This book serves as a guide for companies to explore the path from traditional media to the new world of interactive broadband media. The key challenge is to base indispensable future investments on reliable business models. This book offers a comprehensive set of concepts and strategies for the interactive broadband realm, grounded in attractive service offerings and customer preferences. The authors explain and analyze the interaction of broadband technologies, its processes and the end customers' point of view. At the same time they provide current examples of successful long-term business models. By applying Accenture's tried and tested Get Audience / Sell Audience concept, companies can assess their position in the interactive broadband value chain and optimize their strategies accordingly.

The digitisation of traditional media formats, such as text, images, video, and sound provides us with the ability to store, process, and transport content in a uniform way. This has led the formerly distinct industries of media, telecommunications, and information technology to converge. Cross-media publishing and service delivery are important new trends emerging in the content industry landscape. Mass-media organizations and content providers traditionally targeted content production towards a single delivery channel. However, recent economic and technological changes in the industry led content providers to extend their brands to cover multiple delivery channels. Following the content industry trend to "create once and publish everywhere"-COPE, a number of architectures, technologies, and tools are currently being developed and deployed to facilitate the automatic conversion of content to multiple formats, and the creation of innovative multi-platform services. This new approach enables the seamless access to information over different network infrastructures and client platforms. This work aims to bring together a cross-disciplinary core of contributors to address the technical and business issues of cross-media publishing and service delivery. The volume is based on papers presented at the conference on Cross-Media Service Delivery-CMSD-2003 that took place in Santorini, Greece in May 2003. Each contribution was reviewed by at least two reviewers-typically three. From the 30 papers that were submitted 20 were selected for presentation at the conference. Those were further "shepherded" by programme committee members to be improved according to the review suggestions.

Reviews the features and applications of a broad range of computer software systems that allow the user to choose the sequence of text or other display at the time of use. Contains a well-annotated bibliography. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan. As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

A study of the impact of Internet use on American society, based on a series of nationally representative surveys conducted from 1995 to 2000. Drawing on nationally representative telephone surveys conducted from 1995 to 2000, James Katz and Ronald Rice offer a rich and nuanced picture of Internet use in America. Using quantitative data, as well as case studies of Web sites, they explore the impact of the Internet on society from three perspectives: access to Internet technology (the digital divide), involvement with groups and communities through the Internet (social capital), and use of the Internet for social interaction and expression (identity). To provide a more comprehensive account of Internet use, the authors draw comparisons across media and include Internet nonusers and former users in their research. The authors call their research the Syntopia Project to convey the Internet's role as one among a host of communication technologies as well as the synergy between people's online activities and their real-world lives. Their major finding is that Americans use the Internet as an extension and enhancement of their daily routines. Contrary to media sensationalism, the Internet is neither a utopia, liberating people to form a global egalitarian community, nor a dystopia-producing armies of disembodied, lonely individuals. Like any form of communication, it is as helpful or harmful as those who use it.

A new multimedia e-dition package includes the book and CD-ROM plus access to the continuously updated website! The website (http://www.criticalcaretext.com) also offers links to important websites, calculators, the full text online, and all the illustrations--downloadable for presentations. A completely new editorial team presents the radical revision to this leading critical care text, previously edited by Shoemaker et al. Today's best coverage of both adult and pediatric critical care, with contributions from an impressive roster of world experts. In addition to numerous new chapters and many extensively rewritten ones, it features a completely new section on commonly encountered problems and a new, more user-friendly organization. Covers both adult and pediatric critical care. Features the authority of the top names in critical care from around the world, including an outstanding new editorial team as well as authors who are among the most highly respected researchers, instructors, and clinicians in the field. Offers a brand-new section that provides quick access to practical guidance on the problems most frequently encountered in the ICU. Explores hot new topics such as Inter- and Intra-Hospital Transport, Disaster Medicine for the ICU Physician, and Teaching Critical Care. Provides a new, more user-friendly organization. Presents only the most essential references within the text, with the rest provided on the enclosed CD-ROM. Is available in a multimedia package that combines the book with access to a fully searchable, continuously updated web site!. Your purchase entitles you to access the web site until the next edition is published, or until the current edition is no longer offered for sale by Elsevier, whichever occurs first. If the next edition is published less than one year after your purchase, you will be entitled to online access for one year from your date of purchase. Elsevier reserves the right to offer a suitable replacement product (such as a downloadable or CD-ROM-based electronic version) should access to the web site be discontinued.

Converging Media reflects the fundamental changes that digital technologies have made in the way people get their news and entertainment and conduct media commerce. The book does not contend that every media product, such as newspapers, magazines or books, are or ever will become digital. Rather, Converging Media proposes that the majority of the process of mass communication is or is becoming digital. --Publisher description.