Why doesn't your home page appear on the first page of search results, even when you query your own name? How do other Web pages always appear at the top? What creates these powerful rankings? And how? The first book ever about the science of Web page rankings, Google's PageRank and Beyond supplies the answers to these and other questions and more.

The book serves two very different audiences: the curious science reader and the technical computational reader. The chapters build in mathematical sophistication, so that the first five are accessible to the general academic reader. While other chapters are much more mathematical in nature, each one contains something for both audiences. For example, the authors include entertaining asides such as how search engines make money and how the Great Firewall of China influences research.

The book includes an extensive and complete background chapter designed to help general readers learn more about the mathematics of search engines, and it contains several Matlab codes and links to sample Web data sets. The philosophy throughout is to encourage readers to experiment with the ideas and algorithms in the tex

Google's PageRank and Beyond : The Science of Search Engine Rankings

Starting with Napster and Gnutella, peer-to-peer systems became an integrated part of the Internet fabric attracting millions of users. According to recent evaluations, peer-to-peer traffic now exceeds Web traffic, once the dominant traffic on the Internet. While the most popular peer-to-peer applications remain file sharing and content distribution, new applications such as Internet telephony are emerging.

Within just a few years, the huge popularity of peer-to-peer systems and the explosion of peer-to-peer research have created a large body of knowledge, but this book is the first textbook-like survey to provide an up-to-date and in-depth introduction to the field.

This state-of-the-art survey systematically draws together prerequisites from various fields, presents techniques and methodologies in a principled and coherent way, and gives a comprehensive overview on the manifold applications of the peer-to-peer paradigm. Leading researchers contributed their expert knowledge to this book, each in his/her own specific area.

Lecturers can choose from the wide range of 32 tightly integrated chapters on all current aspects of P2P systems and applications, and thus individually tailor their class syllabi. R&D professionals active in P2P will appreciate this book as a valuable source of reference and inspiration.

Peer-to-Peer Systems and Applications

Accompanying website for

As the Internet becomes increasingly heterogeneous, the issue of congestion control becomes ever more important.

In order to maintain good network performance, mechanisms must be provided to prevent the network from being congested for any significant period of time. Michael Welzl describes the background and concepts of Internet congestion control, in an accessible and easily comprehensible format. Throughout the book, not just the how, but the why of complex technologies including the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Active Queue Management are explained. The text also gives an overview of the state-of-the-art in congestion control research and an insight into the future.

Network Congestion Control:

* Presents comprehensive, easy-to-read documentation on the advanced topic of congestion control without heavy maths.
* Aims to give a thorough understanding of the evolution of Internet congestion control: how TCP works, why it works the way it does, and why some congestion control concepts failed for the Internet.
* Explains the Chiu/Jain vector diagrams and introduces a new method of using these diagrams for analysis, teaching & design.
* Elaborates on how the theory of congestion control impacts on the practicalities of service delivery.
* Includes an appendix with examples/problems to assist learning.
* Provides an accompanying website with Java tools for teaching congestion control, as well as examples, links to code and projects/bibliography.

This invaluable text will provide academics and researchers in computer science, electrical engineering and communications networking, as well as students on advanced networking and Internet courses, with a thorough understanding of the current state and future evolution of Internet congestion control. Network administrators and Internet service and applications providers will also find Network Congestion Control a comprehensive, accessible self-teach tool.

Network Congestion Control: Managing Internet Traffic

Just when you thought Google didn’t get “social,” Google Reader introduced a nice new feature: sharing of feeds. Click on the new “Share” tab and it allows you to publish items by label or by their star.

For example, on this address I’m sharing a couple of feeds I labeled “google.” Google also allows me to generate an Atom feed for this.

Share Google Reader Feeds

The idea had sprung out of a late-night discussion among some Harvard students about the inanity of blind dates and mixers.

Computing the Mysteries of Attraction

Promise theory is a graph theoretical framework for understanding complex relationships in networks, where many constraints have to be met, which we have developed here at Oslo University College, by drawing on ideas from several different lines of research here, including policy based management,graph theory, logic and configuration management. It uses a constructivist approach that builds conventional management structures from graphs of interacting, autonomous agents. Promises can be asserted either from an agent to itself or from one agent to another and each promise implies a constraint on the behaviour of the promising agent. The atomicity of the promises makes them a tool for finding contradictions and inconsistencies.

Introduction to Promise Theory

Madeleine's favorite text ever is one she sent to her husband about a week after they met, and which he recently rediscovered on his phone: DRUNK. SEXSEXSEXSEXSEXSEXSEX. XO, M.

I Want Your Text

"It's sad," said Esther Dyson. "The kids are growing up."

Google, Once a Maverick, Joins Lobbying Herd

Are search engines making today's students dumber?

"Google's simplicity and impressive search prowess trick students into thinking they are good all-around searchers, and when they fail in library searches, they are ashamed as well as confused."

Searching for Dummies

Robotic Feral Public Authoring links together two branches of research for community fun and action. Hobbyist robotics and public authoring (knowledge mapping and sharing) both enable people to use emerging technologies in dynamic and exciting new ways. Brought together they open up whole vistas of possibilities for exploring our local environments with electronic sensors to detect all kinds of phenomena and map them using online tools.

Proboscis | Social Tapestries | Feral Robots