<p>Science is changing. Computers, fast communication, and  new technologies have created new ways of conducting research.  For  instance, researchers from different disciplines are processing and  analyzing scientific data that is increasing at an exponential rate.  This kind of research requires that the scientists have access to  tools that can handle huge amounts of data, enable access to vast  computational resources, and support the collaboration of large  teams of scientists. This thesis focuses on tools that help support  scientific collaboration.</p><p>Workflows and provenance are two concepts that have proven useful in  supporting scientific collaboration.  Workflows provide a formal  specification of scientific experiments, and provenance offers a  model for documenting data and process dependencies.  Together, they  enable the creation of tools that can support collaboration through  the whole scientific life-cycle, from specification of experiments  to validation of results.  However, existing models for workflows  and provenance are often specific to particular tasks and tools.  This makes it hard to analyze the history of data that has been  generated over several application areas by different tools.  Moreover, workflow design is a time-consuming process and often  requires extensive knowledge of the tools involved and collaboration  with researchers with different expertise. This thesis addresses  these problems.</p><p>Our first contribution is a study of the differences between two  approaches to interoperability between provenance models: direct  data conversion, and mediation. We perform a case study where we  integrate three different provenance models using the mediation  approach, and show the advantages compared to data conversion.  Our  second contribution serves to support workflow design by allowing  multiple users to concurrently design workflows. Current workflow  tools lack the ability for users to work simultaneously on the same  workflow.  We propose a method that uses the provenance of workflow  evolution to enable real-time collaborative design of workflows.  Our third contribution considers supporting workflow design by  reusing existing workflows. Workflow collections for reuse are  available, but more efficient methods for generating summaries of  search results are still needed. We explore new summarization  strategies that considers the workflow structure.</p><p><img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABgAAAAYCAYAAADgdz34AAADsElEQVR4nK2VTW9VVRSGn33OPgWpYLARbKWhQlCHTogoSkjEkQwclEQcNJEwlfgD/AM6NBo1xjhx5LyJ0cYEDHGkJqhtBGKUpm3SFii3vb2956wPB/t+9raEgSs52fuus89613rftdcNH8/c9q9++oe/Vzb5P+3McyNcfm2CcPj9af9w6gwjTwzvethx3Bx3x8xwd1wNM8dMcTNUHTfFLPnX6nVmZpeIYwf3cWD/PhbrvlPkblAzVFurKS6GmmGqqComaS+qmBoTI0Ncu3mXuGvWnrJ+ZSxweDgnkHf8ndVTdbiT3M7cQp2Z31dRTecHAfqydp4ejhwazh6Zezfnu98E1WIQwB3crEuJ2Y45PBTAQUVR9X4At66AppoEVO1Q8sgAOKJJjw6Am6OquDmvHskZ3R87gW+vlHz98zpmiqphkkRVbQtsfPTOC30lJKFbFTgp83bWh7Zx/uX1B6w3hI3NkkZTqEpBRDBRzG2AQHcwcYwEkOGkTERREbLQ/8HxJwuW7zdYrzfZ2iopy4qqEspKaDYravVm33k1R91Q69FA1VBRzFIVvXbx5AgXT44A8MWP81yfu0utIR2aVK3vfCnGrcUNxp8a7gKYKiLCvY2SUvo/aNtnM3e49ucK9S3p0aDdaT0UAVsKi2tVi6IWwNL9JvdqTdihaz79/l+u/rHMxmaJVMLkS2OoKKLWacdeE3IsSxctc2D5Qcl6vUlVVgNt+fkPPcFFmTw1xruvT7SCd7nuVhDQvECzJH90h0azRKoKFRkAmP5lKTWAGRdefoZL554FQNUxB92WvYeA5UN4PtSqwB2phKqsqMpBgAunRhFR3j49zuU3jnX8k6fHEQKXzh1jbmGDuYU6s4t1rt6socUeLLZHhYO2AHSHmzt19ihTZ48O8Hzl/AmunD/BjTvrvPfNX3hWsNpwJCvwYm+ngug4UilSCSq6k8YPtxDwfA+WRawIWFbgscDiULcCEaWqBFOlrLazurupOSHLqGnEKJAY8TwBEHumqUirAjNm52vEPPRV4p01XXMPAQhUBjcWm9QZwijwokgAeYHlHYA06KR1cT6ZvoV56pDUJQEjw0KeaMgj1hPEY4vz2A4eW0/e1qA7KtQdsxTYAG0H3iG4xyK1Y+xm7XmEPOJZDiENzLi2WZHngeOjj2Pe+sMg4GRYyLAsx7ME4FnsyTD9pr0PEc8zPGRAwKXBkYOPEd96cZRvf11g9MDe7e3R4Z4Q+vyEnn3P4t0XzK/W+ODN5/kPfRLewAJVEQ0AAAAASUVORK5CYII%3D" /></p>

