bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Portals in the Public Sector
Authors: Watson Ed , Schaefer Brian
Published: May 2011

A complete enterprise portal solution should provide all users personalized, convenient, and secure access to everything needed to perform their tasks or job functions. The SAP portal platform provides a single point of access to a variety of information sources in an organization and enables personalization of this content based on the user’s classification. Content is provided in the portal client through a standard browser on the end user desktop, without a need to install any additional components. This article reviews the SAP portal offering and discusses issues around the design and delivery of portal technology. In particular, the public sector environment will be discussed with analysis of the employee portal for the State of Louisiana.
Portals Supporting a Mobile Learning Environment
Authors: Crowther Paul
Published: May 2011

Mobile computing gives a learner the ability to engage in learning activities when and where they wish. This may be formal learning, where the learner is a student enrolled on a course in an institution, or informal learning, where they may be engaged in activities such as a visit to an art gallery. This entry emphasises the importance of portals to this learning environment, using the MOBIlearn project as an example.
Privacy Preserving Data Portals
Authors: Fung Benjamin C.M.
Published: May 2011

Information in a Web portal often is an integration of data collected from multiple sources. A typical example is the concept of one-stop service, for example, a single health portal provides a patient all of her/his health history, doctor’s information, test results, appointment bookings, insurance, and health reports. This concept involves information sharing among multiple parties, for example, hospital, drug store, and insurance company. On the other hand, the general public, however, has growing concerns about the use of personal information. Samarati (2001) shows that linking two data sources may lead to unexpectedly revealing sensitive information of individuals. In response, new privacy acts are enforced in many countries. For example, Canada launched the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act in 2001 to protect a wide spectrum of information (The House of Commons in Canada, 2000). Consequently, companies cannot indiscriminately share their private information with other parties.
Project Management Web Portals and Accreditation
Authors: Triantafillidis Vicky
Published: May 2011

Project management skills and professional certification are quickly developing into required core practice (Hammond et al., 2006). Peter Shears, CEO of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), stated at a April, 2006, conference, that there was increased demand for skilled project managers within all organizations across all industry sectors (Hammond et al., 2006). AIPM is an Australian Project Management Web portal offering certifications of AIPM’s Registered Project Management (RegPM). As a supporter of the project management profession, the Project Management Institute (PMI) also plays an enormous role. The PMI Web portal encourages a standard with the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide describing what should be done to manage a project. PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP®) credential program is also available from the PMI Web portal recognizing and approving skills (Project Management Institute, Inc., 2006).
Semantic Integration and Interoperability among Portals
Authors: Kotis Konstantinos
Published: May 2011

In distributed settings, such as that of the World Wide Web, where a large number of information sources and services reside, portals provide a single point of global access via a single and unified view. This view is circumscribed by a specific conceptualization and a specific vocabulary whose entries provide lexicalizations of the concepts used for shaping information, data, and services provided. Ontologies play a key role to shaping information, as they provide conceptualizations of domains. Different portals may use different or partially overlapping ontologies for shaping information, or even different schemata for storing data. This affects the integration of information from different portals, and the interoperability between the services that portals provide. Consequently, this situation affects recall and precision of information retrieval, and sets limitations to the composition (and decomposition) of services among portals for serving clients’ (users or software agents) requests
SHRM Portals in the 21st Century Organisation
Authors: Lloyd-Walker Beverley
Published: May 2011

The importance of people to organisational success has been recognised; the implications of this for human resource departments forms the basis for the content of this article. The ways in which information technology has been used to support changes in the human resource function are discussed, leading to an exploration of the role of strategic human resource management portals. The content of strategic human resource management portals is then outlined, and covers the range of information they currently provide and their future role. Finally, issues relating to implementation are addressed. The need for human resource practitioners to develop a greater understanding of technology and its potential benefits is discussed. This article concludes by reiterating the uses made of strategic human resource portals and by acknowledging the need to continue to strive for improvements in the implementation of IT systems.
Software Agent Augmented Portals
Authors: Miao Yuan
Published: May 2011

The Internet was designed to connect distributed networks. It, however, provides a new way for people to interact. Connectivity becomes an important need. People feel uneasy while not being connected. The challenge for connecting people from different locations introduced a new concept of accessing resources and capabilities/utilities, the portal. Web portals have been successful in providing basic connectivity, for example, file archiving. On top of this, users start to expect the availability of a larger variety of services, more intelligent services, and more affordable services. New challenges emerge, however, and Web portals have limited capability to address them. It needs a significant enhancement of the mechanism of how services are provided. The software agent paradigm is a technology that is good at high level modelling and good at offering flexible and intelligent services. It has exhibited great potential to augment portals for addressing the new challenges. This article will review and discuss how agent technology can augment portals to provide desirable services.
Teaching Collaborative Web Portals Technology at a University
Authors: Medina-Domínguez Fuensanta
Published: May 2011

