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High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a collection of two mobile telephony protocols, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA). Allowing networks based on the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to achieve data rates of several megabits per second, these powerful protocols are ideal for applications ranging from file transfer to multimedia streaming.From basic concepts to research grade material, the HSDPA/HSUPA Handbook provides technical information on all aspects of HSDPA/HSUPA. With contributions from 30 experts from around the world, this comprehensive HSPA reference provides a global and authoritative perspective of this rapidly emerging technology. Investigates the relationship between HSDPA/HSUPA and UMTSDescribes the benefits of HSPA and its technical enhancementsExplains packet flows in HSDPAExplores migration issues associated with HSPA Considers receiver designs and multi-user extensions to MIMO HSDPA Presenting information in a well-structured manner for ease of reference, this book presents accurate and up-to-date information on the full spectrum of topics related to HSPA technology, including future directions. The ideal desk reference for designers and planners of contemporary wireless communication networks, this book can also be adopted as a textbook for graduate and research-oriented courses that deal with HSPA.

While 3G has been an outstanding success, the ever-growing demand for higher data rates and higher quality mobile communication services continues to fuel conflict between the rapidly growing number of users and limited bandwidth resources. In the future, a 100-fold increase in mobile data traffic is expected. That will necessitate further improvements to 3GPP LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and create limitless opportunities for engineers who understand the technology and how to apply it to deliver enhanced services.Long Term Evolution: 3GPP LTE Radio and Cellular Technology outlines the best way to position yourself now for future success. With coverage ranging from basic concepts to current research, this comprehensive reference contains technical information about all aspects of 3GPP LTE. It details low chip rate, high-speed downlink/uplink packet access (HSxPA)/TDSCDMA EV 1x, LTE TDD, and 3G TDD. It introduces new technologies and covers methodologies to study the performance of frequency allocation schemes. The authors also discuss the proposed architecture of Mobile IPRR and distributed dynamic architecture in wireless communication, covering performance evaluation of the TD-SCDMA LTE System.With each passing day, more and more users are demanding mobile broadband data access everywhere, to facilitate synchronization of e-mails, Internet access, specific applications, and file downloads to mobile devices such as cell phones, smart phones, PDAs, and notebooks. LTE, successor to the 3G mobile radio network, is essential to creating radio coverage in the rollout phase and high capacity all over the radio cell in the long term. The 3GPP LTE will become increasingly crucial to supporting the high demand of data traffic rates generated by future mobile user terminals. Authored by international experts in the field, this practical book is an extremely valuable guide that addresses emerging current and future technolo

Operators are introducing mobile television and digital video content services globally. The Handbook of Mobile Broadcasting addresses all aspects of these services, providing a comprehensive reference on DVB-H, DMB, ISDB-T, and MediaFLO. Featuring contributions from experts in the field, the text presents technical standards and distribution protocols, offering detailed coverage of video coding, including design methodology and error resilience techniques; state-of-the-art technologies such as signaling, optimization, implementation, and simulation; and applications of mobile broadcasting, including emerging areas and new interactive services.

Intellectual property owners must continually exploit new ways of reproducing, distributing, and marketing their products. However, the threat of piracy looms as a major problem with digital distribution and storage technologies. Multimedia Encryption and Authentication Techniques and Applications covers current and future trends in the design of modern systems that use encryption and authentication to protect multimedia content. Containing the works of contributing authors who are worldwide experts in their fields, this volume is intended for researchers and practitioners, as well as for those who want a broad understanding of multimedia security. In the wake of the explosive growth of digital entertainment and Internet applications, this book is a definitive resource for scientists, researchers, programmers, engineers, business managers, entrepreneurs, and investors.FeaturesDescribes and evaluates the state of the art in multimedia encryption and authentication techniques and related technologies, architectures, standards, and applications Includes advanced topics, such as chaotic encryption techniques for digital images and video, as well as streaming media encryption Focuses on digital rights management issues for video and for consumer devices Covers key management and protection for IP multimedia, digital media fingerprinting, and signature-based media authentication

