After the dramatic failures of the dot coms in 2000 and 2001, many observers were quick to report on the death of electronic commerce. Investor confidence sagged, stock prices of technology firms in nearly all of the related sectors suffered. In reality, the picture is not nearly as dismal as the press would have us believe. E-commerce is not dead, but it has moved beyond its overhyped beginning stage. This book is an effort to sort through the hype, providing a realistic assessment of the state of electronic commerce today, and the important areas of opportunity and challenge for tomorrow. The book sees all kind of developments where e-business is becoming an integral part of 'traditional' business processes, with special emphasis on practical and policy importance. E-commerce scholars from a number of disciplines and countries contribute to assess the impact of the dot com bust and the current state of e-commerce.

Information providers are a very promising application area of recommender systems due to the general problem of assessing the quality of information products prior to the purchase. Recommender systems automatically generate product recommendations: customers profit from a faster finding of relevant products, stores profit from rising sales. All aspects of recommender systems are covered: the economic background, mechanism design, a survey of systems in the Internet, statistical methods and algorithms, service oriented architectures, user interfaces, as well as experiences and data from real-world applications. Specific solutions for areas with strong privacy concerns, scalability issues for large collections of products, as well as algorithms to lessen the cold-start problem for a faster return on investment of recommender projects are addressed. This book describes all steps it takes to design, implement, and successfully operate a recommender system for a specific information platform.

By and large, cost-effective information technology (IT) management is more about people, personal relationships, and corporate culture than it is about the technology itself. Simply put, IT doesn't work if you are surrounded by bad people and stupid processes in a deranged corporate culture.
IT's All about the People: Technology Management That Overcomes Disaffected People, Stupid Processes, and Deranged Corporate Cultures explains how to achieve dramatic improvements in service and agility by enhancing the people, processes, and culture within your organization. It details the various roles within the technology management process and supplies authoritative insight into the realities of human behavior-including the range of best and worst behaviors from managers, executives, and corporate culture.
Industry veteran Stephen J. Andriole explains the reason behind why many business cases fail and includes helpful insights on new governance models, organic transformation, guerilla budgeting, and open source software. Providing a fresh perspective on the old basics of IT management through a twenty-first-century lens, this book arms you with the methods needed to master the soft art of IT management as well as purchasing, deployment, and technological support.

This book covers significant recent developments in the field of Intelligent Meth ods applied to eCommerce. The Intelligent Methods considered are mainly Soft Computing Methods that include fuzzy sets, rough sets, neural networks, evolutionary computations, probabilistic and evidential reasoning, multivalued logic, and related fields. There is not doubt about the relevance of eCommerce in our daily environ ments and in the work carried out at many research centers throughout the world. The application of AI to Commerce is growing as fast as the computers and net works are being integrated in all business and commerce aspects. We felt that it was time to sit down and see how was the impact into that field of low-level AI, i.e. softcomputing. We found many scattered contributions disseminated in con ferences, workshops, journal, books or even technical reports, but nothing like a common framework that could serve as a basis for further research, comparison or even prototyping for a direct transfer to the industry. We felt then the need to set up a reference point, a book like this. We planned this book as a recompilation of the newest developments of re searchers who already made some contribution into the field. The authors were se lected based on the originality and quality of their work and its relevance to the field. Authors came from prestigious universities and research centers with differ ent backgrounds."

This volume contains the papers presented at the Second International Sym- sium on Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT 2009), which was held on October 18-20, 2009, in Paphos, Cyprus. This event followed the ?rst, very successful SAGT symposium, which took place in Paderborn, Germany, last year. The purpose of SAGT is to bring together researchers from computer s- ence, economics and mathematics to present and discuss originalresearchat the intersection of algorithms and game theory. It has been intended to cover all important areas such as solution concepts, game classes, computation of equil- riaandmarketequilibria, algorithmicmechanismdesign, automatedmechanism design, convergenceandlearningingames, complexityclassesingametheory, - gorithmicaspectsof?xed-pointtheorems, mechanisms, incentivesandcoalitions, cost-sharing algorithms, computational problems in economics, ?nance, decision theory and pricing, computational social choice, auction algorithms, price of - archyand its relatives, representationsof games and their complexity, economic aspects of distributed computing and the internet, congestion, routing and n- work design and formation games and game-theoretic approaches to networking problems. Approximately55submissionstoSAGT2009 werereceived.Eachsubmission was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members. The Program Committee decided to accept 29 papers. Out of these, a small number will be invited to a Special Issue of the Theory of Computing Systems journal with selected papers from SAGT 2009. The program of SAGT 2009 featured three invited talks from three outstanding researchers in algorithmic game theory: Elias Koutsoupias, Dov Monderer and Mihalis Yannakakis. We are very grateful toElias, DovandMihalisforjoiningusinPaphosandfortheirexcellentl

