The unprecedented advances in hardware and software technologies, computer communications, networking technologies and protocols, the Internet, parallel, distributed and mobile computing are allowing us to enhance the way we go about our everyday business. Consequently, demand imposed by these new and innovative applications of computers and information technologies continues to challenge researchers to seek innovative solutions.
   This Special Issue presents selected papers from the IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT 2008) held on December 25-27, 2008 at Khulna University of Engineering and Technology in Bangladesh. Before introducing the synopsis of the papers, a brief introduction to the history of ICCIT is in order. ICCIT 2008 was the eleventh annual conference in the series, the first one was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1998. Since then the conference has grown to one of the largest conferences in the South Asian region, focusing on computer technologies, IT and relevant areas, with participation of academics and researchers from many countries. A double blind review process is followed whereby each paper submitted to the conference is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers of high international standing. The acceptance rate of papers in recent years has been less than 30%, indicative of the quality of work the papers need to demonstrate to be accepted for presentation at the conference. The proceedings of ICCIT 2008 were included in IEEExplore.
   In 2008, a total of 538 full papers were submitted to the conference of which 158 were accepted for the conference after reviews conducted by an international program committee comprising 77 members from 12 countries with assistance from 83 reviewers. Form these 158 only 21 highly ranked papers were invited for this Special Issue. The authors were invited to enhance their papers significantly and submit the same for review. Of those only nine papers survived the review process and have been selected for inclusion in this Special Issue. The authors of these papers represent academic and/or research institutions from Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, and United Kingdom. These nine papers cover four domains of computing namely, application-driven algorithms, classification, text compression, and electrical/digital systems.
   The first paper by S.I. Ahmed, M.A. Islam, and M. Hasan presents algorithms for efficiently cutting a cornered convex polygon out of a circle. The problem of cutting small polygonal objects efficiently out of larger planar objects arises in many applications, such as metal sheet cutting, furniture manufacturing, ceramic industries, ornaments, and leather industries. One of these algorithms has been shown to have better running time and the other better approximation ratio compared to the known algorithms. The next paper by A.M. Rahman, S.S. Giasuddin, and R.M. Rahman presents heuristic based strategies that generate efficient academic routines and exam timetables for an educational institution that follows open credit system. The algorithm developed, based on decision tree and sequential search techniques, shows promising simulation results to satisfy both student and teacher preferences. To provide improved detection of network intrusion, a self adaptive Bayesian algorithm is presented by D.M. Farid and M.Z. Rahman in the last application-driven paper. The technique proposed in this paper for alert classification is aimed at reducing false positives in intrusion detection.  
....