While much progress has been made in building the Knowledge Economy, many challenges remain. This requires ever-greater transparency of public and private initiatives, whether commercial, legislative, political, social or technical in nature. It is important that human, cultural and technological issues related to eAdoption and the Digital Divide are constantly in the public eye. Sharing problems encountered and lessons learnt helps inform national and international policy, as well as avoiding expensive mistakes and providing a framework for replication of successful implementations. This book brings together a comprehensive collection of over 230 contributions on commercial, government or societal exploitation of the Internet and ICT, representing cutting edge research from over 30 countries. The issues, applications and case studies presented facilitate knowledge sharing, which is key to addressing global eAdoption issues and the Digital Divide. It can be used to benchmark regional and national developments, avoid previous mistakes and identify potential partners and exploitation opportunities. The contributions reflect state-of-the-art research initiatives funded privately, nationally and regionally, as well as at European level. The increased emphasis on close cooperation and collaboration between end users and commercial and academic researchers is very welcome, and augurs well for the continued development of the European Research Area Reflecting the breadth and depth of the ICT related research undertaken by the contributors.
