bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Segmenting the Mature Travel Market with Data Mining Tools
Authors: Wang Yawei
Published: May 2011

The graying of America is one of the most significant demographic changes to the present and future of the United States (Moisey & Bichis, 1999). As more baby boomers enter their 50s and 60s, the mature travel market becomes a fast-growing market segment and starts to attract attention from many tourism researchers and professionals. The significant increases in size and wealth of the older population make the mature travel market a strong component of the general travel market (Reece, 2004). Understanding the mature market as well as mature travelers’ motivations are vital to the success of the travel industry (Brewer, Poffley, & Pederson, 1995; Hsu, Cai, & Wong, 2007). Today’s mature travel market can be generalized as being “different, diverse and demanding” (Harssel, 1994, p. 376). Faranda and Schmidt (1999) suggest that mature tourism marketers must recognize three critical components: the aging process comprehended from multiple disciplines, the acknowledged “heterogeneity and dynamic nature” of the mature market, and the “necessity for sound segmentation methods” (p. 24). It is not a simple task for marketers to fully understand the mature travel market. In order to better understand and serve the diverse market, tourism professionals will have to use data mining (DM) tools and techniques to discover the hidden patterns and characteristics of the mature travel market. According to Pyo, Uysal, and Chang (2002), DM can be applied to many areas in tourism research. These areas include destination quality control and perceptions, environmental scanning and optimization, travel behavior, tourism forecasting, and market segmentation and positioning. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to review and analyze the segmentation methods reported in the literature during the past seven years on the mature travel market and to explore the application of DM tools regarding the segmentation of the mature travel market in the near future.
Sentiment Analysis of Product Reviews
Authors: Leung Cane W.K.
Published: May 2011

Sentiment analysis is a kind of text classification that classifies texts based on the sentimental orientation (SO) of opinions they contain. Sentiment analysis of product reviews has recently become very popular in text mining and computational linguistics research. The following example provides an overall idea of the challenge. The sentences below are extracted from a movie review on the Internet Movie Database: “It is quite boring...... the acting is brilliant, especially Massimo Troisi.” In the example, the author stated that “it” (the movie) is quite boring but the acting is brilliant. Understanding such sentiments involves several tasks. Firstly, evaluative terms expressing opinions must be extracted from the review. Secondly, the SO, or the polarity, of the opinions must be determined. For instance, “boring” and “brilliant” respectively carry a negative and a positive opinion. Thirdly, the opinion strength, or the intensity, of an opinion should also be determined. For instance, both “brilliant” and “good” indicate positive opinions, but “brilliant” obviously implies a stronger preference. Finally, the review is classified with respect to sentiment classes, such as Positive and Negative, based on the SO of the opinions it contains.
Soft Computing for XML Data Mining
Authors: Srinivasa K. G. , Venugopal K. R. , Patnaik L. M.
Published: May 2011

Efficient tools and algorithms for knowledge discovery in large data sets have been devised during the recent years. These methods exploit the capability of computers to search huge amounts of data in a fast and effective manner. However, the data to be analyzed is imprecise and afflicted with uncertainty. In the case of heterogeneous data sources such as text, audio and video, the data might moreover be ambiguous and partly conflicting. Besides, patterns and relationships of interest are usually vague and approximate. Thus, in order to make the information mining process more robust or say, human-like methods for searching and learning it requires tolerance towards imprecision, uncertainty and exceptions. Thus, they have approximate reasoning capabilities and are capable of handling partial truth. Properties of the aforementioned kind are typical soft computing. Soft computing techniques like Genetic Algorithms (GA), Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Rough Sets and Support Vector Machines (SVM) when used in combination was found to be effective. Therefore, soft computing algorithms are used to accomplish data mining across different applications (Mitra S, Pal S K & Mitra P, 2002; Alex A Freitas, 2002). Extensible Markup Language (XML) is emerging as a de facto standard for information exchange among various applications of World Wide Web due to XML’s inherent data self-describing capacity and flexibility of organizing data. In XML representation, the semantics are associated with the contents of the document by making use of self describing tags which can be defined by the users. Hence XML can be used as a medium for interoperability over the Internet. With these advantages, the amount of data that is being published on the Web in the form of XML is growing enormously and many naïve users find the need to search over large XML document collections (Gang Gou & Rada Chirkova, 2007; Luk R et al., 2000).
Stages of Knowledge Discovery in E-Commerce Sites
Authors: Giraud-Carrier Christophe
Published: May 2011

