting, regulatory reporting, sales, and marketing communications. Presented as a series of case studies, this highly visual guide presents problems and solutions in the context of real-world scenarios. With over 250 visualizations, you ll have access to relevant examples that serve as a starting point to your implementations. Expand the boundaries of data visualization conventions and learn new approaches to traditional charts and graphs Optimize data communications that cater to you and your audience Provide clarity to maximize understanding Solve data presentation problems using efficient visualization techniques Use the provided companion website to follow along with examples The companion website gives you the illustration files and the source data sets, and points you to the types of resources you need to get started.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications, ICETE 2009, held in Milan, Italy, in July 2009. The 34 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 300 submissions. They have passed two rounds of selection and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on e-business; security and cryptography; signal processing and multimedia applications; wireless information networks and systems.

The increasing importance of industrial services and rapid digitalization towards smart and remote services pose opportunities as well as challenges to the manufacturing sector. This book provides a holistic understanding of industrial service management and guides companies into building capabilities and management practices for smart and remote services. By combining insights from research and practice, it offers a unique perspective on the core and enabling activities of manufacturing companies for growth in the service business. In essence, the first part covers action-based research findings regarding service strategy, organizational design, service innovation, service sales, services operations, and customer relationship management together with insights into value networks. The second part introduces outstanding practices from leading manufacturing companies in industrial and smart services. The book concludes with a summary of key messages and recommendations to navigate the landscape of industrial and smart service management successfully.

This book is based on a selection of thoroughly revised and extended best papers from the 8th Workshop on E-Business (WEB 2009) held in Phoenix, AZ, USA, on December 15th, 2009.

The 29 papers, which were selected from 70 presentations at the workshop, highlight the enormous developments and potential of e-business at a time when new technologies like cloud computing, collective intelligence, and multi-sided platforms are burgeoning. Among the topics covered are Web-based information systems, RFID and supply chain management, process modeling and standardization, security and privacy issues, social networking and mobility, e-services and market mechanisms, IT portfolio management, and other special topics in e-business such as electronic invoicing.

Thepresentvolumewasdevotedto thethirdeditionofthe InternationalSym- sium on Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT), an interdisciplinary scienti?c event intended to provide a forum for researchers as well as practitioners to exchange innovative ideas and to be aware of each other's e?orts and results. SAGT 2010 took place in Athens, on October 18-20, 2010. The present volume contains all contributed papers presented at SAGT 2010 together with the distinguished invited lectures of Amos Fiat (Tel-Aviv University, Israel), and Paul Goldberg (University of Liverpool, UK). The two invited papers are presented at the - ginning of the proceedings, while the regular papers follow in alphabetical order (by the authors' names). In response to the call for papers, the Program Committee (PC) received 61 submissions.Amongthesubmissionswerefour paperswith atleastonecoauthor that was also a PC member of SAGT 2010. For these PC-coauthored papers, anindependent subcommittee (EliasKoutsoupias,PaulG. Spirakis,andXiaotie Deng) made the judgment, and eventually two of these papers were proposedfor inclusion in the Scienti?c Program. For the remaining 57 (non-PC-coauthored) papers, the PC of SAGT 2010 conducted a thorough evaluation (at least 3, and on average 3.9 reviews per paper) and electronic discussion, and eventually selected 26 papers for inclusion in the Scienti?c Program. An additional tutorial, "Games Played in Physics", was also provided in SAGT 2010, courtesy of the academic research network Algogames (A??o?a????o) of the University of Patras.