Intellectual property owners who exploit new ways of reproducing, distributing, and marketing their creations digitally must also protect them from piracy. Multimedia Security Handbook addresses multiple issues related to the protection of digital media, including audio, image, and video content. This volume examines leading-edge multimedia security concepts including protection architectures, encryption, watermarking, fingerprinting, authentication, and various applications.Comprinsing 26 chapters, the Handbook begins by introducing security fundamentals and discussing the vulnerabilities of individual protection schemes. Part II focuses on multimedia encryption, detailing audio, image, and video encryption techniques. Part III examines watermarking techniques, reviewing current and future trends and discussing multidimensional, fragile, and robust watermarks. Part IV covers multimedia data hiding, fingerprinting, and authentication. The text concludes with chapters describing applications of multimedia protection schemes, presenting topics such as application taxonomy, digital rights management, and techniques for adult image filtering.The Handbook offers comprehensive reference material on advanced topics in the field. It delivers invaluable insight for researchers, practitioners, and engineers involved in designing and developing systems that protect digital multimedia content.

Scientists in different geographical locations conduct real-time experiments in a virtual shared workspace. E-commerce provides an emerging market for businesses large and small. E-mail, Servers, and Enterprise Resources Planning have revolutionized businesses on every level. People from all over the globe gather in chat rooms. The Internet is here to stay and Internet technologies and applications continue to grow and evolve.The Handbook of Internet Computing presents comprehensive coverage of all technical issues related to the Internet and its applications. It addresses hot topics such as Internet architectures, content-based multimedia retrieval on the Internet, Web-based collaboration, Web search engines, digital libraries, and more. Real-life examples illustrate the concepts so that technical, non-technical and business people can quickly grasp the fundamentals.

Multimedia Encryption and Watermarking presents a comprehensive survey of contemporary multimedia encryption and watermarking techniques, which enable a secure exchange of multimedia intellectual property.Part I, Digital Rights Management (DRM) for Multimedia, introduces DRM concepts and models for multimedia content protection, and presents the key players. Part II, Multimedia Cryptography, provides an overview of modern cryptography, with the focus on modern image, video, speech, and audio encryption techniques. This book also provides an advanced concept of visual and audio sharing techniques. Part III, Digital Watermarking, introduces the concept of watermarking for multimedia, classifies watermarking applications, and evaluates various multimedia watermarking concepts and techniques, including digital watermarking techniques for binary images.Multimedia Encryption and Watermarking is designed for researchers and practitioners, as well as scientists and engineers who design and develop systems for the protection of digital multimedia content. This volume is also suitable as a textbook for graduate courses on multimedia security.

Provides an access to important concepts, issues and technology trends in the field of multimedia technologies, systems, techniques, and applications.

The advances in computer entertainment, multi-player and online games, technology-enabled art, culture and performance have created a new form of entertainment and art. The success of this new field has influenced the development of the digital entertainment industry and related products/services, which has impacted every aspect of our lives.Handbook of Multimedia for Digital Entertainment and Arts is an edited volume contributed by worldwide experts in the field of the new digital and interactive media, and their applications in entertainment and arts. This handbook covers leading edge media technologies, and the latest research applied to digital entertainment and arts. The main focus of Handbook of Multimedia for Digital Entertainment and Arts targets interactive and online games, edutainment, e-performance, personal broadcasting, innovative technologies for digital arts, digital visual and auditory media, augmented reality, moving media, and other advanced topics. The final chapters of this book present future trends and developments within this explosive field.Handbook of Multimedia for Digital Entertainment and Arts serves as a primary reference for advanced-level students, researchers and professors studying computer science and electrical engineering. With the dramatic growth of interactive digital entertainment and art applications, this handbook is also suitable as a reference for practitioners, programmers, and engineers working in this field.

This text presents contributions from leading researchers and experts describing their current research and their views of future trends in the field. The book consists of 13 chapters in five parts. These chapters tackle a number of critical issues in distributed multimedia systems and applications - from VLSI processors that support multimedia and multimedia servers, through multimedia databases and multimedia networks and communications, to emerging multimedia applications. Until recently multimedia seemed like a brand new research field and an emerging new industry. Now, at the end of the 21st century, multimedia research has come of age, and the multimedia industry has significantly grown with the total market estimated to be about $50 billion. Several years ago it was felt that the digital media revolution had just started; however, the seeds had been sown long before. Fundamental technologies, such as interactive laser disks, video games, and electronic encyclopedias were invented in the 1970s and 80s. They represented the seeds for current "hot" applications, such as digital libraries, video-on-demand, interactive television, and videoconferencing.Another aspect of the digital media revolution is the formation of a new media industry composed of computer, entertainment, communication, and consumer electronics companies. Many industry segments are currently involved in creating new products and services, positioning themselves for the 21st century. They include telephone, cable, and satellite TV companies, communication equipment companies, TV and radio broadcasters, on-line Internet service providers, cable channels, movie studios, record companies, book publishers, CD-ROM title creators, Internet tool vendors, multimedia software tools companies, computer companies, general software tools companies, computer add-on vendors, semiconductor vendors, and consumer electronics vendors. This study should stimulate the curiosity of its readers and inspire new technological breakthroughs in this field. It can serve as a reference for system designers, engineers, programmers, and managers who are involved in multimedia systems, the Internet, and their applications. The book can also be used as a textbook for advanced courses on multimedia in engineering curricula.