With the growth and wide availability of the Internet, most retailers have successfully added the Web to their other, more traditional distribution channels (e.g., stores, mailings). For many companies, the Web channel starts off as little more than an online catalog tied to a secure electronic point of sale. Although valuable in its own right, such use of the Web falls short of some of the unique possibilities it offers for intelligent marketing. Consider the following intrinsic differences between physical, brick-and-mortar stores, and online, Webbased stores. Physical stores are rather static and mostly customer-blind. In particular, 1) the store’s layout and content are the same for all customers, 2) changes to layout and/or content are generally costly, and 3) visits are not traceable except for limited sale’s data, such as what was bought, when it was bought and by what method of payment. Online stores or commercial Web sites, on the other hand, are naturally dynamic and customer-aware. Indeed, 1) layout and content can be modified easily and cheaply, 2) layout and content can be tailored to individual visitors, and 3) every visit automatically generates a rich trail of information about the customer’s experience (e.g., visit duration, pages viewed, items bought if any, etc.), and possibly about the customer’s persona (e.g., demographics gathered through an online questionnaire at registration time). With such flexibility and nearly everything traceable and measurable, the Web is a marketer’s dream come true. Although data-independent initiatives, such as offering social interactions (e.g., user forums) or providing virtual versions of physical stores (e.g., displays, lighting, music) (Oberbeck, 2004), can clearly enhance the user experience, the full benefit of the emerging and growing Web channel belongs to those who both gather and adequately leverage the rich information it provides.
Subsequence Time Series Clustering
Authors: Chen Jason
Published: May 2011

Clustering analysis is a tool used widely in the Data Mining community and beyond (Everitt et al. 2001). In essence, the method allows us to “summarise” the information in a large data set X by creating a very much smaller set C of representative points (called centroids) and a membership map relating each point in X to its representative in C. An obvious but special type of data set that one might want to cluster is a time series data set. Such data has a temporal ordering on its elements, in contrast to non-time series data sets. In this article we explore the area of time series clustering, focusing mainly on a surprising recent result showing that the traditional method for time series clustering is meaningless. We then survey the literature of recent papers and go on to argue how time series clustering can be made meaningful.
XML Warehousing and OLAP
Authors: Mahboubi Hadj
Published: May 2011

With the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) becoming a standard for representing business data (Beyer et al., 2005), a new trend toward XML data warehousing has been emerging for a couple of years, as well as efforts for extending the XQuery language with near On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities (grouping, aggregation, etc.). Though this is not an easy task, these new approaches, techniques and architectures aim at taking specificities of XML into account (e.g., heterogeneous number and order of dimensions or complex measures in facts, ragged dimension hierarchies…) that would be intricate to handle in a relational environment. The aim of this article is to present an overview of the major XML warehousing approaches from the literature, as well as the existing approaches for performing OLAP analyses over XML data (which is termed XML-OLAP or XOLAP; Wang et al., 2005). We also discuss the issues and future trends in this area and illustrate this topic by presenting the design of a unified, XML data warehouse architecture and a set of XOLAP operators expressed in an XML algebra.
Enhancing E-Commerce through Sticky Virtual Communities
Authors: Gupta Sumeet
Published: May 2011

Virtual communities (VCs) are places on the Web where people can find and then electronically ‘talk’ to others with similar interests. VCs primarily act as coffee shops, where people come and meet each other rather than focusing on content or commerce (Gupta & Kim, 2004). Still there are commercial ones where people can conduct transaction, auction, and commerce. The concept of a virtual community was born in 1993 when the Internet was first established in the United States (Rheingold, 1993). Today, virtual communities are more than just a means of connecting individuals and organisations. Today VCs acts as a business model employed by the digital economy for generating income, primarily through advertising (Reinhard & Wolkinger, 2002). Although virtual communities are still widely popular today, accounting for 84% of the Internet usage in 2002 (Horrigan, 2002), no one has yet agreed on a common definition for the term (Schoberth & Schrott, 2001). Schubert and Ginsberg (2000) defines a virtual community as a shared semantic space where individuals and organisations come together regularly to share common interests and values electronically. The definition varies depending upon the purpose served by the Web site. Based on a comprehensive research, Gupta and Kim (2004) developed a definition based on essential elements of a virtual community and define VC as a groups of like-minded strangers who interact predominantly in cyberspace to form relationships, share knowledge, have fun, or engage in economic transactions (Gupta & Kim, 2004). VCs play a bigger role in many aspects of a member’s life, from forming and maintaining friendships and romantic relationships, to learning, forming opinions, purchasing, and consuming products and services (Hagel & Armstrong, 1997). VCs are also ideal tools for e-commerce, marketing, knowledge building, and e-learning activities. Particularly, VCs add value by providing repeated points of contact which increase the stickiness of the Web site (Laudon & Traver, 2003). People love to interact on Internet and by facilitating their interaction users can be retained on site. The longer they are on site the greater are the chances of making the sale. How do these VCs exactly increase the stickiness of the Web site and how do they add business value to the Web site? To answer these questions we will visit hardwarezone.com (Appendix 1), a Singapore based virtual community which has been phenomenally successful since its inception. But before that we will briefly review the concept of stickiness.
A Historical Analysis of the Emergence of Free Cooperative Software Production
Authors: Jullien Nicolas
Published: May 2011