It is a great pleasure to share with you the Springer CCIS 112 proceedings of the Third World Summit on the Knowledge Society--WSKS 2010--that was organized by the International Scientific Council for the Knowledge Society, and supported by the Open Research Society, NGO, (http://www.open-knowledge-society.org) and the Int- national Journal of the Knowledge Society Research, (http://www.igi-global.com/ijksr), and took place in Aquis Corfu Holiday Palace Hotel, on Corfu island, Greece, September 22-24, 2010. The Third World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2010) was an inter- tional scientific event devoted to promoting the dialogue on the main aspects of the knowledge society towards a better world for all. The multidimensional economic and social crisis of the last couple years brings to the fore the need to discuss in depth new policies and strategies for a human-centric developmental process in the global c- text. This annual summit brings together key stakeholders of knowledge society dev- opment worldwide, from academia, industry, government, policy makers, and active citizens to look at the impact and prospects of it information technology, and the knowledge-based era it is creating, on key facets of living, working, learning, innovating, and collaborating in today's hyper-complex world.

The International Conference on E-business Technology & Strategy (CETS) provides a peer-reviewed forum for researchers from across the globe to share contemporary research on developments in the fields of e-business, information technology and business strategy. It seeks to promote effective and vibrant networking among researchers and practitioners from around the world who are concerned about the effective management of information technology in organizations. This network of researchers views fostering the development of emerging scholars in the information technology and e-business fields as its primary task. Consequently the conference is designed to provide a venue for researchers to get substantive and beneficial feedback on their work. There were 134 contributions submitted to CETS 2010. After in-depth discussions, 29 high-quality contributions were selected for publication in this volume. The authors are from Canada, USA, China, Japan, India and Malaysia. We thank all the authors who submitted papers, the Program Committee members, and the external reviewers. We also thank all the local people who were instrumental in making this edition of CETS another very successful event. In particular, we are very grateful to Ying Xie, who was responsible for the local arrangements. Special gratitude goes to the publishing editor, Leonie Kunz, who managed the complexity of information and communication aspects. Furthermore, we thank the many students who volunteered on the organization team, as well as the IT services of Carleton University.

The past decade in e-commerce will be remembered as one in which age- mediated electronic commerce technology became a reality. The evolution from electronic data interchange technology to electronic marketplaces brought e-commerce to the masses. Yet it was accompanied by numerous challenges - tributed to the exponentialincreasein the e?orts requiredfor searchingandp- cessing information as well as coordinating with the di?erent parties involved. Theintroductionof autonomousagentsin e-commerce,enabling agent-mediated trading, holds the promise of bridging this gap, by facilitating ?exible, faster, less labor-intensiveandhighly competitive commerce. Using agents,e-commerce nowgoesbeyondmerelyeliminatingthemediatorsinthetraditionalprocessand o?ersadynamic set oftechnologies,integratedapplicationsand multi-enterprise business processes that link enterprises together. Consequently, the focus of - search in the area of e-commerce is now on technologies for online advertising, searching, negotiating, ordering, delivering, paying, using, and servicing. No- days, the application of agents in e-commerce is well recognized as one of the fastest-growing and most exciting areas of computer science. This volume presents some of the recent advances in research on designing trading agents and mechanisms for agent-mediated electronic commerce. It is built around a collection of articles initially presented at two highly respected international workshops held in the summer of 2009. The ?rst is the 11th - ternational Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2009) collocated with the AAMAS 2009 conference held in Budapest, Hungary. The second is the 2009 Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2009) collocated with the IJCAI 2009 conference held in Pasadena, California, USA.

Intelligent Decision Technologies (IDT) seeks an interchange of research on intelligent systems and intelligent technologies which enhance or improve decision making in industry, government and academia. The focus is interdisciplinary in nature, and includes research on all aspects of intelligent decision technologies, from fundamental development to the applied system. This volume represents leading research from the Second KES International Symposium on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES IDT'10), hosted and organized by the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola University Maryland, USA, in conjunction with KES International. The symposium was concerned with theory, design development, implementation, testing and evaluation of intelligent decision systems. Topics include decision making theory, intelligent agents, fuzzy logic, multi-agent systems, Bayesian networks, optimization, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, decision support systems, geographic information systems, case-based reasoning, time series, knowledge management systems, Kansei communication, rough sets, spatial decision analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize decision making in many areas of management, healthcare, international business, finance, accounting, marketing, military applications, ecommerce, network management, crisis response, building design, information retrieval, and disaster recovery.

