Information intermediation is the foundation stone of some of the most successful Internet companies, and is perhaps second only to the Internet Infrastructure companies. On the heels of information integration and interoperability, this book on information brokering discusses the next step in information interoperability and integration. The emerging Internet economy based on burgeoning B2B and B2C trading will soon demand semantics-based information intermediation for its feasibility and success. B2B ventures are involved in the rationalization' of new vertical markets and construction of domain specific product catalogs. This book provides approaches for re-use of existing vocabularies and domain ontologies as a basis for this rationalization and provides a framework based on inter-ontology interoperation. Infrastructural trade-offs that identify optimizations in performance and scalability of web sites will soon give way to information based trade-offs as alternate rationalization schemes come into play and the necessity of interoperating across these schemes is realized. Information Brokering Across Heterogeneous Digital Data's intended readers are researchers, software architects and CTOs, advanced product developers dealing with information intermediation issues in the context of e-commerce (B2B and B2C), information technology professionals in various vertical markets (e.g., geo-spatial information, medicine, auto), and all librarians interested in information brokering.

In the Industrial Age, citizens thrived by buying private property and engaging in commerce. In today's Information Age, people need access to city public services in order to ensure their welfare. In "Electronic cities & Web-based urbanization integrated systems," Maryam Kamrani and Amir Alikhanzadeh, experts in their respective fields, lay out a plan for cities to build an informational infrastructure that is essential for every individual's well-being. The authors argue that building e-cities based on broad strategies and master plans is necessary so that everyone will have equal access to public services. Moreover, designing such cities would enable areas to move quickly into a fully networked environment that would improve public services. Creating such e-cities, however, is no easy task. This kind of development requires master plans and broad strategies. Web sites must be created to provide online services through a city portal, paperless municipal services must become the norm, and all kinds of new management infrastructure must be designed and carefully set in place. Kamrani and Alikhanzadeh envision a new future and lay out the necessary steps municipal governments must take in order to serve their residents and change with the times.

This book attempts to link some of the recent advances in crowdsourcing with advances in innovation and management. It contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it provides a global definition, insights and examples of this managerial perspective resulting in a theoretical framework. Second, it explores the relationship between crowdsourcing and technological innovation, the development of social networks and new behaviors of Internet users. Third, it explores different crowdsourcing applications in various sectors such as medicine, tourism, information and communication technology (ICT), and marketing. Fourth, it observes the ways in which crowdsourcing can improve production, finance, management and overall managerial performance. Crowdsourcing, also known as "massive outsourcing" or "voluntary outsourcing," is the act of taking a job or a specific task usually performed by an employee of a company or contractors, and outsourcing it to a large group of people or a community (crowd or mass) via the Internet, through an open call. The term was coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 issue of Wired magazine. It is being developed in different sciences (i.e., medicine, engineering, ICT, management) and is used in the most successful companies of the modern era (i.e., Apple, Facebook, Inditex, Starbucks). The developments in crowdsourcing has theoretical and practical implications, which will be explored in this book. Including contributions from international academics, scholars and professionals within the field, this book provides a global, multidimensional perspective on crowdsourcing.

Within the past ten years, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and others have grown at a tremendous rate, enlisting an astronomical number of users. Social media have inevitably become an integral part of the contemporary classroom, of advertising and public relations industries, of political campaigning, and of numerous other aspects of our daily existence. Social Media: Usage and Impact, edited by Hana S. Noor Al-Deen and John Allen Hendricks, provides a comprehensive and scholarly analysis of social media. Designed as a reader for upper-level undergraduate and graduate level courses, this volume explores the emerging role and impact of social media as they evolve. The contributors examine the implementation and effect of social media in various environments, including educational settings, strategic communication (often considered to be a merging of advertising and public relations), politics, and legal and ethical issues. All chapters constitute original research while using varied research methodologies for analyzing and presenting information about social media. Social Media: Usage and Impact is a tremendous source for educators, practitioners (such as those in advertising, PR, and media industries), and librarians, among others. This collection is an essential resource for any media technology course. With the rapid proliferation and adoption of social media, it is a juggernaut that must be addressed in the higher education curriculum and research.

HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web is devoted to teaching the Web user how to generate good hypertext. `As a result of (this) rapid uncontrolled growth, the Web community may be facing a `hypertext crisis'. Thousands of hastily written or ill conceived documents may soon be presented to readers poorly formatted or unusable... .' (From the Preface.) `The clear and practical ways in which HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web sets forth the principles of the Web, the operation of its servers and browsers, and its publishing concept is commendable. It will be an indispensable guide to the Web author as well as the sophisticated user.' (From the Foreword by Robert Cailliau.) `Despite its user friendliness, the Web has, by its own virtue, a default that makes it difficult for people to know where to begin: there is no starting point to the Web. Bebo White's HTML and the Art of Authoring For the World Wide Web will fill this gap immediately, as it provides a clear, introductory and sequential description of the fundamental concepts that lie underneath the Web. It describes HTML as an SGML application, explains the relationship between HTML and SGML, and gives a complete description of all the structure that HTML provides.' (From the Foreword by Eric van Herwijnen.)

