bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Buongiorno! MyAlert
Authors: de Haro Guillermo , García José María
Published: May 2011

In 1999 Jorge Mata, vice president of Broadvision and former expert in interactive solutions for Banco Santander and McKinsey, decided to leave everything to create MyAlert. The company was born on the basis of offering the same Internet services on the new and growing mobile devices. With a strong financial capitalization after raising more than 50 million euros during the bubble burst, in 4 years the company figures were in the black, and the journey had led to the creation of the European sector of mobile data services market and the European leader in that sector. As Charles Darwin emphasized, if a being wants to survive in a shifting environment, it must evolve at least as fast as the medium itself: Buorngiorno! MyAlert ruled the change.
Economics of Immediate Gratification in Mobile Commerce
Authors: Tomak Kerem
Published: May 2011

University of Texas at Austin, USA
An Empirical Examination of Customer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising
Authors: Lee Su-Fang , Tsai Yuan-Cheng , Jih Wen-Jang (Kenny)
Published: May 2011

Overseas Chinese Institute of Technology, Taiwan; Da-Yeh University, Taiwan; Middle Tennessee State University, USA
Factors Influencing Segmentation and Demographics of Mobile-Customers
Authors: Ranft Anne-Marie
Published: May 2011

University of Technology, Australia
Special Features of Mobile Advertising and Their Utilization
Authors: Salo Jari , Tähtinen Jaana
Published: May 2011

Mobile advertising, or m-advertising, refers to ads sent to and presented on mobile devices such as cellular phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and other handheld devices.1 M-advertising can be seen as a part of m-commerce (e.g., Mennecke & Strader, 2003), which is seen as radically different from traditional commerce (e.g., Choi, Stahl, & Whinston, 1997). Thus, it can be argued that m-advertising is also different. M-advertising enables the advertiser not only to send unique, personalized, and customized ads (Turban, King, Lee, Warkentin, & Chung, 2002), but also to engage consumers in discussions and transactions with the advertiser. Any retailer can make use of m-advertising. Thus this study focuses on the brick-and-mortar retailers’ use of m-advertising in Finland. In Finland, mobile phone subscriptions reached 84% of the population at the end of the year 2002 (Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland, 2003), and more than 30% of the users under 35 years and over 20% of all users have received m-advertising in the form of SMS (www.opas.net/suora/mob%20markk%20nous.htm). However, there are no commercial solutions available for the MMS type of m-advertising. Therefore, the empirical setting of this study is a service system SmartRotuaari, which is a part of a research project (see Ojala et al., 2003; www.rotuaari.net) offering the retailers an infrastructure and a service system for context-dependent m-advertising in the city of Oulu in Northern Finland. This study focuses on permission-based m-advertising. In Finland, that is the only form of m-advertising that is legal. Firstly, we will discuss the features of m-advertising that make it unique. Secondly, we will present some empirical results from the SmartRotuaari case. Based on the recognized features, we study which of them retailers utilized in their m-ads, as well as those remaining unused. The aim is to find out how well the uniqueness of m-advertising was portrayed in the m-ads. The study concludes by suggesting how retailers could improve the use of m-advertising in order to fully harness its power.
Mobile Business Applications
Authors: Lee Cheon-Pyo
Published: May 2011

As an increasing number of organizations and individuals are dependent on mobile technologies to perform their tasks, various mobile applications have been rapidly introduced and used in a number of areas such as communications, financial management, information retrieval, and entertainment. Mobile applications were initially very basic and simple, but the introduction of higher bandwidth capability and the rapid diffusion of Internet-compatible phones, along with the innovations in the mobile technologies, allow for richer and more efficient applications. Over the years, mobile applications have primarily been developed in consumer-oriented areas where products such as e-mail, games, and music have led the market (Gebauer & Shaw, 2004). According to the ARC group, mobile entertainment service will generate $27 billion globally by 2008 with 2.5 billion users (Smith, 2004). Even though mobile business (m-business) applications have been slow to catch on mobile applications for consumers and are still waiting for larger-scale usage, m-business application areas have received enormous attention and have rapidly grown. As entertainment has been a significant driver of consumer-oriented mobile applications, applications such as delivery, construction, maintenance, and sales of mobile business have been drivers of m-business applications (Funk, 2003). By fall of 2003, Microsoft mobile solutions partners had registered more than 11,000 applications including e-mail, calendars and contacts, sales force automation, customer relationship management, and filed force automation (Smith, 2004). However, in spite of their huge potential and benefits, the adoption of m-business applications appears much slower than anticipated due to numerous technical and managerial problems.
Exploring Mobile Service Business Opportunities from a Customer-Centric Perspective
Authors: Pura Minna , Heinonen Kristina
Published: May 2011

