This thesis examines companies offering their services for free to Internet users, byemploying digital free business models. As a framework Chris Anderson’s classificationsof “free” business models are used. A sample of eleven companies that provide “free”services was selected and divided into four groups. These were search engine, socialnetworking/community, content based and others. Their profitability was then measuredin relation to their valuation with the help of P/E ratios within and among the groups. Aregression analysis was also conducted to compare profitability of either one of two“free” business models used by the researched companies.Findings were that search engine and social networking/community companies appear tohave profits for the period researched. No strong trend for overvaluation could be foundin either of these groups, except for individual companies with high P/E ratios. Neithercompany within the content based group showed any profits. Their marginal costs weretoo high but this may change with technological progress. Regression analysis could notshow any significant results employing either the “Freemium” or the advertising “free”business model to be more profitable than the other. Significant results could be shownbeing a content based company and being unprofitable. Comparison between specificcompanies gave mixed results but network effects appear to create dominant playerswithin each group. Employing more than only the advertising “free” business modelseems to be efficient in raising revenue per user for social networking/communitycompanies.

Bakalauro baigiamajame darbe nagrinėjamos įmonės „Stoke Travel” interentinio marketingo priemonės. Pagrindinis tyrimo tikslas, aptarus internetinio marketingo priemones teoriniu požiūriu ir atlikus anketinę apklausą, bei interviu, ištirti kaip respondentai vertina įmones naudojamas internetinio marketingo priemones, bei pasiūlyti įmonei tinkamiausias interentinio marketingo priemones. / In this Bachelor’s Degree Work companies “Stoke Travel” Internet marketing tools are analyzing. The main objective is after researching theoretical background of the subject to conduct a survey and interview to find out companies internet marketing tools dimension, their clients internet use peculiarity and clients evaluation to the companies used internet marketing tools.

Magistro baigiamajame darbe išanalizuota ir įvertinta Lietuvos viešbučiuose taikomų internetinės rinkodaros priemonių efektyvumas, iškeltos pagrindinės internetinės rinkodaros naudojimo problemos bei pateikti siūlymai, kaip šias problemas spręsti. Pirmoje darbo dalyje, remiantis įvairiais Lietuvos ir užsienio autoriais pateikiama internetinės rinkodaros samprata, teoriniu aspektu tiriamas internetinės rinkodaros turinys, tikslai, komunikacijos priemonės, sąsaja su socialiniais tinklais. Taip pat nagrinėjamos ir optimizavimo paieškos sistemoms bei ryšių su klientais valdymo sąvokos. Antroje dalyje analizuojamos ir vertinamos internetinės rinkodaros tendencijos Lietuvoje ir pasaulyje. Trečioje darbo dalyje aptariama tyrimų metodika bei organizavimas. Ketvirtoje dalyje nagrinėjama paslaugų gavėjų patirtis ir ekspertų požiūris į internetinę rinkodarą, jos priemones bei tų priemonių taikymo efektyvumą. Išnagrinėjus teorinius internetinės rinkodaros aspektus ir tendencijas bei abiejų pusių požiūrius, yra pateikiamso išvados bei siūlymai. / Master's thesis analyzes and evaluates efficiency of internet marketing measures used in Lithuanian hotels, brings up the main challenges for the use of online marketing and provides suggestions how to solve the problems. In the first part of the work, using the literature of different Lithuanian and foreign authors, the concept of online marketing is presented, the content of online marketing as well as objectives, means of communication and interface with social networks are studied from a theoretical point of view. This section also analyzes the concepts of search engine optimization and customer relationship management. The second part analyzes and assesses the trends of online marketing trends in Lithuania and worldwide. The third chapter discusses the research methodology and organization. The fourth section analyzes the user‘s experience and expert approach to online marketing, its tools and effectiveness of their application. Conclusions and suggestions are presented after theoretical analysis of online marketing aspects, trends and attitudes of both sides.

We propose preferential and trust-based frameworks for Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems, which utilize the power of Hyperreal Numbers. In the first part of our research, we propose a preferential framework for Information Retrieval which enables expressing preference annotations on search keywords and document elements, respectively. Our framework is flexible and allows expressing preferences such as “A is infinitely more preferred than B,” which we capture by using hyperreal numbers. Due to widespread use of XML as a standard for representing documents, we consider XML documents in this research and propose a consistent preferential weighting scheme for nested document elements. We show how to naturally incorporate preferences on search keywords and document elements into an IR ranking process using the well-known TF-IDF (Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency) ranking measure. In the second part of our research we propose a novel recommender system which enhances user-based collaborative filtering by using a trust-based social network. Again, we use hyperreal numbers and polynomials for capturing natural preferences in aggregating opinions of trusted users. We use these opinions to “help” users who are similar to an active user to come up with recommendations for items for which they might not have an opinion themselves. We argue that the method we propose reflects better the real life behaviour of the people. Our method is justified by the experimental results; we are the first to break a stated “barrier” of 0.73 for the mean absolute error (MAE) of the predicted ratings. Our results are based on a large, real life dataset from Epinions.com, for which, we also achieve a prediction coverage that is significantly better than that of the state-of-the-art methods.

