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The article focuses on social networking services (SNS) in China, which aim to help users start or sustain social networks on the Internet. It says that SNS swept the Chinese Internet Market in 2007 and its market value in that year exceeded 500 million Renminbi (RMB). It discusses the five categories of Chinese SNS web sites, including campus SNS, entertainment-oriented SNS, and business-oriented SNS, as well as the several SNS platforms launched by the top portal web sites in China such as Tencent.com. and Yahoo.com. It mentions that the majority of the Chinese SNS web sites have used word-of-mouth as a marketing strategy, which is said to be inexpensive and effective. It also discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by Chinese SNS.

Almost two-thirds of marketers and agency managers believe that strong customer relationships can be established through the strategic use of Internet technology. To take advantage of this, it is important to understand what motivates and de-motivates users to participate in online social networks (social networking sites-SNS). The extant literature has focused on why users participate in online or virtual communities of practice. This study looks at a number of first-order factors that together drive an overall (second-order) motivation construct for explaining why users participate in SNS in particular. We conclude by discussing the implications for managers and opportunities for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web services are increasingly gaining acceptance as a framework for facilitating application-toapplication interactions within and across enterprises. It is commonly accepted that a service description should include not only the interface, but also the business protocol supported by the service. The present work focuses on the formalization of an important category of protocols that includes time-related constraints (called timed protocols), and the impact of time on compatibility and replaceability analysis. We formalized the following timing constraints: C-Invoke constraints define time windows within which a service operation can be invoked while M-Invoke constraints define expiration deadlines. We extended techniques for compatibility and replaceability analysis between timed protocols by using a semantic-preserving mapping between timed protocols and timed automata, leading to the identification of a novel class of timed automata, called protocol timed automata (PTA). PTA exhibit a particular kind of silent transition that strictly increase the expressiveness of the model, yet they are closed under complementation, making every type of compatibility or replaceability analysis decidable. Finally, we implemented our approach in the context of a larger project called ServiceMosaic, a model-driven framework forWeb service life-cycle management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge plays a major role in enterprises, given its importance as a significant organizational asset. In order to solve problems and support complex decision-making processes, knowledge and experience have to be transmitted between diverse individuals and organizations. Thus, knowledge-sharing can be considered a fundamental element in any knowledge-oriented process, because it fosters collaboration, and facilitates experiential knowledge discovery, distribution, and use. We present the E-Decisional Community, a proposal for an integrated knowledge-sharing platform where several entities are able to share experiential knowledge. Its main concern is to promote experiential knowledge evolution and sharing through generations of decision makers, aiming at the creation of a marketplace where knowledge is provided as a service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of 'Constantin Brancusi' University of Targu-Jiu. Engineering Series / Analele Universităţii Constantin Brâncuşi din Târgu-Jiu. Seria Inginerie is the property of Universitatea Constantin Brancusi din Targu-Jiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A generic infrastructural grid service for submission, management, and access to computing resource is described. It is suitable for interactive applications and on-demand computing with frequent usage of short jobs. The improved access to computing resources is achieved through allocation and maintenance of a pool of ready jobs, the size of which is dynamically adjusted to demand produced by applications. A set of APIs facilitates communication between the clients and worker jobs through a simple programming model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the phenomenal innovations within the field of information and communications technologies during the last decade, companies have been able to reinvent their techniques for selling products and services, reorganise the work process and build strategic partnerships. The use of these technologies has resulted in major spatial and temporal asynchronies. The decompartmentalisation of time and space in organisational activities has given rise to a new kind of organisation that many people refer to as a virtual enterprise. In this article, we propose a different approach. We believe that virtuality is a dimension that exists in all enterprises; consequently, all organisations need to pay particular attention to it. On this basis, we developed an analysis model based on organisational relationships that can be used to assess the degree of virtuality in an enterprise. We believe that this model will help managers to better understand the impacts of virtuality on their organisations and consequently on their management methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimedia technology has changed the way we use computers. Multimedia transforms com-puters into a second person. Multimedia technology has made it possible for us to see, hear, read, feel, and talk to computers. Multimedia technology has transformed our use and under-standing of computers. On the other hand, multimedia presentation is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the computer industry. Applications have appeared in many areas, such as training, education, business presentation, merchandising, and communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years considerable demand for business oriented multimedia information systems has developed. A multimedia information system is one that can create, import, integrate, store, retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of media materials in digital form, such as