Mobile services have evolved into an important business area and many companies in various industries are offering mobile services. However, formal classifications or user-centric categorizations of mobile services are still scarce. This chapter develops a conceptual classification for mobile services that illustrates the characteristics of mobile services and gives indications on how to describe mobile business opportunities and categorize services from a customer-centric perspective. The classification scheme, grounded in previous research, is based on the type of consumption, context, social setting, and customer relationship with the service provider. The explorative classification is illustrated with two case studies of existing mobile services in the European market. The theoretical contribution to service management research involves how to describe mobile services from a customer perspective. Managerially, the classification helps marketers, service developers, and stakeholders to evaluate, differentiate, group, and market mobile service offerings more effectively.
Security Issues Concerning Mobile Commerce
Authors: Pierre Samuel
Published: May 2011

Electronic commerce or e-commerce can be briefly defined as a financial transaction or commercial information between two parties based on data transmitted over communication networks (Soriano & Ponce, 2002). It relies upon users’ interventions to initiate a transaction and select the main steps of the process. Users’ actions stem from a succession of virtual decisions. Indeed, when shopping with a virtual catalog, customers can select products which meet their needs, tastes, and respect their price range. Such decisions consistently require the users’ input, thus costing them both time and money. These costs are even more exorbitant when a search is launched for an order that includes a variety of products from different sources which have different characteristics (price range, delivery dates, etc.). When transactions involve users who are moving or take place over mobile networks, this is referred to as mobile electronic commerce, a specific type of e-commerce. Mobile electronic commerce (or m-commerce) refers to an ability to carry out wireless commercial transactions using mobile applications within mobile devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). It is generally defined as the set of transactions or processes which can be carried out over a wireless mobile network. According to this definition, m-commerce constitutes a subset of all electronic commercial transactions (electronic commerce or e-commerce) from business to consumer (B2C) or business to business (B2B). Thus, short personal messages such as those from SMS (short messaging system) sent between two individuals do not fall into the category of m-commerce, whereas messages from a service provider to a salesperson or a consumer, or vice versa, do fit this very definition. M-commerce appears as an emerging manifestation of Internet electronic commerce which meshes together concepts such as the Internet, mobile computing, and wireless telecommunications in order to provide an array of sophisticated services (m-services) to mobile users (Varshney, Vetter, & Kalakota, 2000; Veijalainen, Terziyan, & Tirri, 2003). E-commerce includes an initial step where consumers search for a product they wish to purchase by virtually visiting several merchants. Once the product is found, negotiations can take place between the customer and the merchant (electronic negotiation or e-negotiation) (Paurobally, Turner, & Jennings, 2003). If an agreement is reached, the next step is the payment phase. At each step of the process, some problems arise, such as transaction security, confidence in the payment protocol, bandwidth limitations, quality of service, shipping delays, and so forth (Younas, Chao, & Anane, 2003; Zhang, Yuan, & Archer, 2002). The peak withdrawal periods have always presented a major challenge for certain types of distributed applications. The advent of m-commerce further highlights this problem. Indeed, in spite of rather optimistic predictions, m-commerce is plagued by several handicaps which hinder its commercial development, security being the main one.
Mobile Phone Customer Type Discrimination via Stochastic Gradient Boosting
Authors: Steinberg Dan , Golovnya Mikhaylo , Cardell Nicholas Scott
Published: May 2011

Mobile phone customers face many choices regarding handset hardware, add-on services, and features to subscribe to from their service providers. Mobile phone companies are now increasingly interested in the drivers of migration to third generation (3G) hardware and services. Using real world data provided to the 10th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2006 Data Mining Competition we explore the effectiveness of Friedman’s stochastic gradient boosting (Multiple Additive Regression Trees [MART]) for the rapid development of a high performance predictive model.
Location-Aware Query Resolution for Location-Based Mobile Commerce
Authors: Wyse James E.
Published: May 2011

