Services both as a science and as a practice in today's corporate environments are suffering from many suboptimalities. A compromise of both organizational and technological aspects provides the answer to many pitfalls and shortcomings currently faced. ""Service Science for Socio-Economical and Information Systems Advancement: Holistic Methodologies"" sheds light on a variety of issues and shortcomings of service-based economies by analyzing situations and modern practices that improve the way researchers, field practitioners, and ICT professionals account for their core business service-related activities. This defining body of research provides a broad perspective of how to improve service creation, production, and management of assets.

Tired of writing all your user IDs and passwords on sticky notes and pieces of scrap paper? This convenient address book stores them all in one place. This is not your typical address book There are also special sections for online banking info and one for storing e-mail addresses.

Technological innovation continues to be present in all areas of our lives, offering seemingly endless possibilities. As technology is increasingly implemented in healthcare applications, it is necessary to understand whether users respond to a predefined organizational strategy of model of care or whether they will become wholly dependent on the healthcare technology. This understanding is especially crucial when dealing with the possibility of generating inequities, especially with individuals that are elderly. Exploring the Role of ICTs in Healthy Aging is a collection of innovative research that proposes the detailed study of a strategic framework for the development of technological innovation in healthcare and for its adoption by health organizations. While highlighting topics including emotional health, quality of life, and telemedicine, this book is ideally designed for physicians, nurses, hospital staff, medical professionals, home care providers, hospital administrators, academicians, students, and researchers. Moreover, the book will provide insights and support executives concerned with the management of expertise, knowledge, information, and organizational development in different types of healthcare units at various levels.

The analysis of commonalities and differences between agile technology and open source software development is needed to understand how advancement approaches have evolved and whether they produce concrete benefits in terms of software quality and customer satisfaction. ""Agile Technologies in Open Source Development"" explores the overlap between open source and agile technologies, providing valuable strategies for advancement in software. This innovative publication provides a valuable resource to assist project managers, engineers, and developers interested in experimenting with new approaches in software expansion.

Technology holds the key for bridging the gap between access to quality education and the need for enhanced learning experiences. Cases on Technological Adaptability and Transnational Learning: Issues and Challenges contains case studies on divergent themes of personalized learning environments, inclusive learning for social change, innovative learning and assessment techniques, technology and international partnership and transnational collaboration for enhanced access under the core domain of technological adaptability and transnational learning.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things are facing tremendous advances both in terms of energy-efficiency as well as in the number of available applications. Consequently, there are challenges that need to be tackled for the future generation of WSNs. After giving an overview of the WSN protocols and IEEE 802.15.4 standard, this book proposes IEEE 802.15.4 Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer performance enhancements by employing not only RTS/CTS combined with packet concatenation but also scheduled channel poling (MC-SCP). Results have shown that the use of the RTS/CTS mechanism improves channel efficiency by decreasing the deferral time before transmitting a data packet. Furthermore, the Sensor Block Acknowledgment MAC (SBACK-MAC) protocol enables more efficiency as it allows the aggregation of several acknowledgement responses in one special Block Acknowledgment (BACK) Response packet. The throughput and delay performance have been mathematically derived under both ideal conditions (a channel environment with no transmission errors) and non-ideal conditions (with transmission errors). Simulation results successfully validate the proposed analytical models. This research reveals the importance of an appropriate design for the MAC sub-layer protocol for the desired WSN application. Depending on the mission of the WSN application, different protocols are required. Therefore, the overall performance of a WSN application certainly depends on the development and application of suitable e.g., MAC, network layer protocols.

The World Wide Web is changing the way we use technology, bringing e-learning and teaching to a whole new dimension of collaboration and communication. Looking Toward the Future of Technology-Enhanced Education: Ubiquitous Learning and the Digital Native bridges the gap between technology and education by presenting innovative research on the future of education. An essential reference on e-learning, this scholarly publication examines current research in technology enhanced learning, provides new didactic models for education, and discusses the newest technologies and their impact on education.

A key focus in recent years has been on sustainable development and promoting environmentally conscious practices. In today's rapidly evolving technological world, it is important to consider how technology can be applied to solve problems across disciplines and fields in these areas. Further study is needed in order to understand how technology can be applied to sustainability and the best practices, considerations, and challenges that follow. Futuristic Trends for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Ecosystems discusses recent advances and innovative research in the area of information and communication technology for sustainable development and covers practices in several artificial intelligence fields such as knowledge representation and reasoning, natural language processing, machine learning, and the semantic web. Covering topics such as blockchain, deep learning, and renewable energy, this reference work is ideal for computer scientists, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, scholars, instructors, and students.

Developments in Technologies for Human-Centric Mobile Computing and Applications is a comprehensive collection of knowledge and practice in the development of technologies in human -centric mobile technology. This book focuses on the developmental aspects of mobile technology; bringing together researchers, educators, and practitioners to encourage readers to think outside of the box.

Take an active role in managing technology!

From new business models to new types of business, information technology has become a key driver of business and an essential component of corporate strategy. But simply acquiring technology is not enough; organizations must manage IT effectively to gain the competitive advantage.

Henry Lucas's Information Technology: Strategic Decision Making for Managers focuses on the key knowledge and skills you need to take an active role in managing technology and obtain the maximum benefits from investing in IT. Offering streamlined, up-to-date coverage, the text is ideally suited for MBA students or anyone who wants to learn more about how to gain the competitive advantage by successfully managing IT.

Features Focuses on managerial issues: This text explores the many real technology issues confronting today's managers, such as what to do with legacy systems, when to outsource, and how to choose a source of processing and services. Shows how to evaluate IT investments: Two full chapters cover the value of information technology and how to evaluate IT project proposals using both net present value and real options approaches. Balances technical and managerial coverage: This balance helps you understand how diverse companies have developed their IT architectures and environments. Explains the various applications of technology: Concrete examples illustrate major IT applications, such as ecommerce, ERP, CRM, decision and intelligent systems, and knowledge management.