Whatever its name, Free/Libre or Open Source Software (FLOSS), diffusion represents one of the main evolutions of the Information Technology (IT) industry in recent years. Operating System Linux, or Web server Apache (more than 60% market share on its market), database MySQL or PHP languages are some examples of broadly-used FLOSS programs. One of the most original characteristics of this movement is its collective, cooperative software development organization in which a growing number of firms is involved (some figures in Lakhani & Wolf (2005)). Of course, programs, because they are codified information, are quite easy to exchange, and make the cooperation easier than in other industries. But, as pointed out by Stallman (1998), if sharing pieces of software within firms was a dominant practice in the 1950’s, it declined in the 1970’s, and almost disappeared in the 1980’s, before regaining and booming today. This article aims at explaining the evolution (and the comeback) of a cooperative, non-market production. In the first part, we explain the decrease of cooperation as a consequence of the evolution of the computer users, of their demand, and of the industrial organization constructed to meet this demand. This theoretical and historical framework is used in the second part to understand the renewal of a cooperative organization, the FLOSS phenomenon, first among computer-literate users, and then within the industry.
Implementation of Quality of Service in VoIP
Authors: Bose Indranil
Published: May 2011

Today, Internet technologies have pervaded every corner of our society. More and more people are benefiting from the Internet in one way or the other. One of the current Internet technologies that may benefit us greatly is voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). According to Hardy (2003, p. 2), VoIP is “the interactive voice exchange capability carried over packet-switched transport employing the Internet protocol.” With VoIP technology, one can call anyone in this world at a lower cost, compared to traditional telephone systems. However, VoIP technology has one significant drawback. It has a low degree of reliability. From experimental results it is known that VoIP can achieve only 98% reliability. The service down time per year for VoIP is almost 20 working days (175 hours). For most companies and government organizations, such a degree of reliability is unacceptable since the traditional telephone system can achieve 99.999% reliability with a service down time of only five minutes per year (Kos, Klepec, & Tomaxic, 2005). As a result, quality of service (QoS) is an important concept for VoIP. Using QoS, VoIP may be able to overcome its limitation in reliability. QoS is often defined as the capability to provide resource assurance and service differentiation in a network. The definition includes two important terms—resource assurance and service differentiation. Resource assurance provides a guarantee about the amount of network resources requested by the user. On the other hand, service differentiation provides higher priority of getting network resources to those applications that have critical latency constraints. Given the importance of low latency for voice communication, it is not difficult to predict that QoS will assume greater importance in the VoIP industry as this technology gains popularity in the mass market. It is reported that VoIP is aggressively growing, and this growth is expected to continue in the coming years.
Information Security and Risk Management
Authors: Chen Thomas M.
Published: May 2011

It is easy to find news reports of incidents where an organization’s security has been compromised. For example, a laptop was lost or stolen, or a private server was accessed. These incidents are noteworthy because confidential data might have been lost. Modern society depends on the trusted storage, transmission, and consumption of information. Information is a valuable asset that is expected to be protected. Information security is often considered to consist of confidentiality, integrity, availability, and accountability (Blakley, McDermott, & Geer, 2002). Confidentiality is the protection of information against theft and eavesdropping. Integrity is the protection of information against unauthorized modification and masquerade. Availability refers to dependable access of users to authorized information, particularly in light of attacks such as denial of service against information systems. Accountability is the assignment of responsibilities and traceability of actions to all involved parties. Naturally, any organization has limited resources to dedicate to information security. An organization’s limited resources must be balanced against the value of its information assets and the possible threats against them. It is often said that information security is essentially a problem of risk management (Schneier, 2000). It is unreasonable to believe that all valuable information can be kept perfectly safe against all attacks (Decker, 2001). An attacker with unlimited determination and resources can accomplish anything. Given any defenses, there will always exist a possibility of successful compromise. Instead of eliminating all risks, a more practical approach is to strategically craft security defenses to mitigate or minimize risks to acceptable levels. In order to accomplish this goal, it is necessary to perform a methodical risk analysis (Peltier, 2005). This article gives an overview of the risk management process.
Interactive Television Evolution
Authors: Prata Alcina
Published: May 2011