A collaborative Web portal is a Web site that consists of a set of Web pages, grouped according to specific criteria, from which users can access Web services and functionalities, and which, depending on the type of collaborative Web portal, allows synchronous and/or asynchronous interaction among users who may be geographically dispersed. The origin of collaborative Web portals is the combination of Web portals and collaborative environments fields.
Visual Metaphors for Designing Portals and Site Maps
Authors: Laurini Robert
Published: May 2011

When one says, “life is a struggle,” “life is a journey,” “at the evening of the life,” “at the dusk of the life,” he or she is using metaphors. A metaphor denotes a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically different but have something in common. In computing, the older metaphor is the desktop metaphor, which was used by Apple for the first visual interface. In the desktop metaphor, the computer screen is a virtual “desktop” with electronic “folders,” “documents,” “disk icons,” and a “trash can,” which are patterned after the physical objects in the physical office. Now the desktop metaphor is quite common in all visual operating systems. As Catarci, Costabile, and Matera (1995) said, “The more the metaphor is appropriate and visually impressive, the easier it is for the user to grasp the intended meaning.”
Web Site Portals in Local Authorities
Authors: Laurini Robert
Published: May 2011

Nowadays, practically all big cities have a Web site. The objective of this article is not to make a detailed study about their contents, but to examine their organization and underlying assumptions: indeed those choices illustrate very clearly the trends and priorities in terms of governance. The metaphors are becoming a structuring element for software design and applications. For instance, the screens of the first Macintoshes were designed with the desktop metaphor. Nowadays, practically all existing operating systems are not only visual, but also based on this metaphor. Those metaphors used in local authorities portals reveal the type of relationships with the public, and are a track to follow for e-government and e-democracy.
What is a Portal?
Authors: Ainamo Antti , Marxt Christian
Published: May 2011

The brief history of Web portals is beginning to be common knowledge for software and engineering designers and researchers specialized on the technologies of the Web(Berners-Lee & Fischetti, 1997). The first Web portals were a product of large government-sponsored “big science” projects in the United States and Europe that spawned private online services, such as AOL (Tuomi, 2002). These new businesses provided access to the Web for a fee. Then, in a second phase, companies such as Yahoo, Alta Vista, and Google appeared. As search engines they enabled users to find other pages on the Web. In contrast to AOL, they provided free access to all free pages to all users who had a technical connection to the Web. Now, in a third stage, many of these traditional search engines have begun their transformation into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience (Tatnall, in this volume; Webomadia, 2006).
Role of FS-ISAC in Countering Cyber Terrorism
Authors: Gupta Manish , Rao H. R.
Published: May 2011

In recent times, reliance on interconnected computer systems to support critical operations and infrastructures and, at the same time, physical and cyber threats and potential attack consequences have increased. The been so great. Information sharing and coordination among organizations are central to producing comprehensive and practical approaches and solutions to combating threats. Financial services institutions present highly financially attractive targets. The financial services industry, confronts cyber and physical threats from a great variety of sources ranging from potentially catastrophic attacks launched by terrorist groups or other national interest groups to the more commonly experienced extremely targeted attacks perpetrated by hackers and other malicious entities such as insiders. In this chapter we outline structure, major components, and concepts involved in information sharing and analysis in the financial services sector. Then we discuss the relevance and importance of protecting financial services institutions’ infrastructure from cyber attacks vis-à-vis presentation of different issues and crucial aspects of current state of cyber terrorism. We also discuss role and structure of ISACs in counterterrorism; and constituents, functions, and details of FS-ISAC.
The Analysis of Money Laundering Techniq
Authors: Woda Krzysztof
Published: May 2011

There exist many connections between money laundering and terrorism financing concerning illicit practices for fundraising, transfer or withdrawal of funds. The characteristic multistage process of money laundering is also typical for the terrorism financing and often contains a series of transactions in order to conceal the origin or disposition of money. The purpose of this article is the analysis of the best suited techniques of money laundering for terrorism financing using electronic payment systems (like transfers, mobile payment systems or virtual gold currencies). Furthermore, the suitability of payment systems for conducting secret transactions for terrorism financing will be analyzed regarding the realization of a single phase of money laundering.
Large-Scale Monitoring of Critical Digital Infrastructures
Authors: Årnes André
Published: May 2011

