Resumen
Open communication standards are making possible the virtual equivalent of real city life, enabling delivery of such essential services as 911 emergency calls, traffic and health alerts, and market and medical information in real or near real time. This article explores the underlying technology frameworks and open standards needed to build the foundations for these and other information cities. An information city is a large Internet-based site offering a range of online services, including access to social environments, community services, municipal information and e-commerce to its infohabitants. Its boundaries are potentially unlimited, scaling as far as the available computation and storage capacity allows in order to manage huge volumes of content and millions of users simultaneously. Capturing user profiles and preferences is a key requirement for collaborative environments in information cities. Service-oriented computing paradigms will provide the open framework needed for the entities in physical cities to participate in and consume the services offered by their counterpart information cities.