Endorsed by all major vendors (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and SAP), SOA has quickly become the industry standard for building next-generation software; this practical guide shows readers how to achieve the many benefits of SOA Begins with a look at the architectural principles needed to create successful applications and then goes on to examine the process for designing services and SOA implementations Each stage of the design process has an accompanying chapter that walks readers through the details and provides helpful tips, techniques, and examples The author team of SOA practitioners also provides two unique, comprehensive, end-to-end case studies illustrating the architectural and design techniques presented in the book

The massive growth of the Internet has made an enormous amount of infor- tion available to us. However, it is becoming very difficult for users to acquire an - plicable one. Therefore, some techniques such as information filtering have been - troduced to address this issue. Recommender systems filter information that is useful to a user from a large amount of information. Many e-commerce sites use rec- mender systems to filter specific information that users want out of an overload of - formation [2]. For example, Amazon. com is a good example of the success of - commender systems [1]. Over the past several years, a considerable amount of research has been conducted on recommendation systems. In general, the usefulness of the recommendation is measured based on its accuracy [3]. Although a high - commendation accuracy can indicate a user's favorite items, there is a fault in that - ly similar items will be recommended. Several studies have reported that users might not be satisfied with a recommendation even though it exhibits high recommendation accuracy [4]. For this reason, we consider that a recommendation having only accuracy is - satisfactory. The serendipity of a recommendation is an important element when c- sidering a user's long-term profits. A recommendation that brings serendipity to users would solve the problem of “user weariness” and would lead to exploitation of users' tastes. The viewpoint of the diversity of the recommendation as well as its accuracy should be required for future recommender systems.

Common Core Achieve is a groundbreaking blended test-prep program that helps adult learners prepare for high school equivalency exams more quickly and retain more of what they learn. It is aligned to College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education and built upon the new standards and assessment targets for the 2014 GED® Test, TASCTM test, and HiSETTM Exam. Contextualized skill instruction engages learners while preparing them for test success, postsecondary credentials or certification programs, and family-sustaining careers.

In our hyper-connected world that is changing at warp speed, marketers recognize the need to shift from traditional marketing methods to a new way that can help them better navigate the unpredictable environment. For traditionalists, this change has posed a challenge. Many have tried to incorporate new approaches into the old models they grew up with, only to be frustrated with the results. From the bestselling authors of The Social Employee, and LinkedIn Learning course authors, comes a powerful new textbook that cracks the marketing code in our hyper-focused digital age. The New Marketing, with contributions spanning CMO trailblazers to martech disruptors, behavioral economics luminaries at Yale to leading marketing thinkers at Kellogg and Wharton, is a GPS for navigating in a digital world and moves the craft of marketing through the forces of marketing transformation. We can’t predict the future. But our goal is to help make Masters/MBA students and marketing practitioners future-ready and successful.

Tourism is changing. This innovative textbook examines a key international service industry in the context of globalization processes, the state, and increased individual mobility, using case studies to illustrate wider themes and key issues.

This book describes the research of the authors over more than a decade on an end-to-end methodology for the design and development of Web Information Systems (WIS). It covers syntactics, semantics and pragmatics of WIS, introduces sophisticated concepts for conceptual modelling, provides integrated foundations for all these concepts and integrates them into the co-design method for systematic WIS development. WIS, i.e. data-intensive information systems that are realized in a way that arbitrary users can access them via web browsers, constitute a prominent class of information systems, for which acceptance by its a priori unknown users in varying contexts with respect to the presented content, the ease of functionality provided and the attraction of the layout adds novel challenges for modelling, design and development. This book is structured into four parts. Part I, Web Information Systems – General Aspects, gives a general introduction to WIS describing the challenges for their development, and provides a characterization by six decisive aspects: intention, usage, content, functionality, context and presentation. Part II, High-Level WIS Design – Strategic Analysis and Usage Modelling with Storyboarding, introduces methods for high-level design of WIS covering strategic aspects and the storyboarding method, which is discussed from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives. Part III, Conceptual WIS Design – Rigorous Modelling of Web Information Systems and their Layout with Web Interaction Types and Screenography, continues with conceptual design of WIS including layout and playout. This introduces the decisive web interaction types, the screenography method and adaptation aspects. The final Part IV, Rationale of the Co-Design Methodology and Systematic Development of Web Information Systems, describes the co-design method for WIS development and its application for the systematic engineering of systems. The book addresses the research community, and at the same time can be used for education of graduate students and as methodological support for professional WIS developers. For the WIS research community it provides methods for WIS modelling on all levels of abstraction including theoretical foundations and inference mechanisms as well as a sophisticated end-to-end methodology for systematic WIS engineering from requirements elicitation over conceptual modelling to aspects of implementation, layout and playout. For students and professional developers the book can be used as a whole for educational courses on WIS design and development, as well as for more specific courses on conceptual modelling of WIS, WIS foundations and reasoning, co-design and WIS engineering or WIS layout and playout development.

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Prize 2008 The Snowball is the first and will be the only biography of the world's richest man, Warren Buffett, written with his full cooperation and collaboration. Combining a unique blend of "The Sage of Omaha's" business savvy, life story and philosophy, The Snowball is essential reading for anyone wishing to discover and replicate the secrets of his business and life success. Warren Buffett is arguably the world's greatest investor. Even as a child he was fascinated by the concept of risk and probability, setting up his first business at the age of six. In 1964 he bought struggling Massachusetts textile firm Berkshire Hathaway and grew it to be the 12th largest corporation in the US purely through the exercise of sound investing principles - a feat never equalled in the annals of business. Despite an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, Buffett leads an intriguingly frugal life taking home a salary of only £50,000 a year. His only indulgence is a private jet, an extravagance he wryly acknowledges by calling it "The Indefensible". In 2006, he made the largest charitable donation on record, with most of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Snowball provides a comprehensive, richly detailed insight one of the world's most extraordinary and much loved public figures.

Building the E-Service Society is a state-of-the-art book which deals with innovative trends in communication systems, information processing, and security and trust in electronic commerce, electronic business, and electronic government. It comprises the proceedings of I3E2004, the Fourth International Conference on E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government, which was held in August 2004 as a co-located conference of the 18th IFIP World Computer Congress in Toulouse, France, and sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). The book contains recent results and developments in the following areas: E-Government: E-Government Models and Processes, E-Governance, Service Provisioning. E-Business: Infrastructures and Marketplaces, M-Commerce, Purchase and Payment. E-Commerce: Value Chain Management, E-Business Architectures and Processes, E-Business Models.

*Describes an agile process that works on large projects *Ideal for hurried developers who want to develop software in teams *Incorporates real-life C#/.NET web project; can compare this with cases in book