Network monitoring is becoming increasingly important, both as a security measure for corporations and organizations, and in an infrastructure protection perspective for nation-states. Governments are not only increasing their monitoring efforts, but also introducing requirements for data retention in order to be able to access traffic data for the investigation of serious crimes, including terrorism. In Europe, a resolution on data retention was passed in December 2005 (The European Parliament, 2005). However, as the level of complexity and connectivity in information systems increases, effective monitoring of computer networks is getting harder. Systems for efficient threat identification and assessment are needed in order to handle high-speed traffic and monitor data in an appropriate manner. We discuss attacks relating to critical infrastructure, specifically on the Internet. The term critical infrastructure refers to both systems in the digital domain and systems that interface with critical infrastructure in the physical world. Examples of a digital critical infrastructure are the DNS (domain name service) and the routing infrastructure on the Internet. Examples of systems that interface with the physical world are control systems for power grids and telecommunications systems. In 1988, the first Internet worm (called the Morris worm) disabled thousands of hosts and made the Internet almost unusable. In 2002, the DNS root servers were attacked by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack specifically directed at these servers, threatening to disrupt the entire Internet.1 As our critical infrastructure, including telecommunication systems and power grids, becomes more connected and dependent on digital systems, we risk the same types of attacks being used as weapons in information warfare or cyber terrorism. Any digital system or infrastructure has a number of vulnerabilities with corresponding threats. These threats can potentially exploit vulnerabilities, causing unwanted incidents. In the case of critical infrastructures, the consequences of such vulnerabilities being exploited can become catastrophic. In this chapter, we discuss methods relating to the monitoring, detection, and identification of such attacks through the use of monitoring systems. We refer to the data-capturing device or software as a sensor. The main threats considered in this chapter are information warfare and cyber terrorism. These threats can lead to several different scenarios, such as coordinated computer attacks, worm attacks, DDoS attacks, and large scale scanning and mapping efforts. In this context, the primary task of network monitoring is to detect and identify unwanted incidents associated with threats in order to initiate appropriate precautionary measures and responses.
Data Mining
Authors: Last Mark
Published: May 2011

Data mining is a growing collection of computational techniques for automatic analysis of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data with the purpose of identifying important trends and previously unknown behavioral patterns. Data mining is widely recognized as the most important and central technology for homeland security in general and for cyber warfare in particular
Bouncing Techniques
Authors: Coulondre Stéphane
Published: May 2011

Police investigation methods and tools are very efficient today in tracking down a cyber-attack. As a consequence, skilled cyber-terrorists now use some particular techniques in order to hide their real electronic identity. They can even mislead the investigators by showing another identity. Unfortunately, these techniques increasingly become widespread. We present several of these techniques and show how they can either help or betray attackers. An important conclusion of this paper is that unfortunately nowadays anonymity is practically attainable. The solution can not only rely on technology. International collaboration and information sharing is a key to this problem.
Analysis of TCP-Friendly Protocols for Media Streaming
Authors: Hosszú Gábor , Tegze David
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents various congestion control schemes for transport protocols together with a number of metrics for the evaluation of these protocols with special emphasis on fairness-related measures. The paper analyzes some properties of the TFRC algorithm, which provides applications with congestion control mechanisms that can be applied for streaming media. Streaming media is a delivery method of media content, which is simultaneously received by, and displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider.
Autonomic Networking
Authors: Karamolegkos Pantelis N. , Patrikakis Charalampos , Protonotarios Emmanuel
Published: May 2011

The term “autonomic networking” refers to a recently emerged communications paradigm, that uses distributed techniques (swarm intelligence based methods) and distributed hash tables to implement traditional functionalities of networking, including among others routing, service and resource discovery, addressing, load balancing etc. The shift of interest towards the autonomic networking approach has been mainly motivated by the pervasion of novel algorithms into relevant fields of computer communication science. These innovative techniques have been greatly alleviated by their fusion with already established solutions and applications (i.e. agent-based systems, network middleware development etc) so as to form a new ever-evolving landscape in networking.
DNS-Based Allocation of Multicast Addresses
Authors: Orosz Mihály , Hosszú Gábor , Kovács Ferenc
Published: May 2011

Despite the efficiency of the IP-multicast it has not been deployed in the whole Internet. The main reason is that the wide-area multicasting among the different autonomous systems (AS) has not been solved perfectly. The global address allocation is especially a problematic part of Internet-wide multicasting. This article addresses such problems in order to review the existing methods and the emerging research results (Hosszú, 2005).
Efficient and Scalable Client-Clustering for Proxy Cache
Authors: Kim Kyungbaek , Park Daeyeon
Published: May 2011

