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Researchers have looked extensively into the adoption and satisfaction level of academic electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) by students. The majority of research to date has indicated that either students prefer print textbooks to e-textbooks or the results are inconclusive. In this study a survey consisting of questions related to the use of an e-textbook was administered to a group of business majors and non-business undergraduate college students at a regionally accredited Mid-South university with a total of 313 valid responses. All students had used etextbooks in one or more of their courses. The results of this study indicate that students who are not business majors (non-business students) are more satisfied with an e-textbook than business majors. Non-business students who use one of the e-textbook's electronic features are also more satisfied with the ease of use of the e-textbook. In addition, non-business students are more likely to use an e-textbook again in the future compared to a business major. Although there is no significant difference between the two groups for the price they are willing to pay for an etextbook, non-business students on average are willing to pay a higher price for a printed textbook.

Approximately 55 percent of the world's 7.3 billion people access the Internet, creating a significant demand in information technology (IT) services for both organizations and consumers. The number of data centers continue to increase to meet this demand, consuming 2 percent of the energy produced worldwide. Many organizations moving towards cloud computing due to its ability to meet users' needs on demand. Greening cloud computing technology has become an important aspect of an organization's design and use of cloud computing. One aspect of greening the cloud is through efficiently using cloud-based resources. In this study, we focus on the resource allocation applications of cloud computing technologies to green an organizations cloud. We design a pricing and allocation mechanism for a private cloud computing service that allows the firm to effectively load balance their cloud computing resources. Our optimal pricing mechanism is a dynamic pricing model, which maximizes the net value of users in a private cloud computing service. Additionally, we create a job allocation algorithm based on our dynamic pricing model to load balance the cloud. We show that balancing the job allocation such that the number of jobs at individual resource servers as close to equal as possible is optimal. Furthermore, simulations were run on the allocation mechanism to examine the effects on the cloud resources while gaining insight to effectively distribution resources to public clouds. Our model can help organizations to efficiently distribute their cloud-based resources, which allows for a greener cloud computing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of people using smartphones is increasing dramatically; the smartphone install base is expected to reach 1.4 billion by the end of 2013. Additionally, the use of mobile Internet, especially in emerging markets, is increasing. This has led to an increased use of smartphones for education learning in both formal and informal settings. The purpose of this research is to see how students are currently using their smartphones for educational purposes. We examine if gender and age play a role in how smartphones are used. We will also examine the findings of the survey and discuss the implications for both educators and content providers; but also consider these issues for less formal forms of education. Our results indicate that both college educators and employers should start using smartphones for education and training purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]