A welcome addition to Palgrave's Global Media Policy and Business series, Internet Governance and the Global South documents the role of the global south in Internet policymaking and challenges the globalization theories that declared the death of the state in global decision-making. Abu Bhuiyan argues that the global Internet politics is primarily a conflict between the states - the United States of America and the states of the global south - because the former controls Internet policymaking. The states of the global south have been both oppositional and acquiescing to the sponsored policies of the United States on Internet issues such as digital divide, multilingualism, intellectual property rights and cyber security. They do not oppose the neoliberal underpinnings of the policies promoted by the United States, but ask for an international framework to govern the Internet so that they can work as equal partners in setting norms for the global Internet.

SMIL 3.0: Multimedia for the Web, Mobile Devices and Daisy Talking Books is a revised introduction to - and resource guide for - the W3C SMIL language. It covers all aspects of the SMIL specification and covers all of SMIL's implem- tation profiles, from the desktop through the world of mobile SMIL devices. Based on the first version of the book, which covered SMIL 2.0, this edition has been updated with information from the past two releases of the SMIL l- guage. We have benefitted from comments and suggestions from many readers of the first edition, and have produced what we feel is the most comprehensive guide to SMIL available anywhere. Motivation for this Book While we were working on various phases of the SMIL recommendations, it became clear to us that the richness of the SMIL language could easily ov- whelm many Web authors and designers. In the 500+ pages that the SYMM working group needed to describe the 30+ SMIL elements and the 150+ SMIL attributes, there was not much room for background information or extensive examples. The focus of the specification was on implementation aspects of the SMIL language, not on the rationale or the potential uses of SMIL's declarative power.

"Security and Privacy in Social Networks" brings to the forefront innovative approaches for analyzing and enhancing the security and privacy dimensions in online social networks, and is the first comprehensive attempt dedicated entirely to this field. In order to facilitate the transition of such methods from theory to mechanisms designed and deployed in existing online social networking services, the book aspires to create a common language between the researchers and practitioners of this new area- spanning from the theory of computational social sciences to conventional security and network engineering.

The development of successful, usable Web-based systems and applications requires careful consideration of problems, needs, and unique circumstances within and among organizations. Uniting research from a number of different disciplines, Web engineering seeks to develop solutions and uncover new trends in the rapidly growing body of literature on Web system design, modeling, and methodology. Models for Capitalizing on Web Engineering Advancements: Trends and Discoveries contains research on new developments and existing applications made possible by the principles of Web engineering. With selections focused on a broad range of applications from telemedicine to geographic information retrieval this book provides a foundation for further study of the unique challenges faced by Web application designers.

With the prevalence of social media, businesses and other organizations have a growing need to utilize various online media platforms and sites to engage and interact with their potential consumer base. Virtual communities and social networking can provide an effective escape route from the limits imposed by traditional media. Using optimal strategies can lead to more successful outcomes when using these platforms. Modern Perspectives on Virtual Communications and Social Networking provides innovative insights into connection and conversation through internet media that foster trust, commitment, and transparency in business. The content within this publication represents the potential to create virtual bonds with consumers through the observation of buying behavior, social media best practices, and digital marketing strategies. It is designed for business professionals, academicians, consultants, managers, marketers, and researchers and covers topics centered on the use of online media as a method of reaching a wider population.

Before use, standard ERP systems such as SAP R/3 need to be customized to meet the concrete requirements of the individual enterprise. This book provides an overview of the process models, methods, and tools offered by SAP and its partners to support this complex and time-consuming process. It begins by characterizing the foundations of the latest ERP systems from both a conceptual and technical viewpoint, whereby the most important components and functions of SAP R/3 are described. The main part of the book then goes on to present the current methods and tools for the R/3 implementation based on newer process models (roadmaps).

In recent years, billions of dollars (and euros, yen, and other currencies) have been spent by wireless services providers to acquire the radio frequency spectrum needed to offer so-called "Third Generation" (3G) mobile services. These services include high-speed data, mobile Internet access and entertainment such as games, music and video programs. Indeed, as voice communications are substituted by data communications, software -rather than terminals or networks- has become the driver of the wireless industry. Meanwhile, services are becoming increasingly specialized.
Why has the road to multimedia cellular been so difficult? These benefits of the mobile Internet have come with the costs of a massive transition that has coincided with the bust of stock markets and the technology segments worldwide, controversial and costly license auctions in several lead markets, dated or mistaken regulatory policies, the clash between the early hype and the pioneering realities of the mobile Internet. But these are generalities that barely scratch the surface. The devil is in the details. And it is these details that Competition for the Mobile Internet addresses.