The recent increase in popularity of the Web has led to a considerable increase in the amount of Internet traffic. As a result, the Web has now become one of the primary bottlenecks to network performance and web caching has become an increasingly important issue. Web caching aims to reduce network traffic, server load, and user-perceived retrieval delay by replicating popular content on caches that are strategically placed within the network. Browser caches reside in the clients’ desktop, and proxy caches are deployed on dedicated machines at the boundary of corporate network and Internet service providers.
Light-Weight Content-Based Search for File Sharing Systems
Authors: Richly Gábor , Hosszú Gábor , Kovács Ferenc
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a novel approach to search in shared audio file storages, such as P2P-based systems. The proposed method is based on the recognition of specific patterns in the audio contents in such a way to extend the searching possibility from the description based model to a content-based one.
Modeling IP Traffic Behavior through Markovian Models
Authors: Nogueira Antóniol , Salvador Paulo , Valadas Rui , Pacheco António
Published: May 2011

This article addresses the use of Markovian models, based on discrete time MMPPs (dMMPPs), for modeling IP traffic. In order to describe the packet arrival process, we will present three traffic models that were designed to capture self-similar behavior over multiple time scales. The first model is based on a parameter fitting procedure that matches both the autocovariance and marginal distribution of the counting process (Salvador 2003). The dMMPP is constructed as a superposition of two-state dMMPPs (2-dMMPPs), designed to match the autocovariance function, and one designed to match the marginal distribution. The second model is a superposition of MMPPs, each one describing a different time scale (Nogueira 2003a). The third model is obtained as the equivalent to a hierarchical construction process that, starting at the coarsest time scale, successively decomposes MMPP states into new MMPPs to incorporate the characteristics offered by finer time scales (Nogueira 2003b). These two models are constructed by fitting the distribution of packet counts in a given number of time scales.
Optical Network Survivability
Authors: Correia N. S.C. , Medeiros M. C.R.
Published: May 2011

The telecommunications world is evolving dramatically toward challenging scenarios where the fast and efficient transportation of information is becoming a key element in today’s society. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology has the potential to satisfy the ever-increasing bandwidth needs of the network users on a sustained basis (Mukherjee, 2000). Network operators must provide uninterrupted service to their customers, that is, network survivability must be guaranteed. This means that, networks must be able to handle link or fiber cuts as well as equipment failures, fact that influences the design and operation of networks (Gerstel & Ramaswami, 2000). When using WDM, survivability becomes even more important because of the huge amount of traffic carried by a single fiber. A single fiber failure, even for few seconds, can be catastrophic (Maier, Pattavina, Patre & Martinelli, 2002). This issue is actually very important since the optical WDM technology is now being deployed in the field. Network survivability is not just an academic subject. In real networks, failures happen quite frequently (fiber cuts, for example, are very common in terrestrial networks since they share other utility transport conduits, such as gas or water pipes and electrical cables, and are considered the least reliable component (Gerstel & Ramaswami, 2000; Maier, Pattavina, Patre & Martinelli, 2002). The prevention of service interruption, or the reduction of the service loss when failures occur, must now be an integral part of the network design and operations strategy or otherwise severe service losses can happen.
Privacy in the Digital World
Authors: Gritzalis Stefanos , Lambrinoudakis Costas
Published: May 2011

Recent years have witnessed a significant evolution in the way information and communication systems are utilized, transforming modern communities into modern information societies. Nowadays, personal data are available or/and can be collected at different sites around the world. Even though the utilization of personal information leads to several advantages, including improved customer services, increased revenues, and lower business costs, it can be misused in several ways and may lead to violation of privacy.
Semantic Web Services
Authors: Roman Dumitru , Toma Ioan , Fensel Dieter
Published: May 2011

Service-oriented computing (SOC) is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing, especially in the area of e-business and e-work processing, that has evolved from object-oriented and component-based computing to enable the building of scalable and agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries; services will count for customers and not the specific software or hardware component that is used to implement the services. In this context, services become the next level of abstraction in the process of creating systems that would enable automation of e-businesses and e-works.
Service Provisioning in the IP Multimedia Subsystem
Authors: Oredope Adetola , Liotta Antonio
Published: May 2011

The IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) specifies a service centric framework for converged, all-IP networks. This promises to provide the long awaited environment for deploying technology-neutral services over fixed, wireless, and cellular networks, known as third generation (3G) networks. Since its initial proposal in 1999, the IMS has gone through different stages of development, from its initial Release 5 up to the current Release 7.
Sharing Protected Web Resources
Authors: Encheva Sylvia , Tumin Sharil
Published: May 2011

