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.

Recent technological progress in computer science, Web technologies, and the constantly evolving information available on the Internet has drastically changed the landscape of search and access to information. Current search engines employ advanced techniques involving machine learning, social networks, and semantic analysis. Next Generation Search Engines: Advanced Models for Information Retrieval is intended for scientists and decision-makers who wish to gain working knowledge about search in order to evaluate available solutions and to dialogue with software and data providers. The book aims to provide readers with a better idea of the new trends in applied research.

Web Intelligence is a new direction for scientific research and development that explores the fundamental roles as well as practical impacts of artificial intelligence and advanced information technology for the next generation of Web-empowered systems, services, and environments. Web Intelligence is regarded as the key research field for the development of the Wisdom Web (including the Semantic Web). As the first book devoted to Web Intelligence, this coherently written multi-author monograph provides a thorough introduction and a systematic overview of this new field. It presents both the current state of research and development as well as application aspects. The book will be a valuable and lasting source of reference for researchers and developers interested in Web Intelligence. Students and developers will additionally appreciate the numerous illustrations and examples.

This book presents a specific and unified approach framework to three major components: Search Engines Performance, Link Analysis, and User 's Web Behavior. The book can be used by researchers in the fields of information sciences, engineering (especially software), computer science, statistics and management, who are looking for a unified theoretical approach to finding relevant information on the WWW and a way of interpreting it from a data perspective to a user perspective.

With the daily addition of million documents and new users, there is no doubt that the World Wide Web (WWW or Web shortly) is still expanding its global information infrastructure. Thanks to low-cost wireless technology, the Web is no more limited to homes or offices, but it is simply everywhere. The Web is so large and growing so rapidly that the 40 million page "WebBase" repository of Inktomi corresponds to only about 4% of the estimated size of the publicly indexable Web as of January 2000 and there is every reason to believe these numbers will all swell significantly in the next few years. This unrestrainable explosion is not bereft of troubles and drawbacks, especially for inexpert users. Probably the most critical problem is the effectiveness of Web search engines: though the Web is rich in providing numerous services, the primary use of the Internet falls in emails and information retrieval activities. Focusing in this latter, any user has felt the frustrating experience to see as result of a search query overwhelming numbers of pages that satisfy the query but that are irrelevant to the user.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as the backbone of today's world economy. However, SMEs are well known for having limitations and acceptance barriers in adopting new technology even though the internet and communications channel's revolution has changed the way people conduct business today. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has disturbed the operations of SMEs and increased the burden on social media application globally. It is essential that SMEs utilize social media to strengthen their performance. Strengthening SME Performance Through Social Media Adoption and Usage explores experiences in different technological, managerial, organizational, and entrepreneurial environmental issues. It focuses on different conceptions of factors and consequences influencing social media usage and SME performance. Covering topics such as corporate social responsibility, marketing frameworks, and social media adoption, this premier reference source is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs, business leaders and managers, human resource managers, marketers, consultants, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

'Is private regulation of the Internet over? Have states taken over?' This book examines the function of self-regulation in cyberspace. It argues that contrary to what is often supposed in the literature, self-regulation is still an indispensable part of regulation of the Internet and will arguably remain so. It is intricately woven into the mesh of rules that governs the Internet today. Private regulation fills substantive or procedural gaps where no state regulation exists or where it is incomplete or ineffective, thus complementing the reach of state regulation. Simultaneously, states supply legal (and financial) frameworks that enable or complement self-regulation. In practice, often unknown to users, their behaviour is regulated by intertwined rules coming from both states and private groups. While each source of rules retains its identity and regulatory strengths, it is dependent on and complementary to the rules and processes of the other to effectively regulate Internet activities. Dr. Jeanne P. Mifsud Bonnici is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Law, Information and Converging Technologies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. This is Volume 16 in the Information Technology and Law (IT&Law) Series

