Overcoming challenges for managing IT innovations in non-IT companies

Information technology (IT) impacts almost every business unit inside the enterprise. However, the role of the IT organization as an enabler of growth and driver of business innovation is mostly ignored. In this paper we introduce six non- IT companies which asses IT innovations as important for their strategy and competitive advantage. Four companies already created formalized structures for managing IT innovations. We describe the reasons why companies have chosen to create those structures and which challenges they experienced. Furthermore, we reveal reasons why companies do not create formalized structures, although IT innovations are important for their business. As a result we propose measures how companies can overcome these challenges to manage IT innovations. Approaching these steps will not only lead to successful IT innovations and improved processes, it will also strengthen the perception of the IT organization as an innovative partner

An XML-based Multimedia Middleware for Mobile Online Auctions

Pervasive Internet services today promise to provide users with a quick and convenient access to a variety of commercial applications. However, due to unsuitable architectures and poor performance user acceptance is still low. To be a major success mobile services have to provide device-adapted content and advanced value-added Web services. Innovative enabling technologies like XML and wireless communication may for the first time provide a facility to interact with online applications anytime anywhere. We present a prototype implementing an efficient multimedia middleware approach towards ubiquitous value-added services using an auction house as a sample application. Advanced multi-feature retrieval technologies are combined with enhanced content delivery to show the impact of modern enterprise information systems on today’s e-commerce applications

Tendenzen in der konvergenzbezogenen Mediennutzung des Medienensembles durch Jugendliche: Zwischenergebnisse des Medienkonvergenz Monitoring

"Jugendliche leben in sich schnell wandelnden, konvergierenden Medienwelten, in denen Medien technisch zusammenwachsen und Inhalte medienübergreifend präsentiert werden. Das Projekt Medienkonvergenz Monitoring der Professur für Medienpädagogik und Weiterbildung der Universität Leipzig untersucht konvergenzbezogene Nutzungsstrukturen Jugendlicher und ihre Aneignung des konvergenten Medienensembles in der Langzeitperspektive. Dargestellt werden aktuelle Teilergebnisse aus einer Onlinebefragung von 12- bis 19-Jährigen. Sie weisen darauf hin, dass Jugendliche sich dem Internet verstärkt als Massenmedium mit neuen Nutzungsqualitäten zuwenden. Sie nutzen im Internet sowohl Inhalte aus den traditionellen Massenmedien als auch internetspezifische Inhalte programm- und zeitunabhängig und eingebettet in sozial-kommunikative Kontexte. Das Internet nimmt als Unterhaltungsmedium eine zentrale Position in den alltäglichen Medienwelten Jugendlicher ein. Es ist zum Teil wichtiger als andere Medien, wenn Jugendliche ihre medialen Vorlieben mit dem konvergenten Medienensemble verfolgen. Es schließen sich Fragen an, welchen sich das Projekt unter Anwendung quantitativer und qualitativer Methoden widmen wird." (Autorenreferat)"Adolescents grow up in rapidly changing, converging media worlds, in which media is merging technically and contents are presented across various media. The Media Convergence Monitoring at the chair for media pedagogics and further education of the University of Leipzig analyses convergence-related media use und media appropriation of adolescents in a long-term perspective. The latest results based on an online survey with adolescents aged 12–19 years indicate an increasing use of the internet as a mass medium offering new qualities of use. Both contents of traditional mass media and internet specific contents are used program- and time-independently and in socio-communicative contexts. The internet as a medium of entertainment takes a central position in adolescents' every day media worlds. It is in part more important than other media, as adolescents pursue their medial preferences within the media ensemble. The project will deal with further questions applying quantitative and qualitative methods." (author's abstract