Role-based access control (RBAC) is a security mechanism that can lower the cost and complexity of security administration for large networked applications. RBAC simplifies security administration by using roles, hierarchies, and constraints to organize privileges (Ferraiolo et al., 1992).
TCP and TCP-Friendly Protocols
Authors: Chodorek Agnieszka
Published: May 2011

One of the most popular transport protocols—Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)—has a long history. The first document describing TCP protocol in early stages was published in 1974. Since then, TCP specification was changed several times, and finally in 1981 was standardised by RFC 793 (Postel, 1981). Two years later TCP, together with Internet Protocol (IP), became the official protocol suite of the Internet. In the same year the first widely available implementation of TCP in the 4.2 BSD operating system was built.
TCP for High-Speed Networks
Authors: Saldanha da Fonseca Nelson Luís , Michel Neila Fernanda
Published: May 2011

In response to a series of collapses due to congestion on the Internet in the mid-’80s, congestion control was added to the transmission control protocol (TCP) (Jacobson, 1988), thus allowing individual connections to control the amount of traffic they inject into the network. This control involves regulating the size of the congestion window (cwnd) to impose a limit on the size of the transmission window. In the most deployed TCP variant on the Internet, TCP Reno (Allman, Floyd, & Partridge, 2002), changes in congestion window size are driven by the loss of segments. Congestion window size is increased by 1/cwnd for each acknowledgement (ack) received, and reduced to half for the loss of a segment in a pattern known as additive increase multiplicative decrease (AIMD). Although this congestion control mechanism was derived at a time when the line speed was of the order of 56 kbs, it has performed remarkably well given that the speed, size, load, and connectivity of the Internet have increased by approximately six orders of magnitude in the past 15 years. However, the AIMD pattern of window growth seriously limits efficienct operation of TCP-Reno over high-capacity links, so that the transport layer is the network bottleneck. This text explains the major challenges involved in using TCP for high-speed networks and briefly describes some of the variations of TCP designed to overcome these challenges.
Web-Based Commerce Applications
Authors: Lin Chad , Cripps Helen , Huang Yu-An
Published: May 2011

The transaction of business via the Web is becoming an imperative for organizations aiming at improving their competitiveness. The Web-based commerce applications allow organizations to access potential customers and suppliers via the Internet. Expected benefits include: expanded marketplaces, potential cost reductions, productivity improvements, customization of products and services, 24-hour trading and information exchange, and management (McIvor & Humphreys, 2004; Raisinghani et al., 2005). This expansion of Web based commerce has led to growing research into the impact of investments made by organisations in this field (Raisinghani et al., 2005).
Wi-Fi Technology
Authors: Alexiou Antonios , Antonellis Dimitrios , Bouras Christos
Published: May 2011

Wi-Fi, short for “wireless fidelity,” is a term for certain types of wireless local area network (WLAN) that use specifications in the 802.11 family. In general, the wireless technologies are used for the replacement or the expansion of the common wired networks. They possess all the functionality of wired LANs but without the physical constraints of the wire itself. The wireless nature inherently allows easy implementation of broadcast/multicast services. When used with portable computing devices (e.g., notebook computers), wireless LANs are also known as cordless LANs because this term emphasizes the elimination of both power cord and network cable (Tanenbaum, 2003).
Greasemonkey and a Challenge to Notions of Authorship
Authors: Ballentine Brian D.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces Greasemonkey, a new extension for the Firefox browser, which enables users to alter the behavior and appearance of Web pages as the pages load. The chapter claims that Greasemonkey is forcing a reevaluation of what it means to be an author in digital environments. Using Michel Foucault’s (1979) original question, “What is an author?” the chapter argues that creators of Greasemonkey scripts take on the additional roles of designer and programmer. Also, the chapter cautions that since Greasemonkey scripts have the ability to alter the layout, navigation, and advertising on a Web page, there may be legal ramifi cations in the future for this open source project.
Morality and Pragmatism in Free Software and Open Source
Authors: Yeats Dave
Published: May 2011

This chapter analyzes the differences between the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as described by Richard Stallman and the open source movement as described in the writings of Eric Raymond. It argues that free software bases its activity on the argument that sharing code is a moral obligation and open source bases its activity on a pragmatic argument that sharing code produces better software. By examining the differences between these two related software movements, this chapter enables readers to consider the implications of these differences and make more informed decisions about software use and involvement in various software development efforts.
Social Technologies and the Digital Commons
Authors: da Rimini Francesca
Published: May 2011