audio, image, full-motion video, and text information. Multimedia information systems play a central role in many business activities. They represent a very special class complex computing systems. This paper surveys a special type of multimedia information systems: multimedia news systems. Multimedia news systems deal with architectures to manage complex multimedia news databases, online presentation and distribution services or the integration of several existing services to meta-services using intelligent news retrieval engines. The leading presentation platform in multimedia news presentation is news networks providing television services and Internet content distribution. The primary focus is on advanced multimedia news systems infrastructure, document standards, application architecture and principles for multimedia news on the Web that suggest long-term trends in this increasingly important area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All enterprises require enterprise architecture in order to use its benefits but it is crucial for this project to be applied by formal stakeholders' satisfaction. A suitable framework for the enterprise requirements can be planned by use of agile methods and its practices, in which we cannot only increase the percentage of prosperity but also we can return the asset to stakeholders as soon as possible. We put our whole creativity in which makes it to be better. As applying the framework, some continual reviews will correct activities. By the use of this framework the risk of the project can be reduced and also the simultaneous cooperation of enterprise architecture and project team is a reliable guarantee for prosperity. Then holding variety meetings among stakeholders and presenting the rudimentary models and at last accepting of them by the stakeholder cause our framework to proceed in a reliable way. Besides all of the stakeholders' viewpoints are put in the architecture, so in this way all of their needs are provided. Another point is that several educational classes will be held during its implementation for people involved in, so that the essential statement is taught to them and they can use it wherever is necessary. One of the other benefits of this framework is to use a repository in order to keep information, survey, adjust models and use of agile method in all steps of the framework. Finally it is vital to say that this framework is better, faster and cheaper than the classical one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Historically, Japan constructed its socio-cultural system so that it introduced, adopted, assimilated, and developed Western technology selectively without spoiling its own indigenous culture. And until recently, Japan learned and assimilated global best practices without being dependent on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). M&As in Japan were the lowest in the world until 2000, suggesting a low dependence on acquiring technology in this way. Recently, the number of M&As has increased dramatically among certain Japanese manufacturing firms. Prior to 2004, these firms were less profitable than their counterparts that did not depend on M&A. Today Japan''s corporate technology and innovation strategy is at a crucial inflection point of maintaining the indigenous learning/assimilation function while also becoming more dependent on M&As. This paper explores the changing role of M&As in Japanese firms, and also considers the role of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 in the innovation process. Using an empirical analysis of the trajectories of Japan''s leading electrical machinery firms, this paper explores the changing role of M&A in the context of business innovation in Japan, and the ongoing dialectic between indigenous strengths and global best practices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: With the aim of identifying a mechanism that enables e-business technology to improve enterprise competitiveness, the authors conducted a case study of three large iron and steel manufacturing enterprises in China. This paper proposes the concept of application capability of e-business from a process-oriented perspective, and investigates the impact of the application capability of e-business on the relationship between e-business resources and enterprise competitiveness. The results show that e-business resources are necessary, rather than sufficient, to enhance enterprise competitiveness. We also found that an enterprise can use e-business technology to significantly enhance its competitiveness only when its e-business resources and application capability of e-business (particularly the core application capability) are efficiently and effectively synthesized. We conclude that differences in the enterprise application capability of an e-business eventually determine the effectiveness of an e-business technology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: IT failures abound but little is known about the financial impact that these failures have on a firm’s market value. Using the resource-based view of the firm and event study methodology, this study analyzes how firms are penalized by the market when they experience unforeseen operating or implementation-related IT failures. Our sample consists of 213 newspaper reports of IT failures by publicly traded firms, which occurred during a 10-year period. The findings show that IT failures result in a 2% average cumulative abnormal drop in stock prices over a 2-day event window. The results also reveal that the market responds more negatively to implementation failures affecting new systems than to operating failures involving current systems. Further, the study demonstrates that more severe IT failures result in a greater decline in firm value and that firms with a history of IT failures suffer a greater negative impact. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The convergence of increasingly efficient high throughput sequencing technology and ubiquitous Internet use by the public has fueled the proliferation of companies that provide personal genetic information (PGI) direct-to-consumers. Companies such as 23andme (Mountain View, CA) and Navigenics (Foster City, CA) are emblematic of a growing market for PGI that some argue represents a paradigm shift in how the public values this information and incorporates it into how they behave and plan for their futures. This new class of social networking business ventures that market the science of the personal genome illustrates the new trend in collaborative science. In addition to fostering a consumer empowerment movement, it promotes the trend of democratizing information—openly sharing of data with all interested parties, not just the biomedical researcher—for the purposes of pooling data (increasing statistical power) and escalating the innovation process. This target article discusses the need for new approaches to studying DTC genomics using social network analysis to identify the impact of obtaining, sharing, and using PGI. As a locus of biosociality, DTC personal genomics forges social relationships based on beliefs of common genetic susceptibility that links risk, disease, and group identity. Ethical issues related to the reframing of DTC personal genomic consumers as advocates and research subjects and the creation of new social formations around health research may be identified through social network analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation and selection of enterprise software has become increasingly difficult for decision makers due to a large number of software products available for many applications. Therefore, systematic and repeatable approaches are needed in order to select the appropriate product that best meets the customer requirements. In this paper, we present a literature review and classification of enterprise software selection approaches from the period 1982-2007. In addition to classifying the selected approaches by functional perspective, the decision-making methods used by these approaches in the generic phases of software selection process are also presented. Results are summarized with comprehensive classification tables. This study is intended as a source for academics and practitioners alike interested in software selection problem, especially those who want to see alternative decision-making techniques that can be used to support the every single step of software selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Review of several failure databases from software, hardware, and service industries and analysis of the failure cases from the Axiomatic Design perspective led to identifying three typical failure scenarios of the mind process of design; uncoupled but unrealized, coupled but over-simplified, and coupled and complex designs. Failure due to coupled and complex design occurred in all databases at rates of 10–40%. Recent large-scale computer systems have especially expanded the number of functional requirements beyond human capability of recognizing their interference, and failure from such causes amounted to 30–40% of all cases of software industry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Before starting, the production forming processes require real experiments in order to accurately define forming limits. For this reason and because incremental sheet metal forming technology requires a relatively long production time, an autonomous on-line system for fracture identification has been developed. The system is a versatile tool for the identification of the location and time of the occurrence of the fracture, without human influences or oversight. The system is based on an investigation of the forming forces, responsive to very small variations, appearing during the forming process, and works effectively with different material types, material thicknesses and product shapes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a mixed reality (MR) environment for collaborative product design and development. This MR collaborative environment is based on a client/server architecture where multiple users can create and modify product features in a 3D physical space simultaneously. A tri-layer model representation scheme is designed to facilitate product creation and visualization. Intuitive feature manipulation methods and grid-and-snap modes have been designed to support solid modelling in the MR environment. Bi-directional communication between the MR environment and the CAD system ensures any modifications made by one user are propagated to the views of other users for maintaining design data consistency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In today''s networked world, a recent trend is to tap onto the vast human resource available online for performing various tasks. The resulting phenomenon is known as mass collaboration where large numbers of people collaborate to perform various tasks. The availability of human resource on the network presents opportunities to tap onto the competencies of people outside of the core team in product realization. However, new mechanisms are necessary to facilitate mass collaborative product realization. This paper proposes and evaluates a platform that provides different mechanisms for harnessing the collective intelligence of large numbers of people in product realization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article presents a novel approach to generate optimized tool paths for free form surfaces that are commonly used in automotive, aerospace, biomedical, home appliance manufacturing and die/mold industries. The developed tool path optimization approach can handle various objectives under multiple constraints. Due to anisotropic geometry of free form surfaces, tool paths become one of the most critical factors for determining cutting forces. Here, the concept of force-minimal tool path generation is introduced and demonstrated for free form surfaces. Nowadays, process planning engineers must select the tool paths only from a set of ordinary tool paths available in CAM systems. These standard tool paths available in CAM systems are generated based on geometric computations only, not considering mechanics of processes, and most often these paths are away being optimum for free form surfaces. Here, a new methodology is introduced the first time for generating the tool paths based on process mechanics for globally minimizing the cutting forces for any given free form surface. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the cyberdefense mechanism used to secure the electronic data and computerized information systems in cyberspace of business enterprises. It mentions the major elements of cyberdefense that constitutes like a fortress such as an observation tower, fortified walls, and gates which respectively monitors any incoming threats, guide the servers, and manipulates the access protected by fortified walls. Moreover, it mentions several actions to be taken in assuring the development of a comprehensive security program which include vulnerability management, business continuity planning (BPC), and security awareness training.

