More than ever, emerging technology is assisting individuals with autism in a variety of ways. However, many parents, schools, and special education professionals are not aware of the recent technological developments that are available to assist these individuals. Innovative Technologies to Benefit Children on the Autism Spectrum brings together relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical research concerning the emerging technologies that benefit individuals living with autism. This book is an essential reference source for parents, teachers, special educators, researchers, academics, and other professionals seeking relevant information on the emerging technological advances available for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong.

For all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.

Instead of buying the myths these compa­nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they’re almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal­lenge them?

In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world’s most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.

Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.

Co-creativity has become a significant cultural and economic phenomenon. Media consumers have become media producers. This book offers a rich description and analysis of the emerging participatory, co-creative relationships within the videogames industry. Banks discusses the challenges of incorporating these co-creative relationships into the development process. Drawing on a decade of research within the industry, the book gives us valuable insight into the continually changing and growing world of video games.

"An engrossing microcosm of the internet's Wild West years" (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex.In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only five percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream. Imagine Kremen's surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had stolen the rights to Sex.com and was already making millions that Kremen would never see. Thus follows the wild true story of Kremen's and Cohen's decade-long battle for control. In The Players Ball, author and journalist David Kushner provides a front seat to these must-read Wild West years online, when innovators and outlaws battled for power and money. This cat-and-mouse game between a genius and a con man changed the way people connect forever, and is key to understanding the rise and future of the online world. "Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up." --Publishers Weekly

Robert Greifeld was CEO of NASDAQ for over a decade, during which time it was named Company of the Year, ranked one of the best performing companies in the U.S., included in Fortune's annual list of 100 fastest growing companies and shares of the company's stock rose a whopping 800%.

In Market Mover, Bob looks at the headline-making events that took place while he was at the helm from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis of 2008, to Facebook's disastrous IPO and the Bernie Madoff scandal. He takes you exclusively behind the headlines using them as jumping off points for lessons that can be applied to any business, including jumpstarting change, working with technology, finding the best people, and adapting to globalization.

Imagine if you could see the playbook that returned a struggling tech empire to the top of the tech leaderboard. The Microsoft Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled the tech company to once again become a leading tech innovator. It wasn't so long ago that Microsoft and its Windows operating system dominated the tech industry so much so that they faced antitrust charges for what was perceived by many to be predatory, monopolistic practices. Less than a decade later, the tide had turned and Microsoft lost its dominance in the personal tech marketplace amidst the launch of the iPhone, the rise of Google, and the cloud computing phenomenon. But, now, Microsoft is back on top. The company's value is soaring and once again Microsoft is being recognized as a tech leader once again. What changed? Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO, the company has gone through significant changes. The company culture has become one of creativity and innovation, no longer requiring that all products revolve around Windows. The company has reevaluated their business lines, getting rid of underperforming initiatives such as smartphones, and focused on the area of growth where the company excelled:the cloud. Through the story of Microsoft, you'll learn: How to build a nimble company culture that supports innovation and growth. How to return a forgotten brand to the spotlight. How to recognize and build upon successful business lines, while letting go of underperforming initiatives. When to change the entire way you do business. And much, much more.

Why do some games seem to be universal while others have a particular connection to the culture of the people playing them? Around the World in 80 Games is about the mathematics of chance, game theory, gamification, gaming strategies and computer games. Traversing the globe, Marcus du Sautoy looks at the genesis of games new and old, explores how to invent a good game and explains the fascination of a popular lockdown game. From the secrets of whist to hopscotch, Scrabble to Wordle. The most simple games endure: board games, card games and dice games have captivated us for centuries and the acclaimed mathematician and author of The Creativity Code (among many others) will once again bring mathematics to the fore with insight and aplomb in Around the World in 80 Games.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This cutting edge book introduces the origins and consequences of digital platforms, examining how artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users by providing social media and e-commerce services. Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy approaches. They show how uneven power relationships between platform operators and their users are analysed in different economic traditions. Key features include: analysis of economic and public values provides a foundation for platform regulation examines the impacts of platforms on the media industry challenges claims of the inevitability of platform dominance discusses key challenges, including: artificial intelligence, data sharing and competition in the digital economy. This concise book will be indispensable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and communication studies, innovation studies and economics, particularly those focusing on platform economics.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.

Meet Thaddeus Sikorski, a herculean third-generation American, courageous, persevering, and surprisingly steadfast father of this tragic odyssey to love and protect his angel children. After losing his first love, 18-year-old Thad enlist, and goes on to become a Vietnam War combatant, a San Francisco progressive street revolutionary, a graduate business student, an Internet-related technology visionary, husband, and a global business leader. In between entrepreneurial misadventures, he manages to save the life of an American President, struggles with a psychopathy attorney and murderer, discovers the truth about Silicon Valley's justice system, experiences the economic hollowing out brought on by the outsourcing of Silicon Valley technologies, and survives the emotions of remaining true to his love for his children. This extraordinary journey travels through three decades of the American technology and cultural landscape. Author Richard Kusiolek paid much attention to the details of everyday life of an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Angels in the Silicon encapsulates the experience of living in Silicon Valley for three decades of rapid technology progress, economic change, and a politically correct progressive judiciary. The novel, "Angels in the Silicon," has a powerful American story to tell. You will learn the naked truth of living in Northern California's Silicon Valley.

More software engineers are likely to work in a globally distributed environment, which brings benefits that include quick and better software development, less manpower retention, scalability, and less software development cost and sharing of knowledge from the global pool of employees. However, these work environments also introduce a physical separation between team members and project leaders, which can create problems in communication and ultimately lead to the failure of the project. Human Factors in Global Software Engineering is a collection of innovative research focusing on the challenges, issues, and importance of human factors in global software engineering organizations in order to help these organizations better manage their manpower and provide an appropriate culture and technology in order to make their software development projects successful. While highlighting topics including agile software, knowledge management, and human-computer interaction, this book is ideally designed for project managers, administrators, business professionals, researchers, practitioners, students, and academicians.

"Telecom Management for Call Centers" offers a practical guide to addressing the most common issues faced by telecom management in large call-centers. This handbook was written primarily for the telecom manager; the techniques described here are practical and easily applicable, focusing on the issues the telecom manager faces in his or her daily operational work. The lessons learned by the professionals in this growing field are not often documented and shared. This guide provides documentation of this practical knowledge in a single volume, presented by telecom professionals Luiz Augusto de Carvalho and Olavo Alves Jr. It offers a general view of how telecom infrastructures in large call-centers should be planned, priced, negotiated and managed. It examines call-center operations and provides guidelines for cost management; traffic management; call-center infrastructure; transport networks; GSM gateways deployment; billing systems and auditing; dialer deployment. Carvalho and Alves also explore how to do the necessary calculations, prepare and use traffic matrixes, and map and analyze call-center traffic, including relevant case studies for all issues. Put your call center on the path to success using the advice and methods offered in "Telecom Management for Call Centers."

In light of the emerging global information infrastructure, information technology standards are becoming increasingly important. At the same time, however, the standards setting process has been criticized as being slow, inefficient and out of touch with market needs. What can be done to resolve this situation? To provide a basis for an answer to this question, Information Technology Standards and Standardization: A Global Perspective paints as full a picture as possible of the varied and diverse aspects surrounding standards and standardization. This book will serve as a foundation for research, discussion and practice as it addresses trends, problems and solutions for and by numerous disciplines, such as economics, social sciences, management studies, politics, computer science and, particularly, users.