Diese Marktstudie vermittelt einen Überblick über Software, die zur Unterstützung von Wissensmanagement eingesetzt werden kann und berücksichtigt dabei die Spannweite von spezialisierten Suchmaschinen bis zu umfassenden integrierten Wissensmanagementsystemen. Die untersuchte Software bietet sowohl Unterstützung bei Community-orientierten Wissensmanagementansätzen als auch bei Information Retrieval. Die Einsatzmöglichkeiten sind genauso unterschiedlich wie die heterogenen Anforderungen von Unternehmen und Organisationen, die diese an Wissensmanagement stellen. Eine direkte Vergleichbarkeit aller untersuchten Softwareprodukte ist daher nicht sinnvoll. / Applications and systems for knowledge management : a market survey: <br><br> This market survey gives an overview on software for the support of knowledge management. The survey overlooks the span from specialized search engines to integrated knowledge management systems with a broad range of functions. The investigated software supports community-oriented approaches as well as information retrieval. Usage possibilities are as different as the heterogenous requirements of enterprises and organizations for knowledge management. Therefore a direct comparison between the investigated tools is not useful.<br> -----<br> © GITO mbH Berlin

With rapid growth of information on the Web, Web search engines have gained great momentum for exploiting valuable Web resources. Although keywords-based Web search engines provide relevant search results in response to users’ queries, future enhancement is still needed. Three important issues include (1) search results can be diverse because ambiguous keywords in queries can be interpreted to different meanings; (2) indentifying keywords in long queries is difficult for search engines; and (3) generating query-specific Web page summaries is desirable for Web search results’ previews. Based on clickthrough data, this thesis proposes a query-concept bipartite graph for representing queries’ relations, and applies the queries’ relations to applications such as (1) personalized query suggestions, (2) long queries Web searches and (3) query-specific Web page summarization. Experimental results show that query-concept bipartite graphs are useful for performance improvement for the three applications.

This essay explores to what extent the Swedish language version of Google Images meets the usability requirements of average everyday users. Previously published studies on user behaviour and users‟ interface and search option preferences define the usability requirements, which are matched against Google Images‟ actual interface and search options. The retrieval method of Google Images is also briefly discussed, and users‟ opinions about Google Images too, as they come across in the previously published user studies. The findings are that Google Images lack some of the things that users ask for, but it still seems to be the most used image search engine among average internet users and more appreciated than other search engines. Since the user studies were conducted, Google Images has changed its interface and added new options in a way that indicates that the developers have read and taken inspiration from the user-oriented image retrieval research, and still do so. This should mean that Google Images is even more user-oriented and therefore appreciated today, and it might improve even more in the near future.