This unique volume explores cutting-edge management approaches to developing complex software that is efficient, scalable, sustainable, and suitable for distributed environments. Practical insights are offered by an international selection of pre-eminent authorities, including case studies, best practices, and balanced corporate analyses. Emphasis is placed on the use of the latest software technologies and frameworks for life-cycle methods, including the design, implementation and testing stages of software development. Topics and features: * Reviews approaches for reusability, cost and time estimation, and for functional size measurement of distributed software applications * Discusses the core characteristics of a large-scale defense system, and the design of software project management (SPM) as a service * Introduces the 3PR framework, research on crowdsourcing software development, and an innovative approach to modeling large-scale multi-agent software systems * Examines a system architecture for ambient assisted living, and an approach to cloud migration and management assessment * Describes a software error proneness mechanism, a novel Scrum process for use in the defense domain, and an ontology annotation for SPM in distributed environments* Investigates the benefits of agile project management for higher education institutions, and SPM that combines software and data engineering This important text/reference is essential reading for project managers and software engineers involved in developing software for distributed computing environments. Students and researchers interested in SPM technologies and frameworks will also find the work to be an invaluable resource. Prof. Zaigham Mahmood is a Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education UK and an Associate Lecturer (Research) at the University of Derby, UK. He also holds positions as Foreign Professor at NUST and IIU in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Professor Extraordinaire at the North West University Potchefstroom, South Africa.

Web services and Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) have become thriving areas of academic research, joint university/industry research projects, and novel IT products on the market. SOC is the computing paradigm that uses Web services as building blocks for the engineering of composite, distributed applications out of the reusable application logic encapsulated by Web services. Web services could be considered the best-known and most standardized technology in use today for distributed computing over the Internet. This book is the second installment of a two-book collection covering the state-of-the-art of both theoretical and practical aspects of Web services and SOC research and deployments. Advanced Web Services specifically focuses on advanced topics of Web services and SOC and covers topics including Web services transactions, security and trust, Web service management, real-world case studies, and novel perspectives and future directions. The editors present foundational topics in the first book of the collection, Web Services Foundations (Springer, 2013). Together, both books comprise approximately 1400 pages and are the result of an enormous community effort that involved more than 100 authors, comprising the world's leading experts in this field.

Perspectives in Spread Spectrum brings together studies and recent work on six exciting topics from the spread spectrum arts. The book gives a wide, collective view of trends, ideas, and techniques in the spread spectrum discipline, due to the authors' extensive work on spread spectrum techniques and applications from different vantage points. The inexorable march of electronics towards ever faster, ever smaller, and ever more powerful electronic and optical circuitry has wrought, and will continue to enable, profound changes in the spread spectrum arts, by allowing increasingly complex signalling waveforms and statistical tests to be implemented as the theory beyond spread spectrum continues to evolve. Perspectives in Spread Spectrum is divided into six chapters. The first chapter deals with sequence spreading design. There is not a single metric for design of spreading sequences; rather, the design is ideally tailored to the specific scenario of usage. This chapter delves into recent and very promising synthesis work. The second chapter deals with OFDM techniques. As channels become wider and trans-channel fading (or jamming) becomes frequency selective across the band, OFDM techniques may provide a powerful alternative design perspective. The third chapter is a generalization of the venerable Walsh functions. A new modulation scheme, Geometric Harmonic Modulation, GHM for short, is reviewed and characterized as a form of OFDM. From GHM, a further generalization of the Walsh functions is derived for non-binary signalling. The fourth chapter is concerned with some new and exciting results regarding the follower jammer paradigm. A counter-countermeasure technique is reviewed, notable for its counterintuitive characteristic which can be understood from a simple yet elegant game framework. The fifth chapter recounts some results pertaining to random coding for an optical spread spectrum link. The technique is based on laser speckle statistics and uses a coherent array of spatial light modulators at the transmitter but allows the receiver to be realized as a spatially distributed radiometric and therefore incoherent structure. The sixth and final chapter looks at an important and interesting application of spread spectrum to accurately locate a wideband, 'bent pipe', satellite transponder. It is, in a strong sense, an inverted GPS technique. Perspectives in Spread Spectrum serves as an excellent reference and source of ideas for further research, and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

