Game engine for location-based services

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Ontology of technology : Mobile technology in the Kathmandu valley

In contemporary times, modern communication technologies connect enormous amounts of different people from different cultures together. Yet, for all these different people to be able to utilize these technologies requires that they also share some kind a common understanding of them. Consequently, the purpose of this thesis is to study how a shared understanding of a technology is constructed and maintained among people who might otherwise have very different worldviews. It answers to this question through an ethnographic fieldwork which focuses on how the culturally very heterogeneous people of the Kathmandu valley are unified through mobile technology into a connected communication network. To analyse how the common understanding of mobile technology is achieved it conducts a comparison. It compares mobile technology to other different methods of establishing social unity in the Kathmandu valley described by anthropological studies of its cultural forms. By contrasting and comparing these different practices it elicits how the construction of a common understanding concerning mobile technology requires some ontological presuppositions concerning reality in general. Yet, analysis of the presupposed truths that are used to establish technological unity raises a theoretical and methodological problem. This problem is that the ontological truths concerning reality that connect the users of mobile technology together are similar to those which are often used as the basis of social scientific research. To solve this problem this thesis utilizes a method of science and technology studies known as actor-network theory. Consequently, by utilizing actor-network theory it constructs a method which enables to give an ontological description of mobile technology

Brave New Wireless World: Mapping the Rise of Ubiquitous Connectivity from Myth to Market

This dissertation offers a critical and historical analysis of the myth of ubiquitous connectivity—a myth widely associated with the technological capabilities offered by “always on” Internet-enabled mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This myth proclaims that work and social life are optimized, made more flexible, manageable, and productive, through the use of these devices and their related services. The prevalence of this myth—whether articulated as commercial strategy, organizational goal, or mode of social mediation—offers repeated claims that the experience and organization of daily life has passed a technological threshold. Its proponents champion the virtues of the invisible “last mile” tethering individuals (through their devices) primarily to commercial networks. The purpose of this dissertation is to uncover the interaction between the proliferation of media artifacts and the political economic forces and relations occluded by this myth. To do this, herein the development of the BlackBerry, as a specific brand of devices and services, is shown to be intimately interrelated with the myth of ubiquitous connectivity. It demonstrates that the BlackBerry is a technical artifact whose history sheds light on key characteristics of our media environment and the political economic dynamics shaping the development of other technologies, workforce composition and management, and more general consumption proclivities. By pointing to the analytic significance of the BlackBerry, this work does not intend to simply praise its creators for their technical and commercial achievements. Instead, it aims to show how these achievements express a synthesis that represents the motivations of economic actors and prevailing modes of thought most particularly as they are drawn together in and through the myth of ubiquitous connectivity. The narrative arc of this dissertation is anchored by moments of harmonization among political economic interests as these shape (and are shaped by) prevailing modes of producing and relating through ubiquitous connectivity