Successful strategy of E-commerce is an important research topic in the passed decades. Understanding the relationship between order of entry and competitive advantage is the main purpose of this research. In this research, it collected a lot of survey reports, press releases, financial information and market research data from well-known online research companies, consultant companies and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This research focus on three kinds of internet business models such as search engine service, online shop and e-auction. After analyzing the data, the market pioneers have better performance in present than the market followers. It can conclude that there is relative pioneer advantage in the Internet business. However the entry of order has different influence on different business models. For search engine service and e-auction, they have the advantage of taking first. But there is no apparent preponderating first in the on-line shop. The types of online shop and product characteristics also affect the performance under different entry of order. Keywords¡GPioneer Advantage¡Bonline shop¡BSearch engine¡Be-auction¡B E-commerce¡Be-business¡Be-business model

The Internet has become a very important tool in the modern life and a useful channel for people to find information. Although there is a lot of information in the internet, it does not mean that Internet users can always find what they really need and want. The difficulty for Internet users is not that they can¡¦t find out the information but that too much information exists. Therefore, good search tools that can help them find useful information become critical to productivity improvement. The purpose of this research is to investigate how people use different tools on the Internet to find information they are looking for. Three factors were examined: task characteristics, search tools, and user characteristics. Experiments were conducted on tasks designed to show different characteristics. Four task types featured by different uncertainty and equivocality levels and two Internet search tools were used in the experiment. Users were asked to use different tools for solving the assigned tasks to see whether their satisfaction differs under different settings. The results indicate that the effect of task types is not significant. That is, user satisfaction of using search engines is similar under different circumstances. Using the search tool itself is the key factor that affects the level of satisfaction. Therefore, the most important thing for internet user to find useful information is to adopt a proper search tool.

This study investigates the effectiveness of a Web search engine with newly added or improved features in Web search engine architecture. These features can be categorized into three groups: The impact of link quality and usage information on page importance calculation / the use of Turkish stemmer for indexing and query substitution / and, the use of thumbnails for Web search engine result visualization. As Web search engines have become the primary means for finding and accessing information on the Internet, the effectiveness of Web search engines should be evaluated on the idea of how effectively and efficiently they assist users achieve a query, which defines performance criteria rather than the pure precision and recall measures developed among basic information retrieval roles. In this thesis, we propose three distinguishing features to increase the efficiency of a Web search engine: The impact of link quality and usage information on page importance calculation outperforms classical hyperlink graph based methods notably, such as PageRank. The use of the Turkish stemmer for indexing and query substitution has remarkable improvements on Web relevance when used in a mixed framework with normal and stemmed forms. Finally, we have observed that users are able to find the most relevant results by using webpage thumbnails in the queries with decreased precision score values, despite their preferred search engine gazing behavior is much attributed.

Šio darbo tikslas – išanalizuoti pasirinktas rinkmenų paieškos sistemas bei pasirinkta optimaliausia metodika sukurti elektroninių dokumentų paieškos sistemą, kuri leistų sumažinti laiko sanaudas ieškant rinkmenų vietinio tinklo serveryje ir vietiniame tinkle sujungtuose kompiuteriuose. Darbe aprašytos elektroninių dokumentų savybės, paieškos metodikos teoriniai ir praktiniai aspektai. Atlikta pasirinktų rinkmenų paieškos sistemų lyginamoji analizė. Šio tyrimo problema: vidutinio dydžio įmonėje ar įstaigoje sunku greitai surasti ir peržiūrėti dokumentus, naudojamus vietiniame serveryje ar tinklo kompiuteriuose. Išanalizavus elektroninių dokumentų savybes bei jų paieškos technologijas buvo sukurta rinkmenų paieškos programa, pasinaudojant "Microsoft Visual C # 2005 Express Edition" programavimo platforma. Sukurta programa "Paieška", skirta surasti rinkmenas vietinio tinko serveryje ir tinklo kompiuterių bendrai naudojamuose kataloguose. Tai ypač naudinga organizacijose, besinaudojančiose bendrais dokumentų resursais. Darbą sudaro įvadas, elektroninių dokumentų analizė, rinkmenų paieškos sistemų analizė, paieškos technologijų apžvalga, realizuotos paieškos sistemos aprašymas, išvados, literatūros sąrašas ir 2 priedai. Darbo dydis yra 35 puslapiai be priedų, 3 lentelės, 4 paveikslėliai ir 17 literatūros šaltinių. / This work main purpose to analyze the usage of main desktop search systems, choose one optimal system and to create electronic documents search engine, which would reduce the time searching for files on a local network server and LAN computers. There are described document search and managemant teoretical and practical aspects. Develope essential features, accomplished comparable analysis of main document search systems. The following problems ware determined: there are no possibilities to find quickly and modify documents which are shared over Local Area Network in medium organization. After analysis of data search technologies it was decided to create a file search application using „Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition“ programming platform. Created application „Paieška“ is a tool designed for the purpose of searching for files and folders which are shared over a Local Area Network and servers. It is particularly useful in organizations where a lot of folders are shared on individual systems. The work consists of introduction, the analysis of data managemant usage in the document management system, technologies of document seaching, solution for document search system, findings, references and 2 annexes. The size of work is 35 pages without annexes, 3 tables, 4 pictures and 17 references.

