The creation and consumption of content, especially visual content, is ingrained into our modern world. This book contains a collection of texts centered on the evaluation of image retrieval systems. To enable reproducible evaluation we must create standardized benchmarks and evaluation methodologies. The individual chapters in this book...

Anyone who blogs knows that it is a fun, creative way for sharing thoughts and opinions. Now imagine making money from that hobby! This practical, how-to guide shows you how you can get serious about using your blog and implement advertising, sponsorship,...

“The central message of Stuart Hart’s book is that global business needs to be caring and be committed to preserving the globe’s ecological integrity. The ongoing economic slowdown brought about by rampant capitalism, the lessons from which this new edition of the book factors in, has only served to...

The basics of networking an iPad are simple, but once you move beyond connecting to a simple home Wi-Fi network or using 3G data, you'll want to read networking expert Glenn Fleishman's discussion of how to integrate your iPad into more-complex networks and keep its data safe from prying eyes. Along...

"At 7:48 a.m. on a Tuesday, I am showered, cleaned, shaved, pruned, fed, and deodorized, wearing a pressed shirt and shiny shoes, in a cab on my way to the San Francisco waterfront I'm far from home, going to an unfamiliar place, and performing for strangers, three stressful facts that mean anything can happen "

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Harvey Mackay, author of the New York Times #1...

The complex social behaviors of ants have been much studied by science, and computer scientists are now finding that these behavior patterns can provide models for solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems. The attempt to develop algorithms inspired by one aspect of ant behavior, the ability to find what computer scientists would...

After decades of liberalization of the telecommunications industry around the world and technological convergence that allows for increasing competition, sector-specific regulation of telecommunications has been on the decline. As a result, the telecommunications industry stands in the middle of a debate that calls for either a total...

Business Intelligence (BI) software allows you to view different components of a business using a single visual platform, which makes comprehending mountains of data easier. BI is everywhere. Applications that include reports, analytics, statistics, and historical and predictive modeling are all examples of BI. Currently, we are in the second...

The first time I ever heard from Alessandro was through my blog contact form. A few years ago he reached out to me about his interest in donating an article to the Visual Basic Developer Center on MSDN. Reading his email, it was immediately apparent that Alessandro was passionate about programming and particularly the Visual Basic language....