Recursos

Informal caregivers take care of someone (usually a close family member) who suffers from a chronic illness. In this stressful situation, caregivers have a high risk of depression or loneliness, because their social network is weakened. Most existing proposals focus on helping caregivers fulfill caregiving tasks, instead of providing support for their mental wellbeing (e.g. identifying early stages of social isolation). We present a prototype ambient interface, called EmoTree, that makes communication frequency tangible by using a metaphor of a tree, and investigate user perception and motivation of use. People found Emotree to be interesting and enjoyable (78%), and useful (54%) unless the user does not suffer some type of problem (69%). Our preliminary results show the interface is easy to use and has an adequate representation of communication frequency. Our next step will make a second assessment with informal caregivers in their real context.

Nowadays, business corporations are immersed in a competitive world, in which there is current need to revise and renovate traditional business models. Information technologies offer the possibi- lity of defining new business strategies through the use of technology innovation and all of its recent breakthroughs. The virtualization of IT recourses shelters the creation of an IT platform composed of replicates of actual computers machines built on a software base. The objective of this article is to present a panoramic view of the main features, types, uses, and current trends offered by the advantages of this technology.