Darbe yra analizuojamas „Google“ paieškos „AdWords“ skelbimų efektyvumas. Dėl didėjančios informacinių technologijų svarbos, dauguma vartotojų ieškosi informacijos apie produktus ir paslaugas bei perka juos internetu. Todėl reklamos kūrėjams tampa ypač aktualus efektyvių paieškos sistemos skelbimų kūrimo klausimas. Darbo tikslas – remiantis moksliniais reklamos efektyvumo vertinimo šaltiniais ir „Google“ paieškos „AdWords“ skelbimų efektyvumo vertinimo rezultatais, pateikti bendrą „AdWords“ skelbimų efektyvumo vertinimo ir skelbimų efektyvumo didinimo modelius. Magistro baigiamąjį darbą sudaro trys pagrindinės dalys. Pirmojoje, teorinėje dalyje, yra analizuojami skirtingų autorių požiūriai į reklamos efektyvumo vertinimą, yra pateikiami „Google“ paieškos „AdWords“ skelbimų vertinimo ypatumai. Analitinėje baigiamojo darbo dalyje yra atliekamas pasirinktų „Google“ paieškos „AdWords“ reklaminių kampanijų skelbimų efektyvumo vertinimas. Trečiojoje dalyje yra pateikiamas „Google“ paieškos „AdWords“ skelbimų efektyvumo vertinimo ir efektyvumo didinimo modeliai bei pateikiamos skelbimų efektyvumo didinimo priemonės. / The paper analyzes the effectiveness of „Google“ search engine „AdWords“ ads. Due to the growing importance of information technology , most users search for information about products and services and buy them online. Therefore the issue of ads effectiveness has become extremely important to every advertiser. The objective of this paper is to present general model of „Google“ search engine „AdWords“ ads effectiveness measurement and opportunities of ads effectiveness improvement, scientific resources of advertising effectiveness assessment and results of case analysis. Master's thesis consists of three main parts. In the first, theoretical part of the work introduces analysis, comparison of different authors approaches to the advertising activities performance by finding out methods and indicators, which assess the effectiveness of the ads. The analytical part is based on case study which analyzes effectiveness of particular „Google“ search engine „AdWords“ campaigns. The third part is intended for the model, which shows how to measure effectiveness of the „Google“ search engine „AdWords“ ads, and oppurtinities of ads effectiveness improvement.

Search engines of today are focusing on efficiently and accurately generating search results.Yet, there is much to be explored in the way people interact with the applications and relate to the content. Individuals are commonly unique, with complex preferences, motives and expectations. Not only is it important to be sensitive to these differences, but to accommodate the extremes. Enhancing a search engine does not only rely on technological development, but to explore potential user experiences in broader perspectives - which not only gratifies the needs for information, but supports a diversity of journeys. The aim of the project is to develop an alternate search engine with different functionality based on new values that reflects contemporary needs. The result, Exposeek, is an experiential prototype supporting exploratory browsing based on principles of distributed infrastructure, transparent computation and serendipitous information. Suggestive queries, legible algorithms and augmented results provide additional insights and present an alternative way to seek and peruse the Web. / Search Engines, Interaction Design