Previous research on the factors that influence a business's participation in third-party e-markets identified a set of motivational and ability related factors. This paper explores further the question of the determinants of third-party e-market participation using a multiple case study research design. Data were collected from three companies in China. Our findings suggest that motivation and ability related factors might play both an enabling and inhibiting role in e-market adoption. However, we also found that these factors are limited to offer a complete understanding of participation in third-party operated e-markets. In particular, in the context of emerging economies and emerging e-markets where both contextual factors and the offerings of market-makers are crucial to an enterprise's decision to join and stay in e-market, the explanatory power of motivation and ability factors tend to be limited. The paper proposes an extended motivation-ability model to understand the drivers and inhibitors of participating in third-party operated e-markets. It further discusses the implications of the results of the study for both market and business decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green IT has gone mainstream. The last year has seen corporations such as Citigroup establishing their environmental credentials by opening green data centres. But how do the separate disciplines of green IT and security come together? Robin Arnfield reports [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We report on a research model that was developed and tested to empirically investigate the associations of education quality, on-the-job training, the maturity of information and communications technology (ICT) use by individuals, businesses and governments, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita across 122 countries. Overall, the findings indicate that education quality is positively associated with GDP per capita, while on-the-job training is not. Education quality is positively associated with ICT use by individuals and governments, but weakly with ICT use by business. On-the-job training, however, is positively associated with all three domains of ICT use. We then separately analyze countries with higher and lower levels of GDP per capita and find both similarities and differences. Healthy composite reliabilities and R2s are obtained in all analyses. The research model, its analysis, and discussion of the results are presented. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, manufacturers have invested heavily in the use of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs). The results of these investments have been mixed, as some organizations have seen significant returns while others have experienced major problems in implementation. As yet, the returns and complementarities between AMT have not been determined. Using complementarity assumptions developed by Milgrom and Roberts [P. Milgrom and J. Roberts, "Rationalizability, learning, and equilibrium in games with strategic complementarities," Econometrica, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 1255-1277, 1990.1, [P. Milgrom and J. Roberts, "Complementarities and fit - strategy, structure, and organizational-change in manufacturing," J. Accounting Economics, vol. 19, no. 2-3, pp. 179-208, 1995], combined with the Survey of Advanced Technology in Canadian Manufacturing (a comprehensive AMT survey), a model of manufacturing plant productivity was developed. Constrained regression analysis reveals that the effective use of AMT depends on the types of AMT used in combination and that analysis done with a high level of aggregation of either size classes or industries will result in ambiguous conclusions. Insight into the impact of complementarities on optimal AMT adoption strategies is provided through solution lattices for medium plants and the vehicle industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ICANN recently announced an "open season" on top-level domains, to start some time in 2009. This will dramatically expand the namespace for Internet domain names and will allow cities, industries, and companies to register specific top-level domains for themselves. What effect will this have on the companies involved and on Internet users? In this column, the author explores that question and gives his opinion on the answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a handful of brands are providing their customers with highly personalised digital experiences. From their website, to email and mobile messaging, they've put the customer's interests at the forefront of their digital strategy. They've changed the fundamentals of their digital communications with their customers by creating an environment of Connected Commerce. The results have been exceptional customer loyalty, sales growth and profits that outpace those of their peers. The vast majority of companies are, however, still playing catch-up. Many have ‘customer-centricity’ somewhere in their vision statements, but they've not yet made the necessary commitments to bring customer relevance to the face of their digital brands. Their results reflect this in dwindling loyalty, sales and profits. The good news for these companies is that it's not too late to make the shift and push to the front of their industries. This paper explores what it takes to move from internally driven promotions to customer-centric interactions. This shift requires taking advantage of technology advancements and process improvements, but also a new mindset about one's marketing approach.Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice (2009) 10, 249–261. doi:10.1057/dddmp.2008.42 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A problem of today's standard business process (BP) automation systems is that they are too rigid to cope with changing business demands, especially for long running BPs. A solution to overcome this problem is to combine BPs with business rules (BRs). State-of-the-art BP automation systems use WS composition languages and BR services. Often these BRs are used to make calculations and to adapt simple decisions to business users without full integration into a BP automation system. The authors show that BP execution and BR functionality can be integrated properly in a standard service-oriented architecture. This finding is applied in a new approach of configuring BPs through using BRs. The assumption is that if one considers BRs already while modelling a BP, more advanced BP aspects like decisions, data constraints and control flow can be made agile and adaptive during run-time. BP modelling patterns are presented that demonstrate how BRs can be used to obtain different aspects of BP agility. Furthermore, different implementational aspects of bringing BPs and BRs together are discussed and it is shown how to implement these patterns using the IBM WebSphere® integration developer and the IBM WebSphere® process server. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice, the development of process-aware information systems suffers from a gap between conceptual business process models and executable workflow specifications. Because of this gap, conceptual models are hardly reused as execution templates. In this paper, we address two translation challenges that are partly responsible for this gap: the notorious 'OR-join problem' and the multiple start events problem. At the conceptual level people frequently use OR-joins. However, given their non-local semantics, OR-joins cannot be mapped easily onto executable languages. Furthermore, conceptual models often have multiple start events while execution languages require a unique start element. In particular, we present a new approach to mapping a conceptual process model with OR-joins and multiple start events (expressed in terms of an EPC) onto an executable model without OR-joins having a single start element (expressed in terms of a Petri net). Although we used an EPC process model as a running example, the approach is equally applicable to other process modelling languages that offer OR-joins as, for example, BPMN. Moreover, the resulting Petri net can be mapped onto other execution languages such as BPEL. All of this has been implemented in the context of the ProM framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses challenges and solutions on enterprise computing. It gives focus on the need for interoperability and the efforts of increasing it in the case of new business models. It also discusses flexibility and adaptability, design frameworks, architectures and standards. The article also discusses wuality assurance and differentiation and gives an overview of the contents of the issue particularly the highlights of the Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC 2007).

A service composition process typically involves multiple service models. These models may represent the composite and composed services from distinct perspectives, e.g. to model the role of some system that is involved in a service, and at distinct abstraction levels, e.g. to model the goal, interface or orchestration of some service. The consistency among these models needs to be maintained in order to guarantee the correctness of the composition process. Two types of consistency relations are distinguished: interoperability, which concerns the ability of different roles to interoperate, and conformance, which concerns the correct implementation of an abstract model by a more concrete model. This paper gives an overview of the various types of models that may be used in service composition, and explains when interoperability and conformance need to be assessed during the composition process. The paper further focuses on techniques to describe and analyse the interoperability relation using concepts from the COSMO framework. The choice of COSMO allows one to address both interoperability and conformance within a single conceptual framework. For techniques to describe and analyse the conformance relation reference is made to earlier work. Examples are presented to illustrate how different types of models can be used during the service composition process and how interoperability and conformance among these models can be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Administração e Inovação (RAI) is the property of Revista de Administracao e Inovacao- RAI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a study on the involvement between bank debt maturity and relationship lending, using a distinct survey sample of 3,366 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 19 European countries. Accordingly, the formation of institutional environment through proper knowledge on relationship lending, promotes better understanding on present institutional changes. Moreover, the result of the study, had been implied with the new rules of European community which give further impact in SME access to bank differing with others, determined by the operations of the country firm.