The ultimate guide to how to redesign and rethink - reframe - your projects, initiatives and even your very business model, Cyber Commerce Reframing (CCR) shows you how to turn your company around in the Cyber Economy towards maximum use of information technology by additionally saving investments already made. In his vivid and hands-on book, the author provides you the insights of what went wrong with web-based business by examining failed companies all over the world. CCR constitutes an alternative to business process reengineering and optimization, which were partly not as successful as during the 80s and 90s in delivering expected results as they precondition too much additional investments, neglect organizations' uniqueness and often miss the starting point. Having designed, planned, supported and implemented CCR solutions at various companies of different size, the description of the work with corporate clients facilitates the task of incorporating CCR's novel ideas in your company.

This book provides a source of inspiration and a manual for designers, entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking into the practical application of product configurators. In this growing profession, there is a need for a book which focuses on the configuration process from a design perspective. The book delves into the practical application of configurators using case studies of selected firms that present their most significant works. It offers the reader tips, suggestions, technical details and critical issues which need to be considered, from experienced actors and pioneers worldwide, which include: Unfold, Belgium In-flexions, France Nervous System, USA Okinlab, Germany SkimLab, France Twikit, Belgium INDG, The Netherlands ZeroLight, United Kingdom 3Dimerce, The Netherlands 3DSource, USA Bagaar, Belgium MyCustomizer, Canada Combeenation, Austria

This book examines the 'new' areas of telecommunications technology, focusing particularly on fixed data communications (including the internet) and mobile telecommunications (including the mobile internet). A sectoral systems of innovation approach is used as a conceptual framework for the analysis of the telecommunications sector, in terms of equipment, access and content. The authors consider the emergence and expansion of new technologies and explore how the sectoral system of innovation is evolving and how previously independent systems are now converging. In particular, they address the question of equipment production and the provision of intangible service products such as internet access and content. By addressing the production of both goods and services, they highlight the critical interdependence of service innovations and manufacturing innovations. Some of the specific topics discussed within the book include: * the challenges for Europe of fixed data communications * second and third generation mobile telecommunications systems * data communication via satellite and television subsystems * the dynamics and trends of the internet services industry * policy implications for the future of the telecommunications sectoral system of innovation. The book is a comprehensive theoretical, empirical and policy oriented account of the emergence and evolution of the sectoral system of innovation of the internet and mobile telecommunications. It will be an invaluable source of reference for academic researchers and policymakers in the fields of macroeconomics, industrial economics and innovation, as well as consultants and firms operating in the communications industry.

Information Systems: The e-Business Challenge Indisputable, e-Business is shaping the future inspiring a growing range of innovative business models. To bring it to the point: the Internet has redefined the way electronic business is performed. In an electronic supported business all relationships are transformed -may it be a seller-to buyer relationship or a an agency-to-citizen relationship. So for instance in commerce new business models incorporate various activities: promoting and communicating company and product information to a global user base; accepting orders and payments for goods and services; providing ongoing customer support; getting feedback and spurring collaboration for a new product development. There are several ways of further differentiating e-Business such as sketching some diversions on various levels: e-Commerce, e-Government; B2C, B2B, B2G, G2C; Customer Relationship Management, Business Intelligence and so on. Further distinctions may follow divergent criteria such as separating in business stages. Thus particular problem domains emerge. They all state of its own guiding the development of adequate information systems."

Web Search: Public Searching of the Web, co-authored by Drs. Amanda Spink and Bernard J. Jansen, is one of the first manuscripts that address the human - system interaction of Web searching in a thorough and complete manner. The authors provide an examination of Web searching from multiple levels of analysis, from theoretical overview to detailed study of term usage, and integrate these different levels of analysis into a coherent picture of how people locate information on the Web using search engines.

Drawing primarily on their own research and work in the field, the authors present the temporal changes in, the growth of, and the stability of how people interact with Web search engines. Drs. Spink and Jansen present results from an analysis of multiple search engine data sets over a six year period, giving a firsthand account of the emergence of Web searching. They also compare and contrast their findings to the results of other researchers in the field, providing a valuable bibliographic resource.

This research is directly relevant to those interested in providing information or services on the Web, along with those who research and study the Web as an information resource. Graduate students, academic and corporate researchers, search engine designers, information architects, and search engine optimizers will find the book of particular benefit.

If you develop, test, or manage .NET software, you will find ."NET Test Automation Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach" very useful. The book presents practical techniques for writing lightweight software test automation in a .NET environment and covers API testing thoroughly. It also discusses lightweight, custom Windows application user interface automation and teaches you low-level web application user interface automation. Additional material covers SQL stored procedure testing techniques.

