In this thesis we consider how user-generated content that is assembled by different popular Web portals can be exploited for Multilingual Information Retrieval. We define the knowledge that can be derived from such portals as Social Semantics. We present to approaches, Cross-lingual Explicit...

Conceptual Data Structures (CDS) is a unified meta-model for representing knowledge cues in varying degrees of granularity, structuredness, and formality.CDS consists of: (1) A simple, expressive data-model; (2) A relation ontology which unifies the relations found in cognitive models of...

Ontology evaluation is the task of measuring the quality of an ontology. It enables us to answer the following main question: How to assess the quality of an ontology for the Web? In this thesis a theoretical framework and several methods breathing life into the framework are presented. The...

Extracting information from text is the task of obtaining structured, machine-processable facts from information that is mentioned in an unstructured manner. It thus allows systems to automatically aggregate information for further analysis, efficient retrieval, automatic validation, or...

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks (SVN) implies new economic and organizational challenges. This work provides an auction-based coordination mechanism that enables the allocation and pricing of service compositions in SVNs. The mechanism...

The growing development of web-based reputation systems in the 21st century will have a powerful social and economic impact on both business entities and individual customers, because it makes transparent quality assessment on products and services to achieve customer assurance in the...

Die Messung des wirtschaftlichen Erfolgs von transaktionsorientierten Websites ist guterforscht und findet breite Anwendung. Dahingegen ist eine Aussage über den Erfolg vonWebsites, die lediglich Informationen anbieten, nur sehr eingeschränkt möglich. Beitransaktionsorientierten Websites wird...

In modern organisations business process modelling has become fundamental due to theincreasing rate of organisational change. As a consequence, an organisation needs tocontinuously redesign its business processes on a regular basis. One major problemassociated with the way business process...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The objective of this specific research report is to analyse the internet marketing function within the South African tourism industry. Furthermore, the hotel industry is analysed to establish how the introduction of the internet changed the playing field in terms of...

The goal of this thesis is to identify the main political and economic implications of Dubai’s debt crisis and subsequent bailout by her wealthier and more powerful sister emirate Abu Dhabi. This paper examines the implications of the bailout of Dubai on two levels: Dubai’s relationship with...