In recent years, the growing number of devices connected to the internet has increased significantly. These devices can interact with the external environment and with human beings through a wide range of sensors that, perceiving reality through the digitization of some parameters of interest, can provide an enormous amount of data. All this data is then shared on the network with other devices and with different applications and infrastructures. This dynamic and ever-changing world underlies the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. To date, countless applications based on IoT have been developed; think of Smart Cities, smart roads, and smart industries. This article analyzes the current architectures, technologies, protocols, and applications that characterize the paradigm.

In the Big Data era, every sector has adapted to technological development to service the vast amount of information available. In this way, each field has benefited from technological improvements over the years. The cultural and artistic field was no exception, and several studies contributed to the aim of the interaction between human beings and artistic-cultural heritage. In this scenario, systems able to analyze the current situation and recommend the right services play a crucial role. In particular, in the Recommender Systems field, Context-Awareness helps to improve the recommendations provided. This article aims to present a general overview of the introduction of Context analysis techniques in Recommender Systems and discuss some challenging applications to the Cultural Heritage field.

In the world of Big Data, a tool capable of filtering data and providing choice support is crucial. Recommender Systems have this aim. These have evolved further through the use of information that would improve the ability to suggest. Among the possible exploited information, the context is widely used in literature and leads to the definition of the Context-Aware Recommender System. This paper proposes a Context-Aware Recommender System based on the concept of embedded context. This technique has been tested on different datasets to evaluate its accuracy. In particular, the use of multiple datasets allows a deep analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed approach. The numerical results obtained are promising.