A growing concern of mine has been the unrealistic expectations for new computer-related technologies introduced into all kinds of organizations. Unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment, and a schizophrenic approach to the introduction of new technologies. The UNIX and real-time UNIX operating system technologies are major examples of emerging technologies with great potential benefits but unrealistic expectations. Users want to use UNIX as a common operating system throughout large segments of their organizations. A common operating system would decrease software costs by helping to provide portability and interoperability between computer systems in today's multivendor environments. Users would be able to more easily purchase new equipment and technologies and cost-effectively reuse their applications. And they could more easily connect heterogeneous equipment in different departments without having to constantly write and rewrite interfaces. On the other hand, many users in various organizations do not understand the ramifications of general-purpose versus real-time UNIX. Users tend to think of "real-time" as a way to handle exotic heart-monitoring or robotics systems. Then these users use UNIX for transaction processing and office applications and complain about its performance, robustness, and reliability. Unfortunately, the users don't realize that real-time capabilities added to UNIX can provide better performance, robustness and reliability for these non-real-time applications. Many other vendors and users do realize this, however. There are indications even now that general-purpose UNIX will go away as a separate entity. It will be replaced by a real-time UNIX. General-purpose UNIX will exist only as a subset of real-time UNIX.

This work treats a number of critical topics in multimedia systems, with respect to image/video processing techniques and their implementations. These techniques include image/video compression techniques and standards, and image and video indexing and retrieval techniques. The book is divided into three parts. Part I serves as an introduction to multimedia systems, discussing basic concepts, multimedia networking and synchronization, and an overview of multimedia applications. Part II presents comprehensive coverage of image and video compression techniques and standards, their implementations and applications. Because multimedia data (specifically video and images) require efficient compression techniques in order to be stored and delivered in real-time, video and image compression is a crucial element of an effective multimedia system. In Part III attention is focused on the semantic nature of image and video source material, and how that material may be effectively indexed and retrieved. Topics discussed include static images, full-motion video, and the manner in which compressed representations can facilitate structural analysis.Part III concludes with an extended discussion of a case study.

Multimedia computing has emerged in the recent years as a major area of research. Multimedia computer systems have opened a wide range of applications by combining a variety of information sources, such as voice, graphics, animation, images, audio and full-motion video. Looking at the big picture, multimedia can be viewed as the merging of three industries: computer, communications and broadcasting industries. Research and development efforts can be divided into two areas. As the first area of research, much effort has been centred on the stand-alone multimedia workstation and associated software systems and tools, such as music composition, computer-aided education and training, and interactive video. However, the combination of multimedia computing with distributed systems offers even greater potential. Applications based on distributed multimedia systems include multimedia information systems, collaborative and video conferencing systems, on-demand multimedia services and distance learning. This is one of two volumes, both of which provide a broad introduction into this area. It covers fundamental concepts and techniques used in multimedia systems.The topics include multimedia objects and related models, multimedia compression techniques and standards, multimedia interfaces, multimedia storage techniques, multimedia communication and networking, multimedia synchronization techniques, multimedia information systems, scheduling in multimedia systems, and video indexing and retrieval techniques. This work, together with its companion volume, "Multimedia Tools and Applications", is intended for readers involved in multimedia system design and applications. It may also be used as a textbook for advanced courses on multimedia.