A dazzling look at modern videogame worlds seen through an architectural lens, utilizing maps, diagrams and graphic illustrations to offer new perspectives on the art of virtual world building. Videogame Atlas presents a journey through twelve well-known videogame worlds via panoramic maps, intricate exploded diagrams and detailed illustrations. The book offers a playful new way of seeing these beloved virtual worlds using the practices and academic rigour that underpins real-world architectural theory. Titles such as Minecraft, Assassin's Creed Unity and Final Fantasy VII are explored in exhaustive detail through over 200 detailed illustrations of the micro and macro, each with supporting commentary and architectural theory. Taking influence from high-end architectural monographs, the book is carefully designed to the smallest of details and its production is intricately executed. This book, printed in five colours, with neon ink throughout, is a culmination of Luke and Sandra's work, which includes founding the Videogame Urbanism studio at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL that promotes the use of game technologies in architectural education.

The use of the internet for commerce has spawned a variety of auctions, marketplaces, and exchanges for trading everything from bandwidth to books. Mechanisms for bidding agents, dynamic pricing, and combinatorial bids are being implemented in support of internet-based auctions, giving rise to new versions of optimization and resource allocation models. This volume, a collection of papers from an IMA "Hot Topics" workshop in internet auctions, includes descriptions of real and proposed auctions, complete with mathematical model formulations, theoretical results, solution approaches, and computational studies. This volume also provides a mathematical programming perspective on open questions in auction theory, and provides a glimpse of the growing area of dynamic pricing.

Manufacturing and operations management paradigms are evolving toward more open and resilient spaces where innovation is driven not only by ever-changing customer needs but also by agile and fast-reacting networked structures. Flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness are properties that the next generation of systems must have in order to successfully support such new emerging trends. Customers are being attracted to be involved in Co-innovation Networks, as - proved responsiveness and agility is expected from industry ecosystems. Renewed production systems needs to be modeled, engineered and deployed in order to achieve cost-effective solutions. BASYS conferences have been developed and organized as a forum in which to share visions and research findings for innovative sustainable and knowledge-based products-services and manufacturing models. Thus, the focus of BASYS is to discuss how human actors, emergent technologies and even organizations are integrated in order to redefine the way in which the val- creation process must be conceived and realized. BASYS 2010, which was held in Valencia, Spain, proposed new approaches in automation where synergies between people, systems and organizations need to be fully exploited in order to create high added-value products and services. This book contains the selection of the papers which were accepted for presentation at the BASYS 2010 conference, covering consolidated and emerging topics of the conference scope.

This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of inequality and the stratification of the digital sphere. Grounded in classical sociological theories of inequality, as well as empirical evidence, this book defines 'the digital divide' as the unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and explores how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities, as well as create new forms of stratification. The Digital Divide examines how various demographic and socio-economic factors including income, education, age and gender, as well as infrastructure, products and services affect how the internet is used and accessed. Comprised of six parts, the first section examines theories of the digital divide, and then looks in turn at: Highly developed nations and regions (including the USA, the EU and Japan); Emerging large powers (Brazil, China, India, Russia); Eastern European countries (Estonia, Romania, Serbia); Arab and Middle Eastern nations (Egypt, Iran, Israel); Under-studied areas (East and Central Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa). Providing an interwoven analysis of the international inequalities in internet usage and access, this important work offers a comprehensive approach to studying the digital divide around the globe. It is an important resource for academic and students in sociology, social policy, communication studies, media studies and all those interested in the questions and issues around social inequality.

With this book, Onn Shehory and Arnon Sturm, together with further contributors, introduce the reader to various facets of agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE). They provide a selected collection of state-of-the-art findings, which combines research from information systems, artificial intelligence, distributed systems and software engineering and covers essential development aspects of agent-based systems.