This chapter investigates the premise that software is culture. It explores this proposition through the lens of peer production, of knowledge-based goods circulating in the electronic space of a digital commons, and the material space of free media labs. Computing history reveals that technological development has typically been infl uenced by external sociopolitical forces. However, with the advent of the Internet and the free software movement, such development is no longer solely shaped by an elite class. Dyne:bolic, Streamtime and the Container Project are three autonomously-managed projects that combine social technologies and cooperative labour with cultural activism. Innovative digital staging platforms enable creative expression by marginalised communities, and assist movements for social change. The author fl ags new social relations and shared social imaginaries generated in the nexus between open code and democratic media. In so doing the author aims to contribute tangible, inspiring examples to the emerging interdisciplinary fi eld of software studies.“Humanity’s capacity to generate new ideas and knowledge is its greatest asset. It is the source of art, science, innovation and economic development. Without it, individuals and societies stagnate. This creative imagination requires access to the ideas, learning and culture of others, past and present” (Boyle, Brindley, Cornish, Correa, Cuplinskas, Deere, et al., 2005)
The Evolution of Free Software
Authors: Klang Mathias
Published: May 2011

The more we rely upon software to mediate the many facets of our lives the more important the ability to control and adapt that software to our needs becomes. The Free Software Foundation stands at the forefront for this effort to ensure user empowerment. The main tool of the foundation is the General Public License that has been a fundamental document in software development since its conception in 1989. At present the Free Software Foundation is in the process of launching a new version of their license and the process is similar to the development of an existing social contract—the delicate problem is meeting the new challenges that have appeared since the earlier version while maintaining the spirit of the original.
FLOSS Legal and Engineering Terms and a License Taxonomy
Authors: Skidmore Darren
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the reader to terms relevant to understanding free/libre and open source licenses, some of the relevant legal, and relevant software engineering terms that are useful in understanding the issues in FLOSS. Then a brief history of FLOSS licenses is given before introducing a taxonomy to help understand the types of licenses which are available in the FLOSS domain. A brief description to think about differing views of the usage and users of FLOSS is given in conclusion.
Governance and the Open Source Repository
Authors: Stephens R. Todd
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines the critical task of governing the open source environment with an open source repository. As organizations move to higher levels of maturity, the ability to manage and understand the open source environment is one of the most critical aspects of the architecture. Metadata can be defined as information pertaining to the open source environment that the organization defines as critical to the business. Successful open source governance requires a comprehensive strategy and framework which will be presented through historical, current-state, and future perspectives. The author expects that by understanding the role of open source metadata and the repository within, researchers will continue to expand the body of knowledge around asset management and overall architecture governance.
Open Source Software and the Corporate World
Authors: Kelsey Sigrid
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses various ways that open source software (OSS) methods of software development interact with the corporate world. The success achieved by many OSS products has produced a range of effects on the corporate world, and likewise, the corporate world influences the success of OSS. Many times, OSS products provide a quality product with strong support, providing competition to the corporate model of proprietary software. OSS has presented the corporate world with opportunities and ideas, prompting some companies to implement components from the OSS business model. Others have formed companies to support and distribute OSS products. The corporate world, in turn, affects OSS, from funding labs where OSS is developed to engaging in intellectual property disputes with OSS entities. The consumer of software is sometimes baffled by the differences in the two, often lacking understanding about the two models and how they interact. This chapter clarifies common misconceptions about the relationship between OSS and the corporate world and explains facets of the business models of software design to better inform potential consumers.
Novell's Open Source Evolution
Authors: du Preez Jacobus Andries
Published: May 2011

Novell, Inc. was a leading network operating system provider in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in the mid-1990s, Novell lost market share in the network operating system market. To counter this loss of market share, Novell made a strategic decision to go open (i.e., to make use of open standards and open source business strategies). Novell employs a subscription strategy, selling subscriptions to its Linux desktop operating system called SuSE. Novell has subsequently successfully handled the changeover from being a proprietary network operating system provider to being a leader in Linux and open source solutions. For example, a comparison of the financial results of Novell’s fourth quarters of 2004 and 2005 shows an increase of 418% in Linux revenue to US$61 million. Novell has demonstrated that open source business strategies are feasible and profitable.
Communities of Practice for Open Source Software
Authors: Humes Leila Lage
Published: May 2011