Electronic and internet voting has become increasingly widespread in recent years, but which countries are the leaders of the movement and who lags behind? Is the digital divide likely to present a permanent challenge to electronic democracy? What are the experiences with regard to online voting, and what are the arguments for and against? Electronic Voting and Democracy examines these issues and the contexts in which they are played out, such as problems of legitimacy and the practical considerations that have driven some countries toward electronic voting faster than others. JOACHIM ASTROM Department of Social Sciences, University of Orebro, Sweden HUBERTUS BUCHSTEIN Professor of Political Science, University of Greifswald, Germany WOLFGANG DRECHSLER Department of Public Administration, University of Tartu, Estonia HANS GESER Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland CAROLYN HRIBAR Department of Political Science, Kent State Uniersity, Ohio, USA KIMMO GRONLUND Department of Political Science, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland PIA KARGER Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, Germany ROBERT KOFLER Institute for Information Economics, Vienna Univers

This book covers in a great depth the fast growing topic of tools, techniques and applications of soft computing (e.g., fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, neural networks, rough sets, Bayesian networks, and other probabilistic techniques) in the ontologies and the Semantic Web. The author shows how components of the Semantic Web (like the RDF, Description Logics, ontologies) can be covered with a soft computing methodology.

The Semantic Web, which is intended to establish a machine-understandable Web, is currently changing from being an emerging trend to a technology used in complex real-world applications. A number of standards and techniques have been developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), e.g., the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which provides a general method for conceptual descriptions for Web resources, and SPARQL, an RDF querying language. Recent examples of large RDF data with billions of facts include the UniProt comprehensive catalog of protein sequence, function and annotation data, the RDF data extracted from Wikipedia, and Princeton University's WordNet. Clearly, querying performance has become a key issue for Semantic Web applications. In his book, Groppe details various aspects of high-performance Semantic Web data management and query processing. His presentation fills the gap between Semantic Web and database books, which either fail to take into account the performance issues of large-scale data management or fail to exploit the special properties of Semantic Web data models and queries. After a general introduction to the relevant Semantic Web standards, he presents specialized indexing and sorting algorithms, adapted approaches for logical and physical query optimization, optimization possibilities when using the parallel database technologies of today's multicore processors, and visual and embedded query languages. Groppe primarily targets researchers, students, and developers of large-scale Semantic Web applications. On the complementary book webpage readers will find additional material, such as an online demonstration of a query engine, and exercises, and their solutions, that challenge their comprehension of the topics presented.

Design is an art form in which the designer selects from a myriad of alternatives to bring an "optimum" choice to a user. In many complex of "optimum" is difficult to define. Indeed, the users systems the notion themselves will not agree, so the "best" system is simply the one in which the designer and the user have a congruent viewpoint. Compounding the design problem are tradeoffs that span a variety of technologies and user requirements. The electronic business system is a classically complex system whose tradeoff criteria and user views are constantly changing with rapidly developing underlying technology. Professor Milutinovic has chosen this area for his capstone contribution to the computer systems design. This book completes his trilogy on design issue in computer systems. His first work, "Surviving the Design of a 200 MHz RISC Microprocessor" (1997) focused on the tradeoffs and design issues within a processor. His second work, "Surviving the Design of Microprocessor and Multiprocessor Systems" (2000) considers the design issues involved with assembling a number of processors into a coherent system. Finally, this book generalizes the system design problem to electronic commerce on the Internet, a global system of immense consequence.

The World Wide Web has become a ubiquitous global tool, used for finding infor mation, communicating ideas, carrying out distributed computation and conducting business, learning and science. The Web is highly dynamic in both the content and quantity of the information that it encompasses. In order to fully exploit its enormous potential as a global repository of information, we need to understand how its size, topology and content are evolv ing. This then allows the development of new techniques for locating and retrieving information that are better able to adapt and scale to its change and growth. The Web's users are highly diverse and can access the Web from a variety of devices and interfaces, at different places and times, and for varying purposes. We thus also need techniques for personalising the presentation and content of Web based information depending on how it is being accessed and on the specific user's requirements. As well as being accessed by human users, the Web is also accessed by appli cations. New applications in areas such as e-business, sensor networks, and mobile and ubiquitous computing need to be able to detect and react quickly to events and changes in Web-based information. Traditional approaches using query-based 'pull' of information to find out if events or changes of interest have occurred may not be able to scale to the quantity and frequency of events and changes being generated, and new 'push' -based techniques are needed."