Company operating in a B2B market: case study on marketing communication

This version contains the suggestions of the elements of the JuryNo contexto de uma constante mudança e evolução, o marketing sempre foi uma ferramenta fundamental para acompanhar as alterações dos mercados, de forma a promover a adaptação das estratégias às novas condições das empresas. O objetivo deste relatório do estágio é estudar e explorar o tema do mercado Business-to-Business e Business-to-Consumer, comunicações de marketing e a importância da comunicação intercultural nos negócios através da minha experiência adquirida durante o estágio na empresa Snow Factory, SLU. O presente relatório do estágio tem como foco, em primeiro lugar, as especificidades dos mercados empresariais, planeamento de marketing e implementação da estratégia no contexto B2B, visão dos mercados e dos compradores, com base em estudos de diversos autores. Além disso, o estágio demonstra as diferenças entre o marketing B2B e B2C. Em segundo lugar, este relatório revela a função de atendimento ao cliente e as minhas principais responsabilidades durante o estágio. Em terceiro lugar, também será discutido o comportamento de compra da empresa e as potenciais circunstâncias de compra. Por fim, o relatório analisará os fatores interculturais envolvidos numa experiência de estágio, ilustrando conceitos e componentes importantes que contribuem para a definição do conceito. Como vivemos em época de globalização, o público está cada vez mais atento à comunicação intercultural como imprescindível elemento para o sucesso, tanto na vida pessoal como na área profissional. Consequentemente, a comunicação intercultural é mais importante do que nunca para as empresas. Este relatório se concentrará nas atividades desenvolvidas ao longo do estágio de seis meses na Snow Factory Company relativamente ao perfil da organização e a importância do mercado business-to-business e da comunicação intercultural na comunidade global.In the context of constant innovation and evolution, marketing has always been a fundamental tool to follow market changes, in order to help companies to adapt their strategies to the new conditions. The goal for this internship report is to study and explore the theme of Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer market, marketing communications and the importance of intercultural communication in business through my internship experience at the company Snow Factory, SLU. This internship report aims, firstly, on the specificities of business markets, marketing planning and strategy implementation in the B2B context, insight of the markets and the buyers, based on studies of several authors. Also, it will highlight differences between B2B and B2C marketing. Secondly, this report will focus on customer service role and my main responsibilities during the internship. Thirdly, it will also be discussed the business buying behaviour and potential buying circumstances. Finally, the report will analyze the intercultural factors involved in an internship experience, and so illustrating important concepts and components that contribute to the concept definition. Living in globalized time, the public is increasingly paying attention to intercultural communication as a crucial element of success, both in life and at work. Consequently, intercultural communication is now more important than it ever was for companies. This report will focus on the activities developed throughout the six-month internship at Snow Factory Company regarding the organization’s profile and the importance of the business-to-business market and intercultural communication in the global community

A blueprint for successful partnering.

Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.Partnerships have evolved during the last decade from being the 'nice to have' to becoming the 'must have' to survive in all industries across the world. There are many different definitions of 'partnerships' and 'alliances' but most researchers, authors and experts in this field agree that at the core of true partnering or alliance agreements lies shared: benefits, risks and approaches. To avoid market share and profitability deterioration, solutions providers must initiate programs to improve their strategic position in a focused set of partner programs. Microsoft Corporation is the worlds leading software company with 96% of all revenue earned being billed through their partners. The company currently faces poor partner satisfaction ratings and has come to the realisation in that they have to a large extent, ignored the needs of their strategic and 'managed' partners. A blueprint for successful partnering is key to any company looking to differentiate itself, create a competitive advantage and become the industry leader in the offering the 'best of breed' partner experience. This is why the identification and implementation of a defined, successful partnering agreement blueprint is required in order to drive the Microsoft business strategy around the 'Partner' experience forward. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the current Microsoft engagement models in driving partner satisfaction in the managed partner space, to determine what the barriers and best practices are, pertaining to successful partnering in the corporate arena and to establish if it is feasible to identify and implement a blueprint that can be used in the corporate arena that promotes successful alliances/partnerships. Recommendations to implement the said blueprint are also be made in order to guide readers through the process

Unmanned Vehicle Systems & Operations on Air, Sea, Land

Unmanned Vehicle Systems & Operations On Air, Sea, Land is our fourth textbook in a series covering the world of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (CUAS). (Nichols R. K., 2018) (Nichols R. K., et al., 2019) (Nichols R. , et al., 2020)The authors have expanded their purview beyond UAS / CUAS systems. Our title shows our concern for growth and unique cyber security unmanned vehicle technology and operations for unmanned vehicles in all theaters: Air, Sea and Land – especially maritime cybersecurity and China proliferation issues. Topics include: Information Advances, Remote ID, and Extreme Persistence ISR; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles & How They Can Augment Mesonet Weather Tower Data Collection; Tour de Drones for the Discerning Palate; Underwater Autonomous Navigation & other UUV Advances; Autonomous Maritime Asymmetric Systems; UUV Integrated Autonomous Missions & Drone Management; Principles of Naval Architecture Applied to UUV’s; Unmanned Logistics Operating Safely and Efficiently Across Multiple Domains; Chinese Advances in Stealth UAV Penetration Path Planning in Combat Environment; UAS, the Fourth Amendment and Privacy; UV & Disinformation / Misinformation Channels; Chinese UAS Proliferation along New Silk Road Sea / Land Routes; Automaton, AI, Law, Ethics, Crossing the Machine – Human Barrier and Maritime Cybersecurity.Unmanned Vehicle Systems are an integral part of the US national critical infrastructure The authors have endeavored to bring a breadth and quality of information to the reader that is unparalleled in the unclassified sphere. Unmanned Vehicle (UV) Systems & Operations On Air, Sea, Land discusses state-of-the-art technology / issues facing U.S. UV system researchers / designers / manufacturers / testers. We trust our newest look at Unmanned Vehicles in Air, Sea, and Land will enrich our students and readers understanding of the purview of this wonderful technology we call UV.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1035/thumbnail.jp