Television was a brilliant invention because it is capable of transporting us anywhere (Perera, 2002). Since its first production, in 1928, it never stopped spreading. In fact, while the Internet European penetration rate rounds 40-60% the TV penetration rate rounds 95-99% (Bates, 2003), which means that almost every home has, at least, one TV set. However, the TV paradigm which has traditionally occupied the largest share of consumer leisure time is now changing. In fact, and as a result of the so-called “digital revolution,” TV is now undergoing a process of technological evolution. The traditional TV sets and programs (which are typically passive programs) are being replaced by digital TV sets, which allow a long list of new interactive services and programs, concretely, interactive television (iTV). There is no doubt that iTV, which can be defined as a TV system that allows the viewer to interact with an application that is simultaneously delivered, via a digital network, in addition with the traditional TV signal (Perera, 2002) will replace the traditional TV viewing habits. In spite of being a recent phenomenon in terms of use, in the last 20 years, many research groups have worked in iTV development. Their progress over time is going to be addressed in the next section. However, due to the enormous quantity of telecommunications or cable trials launched it was impossible to present them all. Thus, only the more significant are referred.
Leading Virtual Teams
Authors: Novak Dan , Bocarnea Mihai C.
Published: May 2011

New forms of organizations, such as virtual teams who primarily conduct their work through electronic media, are becoming more common. With the proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT), most organizational teams are now virtual to some extent (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004). Virtuality is now a matter of degree (Kratzer, Leenders, & Van Engelen, 2006) as most teams in knowledge-intensive organizations are somewhere on a continuum between traditional teams with no electronic media and completely virtual teams engaging through electronic interaction. Many organizations have assumed that there are minimal differences between traditional teams and virtual teams (Rosen, Furst, & Blackburn, 2006). However, many scholars now suggest the differences are substantial, requiring different approaches and skills to virtual teams (Balotsky & Christensen, 2004). Virtual teams are complex, spanning boundaries across groups, functions, organizations, time zones, and geographies (Adler, Black, & Loveland, 2003), and the organizational leadership issues are important (Vakola & Wilson, 2004). This article reviews the virtual team literature to uncover differences between virtual teams and traditional teams from an organizational leadership perspective. The purpose of this article is to understand what differences exist, what is known about the differences, what still needs to be studied, and some practical implications for organizations and leaders. The literature is reviewed around four leadership aspects of virtual teams: trust, communication, interaction, and the organizational system. The organizational system includes the role of the leader, the organizational structure, culture, goal setting, and training specifically for virtual teams. Practical implications from the literature and recommendations for further research are included in the discussion.
Marketing Research Using Multimedia Technologies
Authors: Meißner Martin , Scholz Sören W. , Wagner Ralf
Published: May 2011

Marketing research is the process of systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data pertaining to the company’s market, customers, and competitors, with a view to improving marketing decisions. Multimedia technologies and the Internet have created opportunities previously unimagined in marketing research practice. Electronic or online marketing research takes one of two forms: research about the Internet and research on the Internet. Generally, marketing research activities cover the provision of relevant information to identify or solve marketing problems in the areas of market segmentation (e.g., selecting target markets or segments) as well as product (e.g., preference measurement for concept testing or new product development), pricing (e.g., identifying price thresholds), promotion (e.g., media and copy decisions), and distribution (e.g., location of retail outlets) decisions (Malhotra & Birks, 2005). This article aims to: • Review the impact of applying multimedia technologies to classic marketing research problems. • Present the different types of marketing research activities about the Internet as the most prominent application area of multimedia technologies. • Discuss the use of multimedia in online surveys in comparison to the traditional paper-and-pencil approach. The main contribution of the article is a discussion of advantages and challenges provided by innovative multimedia and network technologies for marketing researchers. Moreover, we present cues for improving the quality of surveys. The remainder of the article is structured as follows: First, we present examples of the application of multimedia technologies to illustrate the impact of multimedia on classic marketing research tasks. Subsequently, Web log mining, Web usage mining, and Web content mining are introduced as common marketing research fields directly concerned with research about the Internet. Then, benefits and challenges of online surveys are reviewed. Thereafter, we discuss response errors and ethical questions as crucial issues for the quality of data gained by online surveys. Finally, we draw conclusions and provide a spot on future developments.
Multimedia Content Protection Technology
Authors: Lian Shiguo
Published: May 2011

