This paper describes an instrument designed to distinguish frozen from thawed land surfaces from an Earth satellite by bouncing signals back to Earth from deployable mesh antennas.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for describing the diffusion of the Internet in a country. It incorporates insights gained from in-depth studies of about 25 countries undertaken since 1997. The framework characterizes diffusion using six dimensions, defining them in detail, and examines how the six dimensions relate to underlying bodies of theory from the national systems of innovation and diffusion of innovations approaches. It addresses how to apply the framework in practice, highlighting Internet diffusion determinants. This framework is useful for business stakeholders wanting to make use of and invest in the Internet, for policy makers debating how to positively (or negatively) influence its use and development, and for researchers studying the large-scale diffusion of complex, interrelated technologies.

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Experience with information technology (IT) implementation in the local administrations of less developed countries (LDCs) has been largely disappointing. Conventional wisdom suggests that such implementation efforts are usually inappropriate to the information-poor environments ofmany LDCs. This study describes the Governorates Project in Egypt, which seems to have been an encouraging exception to such '~visdom," The project, which was initiated in 1987 by the Egyptian Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), represented a significant administrative and technological innovation because it sought to implement an IDSC in each of the 27 govemorates of Egypt, The purpose of each govemorate IDSC was to provide computerbased information and decision support to the govemor and other local administrators. Based on our findings, three stages of the project are identified-implementation, evaluation, and transformation of the innovation; Three theoretical perspectives derived from past research, L e., functional, political/symbolic, and social information processing, were used to explain the project outcomes, such as the governors' perceptions and behaviors conceming their IDSCs. Results suggest that the symbolic/political and social information processing perspectives had considerable power in explaining the outcomes during implementation, whereas the functional perspective was particularly effective in explaining the outcomes during evaluation and transformation. The theoretical framework and findings suggest considerable potential for understanding IT implementations in both business and administrative settings.