This volume presents the proceedings of the 15th International Workshop of Groupware (CRIWG 2009). The conference was previously held in USA, (- aha)in 2008, Argentina (Bariloche)in 2007, Spain (Medina del Campo) in 2006, Brazil (Porto de Galinhas) in 2005, Costa Rica (San Carlos) in 2004, France (Autrans) in 2003, Chile (La Serena) in 2002, Germany (Darmstadt) in 2001, Portugal (Madeira Island) in 2000, Mexico (Cancun) in 1999, Brazil (Buzios) in 1998, Spain (El Escorial) in 1997, Chile (Puerto Varas) in 1996, and Portugal (Lisbon) in 1995. The CRIWG workshops seek to advance theoretical, experimental, and - plied technical knowledge of computer supported collaboration. In the CRIWG workshops, researchers and professionals report ?ndings, exchange experiences, and explore concepts for improving the success of people making a joint e?ort toward a group goal. Topics of discussion are wide ranging, encompassing all aspects of design development, deployment, and use of groupware. CRIWG embraces both mature works that are nearly ready for publication in peer review journals, and new, cutting-edge works in progress. A total of 30 papers were accepted for presentation this year-16 full papers and 14 works in progress.Papersweresubjectedtodouble-blindreviewbyatleastthreemembers of the Program Committee. The papers are organized into nine sessions, on eight di?erent themes: Mobile Collaboration, Social Aspects of Collaboration I & II, Technologies for CSCW, Groupware Evaluation, CSCW Design, Geo Collaboration, Collaborative Learning and Modeling CSCW.

Knowledge Management and Management Learning: Extending the Horizons of Knowledge-Based Management examines a range of topical considerations in the field by utilizing dynamic and non-linear systems behavior or the complexity paradigm. From this examination have come a number of new and promising relevant extensions to knowledge management and its practice. Many of the topics have been pulled from "real world" situations in actual companies, and therefore these topical treatments reflect quantitative and qualitative research done within the knowledge management framework of actual company experience. Offered are a series of topical treatments that extend the parameters of knowledge management and examine the practical implications of these extensions.

The book begins with an extended introduction and theoretical framework. The contributing authors have written chapters that add to both the framework and the practical consequences of knowledge management. Within this context, the book illustrates why and how of knowledge management is important for companies.

The internet and the electronic economy are a technological revolution whose secular importance is apparent. The internet eliminates the temporal and spatial constraints on the exchange of information. It changes deeply the world of production and of labour. It transforms the exchange relationships between producers and consumers as well as between the suppliers within the supply-chain. The electronic economy is able to generate more accurate con sumer profiles and, therefore, a more powerful and effective marketing di rected to the individual consumer. There is no industry that is not undergoing thorough changes caused by the internet. The volume at hand gives an analysis of the internet revolution. It covers questions reaching form the highly controversial thesis of the end of property rights in the internet caused by the non-rivalry of the "consumption" of in formation to questions regarding the repercussions of the internet on our understanding of the human person. Technological changes like the introduction of the electronic economy pose the question of how to handle it and how to manage reasonably its ethi cal problems and dilemmas. The ethical problems and the business ethics of the electronic economy in the fields of production and labour, of consump tion, and in handling trust and the abuse of trust are analysed by the contribu tions from applied ethics and business ethics."

