From grids to clouds: a collective intelligence study for inter-cooperated infrastructures

Recently, more effort has been put into developing interoperable and distributed environments that offer users exceptional opportunities for utilizing resources over the internet. By utilising grids and clouds, resource consumers and providers, they gain significant benefits by either using or purchasing the computer processing capacities and the information provided by data centres. On the other hand, the collective intelligence paradigm is characterized as group based intelligence that emerges from the collaboration of many individuals, who in turn, define a coordinated knowledge model. It is envisaged that such a knowledge model could be of significant advantage if it is incorporated within the grid and cloud community. The dynamic load and access balancing of the grid and cloud data centres and the collective intelligence provides multiple opportunities, involving resource provisioning and development of scalable and heterogeneous applications. The contribution of this paper is that by utilizing grid and cloud resources, internal information stored within a public profile of each participant, resource providers as well as consumers, can lead to an effective mobilization of improved skills of members. We aim to unify the grid and cloud functionality as consumable computational power, for a) discussing the supreme advantages of such on-line resource utilization and provisioning models and b) analyzing the impact of the collective intelligence in the future trends of the aforementioned technologies

The European Language Resources and Technologies Forum: Shaping the Future of the Multilingual Digital Europe

Proceedings of the 1st FLaReNet Forum on the European Language Resources and Technologies, held in Vienna, at the Austrian Academy of Science, on 12-13 February 2009

Virtuaalinen markkinatutkimusyhteisö innovaatioiden katalyyttina

Tutkielman tavoitteena on selvittää, kuinka virtuaalista markkinatutkimusyhteisöä voidaan hyödyntää suomalaisen elintarvikealan yrityksen innovaatioprosessissa. Virtuaaliyhteisöön rekrytoidut kuluttajat ideoivat ja kehittävät uusia innovaatioita muiden yhteisön jäsenten kanssa. Tutkielman tutkimustehtävä on tarkastella virtuaalisesta markkinatutkimusyhteisöstä saatavia hyötyjä ja haasteita sekä menetelmän kehitysajatuksia. Tutkimusta varten luodaan tilaajayritykselle virtuaalinen markkinatutkimusyhteisö, jonka kautta kerätään kuluttajatutkimustietoa. Virtuaalisen markkinatutkimusyhteisön hyödynnettävyyttä tutkitaan empiirisessä osiossa laadullisin tutkimusmenetelmin kolmiportaisena tapaustutkimuksena, joka sisältää virtuaaliyhteisössä kootun tiedon analysoinnin, yksilöhaastattelut sekä ryhmäkeskustelun. Aineiston analysoimisessa hyödynnetään sisällönanalyysia. Virtuaaliyhteisömenetelmän eduiksi koetaan kuluttajan äänen esiintuomisen yrityksen sisälle, heikkojen signaalien todentaminen, menetelmän joustavuus sekä osallistujien rekrytoinnin helppous. Haasteiksi nähdään tiedon yleistettävyys ja todennettavuus, osallistujien rajoitteet innovaatiotyössä, yrityksen sitoutuneisuus tutkimukseen sekä tietoturvariskit. Virtuaaliyhteisömenetelmän kehitysajatuksina nähdään yhtiön sisäinen virtuaaliyhteisö, virtuaaliyhteisön laajamittainen integrointi tuotekehitysprosessiin sekä kuluttajien osallistaminen täsmällisesti tuotekehityksen eri vaiheisiin. Tutkimustulosten perusteella esitän kahta vaihtoehtoa, joiden kautta virtuaaliyhteisömenetelmää voidaan viedä eteenpäin. Pienimuotoisessa kehitystyössä ehdottamani kehitysaiheet ovat taktisia. Laajamittainen virtuaaliyhteisön kehittäminen puolestaan edellyttää uuden ajattelutavan viemistä yrityksen strategiaan sekä organisatoriseen ajattelutapaan

A treatise on Web 2.0 with a case study from the financial markets

There has been much hype in vocational and academic circles surrounding the emergence of web 2.0 or social media; however, relatively little work was dedicated to substantiating the actual concept of web 2.0. Many have dismissed it as not deserving of this new title, since the term web 2.0 assumes a certain interpretation of web history, including enough progress in certain direction to trigger a succession [i.e. web 1.0 → web 2.0]. Others provided arguments in support of this development, and there has been a considerable amount of enthusiasm in the literature. Much research has been busy evaluating current use of web 2.0, and analysis of the user generated content, but an objective and thorough assessment of what web 2.0 really stands for has been to a large extent overlooked. More recently the idea of collective intelligence facilitated via web 2.0, and its potential applications have raised interest with researchers, yet a more unified approach and work in the area of collective intelligence is needed. This thesis identifies and critically evaluates a wider context for the web 2.0 environment, and what caused it to emerge; providing a rich literature review on the topic, a review of existing taxonomies, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the concept itself, an investigation of the collective intelligence potential that emerges from application usage. Finally, a framework for harnessing collective intelligence in a more systematic manner is proposed. In addition to the presented results, novel methodologies are also introduced throughout this work. In order to provide interesting insight but also to illustrate analysis, a case study of the recent financial crisis is considered. Some interesting results relating to the crisis are revealed within user generated content data, and relevant issues are discussed where appropriate