The examples in this book have been successfully used in seminars and teaching environments where they have proven highly effective for students who are learning intermediate-level .NET programming. You'll come away from the book knowing how to write production-quality combination and permutation methods.-->Table of Contents-->API Testing Reflection-Based UI Testing Windows-Based UI Testing Test Harness Design Patterns Request-Response Testing Script-Based Web UI Testing Low-Level Web UI Testing Web Services Testing SQL Stored Procedure Testing Combinations and Permutations ADO.NET Testing XML Testing

With a growing number of mobile devices offering Flash support, it is an increasingly viable platform for the development of mobile applications. Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices is just the book you need to learn how to take advantage of this new audience of mobile application users. Inside, it covers every facet of mobile Flash, from the essentials of the Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.X platforms and writing applications to testing your work and deploying to mobile users.

Applications presented include screensavers, wallpapers, data-consuming informational programs (such as movie, news, and stock tickers), quiz games, action games, and more. You are given tips on mobile Flash development best practices, and all of the essential topics are covered, including creating and using sound, vector graphics, and bitmaps; optimizing assets for the small screen; coding realistic physics for games; and consuming web services using PHP, Java, ColdFusion, and .NET.

Throughout the book, there are many samples to put together and learn from, and several bonus applications are also available to download and check out.

Aims to strengthen the reader's knowledge of the fundamental concepts and technical details necessary to develop, implement, or debug e-mail software. The text explains the underlying technology and describes the key Internet e-mail protocols and extensions such as SMTP, POP3, IMAP, MIME and DSN. It aims to help the reader build a sound understanding of e-mail archtitecture, message flow and tracing protocols, and includes real-world examples of message exchanges with program code that they can refer to when developing or debugging their own systems. The reader should also gain valuable insight into various security topics, including public and secret key encryption, digital signatures and key management. Each chapter begins with a detailed definition list to help speed the reader's understanding of technical terms and acronyms. The CD-ROM contains a listing of related Internet RFCs, as well as RSA PKCS documents, Eudora 3.0 freeware client, and the free user version of Software.com.Post.Office Server for Windows NT 3.0.

This book redefines community discovery in the new world of Online Social Networks and Web 2.0 applications, through real-world problems and applications in the context of the Web, pointing out the current and future challenges of the field. Particular emphasis is placed on the issues of community representation, efficiency and scalability, detection of communities in hypergraphs, such as multi-mode and multi-relational networks, characterization of social media communities and online privacy aspects of online communities. User Community Discovery is for computer scientists, data scientists, social scientists and complex systems researchers, as well as students within these disciplines, while the connections to real-world problem settings and applications makes the book appealing for engineers and practitioners in the industry, in particular those interested in the highly attractive fields of data science and big data analytics.

Using database-driven web pages or web content management (WCM) systems to manage increasingly diverse web content and to streamline workflows is a commonly practiced solution recognized in libraries to-day. However, limited library web content management models and funding constraints prevent many libraries from purchasing commercially available WCM systems. And, the lack of much needed technical expertise in building in-house WCM systems presents a great challenge for libraries of all types. Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies provides practical and applicable web content management solutions through case studies. It contains successful database-to-web applications as employed in a variety of academic libraries. The applications vary in scope and cover a range of practical how-to-do-it examples from database-driven web development, locally created web content management systems, systems for distributing content management responsibilities, dynamic content delivery, to open source tools, such as MySQL and PHP to manage the content. Issues and challenges associated with the development process are discussed. Authors will also discuss detours, sand traps, and missteps necessary to a real learning process.

The advent of the Internet and other new digital technologies means that companies—be they virtual or traditional bricks-and-mortar—must develop a successful strategy for presenting compelling brands in the virtual world. Drawing on their experience with Interbrand, the world's largest branding consultancy, and including chapters by branding experts from such companies as Pepsi-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Hewlett Packard, the authors focus on the strategic role of e-branding. Practical, tested, and designed for companies in any industry, this book presents a lively look at creating and sustaining e-brands beyond the current dot-com fizzle.

An examination of the social impact of the Internet, this volume explores political, social, technical, legal, and economic controversies in a manner accessible to the general reader. Today more than one billion people worldwide use the Internet for communication, shopping, business, and research. But in the last five years they have lost over $10 billion to malicious computer attacks alone. Is there a way to keep the benefits and avoid the problems? The Internet and Society: A Reference Handbook explores both the positive aspects of the Internet and its darker side. Topically organized, it chronicles the background and history of the Internet, with a focus on the 1960s and beyond. Through analysis of the latest research in sociology, political science, economics, law, and computer science, it examines problems, varieties of cybercrime, controversies, and solutions related to the Internet's phenomenal growth. It also illuminates the likely directions of the Internet's future and the ongoing challenges it presents to societies around the globe. A glossary of key terms, such as algorithm, ARPAnet, Hyper Text Markup Language, identity theft, Internet protocol, malicious mode, and Moore's law, helps readers find their bearings in the high-tech world of the Internet Bibliographical sketches of 20 key personalities-both positive and negative-in Internet history bring this high-tech story to life