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Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, have had an enormous social and economical impact on society in the United State and around the world for many years. With the goal of preventing, diverting, or weakening the destructive forces of tropical cyclones, the preparedness of the public plays a major role in the magnitude of inflicted damage due to these storms. Acknowledging the captivating power of social networking and Web 2.0 over society, we present a prototype system which integrates meteorological data along with user generated content with the aim of improving public response by increasing their situational awareness due to such natural threats. The proposed system aggregates storm track and wind analysis data from the existing H*Wind system along with videos taken from YouTube and presents it to the user in Google Earth. A content-based concept detection mechanism is used to evaluate the relevance of the extracted YouTube videos to the storm of interest. The proposed system demonstrates the potential public benefit resulting from the integration of the areas of multimedia content analysis, Web 2.0, and meteorology.

Web 2.0 as a contemporary phenomenon receives considerable attention by IS scholars due to its perceived transformational impact on businesses. This paper critically elaborates on the value creation potential of Web 2.0 for small and medium enterprises (SME). By conducting an inductive study we reveal that SMEs can effectively use Web 2.0 as a means to support customer acquisition, alleviate resource limitations and to maintain customer enthusiasm associated with the customer purchasing process. In case that a high customer convenience is required which is based on the involvement of different parties or on personal service support, there is hardly any Web 2.0 value creation potential. This research contributes to the domain of business modeling by assessing the notion of value in a Web 2.0 setting. It also contributes to IS research on Web 2.0 adoption.

Web 2.0 technologies provide rich and lightweight online tools that let users contribute with new data. They can associate in social networks, share ideas and information and collaborate together for many kind of reasons, obtaining a community's "collective intelligence". We propose to compute this collective intelligence with a Mobile Decision Support System (MDSS) to aggregate recommendations and use this collective advice to improve the customer satisfaction in decision making situations related with the m-commerce activities.

In this paper, the potential uses of Web 2.0 technologies for the improvement of communication with library clients are examined. Wikis, blogs, RSS, mash-ups and other Web 2.0 tools and services can assist librarians in their efforts to present information online and better connect with their clients, especially the younger generations of Internet users. In three different studies we investigated (1) the familiarity of informatics students with Web 2.0 tools, (2) the computer literacy and Internet use by librarians in higher-education institutions, as well as their assessment of the potential uses of various Web 2.0 tools for interaction with the clients of their library, and (3) the use of Web 2.0 tools on the websites of public libraries in Croatia.

This paper summarizes the methodology and conclusions used on a master thesis that had the research aim of exploring how Web 2.0 and social networks are having an effect on users' information behavior. The method used for the collection of data was a semi structured interview, containing questions constructed according to the issues of Web 2.0 and social networks identified on the literature, along with typical features or characteristics of social networks. Purposive sampling was used to select the interview participants. The method for analyzing data was discourse analysis and a framework of categories was created to present the data in a certain order. This study identified various trends and tendencies in users' information behavior and some future directions for research were proposed. Findings of this type of study provide insights to users' information behavior in information systems, they could contribute to a better understanding of the users and to the design of such systems; this is relevant when it is necessary to build information systems from the point of view of users needs and behaviors, that is, by taking a bottom-up approach.

In order to more fully understand the cultural shifts in technology within and between generations, a sample survey of several public libraries in a rural university community will be analyzed. The following subjects will be addressed and compared on a generational level within this poster presentation: programming, technology—types and usage, and frequency and purpose of visits. A thorough analysis of the data in this case study will provide insight into the changing role of technology use among two distinct generations of library patrons.