Since the beginning of 1990s, some multimedia standards (Joan, Didier, & Chad, 2003) related to image compression, video compression, or audio compression have been published and widely used. These compression methods reduce media data’s volumes, and save the storage space or transmission bandwidth. After the middle of 1990s, network technology has been rapidly developed and widely spread, which increases the network bandwidth. With the development of network technology and multimedia (image, audio, video, etc.) technology, multimedia data are used more and more widely. In some applications related to politics, economics, militaries, entertainment, or education, multimedia content security becomes important and urgent. Some sensitive data need to be protected against unauthorized users. For example, only the customers paying for a TV program can watch the program online, while other customers cannot watch the content, only the administrator can update (delete, insert, copy, etc.) the TV program in the database, while others cannot modify the content, the TV program released over Internet can be traced, and so forth. Multimedia content protection technology protects multimedia data against the threats coming from unauthorized users, especially in network environment. Generally, protected properties include the confidentiality, integrity, ownership, and so forth. The confidentiality defines that only the authorized users can access the multimedia content, while others cannot know multimedia content. The integrity tells whether media data are modified or not. The ownership shows media data’s owner information that is used to authenticate or trace the distributor. During the past decade, various technologies have been proposed to protect media data, which are introduced in this chapter. Additionally, the threats to multimedia data are presented, the existing protection methods are compared, and some future trends are proposed.
Multimedia Data Mining Trends and Challenges
Authors: Swierzowicz Janusz
Published: May 2011

The development of information technology is particularly noticeable in the methods and techniques of data acquisition. Data can be stored in many forms of digital media, for example, still images taken by a digital camera, MP3 songs, or MPEG videos from desktops, cell phones, or video cameras. Data volumes are growing at different speeds with the fastest Internet and multimedia resource growth. In these fast growing volumes of digital data environments, restrictions are connected with a human’s low data complexity and dimensionality analysis. The article begins with a short introduction to data mining, considering different kinds of data, both structured as well as semistructured and unstructured. It emphasizes the special role of multimedia data mining. Then, it presents a short overview of data mining goals, methods, and techniques used in multimedia data mining. This section focuses on a brief discussion on supervised and unsupervised classification, uncovering interesting rules, decision trees, artificial neural networks, and rough-neural computing. The next section presents advantages offered by multimedia data mining and examples of practical and successful applications. It also contains a list of application domains. The following section describes multimedia data mining critical issues, summarizes main multimedia data mining advantages and disadvantages, and considers some predictive trends.
Multimedia Technologies in Education
Authors: Cirrincione Armando
Published: May 2011

Multimedia technologies (MMT) are tools that make it possible to transmit information in a very large meaning, transforming them into knowledge through leveraging the learning power of senses in learners and stimulating their cognitive schemes. This kind of transformation can assume several different forms: from digitalized images to virtual reconstructions; from simple text to iper-texts that allow customized, fast, and cheap research within texts; from communications framework like the Web to tools that enhance all our senses, allowing complete educational experiences (Piacente, 2002b). MMT are composed by two great conceptually-different frameworks (Piacente, 2002a): • Technological supports, such as hardware and software: this refers to technological tools such as mother boards, displays, videos, audio tools, databases, communications software and hardware, and so on, that make it possible to transfer contents; • Contents: this refers to information and knowledge transmitted with MMT tools. Information is simply data (such as visiting timetable of museum, cost of tickets, the name of the author of a picture), while knowledge comes from information elaborated in order to get a goal. For instance, a complex iper-text about a work of art, where several pieces of information are connected in a logical discourse, is knowledge. For the same reason, a virtual reconstruction comes from knowledge about the rebuilt facts. Contents can also be video games, as far as they are conceived for educational purposes (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2005; Gros, 2007). It is relevant to underline that to some extent technological supports represent a condition and a limit for contents (Wallace, 1995). In other words, content could be expressed just through technological supports, and this means that content has to be made in order to fit for specific technological support, and that the limits of a specific technological support are also the limits of its content. For instance, the specific architecture of a database represents a limit within which contents have to be recorded and have to be traced. This is also evident when thinking about content as a communicative action: Communication is strictly conditioned by the tool that we are using.
Online Privacy Issues
Authors: Sockel Hy , Chen Kuanchin , Falk Louis K.
Published: May 2011