This chapter studies the use of communities of practice in the process of disseminating open source software (OSS) in the University of São Paulo. The change management process included establishing an OSS support service and developing a skills-building training program for its professional IT staff, supplemented by a community of practice supported by an Internet-based discussion list. After using the resource extensively during the early phases of the adoption process, users replaced their participation in this local community by a mostly peripheral involvement in global OSS communities of practice. As a result of growing knowledge and experience with OSS, users’ beliefs and attitudes toward this technology became more favorable. These results, consistent with the theory of planned behavior constructs, provide useful guidance for managing the change process.
Open Source E-Learning Systems
Authors: Olla Phillip
Published: May 2011

E-learning applications are becoming commonplace in most higher education institutions, and some institutions have implemented open source applications such as course management systems and electronic portfolios. These e-learning applications initiatives are the first step to moving away from proprietary software such as Blackboard and WEBCT toward open source. With open source, higher education institutions can easily and freely audit their systems. This chapter presents evaluation criteria that was used by a higher education institution to evaluate an open source e-learning system.
Rapid Insertion of Leading Edge Industrial Strength Software into University Classrooms
Authors: Simmons Dick B. , Lively William , Nelson Chris
Published: May 2011

Within the United States, the greatest job growth is in software engineering and information management. Open source software (OSS) is a major technology base for enterprise application development. The complexity of technologies used by industry is often an obstacle to their use in the classroom. In this chapter, a major software development paradigm change that occurred in about the year 2000 is explained. CS education programs have been slow to adapt to the paradigm change due to problems such as the tenure system, inexperienced student laboratory assistants, lack of leading-edge software tool support, lack of software team project servers, unavailability of help and mentoring services, and software unavailability. This chapter explains how these problems can be solved by creating an open source-based shared software infrastructure program (SSIP) sponsored by industry, but planned and implemented by SSIP member universities at no cost to member universities.
The Added Value of E-Procurement for Buyer-Supplier Interaction
Authors: van Duinkerken Wilco , Batenburg Ronald , Versendaal Johan
Published: May 2011

Although there are many possible benefits anecdotal evidence shows that many initiatives and IT-implementations in the procurement domain do not deliver the suspected benefits, see for example Adamson (2001) and Pan, Pan, and Flynn (2004). This paper searches an answer, based on empirical evidence, to the question: “Does the implementation of e-procurement (IT for procurement) positively affect the performance of buyer-supplier interaction?”
Awareness Approaches of E-Collaboration Technology
Authors: Vivacqua Adriana S. , de Souza Jano M. , Barthès Jean-Paul
Published: May 2011

Early field studies in collaborative work have shown that actors are capable of aligning and integrating their activities with those of others in an apparently seamless way (e.g., Heath & Luff, 1991). This is accomplished through the use of information gathered by overhearing others’ conversations or surreptitiously monitoring their ongoing activities. To represent these practices of paying attention to what is going on in the environment, the term awareness was subsequently adopted (Schmidt, 2002). Researchers have dedicated much time to the study of how e-collaboration technologies might create some level of awareness between workers. Systems have been designed to enhance collaboration through the provision of information to create or maintain awareness of the working group. Even though different approaches have been introduced to address awareness, its creation and maintenance, researchers agree that most collaboration demands knowledge of others’ activities (Dourish & Bellotti, 1992), and many have argued extensively that awareness is crucial for groups when performing their joint activities (Gutwin & Greenberg, 2004).
Concurrency Control in Real-Time E-Collaboration Systems
Authors: Zhao Wenbing
Published: May 2011

For all e-collaboration systems, some degree of concurrency control is needed so that two people do not step on each other’s foot. The demand for good concurrency control is especially high for the tightly coupled, real-time e-collaboration systems. Such systems require quick responses to user’s actions, and typically require a WYSIWIS (what you see is what I see) graphical user interface (Ellis, Gibbs, & Rein, 1991). This requirement, together with the fact that users are often separated geographically across wide-area networks, favors a decentralized system design where the system state is replicated at each user’s site. This places further challenges on the design of concurrency control for these systems.
Digital Divide and E-Health Implications for E-Collaboration Research
Authors: Masucci Michele
Published: May 2011

E-health has rapidly gained attention as a framework for understanding the relationship between using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote individual and community health, and using ICTs for improving the management of health care delivery systems. The use of e-collaborative tools is implicit to the delivery and access of e-health. Development of the capacity to transmit and receive digital diagnostic images, use video telecommunications for supporting the remote delivery of specialized care and surgical procedures, and the use of e-communication technologies to support logistical elements of medical care (such as scheduling appointments, filling prescriptions, and responding to patient questions) are just a few ways in which e-communications are transforming how medical care is embedded within institutional, organizational, family, and community settings.
E-Collaboration Enhanced Host Security
Authors: Czirkos Zoltán , Hosszú Gábor , Kovács Ferenc
Published: May 2011

