Internet blogs provide forums for discussions within virtual communities, allowing readers to post comments on what they read. However, such comments may contain abuse, such as personal attacks, offensive remarks about race or religion, or commercial spam, all of which reduce the value of community discussion. Ideally, filters would promote civil discourse by removing abusive comments while pro...

BACKGROUND Orkut, a Brazilian virtual social network, is responsible for popularization of the Internet among people of low income and educational level. It's observed that rapid growth of virtual communities can be reached by low cost Internet access in community local area network houses. Orkut poses an important social resource for Brazilian patients with chronic conditions like hepatitis C ...

In this paper, we describe an intervention for children with social and communication deficits, such as autism, based on the use of a virtual peer that can engage in tightly collaborative narrative. We present a study in which children with autism engage in collaborative narrative with both a virtual and a human peer, and the use of contingent discourse is compared. Our findings suggest that co...

In this paper, we describe an intervention for children with social and communication deficits, such as autism, based on the use of a virtual peer that can engage in tightly collaborative narrative. We present a study in which children with autism engage in collaborative narrative with both a virtual and a human peer, and the use of contingent discourse is compared. Our findings suggest that co...

While 3D space has become almost ubiquitous in computer games that apply narrative techniques, theoretical frameworks and practical experiments about the use of virtual space are underdeveloped compared to the number of works that deal with literary textual pieces such as MUDs. Offering one element to fill this gap, the notion of a Story Map is introduced in this paper. The interactor’s experie...

there are different approaches to business model categorization. [5] in a point of view, the e-business model patterns can be categorized to content provider, direct to customer (d2c), full-service provider, intermediary, shared infrastructure, value net integrator, virtual community, and whole of enterprise.