The development of net-centric approaches for intelligence and national security applications has become a major concern in many areas such as defense, intelligence and national and international law enforcement agencies. In this volume we consider the web architectures and recent developments that make n- centric approaches for intelligence and national security possible. These include developments in information integration and recent advances in web services including the concept of the semantic web. Discovery, analysis and management of web-available data pose a number of interesting challenges for research in w- based management systems. Intelligent agents and data mining are some of the techniques that can be employed. A number of specific systems that are net-centric based in various areas of military applications, intelligence and law enforcement are presented that utilize one or more of such techniques The opening chapter overviews the concepts related to ontologies which now form much of the basis of the possibility of sharing of information in the Semantic Web. In the next chapter an overview of Web Services and examples of the use of Web Services for net-centric operations as applied to meteorological and oceanographic (MetOc) data is presented and issues related to the Navy's use of MetOc Web Services are discussed. The third chapter focuses on metadata as conceived to support the concepts of a service-oriented architecture and, in particular, as it relates to the DoD Net-Centric Data Strategy and the NCES core services.

This book provides a balanced, empirically-based view of the "Digital Economy," and explores its regional and geographical import in areas where the Digital Economy meets more traditional patterns. More than just an interpretive analysis, this book utilizes empirical evidence in its assessment of the dynamics of specific regions in different parts of the world. The book also examines the policy implications of the rising Digital Economy.

The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication Proceedings and post-proceedings of referred international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

Distributed networks such as the Internet have altered the fundamental way a record is created, captured, accessed and managed over time. Law and ethics provide the major sources of regulatory controls over participants in such networks.

This book analyses the interrelationship of recordkeeping, ethics and law in terms of existing regulatory models and their application to the Internet environment. It proposes an Internet model based on the notion of a legal and social relationship as a means of identifying the legal and ethical rights and obligations of recordkeeping participants in networked transactions. Medical, business and governmental relationships within communities of common interest based on trust illustrate the practical application of the model. As legal relationships have their basis in the law of obligations found in common and civil law systems, as well as archival science, the model has a broad-based application. The relationship model also provides a unique ethical and legal approach to property, access, privacy and evidence. Most importantly, the book provides an interdisciplinary approach to Internet regulation, which contributes to closer ties between those who research, teach and work in fields of ethics, law and archival science.

This book provides a systematic examination of the developing business model, service enterprise integration. It investigates the proven concepts, models, methods, and techniques in manufacturing operations and examines all aspects relevant to service productivity. Chapters written by leading researchers provide critical literature reviews, conceptual analysis, and solution-result-oriented applications.

Serverless computing is radically changing the way we build and deploy applications. With cloud providers running servers and managing machine resources, companies now can focus solely on the application's business logic and functionality. This hands-on book shows experienced programmers how to build and deploy scalable machine learning and deep learning models using serverless architectures with Microsoft Azure. You'll learn step-by-step how to code machine learning into your projects using Python and pre-trained models that include tools such as image recognition, speech recognition, and classification. You'll also examine issues around deployment and continuous delivery including scaling, security, and monitoring. This book is divided into four parts: Cloud-based development: learn the basics of serverless computing with machine learning, functions as a service (FaaS), and the use of APIs Adding intelligence: create serverless applications using Azure Functions; learn how to use pre-built machine-learning and deep-learning models Deployment and continuous delivery: get up to speed with Azure Kubernetes Service, as well as Azure Security Center, and Azure Monitoring Application examples: deliver data at the edge, build conversational interfaces, and use convolutional neural networks for image classification

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Enterprise Applications and Services in the Finance Industry, FinanceCom2008, held in Paris, France, on December 13, 2008. The workshop spans multiple disciplines, including technical, economic, sociological and behavioral sciences. The guiding theme of this workshop was concerned with innovations in the financial services industry, driven by either new business models or changed regulations.

The nine presented papers and the keynote speech were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The topics covered are financial markets and customers, service-oriented architectures, and regulation and compliance.