The importance of the host security problems come into prominence by the growth of the Internet, since the network means a breaking point to the intruders (Wang, Jha, McDaniel, & Livny, 2004). The article presents the e-collaboration related security questions, the main concepts of the intrusion detection and the different classes of the system protection methods.
E-Collaboration within Blogging Communities of Practice
Authors: Dennen Vanessa Paz , Pashnyak Tatyana G.
Published: May 2011

Blogging communities have developed in two ways. First, through this proliferation of blogs, individuals with like interests have found each other and built online connections. Second, people with real-life connections have realized the potential of blogging technology to facilitate collaboration and have purposefully created blogs to support their efforts. This article provides an overview of how blogging communities of practice are defined, have developed, and have come to use the tools for e-collaboration.
Enhancing Electronic Learning for Generation Y Games Geeks
Authors: Nichol Sophie , Blashki Kathy
Published: May 2011

This article explores a purpose built learning community, or that which Bruffee (1999) refers to as “conversational community,” of University students. The community functions primarily as a collaborative learning environment, specifically for students studying games design and development at Deakin University. Specifically this article focuses on the electronic, or online learning, “Web community” of the games students. The students typically use the online environment as a supplement to face-to-face lectures and tutorials in games design and development. The games students at the centre of this article are affectionately referred to as “Games Geeks” (with their approval!), and are demographically considered, by virtue of their age, to be Generation Y (those born between 1979 and 2000). Generation Y, and the games students in particular, are collaborative learners with an increased disposition for peer learning and social relationships. Communication amongst Generation Y is continually shifting between face-to-face to online modes, and culturally specific languages such as Leet Speak (Blashki & Nichol, 2005) have evolved as part of these slippery social negotiations and hierarchies. Within the game students’ social and educative milieu, learning via traditional “transmission” forms (the hallmark of university education), is eschewed for a more collaborative and participatory method supplemented by mentor relationships and constructive conversation amongst peers. Active participation and a sense of belonging to a community of knowledgeable peers, allows students to grant authority to their peers for “constructive, reacculturative conversation” (Bruffee, 1999, p. 12) of their work and ideas. Acceptance into the community is dependant upon students being willing to submit to this authority.
E-Scheduling
Authors: Knolmayer Gerhard F.
Published: May 2011

E-Scheduling can be defined as the application of computer and network technology as devices for coordinating tasks that are somehow related. With the evolution of the Web, eScheduling systems also became available for use in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships, for coordinating appointments, meetings, and reservations. In the remainder of the article we discuss e-scheduling first in production systems and then in office and service environments.
Facilitation of Technology-Supported Communities of Practice
Authors: Tarmizi Halbana , de Vreede Gert-Jan
Published: May 2011

Communities of practice (CoP) has gained on prominence since it emerged as a concept in early 1990s, introduced by Lave and Wenger (1991) as situated learning. They argue that knowledge is acquired through active participation in a community as a new member moves from peripheral to full participation in the community. Since then, the CoP concept has evolved (Kimble & Hildreth, 2004), as Wenger (2004) defined CoP as “groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do, and who interact regularly in order to learn how to do it better” (p. 2).
Faculty Perceptions of Traditional and Electronic Communications Channels
Authors: Pena-Sanchez Rolando , Mescioglu Ibrahim , Hicks Richard C.
Published: May 2011

Teaching involves the transfer of knowledge at two levels—group communication and personal communication. Personal communication between the faculty and the student is a valuable component of the learning experience which supplements in-class lectures. This paper examines the perceptions of the faculty of a small state university about their usage of personal communication in a face to face, e-mail, and telephone context.
GSS Research for E-Collaboration
Authors: Mathiyalakan Sathasivam
Published: May 2011

Kock and Nosek (2005) identify two trends within the field of e-collaboration research. First is the development of subcommunities devoted to the examination of a particular topic. The second trend is on integrating prior research and identifying topics of relevancy for e-collaboration. Our study falls within the second trend noted above. It is our argument that findings of GSS/ GDSS research cannot be blindly transferred to e-Collaboration research and there is a need to determine the extent of applicability, relevancy, and boundaries. The purpose of this study is to examine the previous GSS findings and assess their implications and applicability within in the e-collaboration environment. We begin by providing a brief background to e-collaboration and then proceed to assess the GSS research findings. After identifying important future trends, we provide concluding remarks.