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Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are defined as new infrastructures that combine people, roads and vehicles over the basis of modern embedded systems with enhanced digital connectivity. ITS is fast becoming a reality, favored in their development by the use of the internet. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of road‐traffic management systems, using the internet as the communication link.

A literature review is presented to give a background in the progressive role that ITS and road safety and control applications play in society. The combination of internet and the ITS architecture is covered, and an electronic prototype providing web services for road‐traffic management is designed as an example. The scope of road traffic security research is extensive, and the use of artificial vision systems in road‐traffic analysis (technology which is on the basis of the developed prototype) is also discussed. The hardware and software characteristics of the prototype are defined.

The paper provides new insights into the use of the internet for road‐traffic management applications.

The research is limited to one particular road‐traffic management system. Results could be extended if more real equipments were analyzed. Also, end‐users' perception and their acceptance of the new technology could be examined using an information system theory like the technology acceptance model.

The paper shows the utility of the internet in the development of novel ITS.

A large variety of online communities have emerged during the last years as a result of the challenges faced by both the business and scientific worlds. This trend has also been promoted by the development of internet and new Web 2.0 technologies. In this context, this paper is focused on the determinants of success of online communities. But, as a difference from other studies, these determinants are analyzed from the social network analysis perspective. Several constructs related to the community organization as a social network are proposed and their interrelations are hypothesized in a general research framework. The obtained results test the proposed model providing the most relevant antecedents of the project success.

A case study based on Linux ports to non‐conventional processor and environments is used to test the proposed model. Structural equation modeling analysis is used to validate the structural proposed model.

The main antecedents of online communities' success, quantifying the strength of the relation through the standardized path coefficients.

The research is limited to a particular set of online communities engaged with the development of the non‐conventional Linux ports. However, they constitute a representative set of communities in the field of the open source projects (OSS) development, which are typically developed using a community of support.

This paper fulfils the main antecedents causing the successful development of Internet virtual communities. Instead of using sources of data coming from users' surveys, this study employs community interactions as a source of data. Results have important implications over the development of online communities, like software business models based on virtual communities and open source software.

Web sites are typically designed attending to a variety of criteria. However, web site structure determines browsing behavior and way‐finding results. The aim of this study is to identify the main profiles of web sites' organizational structure by modeling them as graphs and considering several social network analysis features.

A case study based on 80 institutional Spanish universities' web sites has been used for this purpose. For each root domain, two different networks have been considered: the first is the domain network, and the second is the page network. In both cases, several indicators related to social network analysis have been evaluated to characterize the web site structure. Factor analysis provides the statistical methodology to adequately extract the main web site profiles in terms of their internal structure.

This paper allows the categorization of web site design styles and provides general guidelines to assist designers to better identify areas for creating and improving institutional web sites. The findings of this study offer practical implications to web site designers for creating and maintaining an effective web presence, and for improving usability.

The research is limited to 80 institutional Spanish universities' web sites. Other institutional university web sites from different countries can be analyzed, and the conclusions could be compared or enlarged.

This paper highlights the importance of the internal web sites structure, and their implications on usability and way‐finding results. As a difference to previous research, the paper is focused on the comparison of internal structure of institutional web sites, rather than analyzing the web as a whole or the interrelations among web sites.