Location-based mobile commerce incorporates location-aware technologies, wire-free connectivity, and locationalized Web-based services to support the processing of location-referent transactions. In order to provide usable transaction processing services to mobile consumers, location-referent transactions require timely resolution of queries bearing transaction-related locational criteria. This research evaluates Wyse’s location-aware method of resolving these queries. Results obtained in simulated mobile commerce circumstances (1) reveal the query resolution behavior of the location-aware method, (2) confirm the method’s potential to improve the timeliness of transactional support provided to mobile consumers, and (3) identify the method-related adjustments required to maintain optimal levels of query resolution performance. The article also proposes and provides a preliminary evaluation of a heuristic that may be used in efficiently determining the method-related adjustments needed in order to maximize query resolution performance.
Data Broadcasting in a Mobile Environment
Authors: Hurson A. R. , Jiao Y.
Published: May 2011

The advances in mobile devices and wireless communication techniques have enabled anywhere, anytime data access. Data being accessed can be categorized into three classes: private data, shared data, and public data. Private and shared data are usually accessed through on-demandbased approaches, while public data can be most effectively disseminated using broadcasting. In the mobile computing environment, the characteristics of mobile devices and limitations of wireless communication technology pose challenges on broadcasting strategy as well as data-retrieval method designs. Major research issues include indexing scheme, broadcasting over single and parallel channels, data distribution and replication strategy, conflict resolution, and data retrieval method. In this chapter, we investigate solutions proposed for these issues. High performance and low power consumption are the two main objectives of the proposed schemes. Comprehensive simulation results are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of each solution and compare different approaches.
Identifying E-Business Options
Authors: Boonstra Albert , de Brock Bert
Published: May 2011

The past few years, many organizations have been using the Internet in quite arbitrary and experimental ways. This phase, which can be considered as a period of learning and experimentation, has created a need for a more systematic approach to the identification, the ordering and the assessment of e-business options. It is the objective of this paper to address this need by presenting a methodology that aims at supporting management in using alternative e-business applications in the first stage of the decision-making process. Figure 1 shows how a systematic decision-making process can be organized by using e-business options. The steps are based on Simon’s intelligence, design, and choice trichotomy (Simon, 1960). First, alternative e-business options have to be identified and ordered. Then the possible options have to be assessed and selected. After this stage the selected opportunities have to be specified and designed. Next, implementation, operation, maintenance, and evaluation may follow. In Figure 1 this is called the “formal life cycle”. We will apply the word “e-business option” referring to the possibility to use an electronic network for a business purpose. An e-business opportunity is defined here as an assessed and selected e-business option. In practice, different intermediate feedback activities, interrupts, delays and adjustments are often necessary to reconsider earlier steps (Mintzberg, Raisinghani, & Théorêt, 1976). This is—among other reasons—because decision-making processes of this kind take place in dynamic environments and decisions are made in political contexts (Pettigrew, 2002). Moreover, participants in decision-making processes are often lacking the necessary information to make well-considered decisions right from the start (Miller, Hickson, & Wilson, 1996). In Figure 1 these activities are called “intermediate feedback”.
The Evolution of ERP and its Relationship with E-Business
Authors: Alwabel S. A. , Zairi M. , Gunasekaran A.
Published: May 2011

Every technical invention is initially designed and eventually applied to solve a real-world problem. The evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is no exception. Owing to its well-organised success to effectively integrate isolated multiple
The Role of Government in E-Business Adoption
Authors: Roberts Barbara , Toleman Mark
Published: May 2011

An analysis of the role of government in e-business adoption is provided in this chapter, with empirical evidence from Australia included. It is shown that government influence is multifaceted. Governments champion e-business adoption for national economic gain; they provide the physical network on which much of e-business depends and increasingly provide e-government services to improve regulation and compliance effectiveness. E-government in particular can act as a strong driver of organisational adoption for some types of e-business processes. Implications for theory from a DOI perspective are included. The authors hope that further research by IS professionals will guide future e-business project directions by improving the understanding of government’s role in e-business adoption in practice, which in turn will improve theoretical understanding of how the benefits can best be maximized.
A Knowledge Management Approach to Improving E-Business Collaboration
Authors: Cox Sharon , Perkins John
Published: May 2011