Enterprises typically operate multiple data center sites, each handling workloads according to an enterprise-level strategy. Sharing resources across multiple sites (or enterprises) brings up several important problems. Each site may have its own policies that govern its interactions with other remote sites. Different policies impact the system performance in different ways, and site administrators and system designers need to understand the effects of a given set of policies on potential workloads. In this paper, we describe an analysis methodology that determines the impact of policies on workloads, and we present results and validation for a prototypical multisite resource sharing system. Our analytical tool is capable of evaluating complex policies on a large-scale system and permits independent policies for each site so that policy makers can quickly evaluate several alternatives and their effects on the workloads before deploying them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  The multi-tier implementation has become the industry standard for developing scalable client-server enterprise applications. Since these applications are performance sensitive, effective models for dynamic resource provisioning and for delivering quality of service to these applications become critical. Workloads in such environments are characterized by client sessions of interdependent requests with changing transaction mix and load over time, making model adaptivity to the observed workload changes a critical requirement for model effectiveness. In this work, we apply a regression-based approximation of the CPU demand of client transactions on a given hardware. Then, we use this approximation in an analytic model of a simple network of queues, each queue representing a tier, and show the approximation’s effectiveness for modeling diverse workloads with a changing transaction mix over time. Using two case studies, we investigate factors that impact the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed performance prediction models. Experimental results show that this regression-based approach provides a simple and powerful solution for efficient capacity planning and resource provisioning of multi-tier applications under changing workload conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Power management is becoming an increasingly critical component of modern enterprise computing environments. The traditional drive for higher performance has influenced trends towards consolidation and higher densities, artifacts enabled by virtualization and new small form factor server blades. The resulting effect has been increased power and cooling requirements in data centers which elevate ownership costs and put more pressure on rack and enclosure densities. To address these issues, we exploit a fundamental characteristic of data centers: “platform heterogeneity”. This heterogeneity stems from the architectural and management-capability variations of the underlying platforms. We define an intelligent heterogeneity-aware load management (HALM) system that leverages heterogeneity characteristics to provide two data center level benefits: (i) power efficient allocations of workloads to the best fitting platforms and (ii) improved overall performance in a power constrained environment. Our infrastructure relies upon platform and workload descriptors as well as a novel analytical prediction layer that accurately predicts workload power/performance across different platform architectures and power management capabilities. Our allocation scheme achieves on average 20% improvements in power efficiency for representative heterogeneous data center configurations, and up to 18% improvements in performance degradation when power budgeting must be performed. These results highlight the significant potential of heterogeneity-aware management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional document classification frameworks, which apply the learned classifier to each document in a corpus one by one, are infeasible for extremely large document corpora, like the Web or large corporate intranets. We consider the classification problem on a corpus that has been processed primarily for the purpose of searching, and thus our access to documents is solely through the inverted index of a large scale search engine. Our main goal is to build the “best” short query that characterizes a document class using operators normally available within search engines. We show that surprisingly good classification accuracy can be achieved on average over multiple classes by queries with as few as 10 terms. As part of our study, we enhance some of the feature-selection techniques that are found in the literature by forcing the inclusion of terms that are negatively correlated with the target class and by making use of term correlations; we show that both of those techniques can offer significant advantages. Moreover, we show that optimizing the efficiency of query execution by careful selection of terms can further reduce the query costs. More precisely, we show that on our set-up the best 10-term query can achieve 93% of the accuracy of the best SVM classifier (14,000 terms), and if we are willing to tolerate a reduction to 89% of the best SVM, we can build a 10-term query that can be executed more than twice as fast as the best 10-term query. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through their websites, biotechnology firms communicate information about themselves and their products to other members of their networks. These networks are made up of an array of organisations with which biotechnology firms collaborate on product development projects, and on whom they rely for funding, and/or marketing and production. Therefore, it is important that the information communicated by firms' websites portrays them in the light they wish to be perceived by others. Despite its importance, biotechnology firms, however, do not prioritise branding or the development of a brand personality. By using demonstrated content analysis methodologies, our study shows that biotechnology firms are nonetheless portraying brand personalities online, even if unintentionally. We show that, by using the same methodologies, managers in biotechnology firms can monitor and manage their firms' brand personalities to ensure that the words they communicate online present an appropriate and attractive image of the firm to their communities. We extend previous research in the area of brand personality and show its application in and importance for the biotechnology industry.Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (2008) 14, 247–255. doi:10.1057/jcb.2008.14; published online 29 April 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personalisation is widely considered as a critical element of contemporary electronic businesses. However, despite the wealth of scientific work on personalisation, the definition of the term remains blurred with as consequence a lack of clarity as to what to design or evaluate when it comes to this area of an e-business. E-business stakeholders, including designers, managers and customers, need to understand the significance of personalisation features for many reasons including: guidance for design and evaluation, user appeal and implications for e-business functionality. The paper introduces a descriptive framework for personalisation aspects of e-businesses, in business-to-consumer (B2C) situations, that is related to typical e-business functionality. The proposed framework classifies previous research and extends it to provide e-commerce stakeholders with a vocabulary for analysing e-businesses, for comparing personalisation features, and for explaining e-business commerce evaluation results. The framework is applied to the evaluation of the personalisation features of contemporary clothing e-businesses, and conclusions are drawn for the readiness of this sector to adopt personalisation requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test previously developed models to identify factors that are perceived to affect the decision to adopt corporate intranet (CI) in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach - The study used survey methodology. A set of questionnaires was returned from 436 intranet users at four major companies in Tunisia. Findings - Several factors identified as significantly affecting users' adoption of CI in Tunisian companies: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, information quality, compatibility, computer self-efficacy, personal innovativeness, superior pressure, peer pressure, self-image, tech support, and top management support. Practical implications –The findings of this study can benefit practitioners as it provides organizations and top managers with a short list of factors that can significantly affect the adoption and usage of CI. Originality/value - The study extends previously tested theories and models to a developing country environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Social relations play an important role in a real community. Interaction patterns reveal relations among actors (such as persons, groups, firms), which can be merged to produce valuable information such as a network structure. This paper aims to present a new approach to extract inter-firm networks from the web for further analysis. Design/methodology/approach - In this study extraction of relations between a pair of firms is obtained by using a search engine and text processing. Because names of firms co-appear coincidentally on the web, an advanced algorithm is proposed, which is characterised by the addition of keywords ("relation keywords") to a query. The relation keywords are obtained from the web using a Jaccard coefficient. Findings - As an application, a network of 60 firms in Japan is extracted including IT, communication, broadcasting, and electronics firms from the web and comprehensive evaluations of this approach are shown. The alliance and lawsuit relations are easily obtainable from the web using the algorithm. By adding relation keywords to named pairs of firms as a query, It is possible to collect target pages from the top of web pages more precisely than by only using the named pairs as a query. Practical implications - This study proposes a new approach for extracting inter-firm networks from the web. The obtained network is useful in several ways. It is possible to find a cluster of firms and characterise a firm by its cluster. Business experts often make such inferences based on firm relations and firm groups. For that reason the firm network might enhance inferential abilities on the business domain. Also we might use obtained networks to recommend business partners based on structural advantages. The authors'' intuition is that extracting a social network might provide information that is only recognisable from the network point of view. For example, the centrality of each firm is identified only after generating a social network. Originality/value - This study is a first attempt to extract inter-firm networks from the web using a search engine. The approach is also applicable to other actors, such as famous persons, organisations or other multiple relational entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to focus on studying the impact of collaborative technologies on firm performance. The methodology used analyzes the influence of collaborative technologies not only directly but through an intermediary variable. This variable represents different intranet use orientations (e-information, e-communication and e-transaction). Design/methodology/approach - A