This book is meant for research scholars, scientists and practitioners involved with the application of computer-based systems in critical applications. Ensuring dependability of systems used in critical applications is important due to the impact of their failures on human life, investment and environment. The individual aspects of...

Haptic devices allow users to feel their interfaces and interactions. This has the potential to radically change the way we use computers. Haptic interaction is interaction related to the sense of touch. This could be based on force-feedback or tactile devices. We can take advantage of our powerful sense of touch as an alternative...

The term photorealistic is thrown around a lot and is often undefined. Although it seems obvious—photorealistic means something looks like a photo—the word requires a greater explanation. There are many facets to photorealism. This is true because as a CG artist, you have control over everything. Achieving 100 percent realism...

My entire career has been about learning and applying new technologies. It has also been about taking on new challenges related to technology and business. I enjoy learning new things,and I like to share things that I have learned through writing and public speaking. I like to help others learn challenging subjects,in particular...

The Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design covers basic human factors issues relating to screen design, input devices, and information organization and processing, as well as addresses newer features which will become prominent in the next generation of Web technologies. These include multimodal interfaces, wireless capabilities,...

This book presents current methods for dealing with software reliability, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The description of the techniques is intended for a non-expert audience with some minimal technical background. It also describes some advanced techniques, aimed at researchers and practitioners in software...

The present book includes a set of selected papers from the fourth “International Conference on Informatics in Control Automation and Robotics” (ICINCO 2007), held at the University of Angers, France, from 9 to 12 May 2007. The conference was organized in three simultaneous tracks: “Intelligent Control Systems and...

The aim...

To this day, enterprise message queuing is a concept that is not well understood by most software developers. Commercial message-oriented middleware (MOM) did not help to encourage adoption of the process; most of the MOMs on the market were closed source, were costly to buy and support, and required trained system administrators for...

Did you ever imagine yourself writing a computer game and being able to make money selling it? With Apple’s iTunes App Store and the accompanying mobile devices iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, it’s now easier than ever. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy— there’s still a lot to learn about game...

Ever since I spotted and started reading my first computer book in 1981, I knew Information Technology (IT) was going to be an important part of my life. I feel privileged to have been able to make a career out of something I enjoy, and the fact that it changes on what seems to be a monthly basis means it never gets boring. It still...