The book chapters are organized into five parts. The first part introduces the AOSE domain in general, including introduction to agents and the peculiarities of software engineering for developing MAS. The second part describes general aspects of AOSE, like architectural models, design patterns and communication. Next, part three discusses AOSE methodologies and associated research directions and elaborates on Prometheus, O-MaSE and INGENIAS. Part four then addresses agent-oriented programming languages. Finally, the fifth part presents studies related to the implementation of agents and multi-agent systems.

The book not only provides a comprehensive review of design approaches for specifying agent-based systems, but also covers implementation aspects such as communication, standards and tools and environments for developing agent-based systems. It is thus of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in exploring the agent paradigm for developing software systems.

The availability of effective global communication facilities in the last decade has changed the business goals of many manufacturing enterprises. They need to remain competitive by developing products and processes which are specific to individual requirements, completely packaged and manufactured globally. Networks of enterprises are formed to operate across time and space with world-wide distributed functions such as manufacturing, sales, customer support, engineering, quality assurance, supply chain management and so on. Research and technology development need to address architectures, methodologies, models and tools supporting intra- and inter-enterprise operation and management. Throughout the life cycle of products and enterprises there is the requirement to transform information sourced from globally distributed offices and partners into knowledge for decision and action. Building on the success of previous DrrSM conferences (Tokyo 1993, Eindhoven 1996, Fort Worth 1998), the fourth International Conference on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DrrSM 2000) aims to: * Establish and manage the dynamics of virtual enterprises, define the information system requirements and develop solutions; * Develop and deploy information management in multi-cultural systems with universal applicability of the proposed architecture and solutions; * Develop enterprise integration architectures, methodologies and information infrastructure support for reconfigurable enterprises; * Explore information transformation into knowledge for decision and action by machine and skilful people; These objectives reflect changes of the business processes due to advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the last couple of years.

This book brings together three great motifs of the network society: the seeking and using of information by individuals and groups; the creation and application of knowledge in organizations; and the fundamental transformation of these activities as they are enacted on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Of the three, the study of how individuals and groups seek information probably has the longest history, beginning with the early "information needs and uses" studies soon after the Second World War. The study of organizations as knowledge-based social systems is much more recent, and really gained momentum only within the last decade or so. The study of the World Wide Web as information and communication media is younger still, but has generated tremendous excitement, partly because it has the potential to reconfigure the ways in which people seek information and use knowledge, and partly because it offers new methods of analyzing and measuring how in fact such information and knowledge work gets done. As research endeavors, these streams overlap and share conceptual constructs, perspectives, and methods of analysis. Although these overlaps and shared concerns are sometimes apparent in the published research, there have been few attempts to connect these ideas explicitly and identify cross-disciplinary themes. This book is an attempt to fill this void. The three authors of this book possess contrasting backgrounds and thus adopt complementary vantage points to observe information seeking and knowledge work.

This is a detailed study of the work of web designers, drawing on empirical research carried out from the birth of web design as an area of work in the 1990s to its professionalisation in the 21st century.

Adopting an informational perspective towards knowledge work, this book investigates how enterprise portals can promote knowledge creation, distribution, and use. Moving beyond the design and delivery of portals as mere information retrieval tools, an enterprise portal is viewed as a shared information work space that can facilitate communication and collaboration among organizational workers, as well as support the browsing, searching, and retrieval of information content. Adopting an information vantage point, the book uniquely explores the human issues surrounding enterprise portal adoption and use, as well as the utilization of intelligent agents to ameliorate the use of portals for knowledge-based tasks. The result is a novel, rich and comprehensive discussion on the factors affecting the design and utilization of enterprise portals for knowledge work, suitable for both graduate-level students and organizational workers alike.

This book presents a blueprint for corporate growth in the challenging environment of the first decade of the 21st century. It shows that Streamlining is an approach that leads companies to enable, automate and innovate, to control costs and improve performance in these new conditions. Pioneers like Cisco, Dell, GE, BP and Siemens have shown that it can deliver. This book will show all companies how to achieve results in the next part of their new techology/e-business journey and will be essential for managers.

This book provides a comprehensive review of China's Internet development in the past 23 years since the country's first access to the Internet, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. It offers a systematic account of China's experience in Internet development and governance, and establishes and presents China's Internet Development Index System, covering network infrastructure, information technology, digital economy, e-governance, cyber security, and international cyberspace governance.