Quantifying Quality of Life

Describes technological methods and tools for objective and quantitative assessment of QoL Appraises technology-enabled methods for incorporating QoL measurements in medicine Highlights the success factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods This open access book presents the rise of technology-enabled methods and tools for objective, quantitative assessment of Quality of Life (QoL), while following the WHOQOL model. It is an in-depth resource describing and examining state-of-the-art, minimally obtrusive, ubiquitous technologies. Highlighting the required factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods and tools for QoL assessment, it also describes how these technologies can be leveraged for behavior change, disease prevention, health management and long-term QoL enhancement in populations at large. Quantifying Quality of Life: Incorporating Daily Life into Medicine fills a gap in the field of QoL by providing assessment methods, techniques and tools. These assessments differ from the current methods that are now mostly infrequent, subjective, qualitative, memory-based, context-poor and sparse. Therefore, it is an ideal resource for physicians, physicians in training, software and hardware developers, computer scientists, data scientists, behavioural scientists, entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders and administrators who are seeking an up-to-date resource on this subject

Mechanising and evolving the formal semantics of WebAssembly: the Web's new low-level language

WebAssembly is the first new programming language to be supported natively by all major Web browsers since JavaScript. It is designed to be a natural low-level compilation target for languages such as C, C++, and Rust, enabling programs written in these languages to be compiled and executed efficiently on the Web. WebAssembly’s specification is managed by the W3C WebAssembly Working Group (made up of representatives from a number of major tech companies). Uniquely, the language is specified by way of a full pen-and-paper formal semantics. This thesis describes a number of ways in which I have both helped to shape the specification of WebAssembly, and built upon it. By mechanising the WebAssembly formal semantics in Isabelle/HOL while it was being drafted, I discovered a number of errors in the specification, drove the adoption of official corrections, and provided the first type soundness proof for the corrected language. This thesis also details a verified type checker and interpreter, and a security type system extension for cryptography primitives, all of which have been mechanised as extensions of my initial WebAssembly mechanisation. A major component of the thesis is my work on the specification of shared memory concurrency in Web languages: correcting and verifying properties of JavaScript’s existing relaxed memory model, and defining the WebAssembly-specific extensions to the corrected model which have been adopted as the basis of WebAssembly’s official threads specification. A number of deficiencies in the original JavaScript model are detailed. Some errors have been corrected, with the verified fixes officially adopted into subsequent editions of the language specification. However one discovered deficiency is fundamental to the model, an instance of the well-known "thin-air problem". My work demonstrates the value of formalisation and mechanisation in industrial programming language design, not only in discovering and correcting specification errors, but also in building confidence both in the correctness of the language’s design and in the design of proposed extensions.2019 Google PhD Fellowship in Programming Technology and Software Engineering Peterhouse Research Fellowshi

Selected Papers from the 5th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications

This Special Issue comprises selected papers from the proceedings of the 5th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications, held on 15–30 November 2018, on sciforum.net, an online platform for hosting scholarly e-conferences and discussion groups. In this 5th edition of the electronic conference, contributors were invited to provide papers and presentations from the field of sensors and applications at large, resulting in a wide variety of excellent submissions and topic areas. Papers which attracted the most interest on the web or that provided a particularly innovative contribution were selected for publication in this collection. These peer-reviewed papers are published with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications. We hope this conference series will grow rapidly in the future and become recognized as a new way and venue by which to (electronically) present new developments related to the field of sensors and their applications