A Web portal is a special Website designed to act as a gateway giving convenient access to other related sites. This book investigates the various types of portals and describes how they can be used in business applications. After considering the nature of portals, the book describes the first general portals like Yahoo, and how they came into being. Portals are used in businesses of all types and sizes and this book discusses how portals can be used in large business corporations as well as small to medium enterprises. Web portals have increasing importance to marketers as, by their nature, they retain their users who must return to them frequently. They also provide a useful means of making information and knowledge readily available in a convenient form to authorized users. This book covers a wide range of issues relating to the use of portals in business.

"Both newbies (newcomers to the Internet) and Netizens (old-timers) will find challenges and rewards in this witty, knowledgeable, and timely report from the electronic front."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"Vividly describes the virtual realm as a place of interconnecting communities every bitas complicated, exciting, and dangerous as any city."
--"Booklist"

"A pleasant antidote to the breathless rhetoric one finds in many books and magazines devoted to computer culture."
--"Technology Review"

"Grossman brings a wealth of professional and personal experience to the material-and a clarity of style and analysis that is a welcome relief from both the hyperbolic prose of many Net boosters and the overwrought jeremiads of cyberphobes."
--"Reason"

"There is a lot to like about this survey, especially the diligent research and reading the author has invested in it. The endnotes are vast and informative..."From Anarchy to Power" gathers strengh as it goes along."
--"The Christian Century"

"An informative exploration into many of the issues and problems that plague the Net today...From Anarchy to Power is a must read."
-- "ComputerUser.com"

companion website: http: //www.nyupress.org/fap

Yesterday's battles over internet turf were fought on the net itself: today's battles are fought in government committees, in Congress, on the stock exchange, and in the marketplace. What was once an experimental ground for electronic commerce is now the hottest part of our economic infrastructure.

In From Anarchy to Power, Wendy Grossman explores the new dispensation on the net and tackles the questions that trouble every online user: How vulnerable are the internet andworld wide web to malicious cyber hackers? What are the limits of privacy online? How real is internet addiction and to what extent is the news media responsible for this phenomenon? Are women and minorities at a disadvantage in cyberspace? How is the increasing power of big business changing internet culture?

We learn about the political economy of the internet including issues of copyright law, corporate control and cryptography legislation. Throughout the book the emphasis is on the international dimensions of the net, focusing on privacy and censorship in the United States, Europe and Canada and the hitherto ignored contributions of other countries in the development of the net. Entertaining and informative From Anarchy to Power is required reading for anyone who wants to know where the new digital economy is heading.

Under Quality of Service (QoS) routing, paths for flows are selected based upon the knowledge of resource availability at network nodes and the QoS requirements of flows. QoS routing schemes proposed differ in the way they gather information about the network state and select paths based on this information. We broadly categorize these schemes into best-path routing and proportional routing. The best-path routing schemes gather global network state information and always select the best path for an incoming flow based on this global view. On the other hand, proportional routing schemes proportion incoming flows among a set of candidate paths. We have shown that it is possible to compute near-optimal proportions using only locally collected information. Furthermore, a few good candidate paths can be selected using infrequently exchanged global information and thus with minimal communication overhead.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet, describes these schemes in detail demonstrating that proportional routing schemes can achieve higher throughput with lower overhead than best-path routing schemes. It first addresses the issue of finding near-optimal proportions for a given set of candidate paths based on locally collected flow statistics. This book will also look into the selection of a few good candidate paths based on infrequently exchanged global information. The final phase of this book will describe extensions to proportional routing approach to provide hierarchical routing across multiple areas in a large network.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet is designed for researchers and practitioners in industry, and is suitable for graduatelevel students in computer science as a secondary text.