Businesses need to understand privacy conditions and implications to ensure that they are in compliance with legal constraints and do not step on consumers’ rights for privacy. Personal identifiable information (PII) and data can have innate importance to an organization. Some organizations view certain privacy features as essential components of their product or services; for example, profile data is often used to tailor products specifically for their customers’ likes and needs. PII can also be used for less-honorable endeavors such as identity theft, phishing, political sabotage, character annihilation, spamming, and stalking. One of the core issues of privacy is: Who actually owns the data, the holder of the data, or the subject (persons) of the data? The answer depends on many criteria: the users’ perspective, the environment that privacy is addressed, and how the data are collected and used. Privacy issues arise because nearly every activity on the Internet leaves traces somewhere. This audit trail has caused many people to be concerned that this data may be inappropriately used. The paradox is that many businesses are also concerned for a different reason. In this age of legislation and litigation, a “minor” misstep or software glitch could easily put businesses in a position of extreme jeopardy. A data breach at T.J. Maxx that allowed hackers to download over 45 million credit/debit card numbers could literally bankrupt the organization. The damage and fines could easily total more than $4.5 billion; some have the figure as high as $8 billion (Ou, 2007). It is important to state that the governments’ approach to the protection of personal privacy is neither equal nor universal. Some localities extend protection much further than others. In 1972, California amended its constitution to specifically include the construct of “a resident’s inalienable right to privacy.” Within the United States, court decisions dealing with privacy have fairly closely upheld two principles (Freedman, 1987): 1. The right to privacy is NOT an absolute. An individual’s privacy has to be tempered with the needs of society; and 2. The public’s right to know is superior to the individual’s right of privacy. However, some large communities were very slow in becoming involved; Japan did not pass its major protection law (“the Act on the Protection of Personal Information”) to protect consumers and to regulate business until 2005 (Yamazaki, 2005).
Ontology and Multimedia
Authors: Poli Roberto , Kameas Achilles , Seremeti Lambrini
Published: May 2011

Audiovisual resources in the form of still pictures, graphical, 3D models, audio, speech, and video play an increasing pervasive role in our lives, and there will be a growing need to manage all these multimedia objects. This is a task of increasing importance for users who need to archive, organize, and search their multimedia collections in an appropriate fashion. To cope with this situation, much effort has been put in developing standards both for multimedia data (natural and synthetic (e.g., photography, face animation), continuous and static (e.g., video, image)) and for data describing multimedia content (metadata). The aim is to describe open multimedia frameworks and achieve a reasonable and interoperable use of multimedia data in a distributed environment.
The Perspectives of Message-Based Service in Taiwan
Authors: Lee Maria R.
Published: May 2011

The number of cellular phone subscribers has reached a total of 5.6 million in Taiwan (NCC, 2007). Meanwhile, Internet users have reached a total of 14.5 million and mobile Internet users have broken the record of 9.1 million in 2006 (NCC, 2007). The combination of information and telecommunication technologies has brought people a new communication method—cellular value-added services, which have become a lucrative business for telecommunication providers in Taiwan. One result of the cellular value-added services presented to the public brought the information-based, messaging-based, and financial services into one kit; people can not only communicate through the cellular phones but also use them as versatile handsets. Do- CoMo, a famous Japanese telecommunication provider, has successfully cultivated the cellular value-added services. Its success can be explained with two reasons: one is content, and Web site providers are willing to share their technical support; and the other reason is the establishment of an automated payment system to assist the cash flow between providers and even beef up the whole industry by associating related business partners (Natsuno, 2001). Comparing with DoCoMo’s case, the telecommunication service providers in Taiwan have provided various cellular value-added services. However, the popularity of the service does not turn out to be as good as expected. We are wondering why. Telecommunication providers began to adjust the fee of short message service (SMS) down to 25% maximally since June 2004 in Taiwan. The idea of lowering fees is to stimulate the popularity of SMS usage. Would that bring a collateral effect to the providers of cellular value-added service positively or negatively? In response, this research will discuss the challenges facing Taiwanese cellular value-added service providers. Hinet, Taiwan Cellular Corporation (TCC), and Flyma online service providers have been chosen as research companies.
Unified KS-Code
Authors: Abdullah M. K.A. , Aljunid S. A. , Samad M. D.A. , Anas S. B.A. , Sahbudin R. K.Z.
Published: May 2011

Many codes have been proposed for optical CDMA system as discussed in Svetislav, Mari, Zoran, Kosti, and Titlebaum (1993), Salehi (1989), Liu and Tsao (2002), Maric, Moreno, and Corrada (1996), Wei and Ghafouri-Shiraz (2002), and Prucnal, Santoro, and Ting (1986). Optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) has been recognized as one of the most important technologies for supporting many users in shared media simultaneous, and in some cases can increase the transmission capacity of an optical fiber. OCDMA is an exciting developments in short haul optical networking because it can support both wide and narrow bandwidth applications on the same network, it connects large number of asynchronous users with low latency and jitter, and permits quality of service guarantees to be managed at the physical layer, offers robust signal security and has simplified network topologies. However, for improperly designed codes, the maximum number of simultaneous users and the performance of the system can be seriously limited by the multiple access interference (MAI) or crosstalk from other users. Another issue in OCDMA is how the coding is implemented. The beginning idea of OCDMA was restricted in time domain, in which the encoding/decoding could not been fully utilized in optical domain. Therefore a new coding in OCDMA has been introduced based on spectral encoding (Kavehrad & Zaccarin, 1995; Pearce & Aazhang, 1994; Smith, Blaikie, & Taylor, 1998; Wei & Ghafouri-Shiraz, 2002). The system, called Optical Spectrum CDMA, or OS-CDMA, has the advantage of using inexpensive optical sources, and simple direct detection receivers. In this article with an emphasis on the Spectral Amplitude Coding scheme, a new code known as Khazani-Syed (KS) code is introduced.
Virtual Reality in Medicine
Authors: LaBrunda Michelle , LaBrunda Andrew
Published: May 2011