Multimedia computing has emerged as a major area of research. Multimedia computer systems have opened a wide range of applications by combining a variety of information sources, such as voice, graphics, animation, images, audio and full-motion video. Looking at the big picture, multimedia can be viewed as the merging of three industries: the computer, communications and broadcasting industries. Research and development efforts in multimedia computing can be divided into two areas. As the first area of research, much effort has been centred on the stand-alone multimedia workstation and associated software systems and tools, such as music composition, computer-aided education and training, and interactive video. However, the combination of multimedia computing with distributed systems offers greater potential. New applications based on distributed multimedia systems include multimedia information systems, collaborative and videoconferencing systems, on-demand multimedia services and distance learning. This volume covers selected tools applied in multimedia systems and key multimedia applications.Topics presented include multimedia application development techniques, techniques for content-based manipulation of image databases, techniques for selection and dissemination of digital video and tools for digital video segmentation. Selected key applications described in the book include multimedia news services, multimedia courseware and training, interactive television systems, digital video libraries, multimedia messaging systems and interactive multimedia publishing systems.

This text introduces the XYZ video compression technique, which operates in three dimensions, eliminating the overhead of motion estimation. First, video compression standards, MPEG and H.261/H.263, are described. They both use asymmetric compression algorithms, based on motion estimation. Their encoders are much more complex than decoders. The XYZ technique uses a symmetric algorithm, based on the Three-Dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (3D-DCT). 3D-DCT was originally suggested for compression about in the 1970s; however, at that time the computational complexity of the algorithm was too high, it required large buffer memory, and was not as effective as motion estimation. We have resurrected the 3D-DCT-based video compression algorithm by developing several enhancements to the original algorithm. These enhancements make the algorithm feasible for real-time video compression in applications such as video-on-demand, interactive multimedia, and video-conferencing. The book may be used as a text for graduate students and researchers working in the area of real-time video compression. In addition, the book serves as a reference for professionals in the field.

Video technology promises to be the key for the transmission of motion video. A number of video compression techniques and standards have been introduced in the past few years, particularly the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 for interactive multimedia and for digital NTSC and HDTV applications, and H.261/H.263 for video telecommunications. These techniques use motion estimation techniques to reduce the amount of data that is stored and transmitted for each frame. Motion Estimation Algorithms for Video Compression is about these motion estimation algorithms, their complexity, implementations, advantages and drawbacks. First, an overview of video compression techniques is presented with an emphasis on techniques which use motion estimation, such as MPEG and H.261/H.263. Then, the book presents a survey of current motion estimation search algorithms, including the exhaustive search and a number of fast search algorithms. An evaluation of current search algorithms, based on a number of experiments on several test video sequences, is also presented.Motion Estimation Algorithms for Video Compression develops the theoretical framework for a new fast search algorithm, Densely-Centered Uniform-P Search (DCUPS). The complexity of the DCUPS algorithm is comparable to other popular motion estimation techniques; however the algorithm shows superior results in terms of compression ratios and video quality. This book serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as the text for an advanced course on the subject.

Intellectual property owners who exploit new ways of reproducing, distributing, and marketing their creations digitally must also protect them from piracy. Multimedia Security Handbook addresses multiple issues related to the protection of digital media, including audio, image, and video content. This volume examines leading-edge multimedia security concepts including protection architectures, encryption, watermarking, fingerprinting, authentication, and various applications.Comprinsing 26 chapters, the Handbook begins by introducing security fundamentals and discussing the vulnerabilities of individual protection schemes. Part II focuses on multimedia encryption, detailing audio, image, and video encryption techniques. Part III examines watermarking techniques, reviewing current and future trends and discussing multidimensional, fragile, and robust watermarks. Part IV covers multimedia data hiding, fingerprinting, and authentication. The text concludes with chapters describing applications of multimedia protection schemes, presenting topics such as application taxonomy, digital rights management, and techniques for adult image filtering.The Handbook offers comprehensive reference material on advanced topics in the field. It delivers invaluable insight for researchers, practitioners, and engineers involved in designing and developing systems that protect digital multimedia content.

Technology has spurred the growth of huge image and video libraries, many growing into the hundreds of terabytes. As a result there is a great demand among organizations for the design of databases that can effectively support the storage, search, retrieval, and transmission of video data. Engineers and researchers in the field demand a comprehensive reference that will help them design and implement the most complex video database projects.Handbook of Video Databases: Design and Applications presents a thorough overview in 45 chapters from more than 100 renowned experts in the field. This book provides the tools to help overcome the problems of storage, cataloging, and retrieval, by exploring content standardization and other content classification and analysis methods. The challenge of these complex problems make this book a must-have for video database practitioners in the fields of image and video processing, computer vision, multimedia systems, data mining, and many other diverse disciplines.

