Research into free and open source software development projects has so far largely focused on how the major tasks of software development are organized and motivated. But a complete project requires the execution of “mundane but necessary” tasks as well. In this paper, we explore how the mundane but necessary task of field support is organized in the case of Apache web server software, and why some project participants are motivated to provide this service gratis to others. We find that the Apache field support system functions effectively. We also find that, when we partition the help system into its component tasks, 98 % of the effort expended by information providers in fact returns direct learning benefits to those providers. This finding considerably reduces the puzzle of why information providers are willing to perform this task “for free. ” Implications are discussed.

Ubiquitous computing and mobile network technologies have fueled a recent proliferation of opportunities for digitally-enabled play in everyday spaces. In this paper, I examine how players negotiate the boundary between these pervasive games and real life. I trace the emergence of what I call “the Pinocchio effect ” – the desire for a game to be transformed into real life, or conversely, for everyday life to be transformed into a "real little game. ” Focusing on two examples of pervasive play – the 2001 immersive game known as the Beast, and the Go Game, an ongoing urban superhero game — I argue that gamers maximize their play experience by performing belief, rather than actually believing, in the permeability of the game-reality boundary.

To increase their revenue from electronic commerce, more and more Internet businesses are soliciting personal information from consumers so as to target products and services at the right consumers. But when deciding whether to disclose their personal information to Internet businesses, consumers may weigh the concerns of giving up information privacy against the benefits of information disclosure. This paper examines how Internet businesses can motivate consumers to disclose their personal information. Based on a synthesis of the literature, it identifies seven types of extrinsic or intrinsic benefits that Internet businesses can provide when soliciting personal information from consumers. Through comprehensive conceptual and empirical validation processes, it develops an instrument that allows Internet businesses to gauge the preference of consumers for the various types of benefits. By testing a set of nomological networks, it offers some ideas to Internet businesses about what types of benefits may be more effective given the personality traits of consumer populations. Besides providing a foundation for efforts at developing theories on information privacy and information disclosure, the results of this research provide useful suggestions to Internet businesses on how best to solicit personal information from consumers. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Key words: privacy, Internet business, information disclosure, extrinsic benefit, intrinsic benefit, personality, confirmatory factor analysis. We gratefully thank all participants in the 2002 NUS summer research workshop and the 2002 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). We also thank Ee-Cheah Tam for her contributions to a previous version of this manuscript, and Juan-Juan Han for her research

In this paper the development of a questionnairebased usability evaluation method for e-learning applications is described. The method extends the current practice by focusing not only on cognitive but also affective considerations that may influence e-learning usability. The method was developed according to an established methodology in HCI research and relied upon a conceptual framework that combines web and instructional design parameters and associates them with the most prominent affective learning dimension, which is intrinsic motivation to learn. The latter is proposed as a new usability measure that is considered more appropriate to evaluate e-learning designs. Two large empirical studies were conducted in order to evaluate usability of e-learning courses offered in corporate environments. Results provide significant evidence for reliability and validity of the method; thus usability practitioners can use it with confidence when evaluating the design of elearning applications. 1. The need to develop a usability evaluation method for e-learning applications Organizations and educational institutions have been investing in information technologies to improve education and training at an increasing rate during the last two decades. Especially in corporate settings continuous education and training for the human resource is critical to an organization’s success. Electronic learning (e-learning) has been identified as the enabler for people and organizations to keep up with changes in the global economy that now occur in Internet time. Within the context of corporate training, e-learning refers to training delivered on a computer that is designed to support individual learning or organizational performance goals (Clark and Mayer, 2003). Although e-learning is emerging as one of the fastest organizational uses of the Internet (Harun, 2002), most e-learning programs exhibit higher dropout rates when compared with traditional instructor-led courses. There are many reasons that can explain the high dropout rates such as relevancy of content, comfort level with technology, availability of technical support etc. but one major

There are activities where a dynamic, creative partnership among equals seems like an appropriate model of empowerment. Not only do good partnerships seem to help people attain or sustain powerful engagement in their current activities, in some cases they seem to enable people to successfully enter new activities.

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This paper proposes research propositions to study on MMOG and MUD addictions based on their causes – flow state and social interaction. Though previous studies relate MMOG addictions to Internet addictions based on social interactions, this study after examining the underlying theories of Use and Gratification Theory and Flow Theory concludes that what cause MMOG addiction is flow experience not social interaction. On the other hand, the cause of MUD addiction is social interaction. After proposing the propositions of MUD and MMOG addiction causes, this study provides possible impacts of such addictions based on the reasoning between the two theories and two online game addictions.

Strategies for improving the writing process and implications for design of support tools

This article advances our understanding of the motivational sources for consumer involvement in online joint innovation. The `free' or `open-source' software movement is the largest socio-technical network and most visible empirical evidence of this new phenomenon. The paper promotes a behavioral view of involvement and offers a conceptualization and empirical evidence of the relationship between cognitive-affective, socially-based and behavioral involvement in online joint production. An Internet survey with 1486 contributors to open-source software revealed that the extent of behavioral involvement is strongly related to the structure and strength of relationships between different motivations. The relationship between concern for self and concern for others especially distinguishes the level of contribution to online projects.

Global warming, and the climate change it induces, is an urgent global issue. One remedy to this problem, and the focus of this paper, is to motivate sustainable energy usage behaviors by people. One approach is the development of technologies that provide real-time, continuous feedback of energy usage. However, there is one problem- most technologies use a “one-size-fits-all ” solution, providing the same feedback to differently motivated individuals at different stages of readiness, willingness and ableness to change. In this paper, we synthesize a wide range of motivational psychology literature to develop a motivational framework based on the Transtheoretical (aka Stages of Behavior Change) Model. For each stage, we state the motivational goal(s), and recommendation(s) for how technologies can reach these goals. Each goal and recommendation is supported by a rationale based on motivational literature. Each recommendation is supported by a simple textual example illustrating one way to apply the recommendation. Author Keywords Sustainability, feedback, motivational theory, design.