Witnessing, remembering and testifying: why the past is special for human beings

The past is undeniably special for human beings. To a large extent, both individuals and collectives define themselves through history. Moreover, humans seem to have a special way of cognitively representing the past: episodic memory. As opposed to other ways of representing knowledge, remembering the past in episodic memory brings with it the ability to become a witness. Episodic memory allows us to determine what of our knowledge about the past comes from our own experience and thereby what parts of the past we can give testimony about. In this article, we aim to give an account of the special status of the past by asking why humans have developed the ability to give testimony about it. We argue that the past is special for human beings because it is regularly, and often principally, the only thing that can determine present social realities like commitments, entitlements, and obligations. Since the social effects of the past often do not leave physical traces behind, remembering the past and the ability to bear testimony it brings, is necessary in order to coordinate social realities with other individuals

Prosodic modules for speech recognition and understanding in VERBMOBIL

Within VERBMOBIL, a large project on spoken language research in Germany, two modules for detecting and recognizing prosodic events have been developed. One module operates on speech signal parameters and the word hypothesis graph, whereas the other module, designed for a novel, highly interactive architecture, only uses speech signal parameters as its input. Phrase boundaries, sentence modality, and accents are detected. The recognition rates in spontaneous dialogs are for accents up to 82,5%, for phrase boundaries up to 91,7%

Молодежь и современные информационные технологии: сборник трудов XVI Международной научно-практической конференции студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных, 3-7 декабря 2018 г., г. Томск

Сборник содержит доклады, представленные на XVI Международной научно-практической конференции студентов, аспирантов и молодых ученых «Молодежь и современные информационные технологии», прошедшей в Томском политехническом университете на базе Инженерной школы информационных технологий и робототехники. Материалы сборника отражают доклады студентов, аспирантов и молодых ученых, принятые к обсуждению на секциях: «Компьютерное моделирование и интеллектуальный анализ данных», «Автоматизация и управление в технических системах», «Робототехнические и мехатронные системы», «Цифровизация, IT и цифровая экономика», «Компьютерная графика и дизайн». Сборник предназначен для специалистов в области информационных технологий, студентов и аспирантов соответствующих специальностей

Efficient and Flexible Multimedia Delivery with Universal Database Systems

Today most commercial database management software is extended to store and manage multimedia objects beside standard alphanumeric data. In this paper we study how such universal database systems can be used for implementing an adaptive multimedia digital library. We present a framework for efficient and flexible delivery of multimedia content based on the idea that multimedia objects are often stored redundantly to support broadest system access for diverse clients from heterogenous environments. There is a large number of alternatives for universal database systems to store and deliver multimedia data, since storage formats are not independent from each other but heavily interrelated by conversion tools. Partitioning the data formats into those that are physically stored in the database and those that are converted into a delivery format on-demand poses a nontrivial optimization problem. The framework presented here tackles this problem and has been implemented and evaluated with the commercial database management system DB2 Universal Database from IBM. Beside the core implementation, a graphical database administration tool has been developed to leverage the automated or semi-automated application of the optimization framework. First experiments with the implemented tools have proved substantial savings in the total costs

Progressive Content Delivery for Mobile E-Services

In this paper we present a framework for the progressive delivery of Web documents in mobile Internet services. Progressive delivery enables users to get fast access to the most relevant parts of a document. Given the reduced bandwidth and the high costs of mobile communication the idea of progressive delivery offers a promising improvement especially for mobile e-services. The central part of the delivery consists of innovative concepts for content selection to determine the most relevant document parts for successive delivery maintaining the documents' readability. To make this selection as flexible and effective as possible we consider the user's notion of relevance together with semantic author annotations and structural document characteristics. Using XML technology documents are automatically adapted to fit both personal user profiles and device constraints. A prototypical mobile news service exemplifies our approach to content selection, but our framework promises to be applicable to a broad range of future Internet services

Hindu-Muslim Violence in India: A Postscript from the Twenty-First Century

The importance of religious conflict today can hardly be overstated. The appalling situation in Syria—stemming from the activism of the Islamic State (ISIS)—is just one cruel reminder of the utter devastation that religious extremism can wreak. The tragic humanitarian crisis in Myanmar involving the displacement of the Rohingya Muslims has strong religious overtones, as do the attacks on Muslims and Christians by Buddhist nationalist groups in Sri Lanka