The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online. Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such vi...

Want to develop games for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7? This hands-on book will get you started with Microsoft's XNA 4.0 development framework right away -- even if you have no experience developing games. Although XNA includes several key concepts that can be difficult for beginning web developers to grasp, Learning XNA 4.0 shortens the learning curve by walking you through the framework in a clear and understandable step-by-step format.Each chapter offers a self-containe...

The father of virtual reality explains its dazzling possibilities by reflecting on his own lifelong relationship with technology.Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, & Vox"A deeply human, highly personal, and beautifully told story." —Dave EggersBridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body , Dawn of the Ne...

Advances in 3D visualization and physics-based simulation technology make it possible for game developers to create compelling, visually immersive gaming environments that were only dreamed of years ago. But today's game players have grown in sophistication along with the games they play. It's no longer enough to wow your players with dazzling graphics; the next step in creating even more immersive games is improved artificial intelligence, or AI.Fortunately, advanced AI game techniques ar...

Augmented Reality (AR) blurs the boundary between the physical and digital worlds. In AR’s current exploration phase, innovators are beginning to create compelling and contextually rich applications that enhance a user’s everyday experiences. In this book, Dr. Helen Papagiannis—a world-leading expert in the field—introduces you to AR: how it’s evolving, where the opportunities are, and where it’s headed.If you’re a designer, developer, entrepreneur, student, educator, business lead...

With the emergence of the internet new forms of crime became possible. From harassment and grooming to fraud and identity theft the anonymity provided by the internet has created a new world of crime of which we all must be aware. The threat of hackers reaches beyond the individual, threatening businesses and even states, and holds worrying implications for the world we live in.In this enlightening account, Cath Senker unmasks the many guises that cybercrime takes and the efforts o...

Want to build Facebook applications that truly stand out among the thousands already available? In addition to providing easy-to-follow recipes that offer practical ways to design and build scalable applications using the Facebook Platform and its new profile design, this Cookbook also explains proven strategies for attracting users in this highly competitive environment.With plenty of examples and practical solutions, Facebook Cookbook answers some of the hardest question...

How can you design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This practical book explores the concept of calm technology, a method for smoothly capturing a user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the background most of the time. You’ll learn how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and remain unobtrusive.Author Amber Case presents ideas first introduced by researchers at Xerox ...

Do you have what it takes to become a game developer? With this hands-on book, you'll learn quickly and easily how to develop computer games with Microsoft's XNA 3.0 framework-not just for your PC, but for Xbox 360 and the Microsoft Zune as well.Written by an experienced university-level game development instructor, Learning XNA 3.0 walks you through the framework in a clear and understandable step-by-step format. Each chapter offers a self-contained lesson with lots of il...

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on HCI in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, VAMR 2016, held as part of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2016, which took place in Toronto, Canada, in July 2016.HCII 2016 received a total of 4354 submissions, of which 1287 papers were accepted for publication after a careful reviewing process.The 70 papers presented in this volume are organized in topic...

This book presents medical image watermarking techniques and algorithms for telemedicine and other emerging applications. This book emphasizes on medical image watermarking to ensure the authenticity of transmitted medical information. It begins with an introduction of digital watermarking, important characteristics, novel applications, different watermarking attacks and standard benchmark tools. This book also covers spatial and transform domain medical image watermarking techniques and t...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Design, CCD 2016, held as part of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2016, held in Toronto, ON, Canada, in July 2016 and received a total of 4354 submissions, of which 1287 papers and 186 poster papers were accepted for publication after a careful reviewing process. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of ...