Intellectual property owners must continually exploit new ways of reproducing, distributing, and marketing their products. However, the threat of piracy looms as a major problem with digital distribution and storage technologies. Multimedia Encryption and Authentication Techniques and Applications covers current and future trends in the design of modern systems that use encryption and authentication to protect multimedia content. Containing the works of contributing authors who are worldwide experts in their fields, this volume is intended for researchers and practitioners, as well as for those who want a broad understanding of multimedia security. In the wake of the explosive growth of digital entertainment and Internet applications, this book is a definitive resource for scientists, researchers, programmers, engineers, business managers, entrepreneurs, and investors.FeaturesDescribes and evaluates the state of the art in multimedia encryption and authentication techniques and related technologies, architectures, standards, and applications Includes advanced topics, such as chaotic encryption techniques for digital images and video, as well as streaming media encryption Focuses on digital rights management issues for video and for consumer devices Covers key management and protection for IP multimedia, digital media fingerprinting, and signature-based media authentication

Scientists in different geographical locations conduct real-time experiments in a virtual shared workspace. E-commerce provides an emerging market for businesses large and small. E-mail, Servers, and Enterprise Resources Planning have revolutionized businesses on every level. People from all over the globe gather in chat rooms. The Internet is here to stay and Internet technologies and applications continue to grow and evolve.The Handbook of Internet Computing presents comprehensive coverage of all technical issues related to the Internet and its applications. It addresses hot topics such as Internet architectures, content-based multimedia retrieval on the Internet, Web-based collaboration, Web search engines, digital libraries, and more. Real-life examples illustrate the concepts so that technical, non-technical and business people can quickly grasp the fundamentals.

Content-Based Image And Video Retrieval addresses the basic concepts and techniques for designing content-based image and video retrieval systems. It also discusses a variety of design choices for the key components of these systems. This book gives a comprehensive survey of the content-based image retrieval systems, including several content-based video retrieval systems. The survey includes both research and commercial content-based retrieval systems. Content-Based Image And Video Retrieval includes pointers to two hundred representative bibliographic references on this field, ranging from survey papers to descriptions of recent work in the area, entire books and more than seventy websites. Finally, the book presents a detailed case study of designing MUSE--a content-based image retrieval system developed at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

Operators are introducing mobile television and digital video content services globally. The Handbook of Mobile Broadcasting addresses all aspects of these services, providing a comprehensive reference on DVB-H, DMB, ISDB-T, and MediaFLO. Featuring contributions from experts in the field, the text presents technical standards and distribution protocols, offering detailed coverage of video coding, including design methodology and error resilience techniques; state-of-the-art technologies such as signaling, optimization, implementation, and simulation; and applications of mobile broadcasting, including emerging areas and new interactive services.

While 3G has been an outstanding success, the ever-growing demand for higher data rates and higher quality mobile communication services continues to fuel conflict between the rapidly growing number of users and limited bandwidth resources. In the future, a 100-fold increase in mobile data traffic is expected. That will necessitate further improvements to 3GPP LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and create limitless opportunities for engineers who understand the technology and how to apply it to deliver enhanced services.Long Term Evolution: 3GPP LTE Radio and Cellular Technology outlines the best way to position yourself now for future success. With coverage ranging from basic concepts to current research, this comprehensive reference contains technical information about all aspects of 3GPP LTE. It details low chip rate, high-speed downlink/uplink packet access (HSxPA)/TDSCDMA EV 1x, LTE TDD, and 3G TDD. It introduces new technologies and covers methodologies to study the performance of frequency allocation schemes. The authors also discuss the proposed architecture of Mobile IPRR and distributed dynamic architecture in wireless communication, covering performance evaluation of the TD-SCDMA LTE System.With each passing day, more and more users are demanding mobile broadband data access everywhere, to facilitate synchronization of e-mails, Internet access, specific applications, and file downloads to mobile devices such as cell phones, smart phones, PDAs, and notebooks. LTE, successor to the 3G mobile radio network, is essential to creating radio coverage in the rollout phase and high capacity all over the radio cell in the long term. The 3GPP LTE will become increasingly crucial to supporting the high demand of data traffic rates generated by future mobile user terminals. Authored by international experts in the field, this practical book is an extremely valuable guide that addresses emerging current and future technolo