網際網路在許多方面皆改變了大眾的讀報方式：不僅僅是因為Google News一類的新聞搜尋引擎，提供讀者多樣化且一次性的即時整合型閱覽，現今多數的網路使用者，也已養成從數個不同網頁中選擇所需資訊來瀏覽或進行研究、調查的習慣。然而，隨著報紙印刷發行量的銳減、新聞網站的流量不如預期，新聞媒體出版商對於搜尋引擎憑藉他人著作獲取暴利的手法感到越來越挫敗。Google自西元2009年起在Google News美國版刊登廣告，會不會成為壓垮傳統新聞媒體的最後一根稻草?而Google的這項舉措是否動搖其利用他人著作內容賺錢的正當性?可符合美國著作權法的合理使用原則? 本文將就Google News刊登廣告所引發的爭議，從網路新聞的發展、Google的經營模式以及合理使用原則的規範目的等面向，鎖定美國著作權法，來探討網路搜尋引擎截取他人著作內容的合法性，以及數位時代下合理使用原則的未來命運。 / The Internet has changed the way people reading the newspaper: not only because news search engines such as Google News providing readers with a diverse and one-time real-time integration of reading, but also because nowadays, most Web users have become accustomed to selecting the information they need from several different Web pages for browsing or carrying out research, and investigation. However, as the newspapers’ circulation drops, and the flow of news Web sites does not reach the expectation, the fact that search engines use others’ works to obtain profits disappoints news media publishers a lot. Will the advertisements placed alongside search results on the American version of Google News be the last straw? Will this undermine the validity of Google’s initiative of using others’ work for money, and fit in with the fair use doctrine? This article will try to analyze the Google News advertising disputes from the perspectives of development of network newsm, Google's business model and the fair use doctrine , and to discuss the legality of the Web search engine as well as the fate of fair use under digital era in the future.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FabioAPP.pdf: 1226499 bytes, checksum: 476c4c4dd5d62663a94a43090900b128 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-19 / The popularization of the Internet has stimulated the appearance of Search Engines that have as their objective aid the users in the Web information research process. However, it s common for users to make queries and receive results which do not satisfy their initial needs. The Information Retrieval in Context (IRiX) technique allows for the information related to a specific theme to be related to the initial user query, enabling, in this way, better results. This study presents a prototype of a search engine based on contexts built from linguistic gatherings and on relationships defined by the user. The context information can be shared with softwares and other tool users with the objective of promoting a socialization of contexts / A populariza??o da Internet estimulou o surgimento das M?quinas de Busca, que t?m como objetivo auxiliar os usu?rios no processo de pesquisa da informa??o na Web. Por?m, ? comum usu?rios formularem consultas e receberem resultados que n?o satisfazem a sua inten??o inicial de pesquisa. A t?cnica Information Retrieval in Context (IRiX) permite que informa??es relacionadas a um determinado tema possam ser atribu?das ? consulta formulada originalmente pelo usu?rio, possibilitando, dessa forma, melhores resultados. Este trabalho apresenta um prot?tipo de M?quina de Busca baseada em contextos constru?dos a partir de um conjunto de sintagmas e de relacionamentos definido pelo usu?rio. As informa??es de contextos podem ser compartilhadas com softwares e com outros usu?rios da ferramenta a fim de promover a socializa??o de contextos.

Millions of people are using search engines every day when they are trying to find information on the Internet. The purpose of this report is to find out how people formulate search queries. The result in this report is based on an empirical study which is based on a search log from the Swedish search engine Seek.se. One of the results in this thesis is that nearly all search queries are based on keywords. / Miljoner människor använder sökmotorer varje dag när de försöker hitta information på Internet. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att ta reda på hur individer formulerar sökfraser. Resultatet i rapporten är baserad på en empirisk studie som är baserad på sökloggen för den svenska sökmotorn Seek.se. Uppsatsen kommer bl.a. fram till att nästan alla sökningar som görs på Internet är nyckelordsbaserade.

Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA) podem ser definidos como materiais de ensino, aprendizagem e pesquisa, em qualquer meio de armazenamento, que estão amplamente disponíveis por meio de uma licença aberta que permite reuso, readequação e redistribuição sem restrições ou com restrições limitadas. Atualmente, diversas instituições de ensino e pesquisa têm investido em REA para ampliar o acesso ao conhecimento. Entretanto, os usuários ainda têm dificuldades de encontrar os REA com os mecanismos de busca atuais. Essa dificuldade deve-se principalmente ao fato dos mecanismos de busca na Web serem genéricos, pois buscam informação em qualquer lugar, desde páginas de vendas até materiais escritos por pessoas anônimas. De fato, esses mecanismos não levam em consideração as características intrínsecas de REA, como os diferentes padrões de metadados, repositórios e plataformas existentes, os tipos de licença, a granularidade e a qualidade dos recursos. Esta dissertação apresenta o desenvolvimento de um mecanismo de busca na Web especificamente para recuperação de REA denominado SeeOER. As principais contribuições desta pesquisa de mestrado consistem no desenvolvimento de um mecanismo de busca na Web por REA com diferenciais entre os quais se destacam a resolução de conflitos em nível de esquema oriundos da heterogeneidade dos REA, a busca em repositórios de REA, a consulta sobre a procedência de dados e o desenvolvimento de um crawler efetivo para obtenção de metadados específicos. Além disso, contribui na inclusão de busca de REA no cenário brasileiro, no mapeamento de padrões de metadados para mecanismos de busca na Web e a publicação de uma arquitetura de um mecanismo de busca na Web. Ademais, o SeeOER disponibiliza um serviço que traz um índice invertido de busca que auxilia encontrar REA nos repositórios dispersos na Web. Também foi disponibilizada uma API para buscas que possibilita consultas por palavras chaves e o uso de palavras booleanas. A forma de validação em mecanismos de busca na Web, como um todo, e de forma quantitativa e específica por componentes foi feita em grau de especialidade. Para validação de qualidade foram considerados 10 participantes com grupos distintos de escolaridade e área de estudo. Os resultados quantitativos demonstraram que o SeeOER é superior em 23.618 REA indexados em comparação a 15.955 do Jorum. Em relação à qualidade o SeeOER demonstrou ser superior ao Jorum considerando a função penalizada e o score utilizada nesta pesquisa. / Open Educational Resources (OER) has been increasingly applied to support students and professionals in their learning process. They consist of learning resources, usually stored in electronic device, associated with an open license that allows reuse, re-adaptation and redistribution with either no or limited restrictions. However, currently the Web search engines do not provide efficient mechanisms to find OER, in particular, because they do not consider the intrinsic characteristics of OER such as different standards of metadata, repositories and heterogeneous platforms, license types, granularity and quality of resources. This project proposes a Web search engine, named SeeOER, designed to recover OER. Main features of SeeOER are: schema-level con ict resolution derived from the heterogeneity of OER, search for Brazilian OER repositories, query considering data provenance and the development of an effective crawler to obtain specific metadata. In addition, our project contributes to the inclusion of the search OER research issues in the Brazilian scenario, to the mapping of metadata standards to Web search engine. In addition, SeeOER provides a service which internally has an inverted index search to find the OER which is different from traditional Web repositories. We also provide an API for queries which make it possible to write queries based on keywords and boolean. The validation of the search engine on the Web was both qualitative and quantitative. In the quantitative validation it was observed in level of specialty of the search engines components. In conclusion, the quality and quantitative results experiments showed that SeeOER is superior in OER indexed 23,618 compared to 15,955 the Jorum. In relation to the quality SeeOER shown to be superior to Jorum 27 points considering the metric used in project.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-11T14:03:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Celia Francisca dos Santos.pdf: 545200 bytes, checksum: 1be2bb65210d0ea7f3239ecdd2efa28d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-02-22 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Neste trabalho são propostos e avaliados experimentalmente novos métodos de poda estática especialmente projetados para máquinas de busca web. Os métodos levam em consideração a localidade de ocorrência dos termos nos documentos para realizar a poda em índices de máquinas de busca e, por esta razão, são chamados de "métodos de poda baseados em localidade". Quatro novos métodos de poda que utilizam informação de localidade são propostos aqui: two-pass lbpm, full coverage, top fragments e random. O método two-pass lbpm é o mais efetivo dentre os métodos baseados em localidade, mas requer uma construção completa dos índices antes de realizar o processo de poda. Por outro lado, full coverage, top fragments e random são métodos single-pass que executam a poda dos índices sem requerer uma construção prévia dos índices originais. Os métodos single-pass são úteis para ambientes onde a base de documentos sofre alterações contínuas, como em máquinas de busca de grande escala desenvolvidas para a web. Experimentos utilizando uma máquina de busca real mostram que os métodos propostos neste trabalho podem reduzir o custo de armazenamento dos índices em até 60%, enquanto mantém uma perda mínima de precisão. Mais importante, os resultados dos experimentos indicam que esta mesma redução de 60% no tamanho dos índices pode reduzir o tempo de processamento de consultas para quase 57% do tempo original. Além disso, os experimentos mostram que, para consultas conjuntivas e frases, os métodos baseados em localidade produzem resultados melhores do que o método de Carmel, melhor método proposto na literatura. Por exemplo, utilizando apenas consultas com frases, com uma redução de 67% no tamanho dos índices, o método baseados em localidade two-pass lbpm produziu resultados com uma grau de similaridade de 0.71, em relação aos resultados obtidos com os índices originais, enquanto o método de Carmel produziu resultados com um grau de similaridade de apenas 0.39. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os métodos de poda baseados em localidade são mais efetivos em manter a qualidade dos resultados providos por máquinas de busca.