Computer Music Composition using Crowdsourcing and Genetic Algorithms

When genetic algorithms (GA) are used to produce music, the results are limited by a fitness bottleneck problem. To create effective music, the GA needs to be thoroughly trained by humans, but this takes extensive time and effort. Applying online collective intelligence or crowdsourcing to train a musical GA is one approach to solve the fitness bottleneck problem. The hypothesis was that when music was created by a GA trained by a crowdsourced group and music was created by a GA trained by a small group, the crowdsourced music would be more effective and musically sound. When a group of reviewers and composers evaluated the music, the crowdsourced songs scored slightly higher overall than the songs from the small-group songs, but with the small number of evaluators, the difference was not statistically significant

Framework for the development of successful web 2.0 tools and application

Tese de Doutoramento em Gestão na especialidade de Gestão de Informação apresentada à Universidade AbertaA incerteza inicial associada à célere disseminação da Web 2.0 está a dissipar-se cada vez mais. A natureza social e colaborativa da Web 2.0 suscitou curiosidade na educação, na saúde, no mundo empresarial e em outras arenas centrais da sociedade. A passividade de uma Web de informação imóvel foi substituída por uma Web dinâmica, de conteúdo vívido gerado pelo utilizador. Esta evolução tem levado muitas instituições, de todos os setores, a implementar componentes da Web 2.0 nos seus websites como uma estratégia para melhorar a relação com o seu público-alvo. Apesar da pesquisa nesta área ser abundante, muitas entidades permanecem irresolutas quanto ao tipo de aplicações e ferramentas que devem selecionar para atingir os seus objetivos específicos. O presente estudo aborda este desafio, através do esboço de uma framework, que pode ser usada por qualquer pessoa ou entidade que pretenda criar e implementar aplicações Web 2.0 bem-sucedidas. A framework foi baseada na revisão da literatura, numa recolha documental e nos resultados obtidos mediante a aplicação de dois questionários online, tendo sido um deles aplicado no âmbito de um estudo de caso de uma entidade internacional. Ao examinar as preferências dos utilizadores, foi possível definir os critérios que potenciam a criação de aplicações Web 2.0 bem-sucedidas. Esta framework estabelece a base para a sua futura implementação na entidade internacional estudada na presente investigação.The initial uncertainty surrounding the swift dissemination of Web 2.0 is increasingly dissipating. The social and collaborative nature of Web 2.0 incited curiosity in education, health, business and other central arenas of society. The passiveness of a Web of motionless information was replaced by a dynamic Web of lively usergenerated content. This evolution has led many institutions from all sectors to implement Web 2.0 components in their websites as a strategy to enhance their relationship with their target population. Despite the voluminous research in this area, many entities remain bewildered as to what type of applications and tools to select to attain their specific objectives. This study addresses this challenge, by outlining a framework that can be used by any individual or entity that wishes to build and implement successful Web 2.0 applications. This framework was based on the literature review, on the collection of documents, and on the results of the two online questionnaires, one of which was used in the context of a case study of an international entity. By examining the users’ preferences, it was possible to define the criteria that potentiate the creation of successful Web 2.0 applications. This framework sets forth the basis for its future implementation in the entity where part of this study was conducted

Social Media in Business-to-Business Companies' Innovation

Regarding the increasingly important paradigm of open innovation, it is recognized that valuable innovation-related knowledge is distributed ever more widely to various actors outside the company borders, such as users, customers, and communities. Various types of novel collaborative web tools and approaches, such as social media, can enable and significantly increase the use of distributed knowledge both within and outside company borders.It is a common assumption that it is much more difficult to utilize social media in business-to-business (B2B) innovation and the customer interface because of the significant differences in B2B markets, B2B products, and product development, for example. Despite the growing number of company experiments and academic studies, social media are still new to many businesses. The opportunities and benefits of social media are not well understood in business, especially in B2B context. Despite the recent increasing interest in the use of social media in B2B marketing, it has received little attention from the innovation perspective.The general purpose of this thesis is to study and help to understand the use of social media in B2B companies’ innovation. The thesis focuses on the innovation process, customer interface and the related perspective of the creation and sharing of customer knowledge. The main objectives of the dissertation are to understand the challenges, new opportunities, use and benefits, as well as, functions and roles of social media in B2B innovation. The choice of carrying out the dissertation as an article thesis has offered the researcher the opportunity to study from multiple perspectives a phenomenon that has been little researched or understood. The thesis combines quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative research approach was used to determine the current use and perceived potential of social media tools in innovation, as well as to identify challenges of social media use in B2B company innovation. Qualitative research was used to gain a deep understanding of the challenges and benefits, and roles and functions of social media in B2B innovation.The thesis contributes to the increasing understanding on the rather little understood topic of social media and its potential in B2B companies’ innovation. Based on the research, new understanding was gained on the challenges that B2B companies face in using social media in innovation, on the new possibilities and benefits that social media provide for innovation, as well as on the applications and the roles of social media in B2B innovation.In addition, models and theories were developed for enhancing social media use: based on the qualitative research, for example, a Social Customer Learning model was built, which aims to help researchers and managers to identify and evaluate different social media approaches in business-to-business customer interface and innovation; modifications and improvements were proposed for media richness theory and channel expansion theory for the better consideration of the social media and the innovation contexts