structured questionnaire consisting of close-ended questions was developed. Face-to-face surveys were conducted on a sample comprising 310 Spanish firms in May 2005. Research hypotheses were tested through ANOVA and hierarchical regression analyses. Findings - Empirical results show that distinct collaborative technologies are associated with different intranet use orientations and demonstrate there is a positive relationship between e-information and organizational performance. That is, the use of collaborative technologies with an informational orientation contributes to increased organizational performance. In addition, the existence of complementarities between e-information and e-communication were found. Thus, firms using collaborative technologies for e-information in conjunction with e-communication achieve better performance. The collaborative technology that has the greatest impact on firm performance is in fact the less employed. Originality/value - This study confirms collaborative technologies are oriented to different, but compatible, uses. However, only certain uses present complementarities and have a direct impact on firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The best-laid plans of any IT strategy can get derailed by unforeseen factors wrong-footing critical application outcomes. However, the author finds that event-driven systems are built to take change in their stride. IT systems are mostly built around the idea that things happen in predictable sequences. Everything else is an exception to be squashed. But that is an approach that is beginning to change as IT directors realise that real-world events are not troublesome inputs but actually provide a way to drive their systems. Event-driven architecture is relevant to any business that has multiple parties involved. People are not used to building architecture because they typically work with in synchronous environments today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo da consejo a las empresas con respeto a su uso de los weblogs para los propósitos de comunicación. Según el artículo, las empresas deban usar los weblogs para mejorar la visibilidad de su marca, aportar su voz personal y distribuir información importante. Los weblogs pueden ser utilizados para comunicación interna y externa.

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to discuss using the intranet to build teamwork. Design/methodology/approach - The author provides a useful viewpoint on using the intranet to build teamwork. Findings - Many organizations are attempting to use teams and allowing these employees to engage in self-directed work. To be successful these teams must work in an integrated, collaborative fashion toward an organizational goal or vision. One of the keys to this success is having rapid, meaningful feedback about performance for all team members. It is argued that the intranet combined with current visualization software can provide not only such feedback but also help the team stay focused and become more integrated. Originality/value - Provides a useful discussion on using the intranet to build teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Web-based portal acting as a presentation layer to the Grid allows us to provide a transparent means of access to Grid resources. Our previous experiences in developing Grid portals have shown that there is a need to draw a clear high-level picture of the architecture. This could be defined using the J2EE component-oriented architecture, which enables a clear separation between the presentation, business logic and data layers. Additional benefits come with J2EE 1.4 making it possible to build up advanced service-based Grid portals by exposing stateless session beans as Web services. In this paper, lessons learnt from our prototype portal/portlet development using Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) are reported. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertical Grid portals, or Vortals, proved to be useful by providing access to applications running on high-performance computational platforms and to distributed data enabling data sharing and other forms of collaboration. This paper identifies the commonalities between Vortals in various application domains, i.e. application-independent patterns of orchestrating Grid services employed by a typical Vortal. These patterns can be captured as façades—a software layer between the Vortal business logic and generic Grid services that promotes a horizontal integration. The façades are reusable and considerably simplify the development of new Vortals. Furthermore, the façades foster interactions between different Vortals, and hence making them the cooperative Grid Vortals. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates corporate intranet effectiveness. It aims to discuss at a conceptual level on the concept of intranet effectiveness and analyze the effectiveness model with several contributing factors classified as organizational, technological, and individual factors. The findings shows the relationship between antecedent factors including intranet effective usage and intranet service quality. Moreover, the effectiveness of intranet directly or indirectly impact organizational effectiveness.

Over the past few years, companies have gradually abandoned paper records. They've shifted to electronic communication and records. But now, IT staff and corporate counsel are grappling with a whole new set of rules governing electronic legal evidence. What electronic information must you preserve? And how can you control the spiraling costs involved—and avoid crippling damage awards for failure to comply? The authors have some answers, including special guidelines for the chief financial officer's role in all this. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]