In today's society, the professional development of teachers is urgent due to the constant change in working conditions and the impact that information and communication technologies have in teaching practices. ""Online Learning Communities and Teacher Professional Development: Methods for Improved Education Delivery"" features innovative applications and solutions useful for teachers in developing knowledge and skills for the integration of technology into everyday teaching practices. This defining collection of field research discusses how technology itself can serve as an important resource in terms of providing arenas for professional development.

This book presents recently developed computational approaches for the study of reactive materials under extreme physical and thermodynamic conditions. It delves into cutting edge developments in simulation methods for reactive materials, including quantum calculations spanning nanometer length scales and picosecond timescales, to reactive force fields, coarse-grained approaches, and machine learning methods spanning microns and nanoseconds and beyond. These methods are discussed in the context of a broad range of fields, including prebiotic chemistry in impacting comets, studies of planetary interiors, high pressure synthesis of new compounds, and detonations of energetic materials. The book presents a pedagogical approach for these state-of-the-art approaches, compiled into a single source for the first time. Ultimately, the volume aims to make valuable research tools accessible to experimentalists and theoreticians alike for any number of scientific efforts, spanning many different types of compounds and reactive conditions.

Talk to just about any Information Technology (IT) executive today and you're likely to hear the same complaint: "Even though we have invested millions of dollars each year in technical infrastructure and support, we don't get the results we expect." The focus of IT management over the past several decades has been on maximizing the benefit that comes from IT investments. Particular attention is paid to finding the right hardware, software, networks, and processes to allow IT to contribute to the bottom line of the business. And still, with all of this focus, IT organizations find themselves unable to meet the demands of their clients. Perhaps a shift in focus is needed. IT PEOPLE: Doing More With Less shifts the focus to the IT people. Because while it is right to focus on getting the hardware, software, networks, and processes right, people are the resources that ultimately make a difference in getting results and meeting the demands of clients. And since people costs are often the largest part of the IT budgets, and our focus has been elsewhere, it could be that a focus on IT people is long overdue. This book is intended for every IT professional (management and individual contributors) who faces the constant challenge of performing a big job with ever-shrinking departmental resources. Whether you are a manager or an individual technician, this book is for you. It will help you improve your ability to plan your work and, meet your commitments while being an effective political actor. Our aim in this book is to provide you with a tool that will not only help you deliver greater value to your organization, but do so in a way that provides a greater degree of job satisfaction andquality of life. IT PEOPLE: Doing More With Less is intended as a practical tool, not a theoretical book. The content of the book comes from the experiences of the authors, each of whom has spent years managing IT organizations and consulting with clients around the worl

The association of personal time management research with calendar applications has remained a relatively under-researched area due to the complexity and challenges it faces. ""Temporal Structures in Individual Time Management: Practices to Enhance Calendar Tool Design"" covers the latest concepts, methodologies, techniques, tools, and perspectives essential to understanding individual time management experiences. Emphasizing personal temporal structure usage involving calendar tools, this book provides both qualitative and quantitative evidences and insights valuable for researchers and practitioners in enhancing current electronic calendar systems design and implementation.

The latest advances in technology development have been particularly useful to actor-network theory as a structure for much of its research. With a socio-technical approach to the understanding of information systems and applications, the actor-network theory aims to bring support for social influence on technological innovations. Social and Professional Applications of Actor-Network Theory for Technology Development presents a platform for the approaches and implementations on the actor-network theory and its relationship with technology development. This book provides researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of the usefulness of the social and technical connection.

During the last two decades, computer and information technologies have forced great changes in the ways businesses manage operations in meeting the desired quality of products and services, customer demands, competition, and other challenges.

Innovation is a time-consuming process that involves invention as a beginning and a marketable service or product as an end. But innovation itself, once concluded, is not necessarily a constructive act as some innovations yield positive and some negative results. The way we recognize and develop innovation - so often a serendipitous and almost invisible act in its beginning - is thus a matter of primary importance in today's world where new thoughts and products play such a crucial role in economies across the globe. Nowhere is the general support structure required for success in innovation more starkly illuminated than in the fields of science and medicine, where human well-being is so manifestly at stake. In this work, which draws together the perspectives of a multidisciplinary group of professionals - medical doctors, innovation policy analysts, and academics in business management - Shantha Liyanage and his colleagues provide a thorough examination of the technology innovation process, and display its critical links with organizational functions, so the innovative capacities of organizations can be better prepared to meet the rapid changes of our age.

This is an information science reference. Distance learning technologies have reshaped the diffusion of communication within the educational system. Within this expanding field, the possibilities for an interactive, cross-boundary education are endless.""Strategic Applications of Distance Learning Technologies"" provides tactical uses of distance education technologies to assist instructors and researchers in their quest to provide a progressive, alternative approach to traditional education techniques. This collection of advanced research incorporates global challenges and opportunities of technology integration while outlining strategies for distance learning within developing countries.

This book introduces the linkage between evolutionary computation and complex networks and the advantages of cross-fertilising ideas from both fields. Instead of introducing each field individually, the authors focus on the research that sits at the interface of both fields. The book is structured to address two questions: (1) how complex networks are used to analyze and improve the performance of evolutionary computation methods? (2) how evolutionary computation methods are used to solve problems in complex networks? The authors interweave complex networks and evolutionary computing, using evolutionary computation to discover community structure, while also using network analysis techniques to analyze the performance of evolutionary algorithms. The book is suitable for both beginners and senior researchers in the fields of evolutionary computation and complex networks.