With high hopes that the worst of the financial crisis is now behind us, our efforts looking forward must be more vigilant. Change is constant in the electronic business management landscape and we must continue to look for organizational efficiencies, competitive strength, strategic differentiation and value creation in both int- organizational and collaborative settings. Seeking new and innovative application areas of information technology, in general, and e-business management solutions, in particular, while simultaneously critically evaluating and constantly challenging our own research contributions, methods and practices. It is for these reasons (and many more) that we are particularly excited about and grateful for the collection of papers included in this volume, LNBIP 58, on Sustainable e-Business Management. The papers selected in this volume address these emerging e-business issues and have been organized into three research lines: e-Business Models and IS in Financial Markets, e-Commerce Use and Design, and e-Business Research Issues and Methods. We are delighted to kick off the first group of papers e-Business Models and IS in Financial Markets with a study by Masao Kakihara of Yahoo Research in Japan, proposing a dynamic revenue model framework and design. This section also includes a fresh look into two pressing e-business areas with Doerr, Benlian, Vetter and Hess's examination of content provider pricing of music as a service and Dutta and Menon's interesting study of the determinants of customer acquisition and e-tailer revenue.

This book serves as both a textbook and handbook on the benchmarking of systems and components used as building blocks of modern information and communication technology applications. It provides theoretical and practical foundations as well as an in-depth exploration of modern benchmarks and benchmark development. The book is divided into two parts: foundations and applications. The first part introduces the foundations of benchmarking as a discipline, covering the three fundamental elements of each benchmarking approach: metrics, workloads, and measurement methodology. The second part focuses on different application areas, presenting contributions in specific fields of benchmark development. These contributions address the unique challenges that arise in the conception and development of benchmarks for specific systems or subsystems, and demonstrate how the foundations and concepts in the first part of the book are being used in existing benchmarks. Further, the book presents a number of concrete applications and case studies based on input from leading benchmark developers from consortia such as the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) and the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Providing both practical and theoretical foundations, as well as a detailed discussion of modern benchmarks and their development, the book is intended as a handbook for professionals and researchers working in areas related to benchmarking. It offers an up-to-date point of reference for existing work as well as latest results, research challenges, and future research directions. It also can be used as a textbook for graduate and postgraduate students studying any of the many subjects related to benchmarking. While readers are assumed to be familiar with the principles and practices of computer science, as well as software and systems engineering, no specific expertise in any subfield of these disciplines is required.

Software architecture is critical to the success of software development projects. Unfortunately, many projects are unsuccessful in their attempts to leverage architecture-based development, especially large-scale projects. Lost in a myriad of possible UML diagrams, project teams often resort to ineffective ad-hoc techniques.

The purpose of this book is to enable software architects, their managers, and other development team members to become more effective in directing the course of large-scale software development projects. Written by two experienced architects that have worked in the trenches on many projects, this book provides practical advice for all software teams about developing and capturing critical software architectural concerns.

Leveraging the recent IEEE standard on software architecture and using UML compatible with versions 1.4 and 2.0 this book describes a series of viewpoints for capturing the software architecture and related concerns. These viewpoints convey essential information to users, stakeholders and other members of the development team.

Large-Scale Software Architecture covers:

• a series of UML based viewpoints for capturing software architecture and related concerns

• useful techniques for development of software architectures

• the roles and responsibilities of the software architect and the architecture team

• traps and pitfalls of architecture development

• utilization of reusable and off-the-shelf software frameworks and components

Whether managing, designing, developing or architecting large and complex systems, you will better understand how the software architecture can be captured and represented using this book.

