A phrase often used when writing about the human ability to become immersed in fantasy is “the willing suspension of disbelief” which Samuel Taylor Coleridge first coined in the early 19th Century as an argument for the fantastical in prosody and poetry. What is a computer game? At base, it is nothing more than a cheap plastic...

When it comes to love and relationships, we’ve learned the lesson of touching the hot stove. Burned once, or lots more than once, we are...

Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) constitute a fascinating concept at the intersection of machine learning and evolutionary computation. LCS’s genetic search, generally in combination with reinforcement learning techniques, can be applied to both temporal and spatial problem-solving and promotes powerful search in a wide variety of...

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT SERVER 2010 has improved and changed dramatically over previous versions of the product. The capabilities of the platform have expanded greatly, with signifi cant enhancements made to the Web Content Management, Social Media, Business Connectivity, and Records Management features of the platform. However, the value of...

Mobile devices provide individuals with almost instant access to friends and family, location-based information, productivity tools,...

Scala is a relatively new programming language that was designed by Martin Odersky and released in 2003. The distinguishing features of Scala include a seamless integration of functional programming features into an otherwise objectoriented language. Scala owes its name to its ability to scale, that is, it is a language that can grow by...

This book is a guide to setting up Openfire, tweaking it, and customizing it to build a secure and feature-rich alternative to consumer IM networks. The features covered include details about setting up the server, adding and handling users and...

The iPod touch is much more than just music. You have all of the features of a PDA—including email, calendar, Google Maps, the App Store, and even phone capabilities—as well as the ability to watch movies and play your favorite games, all packed into Apple’s sleek design. With iPod touch Made Simple, you'll...

While media buzz regularly circulates around iPhone and Android, Nokia still leads the pack in terms of world market share. Symbian, for instance, remains the most widely used mobile operating system. With Nokia's open development platform, the opportunities available for mobile developers to target this vastly popular operating system...

Every web designer harbours tales of frustration, limitation and despair. Web design requires skills and knowledge beyond mere manipulation of form, shape, language, colour, message and meaning. What users don’t see behind those visuals is just as important as what they do see. We have to think about moving parts and engineering...

Automated instrumentation can be found in a wide variety of settings,...

At first glance . . . Adobe’s Audition seems to be a fairly simple and straightforward audio editing program. That’s because it is! But don’t let that intuitive GUI (graphic user interface) fool you – it’s an extremely powerful editor that has worked its way into the mainstay of the audio production industry, one...