The distribution of the German government between Bonn and Berlin calls for the technical support for the collaborative document-based tasks performed by interand intra-ministerial work groups. While modern multimedia collaboration technology provides many important features, easy use and control of this technology by the end user is currently still a big problem. This paper presents an integra...

Abstract Telecommunications data are being explored by many countries as a new source of that can be incorporated into their national statistical systems. In particular, “mobile positioning data” increasingly used to study population movements and distributions. However, the legal, ethical, technical complexities working with this type often pose barriers, which prevent from at times when it is...

As the telecommunications industry endeavours to reinvent itself, the effective management and exploitation of information, data delivered in context, is now the key weapon in gaining and retaining customers. The data management challenges in an environment of massively growing data volumes and complexity introduced by distributed processing are outlined. A framework and methodology for the man...

The macroeconomic rationale for aid relates to its ability to supplement savings, foreign exchange and government revenue, thus contributing to growth. This processes presumes a simple Harrod-Domar context in which growth is driven by physical capital formation. However, the macroeconomic reality of aid is more complicated. Three areas of complication are discussed: (i) the effects of aid on fi...

The recent industry standard Bluetooth promises low cost replacement of communication cabling with moderate symbol-rate, short-range wireless links. The same specification also addresses the establishment of point-to-multipoint piconets and the interconnection of several of these piconets into scatternets, enabling Bluetooth to be used as a technology for realizing personal area networks. Estab...

Since World War II, developing nations have embarked on two massive changes in telecommunications policy. The first was the wave of nationalization of private companies that took place mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, and the second is the now ongoing process of re-privatization and, to a lesser degree, the introduction of competition. The purpose of this essay is to set forth the problems of con...

The recent industry standard and specification Bluetooth promises low cost replacement of communication cabling with moderate symbol-rate, short-range wireless links. The same specification also addresses the establishment of point-to-multipoint piconets and the interconnection of several of these piconets into scatternets, enabling Bluetooth to be used as a technology for realizing personal ar...

We describe a context-aware architecture under development at the Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications of the University of Trento. The middleware system described in this report can integrate various data about the user and his/her context (e.g., position) and provide them in a transparent and system-independent way via a SOAP interface to dynamic web pages and other client ap...

This article examines the dynamics of interand intra-firm networks in technical standard setting initiatives, and how complex social networks align in these initiatives. Specifically, we argue that in standardization, complex economic and social interactions are blended. In standardization activities, firm behavior and the behavior of individuals within firms is best explained through an integr...

Antonio F. Mondragon-Torres received a B.Sc. degree with honors from Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico, a M.Sc. degree from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico, and a Ph.D. degree (as a Fullbright-CONACYT scholarship recipient) from Texas A&M University, College Station; all degrees in electrical engineering in 1990, 1996, and 2002, respectively. From 1988...