Virtual reality is a collection of technologies that enable people to use their senses to experience sensory input provided from a source other than the immediate environment. These events may occur in real time, can be a simulation, or can be completely fictional. Virtual reality (VR) has progressed beyond its military beginnings and is progressively making its way into people’s daily lives. The most prevalent implementation of VR can be found in many forms of modern entertainment such as computer games or IMAX (image maximum) theaters. VR has received little publicity but has enormous potential in the realm of medicine. The utility of VR is starting to be appreciated by the medical community. It is slowly being adopted and implemented in the surgical, medical, and psychiatric specialties. Medical uses of VR are primarily directed toward the simulation of visual, audio, and tactile input. With the aid of VR doctors will be able to perform specialized surgery on a patient from the other side of the world. Students are able to simulate and experience surgical procedures without compromising a patient’s health. Finally, VR can heighten a doctor´s senses and allows input that would be absent without the aid of VR, such as relative bone positions and tissue temperature.
The World of Podcasting, Screencasting, Blogging, and Videoblogging
Authors: Curran Kevin
Published: May 2011

A podcast is a Web feed containing audio or video files which is then placed on the Internet for anyone to download. What makes the podcast distinct from traditional media like broadcasting and streaming is that the podcast file will arrive in archived form. A Screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, which contains audio narration. Screencasts are useful for demonstrating simple and complicated new software to others. It is a neat way to show off work, report bugs, and show how a task can be accomplished. Screencasting is a term for recording a movie of a computer screen to a file that others can view. Screencasts are mostly used for tutorials, overview/ tours, reviews, and demonstrations. Screencasts may also be used as a way to enhance regular movie files. A Weblog, or blog, is a Web site were the owner or user of the Web site posts messages on it so that others can log on and read them. Blogs often focus on one subject, for example, if the blogger is a computer programmer, then the topic of his messages is mainly related to programming languages. However, many are using the blogs as online diaries where they post messages describing their daily news or how they feel about certain subjects. Videoblogging is a new form of blogging, which includes posting videos on the Web. It is a new paradigm for people to place aspects of their personal lives on the Web. Videoblogging is rising in popularity partially due to the release of the Video iPod and the availability of videoblogs on iTunes. So this means that with the recent boom in iPod sales, they will see this one as the most updated one and this will also hit the computer industry by storm. The rest of this article examines the new phenomenon of podcasting, screencasting, blogging, and videoblogging.
The Due Diligence Process
Authors: Andriole Stephen J.
Published: May 2011

As suggested in the preface, due diligence is a process designed to reduce uncertainty and increase the likelihood of productive investments. The focus here is on technology due diligence, or the process by which technology investment decisions are vetted to maximize impact and reduce risk. Research around technology due diligence is sparse. There are only a few analyses and case studies that look at the nuances of due diligence generally and technology due diligence specifically. A literature review reveals very few formal analyses of the overall process, though there are some useful sources, such as Gordon (1996), Harvey and Lusch (1995), Lajoux (2000), Perry and Herd (2004); a few on portfolio management, such as Weill and Aral (2006), and macro trends in business technology (Andriole, 2005). Some analyses have been applied to venture capital due diligence (McGrath, Gunther, Keil, & Tukiainen, 2006), and some in the much larger context of business technology alignment (Prahalad & Krishnan, 2002). As noted in the Preface, very few have focused on technology due diligence. None have focused on technology due diligence from the three intersecting perspectives discussed here. The most relevant discussions for this book focus on merger and acquisition (M&A) due diligence, such as Cullinan, LeRoux, and Weddigen (2004), Breitzman and Thomas (2002), Bing (1996), Lajoux and Elson (2000), Howson (2003), and Perry and Herd (2004). Others focus on venture investing and the due diligence process that some venture capitalists apply (Camp, 2002; Zacharakis & Meyer, 1998). Still others focus on very specific aspects of due diligence—like patents (Panitch, 2000) and, as noted above, very few focus on technology due diligence (Marlin, 1998). This chapter discusses technology due diligence. It first describes the criteria that can be used by Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), hardware and software vendors, and venture capitalists (VCs) to vet alternative technology decisions. It then turns to the processes by which due diligence projects can be organized.
The Emerging Field of Technoethics
Authors: Luppicini Rocci
Published: May 2011