Collecting and Conserving Net Art explores the qualities and characteristics of net art and its influence on conservation practices. By addressing and answering some of the challenges facing net art and providing an exploration of its intersection with conservation, the book casts a new light on net art, conservation, curating and museum studies. Viewing net art as a process rather than as a fixed object, the book considers how this is influenced by and executed through other systems and users. Arguing that these processes and networks are imbued with ambiguity, the book suggests that this is strategically used to create suspense, obfuscate existing systems and disrupt power structures. The rapid obsolescence of hard and software, the existence of many net artworks within restricted platforms and the fact that artworks often act as assemblages that change or mutate, make net art a challenging case for conservation. Taking the performative and interpretive roles conservators play into account, the book demonstrates how practitioners can make more informed decisions when responding to, critically analysing or working with net art, particularly software-based processes. Collecting and Conserving Net Art is intended for researchers, academics and postgraduate students, especially those engaged in the study of museum studies, conservation and heritage studies, curatorial studies, digital art and art history. The book should also be interesting to professionals who are involved in the conservation and curation of digital arts, performance, media and software.

E-Business Management: Integration of Web Technologies with Business Models contains a collection of articles by leading information systems researchers on important topics related to the development of e-business. The goal is to enhance the understanding of the state of the art in e-business, including the most current and forward-looking research. The book emphasizes both business practices and academic research made possible by the recent rapid advances in the applications of e-business technology. The book should help graduate students, researchers, and practitioners understand major e-business developments, how they will transform businesses, and the strategic implications to be drawn.
By illustrating in detail the major e-business developments and research, E-Business Management focuses on addressing e-business management from the perspective of information systems research. In order to cover the subject matter in sufficient breadth and depth, the book is organized into the following five main sections:
-e-Business Fundamentals;
-e-Business Best Practices;
-Marketing, Customer Relations, e-Services, and Personalization;
-Formation of New Intermediaries and e-Markets, and
-B2B and Supply-Chain Management: New Business Models and Valuation.

Managing (e)Business Transformation comprises text and cases designed to show students how a business can be transformed into an internetworked enterprise where IT infrastructures are used to link customers, suppliers, partners and employees to create superior economic value. The book is written based on the premise that integrating internet technologies throughout the value chain is crucial to building and managing customer relationships. Importantly, it underscores the centrality of basic business and economic principles within the context of a networked environment. The book builds on established business and economic theories, concepts and fundamentals to show that 'e-business' will soon be synonymous with 'business'. The book takes a strong managerial perspective, especially popular with MBA students, to argue that the internet is simply an enabling technology, which allows firms to build the infrastructure needed to operate in an evolving business world. The application of theory/concepts is emphasized throughout and contains a range of international case studies enhance the learning experience. This book is a must for all students studying e-business strategy at undergraduate, MBA and postgraduate level. Also available is a companion website with extra features to accompany the text, please take a look by clicking below - http://www.palgrave.com/business/farhoomand/index.asp

This volume offers unique insights into the mutually constitutive nature of social media practices and religious change. Part 1 examines how social media operate in conjunction with mass media in the construction of discourses of religion and spirituality. It includes: a longitudinal study of British news media coverage of Christianity, secularism and religious diversity (Knott et al.); an analysis of responses to two documentaries 'The Monastery' and 'The Convent' (Thomas); an evaluation of theories of the sacred in studies of religion and media within the 'strong program' in cultural sociology in the US (Lynch); and a study of the consequences of mass and social media synergies for public perceptions of Islam in the Netherlands (Herbert). Part 2 examines the role of social media in the construction of contemporary martyrs and media celebrities (e.g., Michael Jackson) using mixed and mobile methods to analyse fan sites (Bennett & Campbell) and jihadi websites and YouTube (Nauta). Part 3 examines how certain bounded religious communities negotiate the challenges of social media: Judaism in Second Life (Abrams & Baker); Bah'ai regulation of web use among members (Campbell & Fulton); YouTube evangelists (Pihlaja); and public expressions of bereavement (Greenhill & Fletcher). The book provides theoretically informed empirical case studies and presents an intriguing, complex picture of the aesthetic and ethical, demographic and discursive aspects of new spaces of communication and their implications for religious institutions, beliefs and practices.