Internet and web technology penetrates many aspects of our daily life. Its importance as a medium for business transactions will grow exponentially during the next few years. In terms of the involved market volume, the B2B area will hereby be the most interesting area. Also, it will be the place, where the new technology will lead to drastic changes in established customer relationships and business models. In an era where open and flexible electronic commerce provides new types of services to its users, simple 1-1 connections will be replaced by n-m relationships between customers and vendors. This new flexibility in electronic trading will generate serious challenges. The main problem stems from the heterogeneity of information descriptions used by vendors and customers, creating problems in both manual trading and in direct 1-1 electronic trading. In the case of B2B market places, it becomes too serious to be neglected. Product descriptions, catalog formats and business documents are often unstructured and non-standardized. Intelligent solutions that mechanize the structuring, standardizing, aligning, and personalizing process are a key requisite for successfully overcoming the current bottlenecks of B2B electronic commerce while enabling its further growth. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce discusses the main problems of information integration in this area and sketches several technological solution paths. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry and graduate level students in Computer Science.

This book contains the collection of papers presented at the conference of the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.2 "Information and Organizations." The conference took place during June 21-24, 2009 at the Universidade do Minho in Guimaraes, Portugal. The conference entitled "CreativeSME - The Role of IS in Leveraging the Intelligence and Creativity of SME's" attracted high-quality submissions from across the world. Each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double-blind review process. In addition to the 19 papers presented at the conference, there were five panels and four workshops, which covered a range of issues relevant to SMEs, creativity and information systems. We would like to show our appreciation of the efforts of our two invited keynote speakers, Michael Dowling of the University of Regensburg, Germany and Carlos Zorrinho, Portuguese coordinator of the Lisbon Strategy and the Technological Plan. The following organizations supported the conference through financial or other contributions and we would like to thank them for their engagement: "

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on E-Technologies, MCETECH 2009, held in Ottawa, Canada, during May 4-6, 2009.

The 23 full and 4 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 42 submissions. They cover topics such as inter-organzational processes, service-oriented architectures, security and trust, middleware infrastructures, open source and open environments, and applications including eGovernment, eEducation, and eHealth.

BIS 2009 held in Pozna? was the 12th in a series of international conferences on Business Information Systems. The BIS conference series has been recognized by professionals from its very beginning as a forum for the exchange and d- semination of topical research in the development, implementation, application and improvement of computer systems for business processes. The theme of the conference was "Information Systems for Agile Organi- tions." The material collected in this volume covers recent tendencies in making organizations more responsive to external conditions. On the one hand, onto- gies are adopted as a tool for better data and information management. On the other hand, ?exible information systems based on process orientation are being developed. A set of 22 papers illustrating these trends were selected for presentation during the main event. The articles are grouped into the following conference topics: Ontologies in Organizations, Ontologies and Security, Process Modelling, Process Analysis and Mining, Service-Oriented Architecture, Web Search, SocialIssues, andERP. The Program Committee consisted of over 90 members, who carefully ev- uated all the submitted papers. The careful review process assured that each paper underwent thorough evaluation and received many valuable comments. Only the best-quality papers were selected, resulting in an acceptance rate of less than 30%. The regular program was complemented by outstanding keynote speakers. We were honored to host leading experts in business process management and information management: Wil van der Aalst (Eindhoven University of Techn- ogy, The Netherlands) and Asuncion Gomez-Perez (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain)."

Create excellent 3D animations with free, open-source software.

When you’re looking for help with creating animation with Blender, look no further than the top-selling Blender book on the market. This edition of Blender For Dummies covers every step in the animation process, from basic design all the way to finished product. This book walks you through each project phase, including creating models, adding lighting and environment, animating objects, and building a final shareable file. Written by long-time Blender evangelist Jason van Gumster, this deep reference teaches you the full animation process from idea to final vision. With this fun and easy guide, you’re on your way toward making your animation dreams a reality.

• Set up Blender and navigate the interface
• Learn how to build models in virtual space
• Texture, light, and animate your figures―then render your final product
• Get help and inspiration from the Blender community

If you’re new to Blender or an experienced user in need of a reference, Blender For Dummies is the easy-to-use guide for you.

NFC geht aus der Kombination von kontaktloser Smart Card Identifikation und RFReader Technologie hervor. Es handelt sich um eine systematische Weiterentwicklung von RFID, die vor allem auf den Endverbrauchermarkt abzielt.

Das Buch NFC-Near Field Communication ist das Standardwerk zur NFCTechnologie. Es bietet einen umfassenden Aoeberblick A1/4ber Anwendungen und Technik des gesamten Themengebietes. FA1/4r Praxis und Ausbildung kann es sowohl als EinfA1/4hrung sowie als Grundlagen- und Nachschlagswerk dienen.

