Video segmentation has been a key technique for visual information extraction and plays an important role in digital video processing, pattern recognition, and computer vision. A wide range of video-based applications will benefit from advances in video segmentation including security and surveillance, bank transactions monitoring,...

AS WE WRITE THIS, it has been several years since we penned the first edition of The Official Ubuntu Book. Over that time, we have seen Ubuntu continue its explosive growth. Updating this book drives this fact home in striking ways. For example, the number of users and posts in the Ubuntu Forums has nearly doubled since the last...

In the early days of pattern recognition and statistical data analysis life was rather simple: datasets were relatively small, collected from well-designed experiments, analyzed using a few methods that had good theoretical background. Explosive growth of the use of computers led to the creation of huge amounts of data of all kinds,...

Information networking has emerged as a multidisciplinary diversified area of research over the past few decades. From traditional wired telephony to cellular voice telephony and from wired access to wireless access to the Internet, information networks have profoundly impacted our lifestyle. At the time of writing, over 3 billion...

Currently the mobile wireless technology is experiencing rapid growth. However the major challenge for deployment of this technology with its special characteristics is securing the existing and future vulnerabilities. Major security and privacy issues for standard wireless networks include the authentication of wireless clients and...

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are computer systems for storing, displaying and analyzing spatial data. The past twenty years have seen a rapid growth in their use in government, commerce and academia, and they can be used for managing a network of utilities, from handling census data through to planning the location of a new...

Since the World Wide Web became widely available in the mid 1990s, Web-based applications have developed rapidly. The Web has come to be used by a range of people for many different purposes, including online banking, e-commerce, distance education, social networking, data sharing, collaborating on team projects, and...

Android is everywhere. Phones. Tablets. TVs and set-top boxes powered by Google TV. Soon, Android will be in cars and all sort of other places as well. However, the general theme of Android devices will be smaller screens and/or no hardware keyboard. And, by the numbers, Android will probably be associated mostly with smartphones for...

Why should a Java developer learn about functional programming (FP)? After all, hasn’t functional programming been safely hidden in academia for decades? Isn’t objectoriented programming (OOP) all we really need? This book explains why functional programming has become an important tool for the challenges of our time and how...

The success of the World Wide Web depends on the ability of users to store, process and retrieve digital information regardless of distance boundaries, languages and domains of knowledge. The universality and flexibility of the World Wide Web have also enabled the rapid growth of a variety of new services and applications based on...

Tap into the power of the free and open source software package, vtiger CRM—the popular alternative to commercial CRM tools. This powerful tool has enjoyed worldwide success and is being utilized by small and large organizations alike. You, too, can add real, modern CRM (customer relationship management) to your business model,...

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have changed everything. Some managers fear their employees will waste entire days using online social media. Smart managers, though, understand that social media is a powerful tool for engaging customers and growing...