This book is for people worrying about their sinking ship. Based on experience, it is a guide for navigating the blockers, buzzwords and bloody-mindedness that doom any analogue organisation trapped into thinking that while the internet has changed the world, it won't change their world. Companies that grew up on the web have changed our expectations of the services we rely on. We demand simplicity, speed and low cost. Organizations founded before the Internet aren't keeping up - despite spending millions on IT, marketing and 'innovation'. This revised, expanded second edition of Digital Transformation at Scale is a guide to building a digital institution. It explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organizations pivot to this new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience. It is based on the authors' experience designing and helping to deliver the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS). The GDS was a new institution made responsible for the digital transformation of government, designing public services for the Internet era. It snipped GBP4 billion off the government's technology bill, opened up public sector contracts to thousands of new suppliers, and delivered online services so good that citizens chose to use them over the offline alternatives, without a big marketing campaign. Other countries and companies noticed, with the GDS model now being copied around the world.

This third volume of the best-selling "Data Model Resource Book" series revolutionizes the data modeling discipline by answering the question "How can you save significant time while improving the quality of any type of data modeling effort?" In contrast to the first two volumes, this new volume focuses on the fundamental, underlying patterns that affect over 50 percent of most data modeling efforts. These patterns can be used to considerably reduce modeling time and cost, to jump-start data modeling efforts, as standards and guidelines to increase data model consistency and quality, and as an objective source against which an enterprise can evaluate data models. Praise for The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3 "Len and Paul look beneath the superficial issues of data modeling and have produced a work that is a must for every serious designer and manager of an IT project." -Bill Inmon, World-renowned expert, speaker, and author on data warehousing and widely recognized as the "father of data warehousing" "The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling is a great source for reusable patterns you can use to save a tremendous amount of time, effort, and cost on any data modeling effort. Len Silverston and Paul Agnewhave provided an indispensable reference of very high-quality patterns for the most foundational types of datamodel structures. This book represents a revolutionary leap in moving the data modeling profession forward." -Ron Powell, Cofounder and Editorial Director of the Business Intelligence Network "After we model a Customer, Product, or Order, there is still more about each of these that remains to be captured, such as roles they play, classifications in which they belong, or states in which they change. The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling clearly illustrates these common structures. Len Silverston and Paul Agnew have created a valuable addition to our field, allowing us to improve the consistency and quality of our models by leveraging the many common structures within this text." -Steve Hoberman, Best-Selling Author of Data Modeling Made Simple "The large national health insurance company I work at has actively used these data patterns and the (Universal Data Models) UDM, ahead of this book, through Len Silverston's UDM Jump Start engagement. The patterns have found their way into the core of our Enterprise Information Model, our data warehouse designs, and progressively into key business function databases. We are getting to reuse the patterns across projects and are reaping benefits in understanding, flexibility, and time-to-market. Thanks so much." -David Chasteen, Enterprise Information Architect "Reusing proven data modeling design patterns means exactly that. Data models become stable, but remain very flexible to accommodate changes. We have had the fortune of having Len and Paul share the patterns that are described in this book via our engagements with Universal Data Models, LLC. These data modeling design patterns have helped us to focus on the essential business issues because we have leveraged these reusable building blocks for many of the standard design problems. These design patterns have also helped us to evaluate the quality of data models for their intended purpose. Many times there are a lot of enhancements required. Too often the very specialized business-oriented data model is also implemented physically. This may have significant drawbacks to flexibility. I'm looking forward to increasing the data modeling design pattern competence within Nokia with the help of this book." -Teemu Mattelmaki, Chief Information Architect, Nokia "Once again, Len Silverston, this time together with Paul Agnew, has made a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge about datamodels, and the act of building sound data models. As a professional data modeler, and teacher of data modeling for almost three decades, I have always been aware that I had developed some familiar mental "patterns" which I acquired very early in my data modeling experience. When teaching data modeling, we use relatively simple workshops, but they are carefully designed so the students will see and acquire a lot of these basic "patterns" - templates that they will recognize and can use to interpret different subject matter into data model form quickly and easily. I've always used these patterns in the course of facilitating data modeling sessions; I was able to recognize "Ah, this is just like ...," and quickly apply a pattern that I'd seen before. But, in all this time, I've never sat down and clearly categorized and documented what each of these "patterns" actually was in such a way that they could be easily and clearly communicated to others; Len and Paul have done exactly that. As in the other Data Model Resource Books, the thinking and writing is extraordinarily clear and understandable. I personally would have been very proud to have authored this book, and I sincerely applaud Len and Paul for another great contribution to the art and science of data modeling. It will be of great value to any data modeler." -William G. Smith, President, William G. Smith & Associates, www.williamgsmith.com "Len Silverston and Paul Agnew's book, Universal Patterns for Data Modeling, is essential reading for anyone undertaking commercial datamodeling. With this latest volume that compiles and insightfully describes fundamental, universal data patterns, The Data Model Resource Book series represents the most important contribution to the data modeling discipline in the last decade." -Dr. Graeme Simsion, Author of Data Modeling Essentials and Data Modeling Theory and Practice "Volume 3 of this trilogy is a most welcome addition to Len Silverston's two previous books in this area. Guidance has existed for some time for those who desire to use pattern-based analysis to jump-start their data modeling efforts. Guidance exists for those who want to use generalized and industry-specific data constructs to leverage their efforts. What has been missing is guidance to those of us needing guidance to complete the roughly one-third of data models that are not generalized or industry-specific. This is where the magic of individual organizational strategies must manifest itself, and Len and Paul have done so clearly and articulately in a manner that complements the first two volumes of The Data Model Resource Book. By adding this book to Volumes 1 and 2 you will be gaining access to some of the most integrated data modeling guidance available on the planet." -Dr. Peter Aiken, Author of XML in Data Management and data management industry leader VCU/Data Blueprint