Ziel des Buches ist es, einen umfassenden Aoeberblick A1/4ber Grundlagen, Technik und Anwendungsszenarien von NFC zu gegeben. Hierzu wird zu Beginn NFC der klassischen RFID Technologie gegenA1/4bergestellt und Unterscheidungsmerkmale erArtert. Neben physikalischen Grundlagen der Aoebertragungstechnik wird auch detailliert auf die Protokolle fA1/4r die unterschiedlichen Operationsmodi eingegangen. Im Buch wird auch auf der aktuelle Stand der Normung von NFC diskutiert. Ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt von NFC - die Sicherheitsthematik - findet in einem gesonderten Kapitel ihren Niederschlag. Auch zahlreiche Anwendungen, die einen praxisnahen Einblick in die Umsetzung der Technologie geben, werden erlAutert (z.B. Smart Poster, Zahlungsverkehr, Zutritt). Ein Aoeberblick A1/4ber Hersteller und EndgerAte sowie Gremien und Institute, die sich mit NFC beschAftigen, findet sich im Anhang.

The aim of this book is to provide professional engineers and students of engineering with a sound working knowledge of the finite element method for engineering analysis and engineering design. This readable text will serve as a guide both to the method, and to its implementation in PAFEC (Program for Automatic Finite Element Calculations) software.

This book takes a comprehensive look at Magento, a robust and flexible e-commerce platform built on the Zend framework. With more than 750,000 downloads, Magento is the fastest growing open source e-commerce solution. This book walks you through all of the steps necessary to build a fully functional Magento-based web site. It also includes information on managing products, customers, and orders. This book is directed at web site designers and developers, but will also be extremely useful for business owners who have web sites built on the Magento platform.Introduces you to Magento, the fastest-growing open-source e-commerce platform Demonstrates how to configure and use Magento Covers how to customize Magento and develop extensions for the Magento platform What you'll learn How to install and set up a Magento based e-commerce web site How to effectively manage products, customers, and orders How to sell products through Magento How to design a custom Magento web site How to add content to your Magento web site How to create your own Magento extensions Who this book is for

Current and prospective web site designers and web developers, andsmall business owners who want an online presence. Table of Contents Introduction to Magento Installing Magento The Public Interface Walk-through The Administration Interface Walk-through Working with Products Working with Customers Working with Orders Configuring Magento Customizing Magento's Appearance Magento Extensions Application Programming Interface (API)Tips and Tricks

ChinacomBiz 2008 was the first international business-to-business (B2B) conference held in collaboration with the Chinacom scientific event in Hangzhou, China, on August 28. It was specifically tailored to produce more effective dialogue between the research, technology and business communities on technical developments in China and around the world. The event had industry support via well-know industry names such as the WIFI Alliance, Springer, CREATE-NET and Arris. The main focus of the event was on transport networks and infrastructures, video distribution systems and methods and the associated software systems that tie them all together. A total of 24 authors submitted their papers and a final 11 registrations were accepted. It was an excellent start to the B2B program and feedback was positive from all attendees. The presentations this year originated from the USA, Denmark, Germany, Brazil and of course China, providing the audience with a wide variety of topics and persp- tives in all the three categories mentioned above. The presentations from the event are available for download from the website itself (see http: //www.chinacombiz.org/). Next year's event is already being planned and it will again be collocated with the Chinacom scientific event. We look forward to having another great interaction with science, business and technology from a China perspective. August 2008 Patrick Bond

Many challenges were identified in CSCW some thirty years ago, and some of these remain problematic today. However they are being progressively transformed and this edited volume contains contributions that demonstrate how these new challenges are being dealt with in a variety of ways, reflecting the balance of rigour and creativity that has always characterised the field.

Originally presented at COOP 08 which took place in Carry-le-Rouet, France in 2008, the contributions to this volume have been substantially extended and revised. New technologies, new domains and new methods are described for supporting design and evaluation. Taking a progressive and critical stance, the authors cover a variety of themes including inter-organisational working, non task-based environments, creativity, and the development of Web 2.0 (and even Web 3.0) applications, including new cooperative mechanisms and new classification possibilities."