Abstract
It is generally considered that a key component of electronic government in the future will be electronic voting, as a means of facilitating the participation of citizens in elections and public debates. However, a long path has to be pursued before electronic voting, particularly if based on Internet, is accepted as a reliable system alternative to conventional methods. In this paper, we propose a new and simple platform, based on open software, which can be used primarily in small to medium sized communities, as a means to build confidence and experience for future larger elections. We try to provide adequate answers to multiple requirements, such as accuracy, democracy, privacy, verifiability and mobility. This can be done by establishing a distributed system which supports the different roles of a voting system and by using cryptography techniques in the interactions between these components.

Abstract
Several developments have been observed recently in areas such as Web development, social networks, interface design, recommendation systems and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The integration of these developments can provide a superior experience, greater than the sum of their individual contributions, regarding user satisfaction. This paper proposes an integration of all these innovations in e-tourism, more specifically by the development of a Web based geographic information platform adaptable to any tourist region. As a case study, we also show how this platform was adapted to the Douro region, in Portugal. The Web platform developed as a proof of concept combines geospatial information from diverse and heterogeneous data sources, encompassing events, news, routes and points of interest (POI). This platform provides also a recommendation engine and features the possibility that users can contribute with content as part of the community, thus emerging a mini social network. © 2011 AISTI.