This undergraduate textbook adopts the perspective of organizations - not individuals - and clarifies the impact of social media on their different departments or disciplines, while also exploring how organizations use social media to create business value. To do so, the book pursues a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach, embracing IT, marketing, HR and many other fields. Readers will benefit from a comprehensive selection of current topics, including: tools, tactics and strategies for social media, internal and external communication, viral marketing campaigns, social CRM, employer branding, e-recruiting, search engine optimization, social mining, sentiment analysis, crowdfunding, and legal and ethical issues.

Modern business relies heavily on information technology. This book presents a new "always-on" business model for the digital age, one based on three interrelated components: a business model, an IT capability model, and an always-on information system model. In addition, it develops an implementation framework for the new model by identifying business-critical continuous computing information technologies as implementation drivers. The model proposed in this book reveals the critical role of business continuity management in ensuring business continuity even when operations are unaffected by any disasters. Using empirical survey data, PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling) combined with mediation analysis are used to test the model and hypotheses. The book is chiefly intended for students in Business Administration/Management degree programs and business leaders whose work involves addressing issues such as organizational performance, IT capability, enterprise information systems, IT management, business continuity management, disaster recovery management, risk management, IT auditing, and compliance.

Many Linux and Unix developers are familiar with the GNU debugger (GBD), the invaluable open source tool for testing, fixing, and retesting software. And since GDB can be ported to Windows, Microsoft developers and others who use this platform can also take advantage of this amazing free software that allows you to see exactly what's going on inside of a program as it's executing. This new pocket guide gives you a convenient quick reference for using the debugger with several different programming languages, including C, C++, Java, Fortran and Assembly.

The GNU debugger is the most useful tool during the testing phase of the software development cycle because it helps you catch bugs in the act. You can see what a program was doing at the moment it crashed, and then readily pinpoint and correct problem code. With the "GDB Pocket Reference" on hand, the process is quick and painless. The book covers the essentials of using GBD is a testing environment, including how to specify a target for debugging and how to make a program stop on specified conditions.

This handy guide also provides details on using the debugger to examine the stack, source files and data to find the cause of program failure-and then explains ways to use GBD to make quick changes to the program for further testing and debugging.

The ability to spot a bug in real time with GDB can save you hours of frustration, and having a quick way to refer to GBD's essential functions is key to making the process work. Once you get your hands on the "GDB Pocket Reference," you'll never let go!