High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is a collection of two mobile telephony protocols, High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA). Allowing networks based on the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to achieve data rates of several megabits per second, these powerful protocols are ideal for applications ranging from file transfer to multimedia streaming.From basic concepts to research grade material, the HSDPA/HSUPA Handbook provides technical information on all aspects of HSDPA/HSUPA. With contributions from 30 experts from around the world, this comprehensive HSPA reference provides a global and authoritative perspective of this rapidly emerging technology. Investigates the relationship between HSDPA/HSUPA and UMTSDescribes the benefits of HSPA and its technical enhancementsExplains packet flows in HSDPAExplores migration issues associated with HSPA Considers receiver designs and multi-user extensions to MIMO HSDPA Presenting information in a well-structured manner for ease of reference, this book presents accurate and up-to-date information on the full spectrum of topics related to HSPA technology, including future directions. The ideal desk reference for designers and planners of contemporary wireless communication networks, this book can also be adopted as a textbook for graduate and research-oriented courses that deal with HSPA.

Multimedia Encryption and Watermarking presents a comprehensive survey of contemporary multimedia encryption and watermarking techniques, which enable a secure exchange of multimedia intellectual property.Part I, Digital Rights Management (DRM) for Multimedia, introduces DRM concepts and models for multimedia content protection, and presents the key players. Part II, Multimedia Cryptography, provides an overview of modern cryptography, with the focus on modern image, video, speech, and audio encryption techniques. This book also provides an advanced concept of visual and audio sharing techniques. Part III, Digital Watermarking, introduces the concept of watermarking for multimedia, classifies watermarking applications, and evaluates various multimedia watermarking concepts and techniques, including digital watermarking techniques for binary images.Multimedia Encryption and Watermarking is designed for researchers and practitioners, as well as scientists and engineers who design and develop systems for the protection of digital multimedia content. This volume is also suitable as a textbook for graduate courses on multimedia security.

Multimedia Technologies and Applications for the 21st Century: Visions of World Experts presents contributions from leading researchers and experts describing their current research and their views of the future trends in the field. The book consists of thirteen chapters in five parts. These chapters tackle a number of critical issues in distributed multimedia systems and applications - from VLSI processors that support multimedia and multimedia servers, through multimedia databases and multimedia networks and communications, to merging multimedia applications. Only a few years ago multimedia seemed like a brand new research field and an emerging new industry. Today, at the edge of the 21st century, multimedia research is coming of age, and the multimedia industry has significantly grown with the total market estimated to be about $50 billion. Several years ago it was felt that the digital media revolution had just started; however, the seeds had been sown long before. Fundamental technologies, such as interactive laser disks, video games, and electronic encyclopedias were invented in the 1970s and 80s.They represented the seeds for current 'hot' applications, such as digital libraries, video-on-demand, interactive television, and videoconferencing. Another aspect of the digital media revolution is the formation of a new media industry composed of computer, entertainment, communication, and consumer electronics companies. Many industry segments are currently involved in creating new products and services, positioning themselves for the 21st century. They include telephone, cable, and satellite TV companies, communication equipment companies, TV and radio broadcasters, on-line Internet service providers, cable channels, movie studios, record companies, book publishers, CD-ROM title creators, Internet tool vendors, multimedia software tools companies, computer companies, general software tools companies, computer add-on vendors, semiconductor vendors, and consumer electronics vendors. Multimedia Technologies and Applications for the 21st Century: Visions of World Experts should stimulate the curiosity of its readers and inspire new technological breakthroughs in this exciting field.It serves as a valuable reference for system designers, engineers, programmers, and managers who are involved in multimedia systems, the Internet, and their applications. This book can also be used as a textbook for advanced courses on multimedia in engineering curricula.

Handbook of Cloud Computing includes contributions from world experts in the field of cloud computing from academia, research laboratories and private industry. The basic concepts of cloud computing and cloud computing applications are also introduced.

Social networking is a concept that has existed for a long time; however, with the explosion of the Internet, social networking has become a tool for people to connect and communicate in ways that were impossible in the past. The recent development of Web 2.0 has provided many new applications, such as Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The purpose of Handbook of Social Network Technologies and Applications is to provide comprehensive guidelines on the current and future trends in social network technologies and applications in the field of Web-based Social Networks. This handbook includes contributions from world experts in the field of social networks from both academia and private industry. A number of crucial topics are covered including Web and software technologies and communication technologies for social networks. Web-mining techniques, visualization techniques, intelligent social networks, Semantic Web, and many other topics are covered. Standards for social networks, case studies, and a variety of applications are covered as well.