Recently much research effort has been devoted to the discovery of relevant Web services. It is widely recognized that adding semantics to service description is the solution to this challenge. Web services with explicit semantic annotation are called Semantic Web Services (SWS). This research proposes an indexation and discovery architecture for SWS, together with a prototype application in the area of bioinformatics. In this approach, a SWS repository is created and maintained by crawling both ontology-oriented UDDI registries and Web sites that hosting SWS. For a given service request, the proposed system invokes the matching algorithm and a candidate set is returned with different degree of matching considered. This approach can add more flexibility to the current industry standards by offering more choices to both the service requesters and publishers. Also, the prototype developed in this research shows the value can be added by using SWS in application areas such as bioinformatics.

Examensarbetet har gått ut på att genom kvalitativa undersökningar ta reda på hur grafisk form ochinformationsstruktur samverkar för att skapa användarcentrerade webbplatser. Målet var att ta fram en grund för huranvändarcentrerade webbplatser bör byggas. Denna grund är tänkt att fungera som riktlinjer för formgivare som villskapa användarcentrerad webbdesign. Studien visar att det viktigaste för att skapa användarcentrerad webbdesign är att involvera användarna kontinuerligti utvecklingsprocessen. Detta sker genom användartester och intervjuer med representanter för målgruppen. Vi harkommit fram till att graden av användbarhet spelar stor roll för hur målgruppen uppfattar webbplatsen som sådan,men också vilken uppfattning de får om företaget bakom. / This thesis considers a qualitative study in how info structure and graphical design collaborate to form a usercentredweb site. The aim was to produce guidelines for how to build user-centred web sites. The results from thestudy are built on qualitative interviews, user tests with the target group and expert evaluation. The study has shown that the most important thing for creating user-centred web sites is to continuously involve thetarget group in the development process. This should be done through interviews and user tests. The level ofusability determines how the target group experience both the company and their web site.

<p>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.</p><p>One of the results in this thesis is that nearly all search queries are based on keywords.</p> / <p>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.</p><p>Uppsatsen kommer bl.a. fram till att nästan alla sökningar som görs på Internet är nyckelordsbaserade.</p>

The dissertation research explores an approach to automatic concept-based query expansion to improve search engine performance. It uses a network-based approach for identifying the concept represented by the user's query and is founded on the idea that a collection-specific association thesaurus can be used to create a reasonable representation of all the concepts within the document collection as well as the relationships these concepts have to one another. Because the representation is generated using data from the association thesaurus, a mapping will exist between the representation of the concepts and the terms used to describe these concepts. The research applies to search engines designed for use in an individual website with content focused on a specific conceptual domain. Therefore, both the document collection and the subject content must be well-bounded, which affords the ability to make use of techniques not currently feasible for general purpose search engine used on the entire web.

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.

Syfte Syftet med arbetet är att söka förståelse för utvecklingen från traditionell till digital marknadsföring samt att analysera hur företag praktiskt arbetar med detta. Studien använder en kvalitativ metod och data har inhämtats från både primära och sekundära källor. Empirin har samlats in genom 10 intervjuer, vilket har analyserats med hjälp av teori och det har sedan lett till studiens slutsatser. Studien visar varför det finns en övergång från traditionella marknadsföringsmetoder till digitala marknadsföringsmetoder, hur de kompletterar varandra och vilka verktyg som främst används av företagen i studien. Förslag till fortsattforskning är Facebook-annonsering, mätinstrument, SEO och Web 3.0. Dessa termer går att arbeta vidare med och det är något som vår studie har påvisat vara viktigt. I vår studie bidrar vi till en förståelse av vägen från de traditionella marknadsföringsmetoderna till de digitala marknadsföringsmetoderna. Vi visar att det ena inte utesluter det andra utan att de kompletterar varandra. Studien belyser de olika verktygen företagen använder för en framstående digital marknadsföring. / The purpose of this study is to seek an understanding of the development from traditional to digital marketing and to analyze how it ́s done in practice. Method: The study uses a qualitative approach and data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The empirical data were collected through 10 interviews, which have been analyzed using the theory and it has led to the study's conclusions. The study shows why there is a shift from traditional marketing methods to digital marketing methods, how they complement each other and what tools that are mainly used by the companies in the study. Suggestions for future research is Facebook advertising, measuring instruments, SEO and Web 3.0. These terms have a potential for future research and it's something that our study has shown to be important. In our study, we contribute to an understanding of the way from the traditional marketing methods to the digital marketing methods. We show that the one does not exclude the other, but that they are complementary to eachother. The study highlights the various tools used by companies for a prominent digital marketing.

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.