Over the last 30 years, an amassing body of work has focused on ethical dimensions of technology in a variety of contexts impacting society. This purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of this new interdisciplinary field by exploring its conceptual development, important issues, and key areas of current technoethics’ scholarship. The first part of this paper introduces key concepts and provides a skeletal description of its historical background and rationale. The second part of this paper identifies key areas and issues in technoethics in an effort to help inform scholarship in technoethics. This paper is based on the premise that it is of vital importance to encourage dialogue aimed at determining the ethical use of technology, guarding against the misuse of technology, and formulating common principles to help guide new advances in technological development and application to benefit society.
Technoethics
Authors: Cerqui Daniela , Warwick Kevin
Published: May 2011

Common ethical issues related to technology are formulated in terms of impact. With an anthropological approach, every technological device is considered as the result of a designing and building process, through which social values are transmitted. The impact can be properly assessed only once these values are understood. The question of privacy is used here to illustrate the approach. Then, it is shown how human beings and machines are defined in reference to each other, the latter being considered as superior. Therefore, human beings try to improve themselves by using technology.
Planning, Interests, and Argumentation
Authors: Visala Seppo
Published: May 2011

Within the organisational development people’s arguments rise from their personal or group interests, which in turn are based on the systemic differentiation of society and technology at a given time. We face a crucial issue: Must we accept separated group interests as inescapable circumstances, or can we reach out for universal human interests? This chapter addresses the issue combining Rawls’ idea of an original position behind a veil of ignorance with Habermas’ concepts of communicative rationality and discourse.
Artificial Moral Agency in Technoethics
Authors: Sullins John P.
Published: May 2011

This chapter will argue that artificial agents created or synthesized by technologies such as artificial life (ALife), artificial intelligence (AI), and in robotics present unique challenges to the traditional notion of moral agency and that any successful technoethics must seriously consider that these artificial agents may indeed be artificial moral agents (AMA), worthy of moral concern. This purpose will be realized by briefly describing a taxonomy of the artificial agents that these technologies are capable of producing. I will then describe how these artificial entities conflict with our standard notions of moral agency. I argue that traditional notions of moral agency are too strict even in the case of recognizably human agents and then expand the notion of moral agency such that it can sensibly include artificial agents.
The Cyborg and the Noble Savage
Authors: Ryder Martin
Published: May 2011

This chapter provides a brief summary of the technical and social hurdles that define the so-called ‘digital divide’ and it considers the celebrated ‘One Laptop Per Child’ project as one response to the problem of digital poverty. The chapter reviews the design of the XO laptop with particular interest on the ethical territory that is traversed in the implementation of a low-cost computer intended for millions of children in underdeveloped nations. The chapter reviews how XO designers negotiated between ethics and feasibility as they confronted numerous problems including infrastructure, power consumption, hazardous materials, free vs. proprietary software, security, and the cost of labor. Apart from technical considerations, this review of the XO evaluates the notion of cultural hegemony and how the imposition of such technology as an educational tool might be balanced by considerations of local control and user agency.
Nanoethics
Authors: Anderson A. , Allan S. , Petersen A. , Wilkinson C.
Published: May 2011

Recent evidence on genetically modified crops, cloning and stem cell research suggests that the news media play a significant role in shaping wider agendas for public debate about ‘the rights and wrongs’ of newly emergent technologies. This may prove to be especially pertinent to nanotechnologies, which currently register low public visibility and yet are predicted by many scientists, policymakers and other stakeholders to have far-reaching implications in the years ahead. This chapter, drawing upon data from the authors’ British study on nanotechnologies and news production, examines how the press may influence the terms of public debate about such ethical issues as the dangers posed by particular applications, who has access to the technologies, and who is likely to benefit or be disadvantaged by developments. Efforts to enhance public deliberation about the ethical implications of nanotechnologies, it is argued, must attend to the complex ways in which journalists mediate between contending claims about their benefits and risks.
Walking the Information Overload Tightrope
Authors: Iannone A. Pablo
Published: May 2011

This chapter asks: What is information overload? At what levels of existence does it occur? Are there any features common to information overload at all these levels? What are information overload’s types? What are information overload’s current and future trends? What problems do they pose? How can they be addressed in both effective and morally justified ways? It argues that there is anarchy concerning the meaning of information overload, that information overload’s precise characterization is best left open at this stage in the inquiry, that information overload occurs at the biological, psychological, and social levels, that it is relational, that there are at least two overall types of information overload—quantitative and semantic— involving various kinds and current and likely future trends which pose problems requiring specific ways of dealing with them. The essay closes outlining how to identify effective and morally justified ways of dealing with information overload.