Information and communication technology (ICT) helps to remove barriers and improve mechanisms that support e-business. E-business involves collaborative systems that enable trading partners to work together as members of communities of practice. This article argues that the ICT components of e-business are necessary to support communication but in themselves are often insufficient as enablers of collaboration. A knowledge management orientation is taken to viewing the dyad between human ability, organisational need, and the extent to which electronic information systems can mediate between them. Concepts from the social practice literature are identified that may contribute to addressing the gap between generic technology and situated business applications, which may inform human resource strategy.
The Evolving Web Presence of SMEs
Authors: Mendo Fernando Alonso , Fitzgerald Guy
Published: May 2011

This chapter reviews current approaches to the study of the progression of small- and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in their use of Internet technologies. It is argued that a research framework that combines three different dimensions of organisational change (process, content, and drivers) offers an alternative approach to e-commerce stage models in understanding the evolution of SMEs Web sites over time. Furthermore, a study of 192 Web sites and their evolution over ten moths is described to demonstrate the relevance and applicability of the dimensions of the framework. The study describes the different approaches (monitoring, content analysis, and telephone interviews) and the characteristics of changes on these Web sites. The proposed framework is argued to be useful to academics, providing multiple perspectives enabling more insightful study of SMEs e-business adoption and progression, and avoiding breakdown, a priori theory, for example, stage models. The framework is also argued to be useful for SME managers seeking to make the most of their limited resources in this context.
Challenges for Deploying Web Services-Based E-Business Systems in SMEs
Authors: Bose Ranjit , Sugumaran Vijayan
Published: May 2011

E-business initiative in many companies had started in the 1990s. These companies have recently begun to explore the use of Web Services (WS) technologies within their e-business context, since they provide an attractive, language-neutral, environment-neutral programming model that accelerates application development and integration inside and outside the enterprise. Despite these advantages, companies are slow to deploy WS because it requires a considerable shift in their application development process. While a few studies have reported on some of the reasons for this wait-and-see approach, a thorough and systematic investigation of the challenges from the stakeholders’ — providers, consumers, and standards organizations — perspective is needed. This study addresses that and provides a framework for studying the factors that impact the deployment and use of WS. The framework is used to analyze small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as they play a vital role in generating employment opportunity and turnover within many major economies globally.
Conflicts, Compromises, and Political Decisions
Authors: Smolander Kari , Rossi Matti
Published: May 2011

This article describes the architecture development process in an international ICT company, which is building a comprehensive e-business system for its customers. The implementation includes the integration of data and legacy systems from independent business units and the construction of a uniform Web-based customer interface. We followed the early process of architecture analysis and definition over a year. The research focuses on the creation of e-business architecture and observes that instead of guided by a prescribed method, the architecture emerges through somewhat non-deliberate actions obliged by the situation and its constraints, conflicts, compromises, and political decisions. The interview-based qualitative data is analyzed using grounded theory and a coherent story explaining the situation and its forces is extracted. Conclusions are drawn from the observations and possibilities and weaknesses of the support that UML and RUP provide for the process are pointed out.
Collaborative Real-Time Information Services via Portals
Authors: Dai Wei
Published: May 2011

The increased use of online services in the commercial world has produced considerable impact on traditional technologies. Traditional information technologies were developed in an era where use of Internet technologies was not widespread. They have a long history and are often based on mature and stable technologies, or practices such as user interface design, artifi- cial intelligence techniques, and so forth. In the era of e-business, business operations are often conducted in conjunction with business alliances and partners through networked activities. Internet (or Web-based) technologies are fulfilling an enabling role to meet the communication and collaboration requirements of e-business. In this article, we share our experiences in how traditional information technologies are coupled with Webbased technologies to gain much-needed leverage in offering e-business solutions. Portals, as the major communication media for Web users, offer opportunities for collaboration using multiple technologies. They also serve as mechanisms for integrating a variety of online services supported by traditional applications. In this article we will discuss the role of portals in application integration for online collaborative service delivery. Particular emphasis will be given to the marrying of the modern roles of portals in e-business with those roles where portals fulfil the traditional roles of front-end technologies. The article demonstrates its vision through a portal-based application integration solution framework associated with a typical application scenario. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using portals in application integration by employing an experimental framework implemented in the PHOENIX research project at Victoria University (http://www.staff.vu.edu. au/PHOENIX/phoenix/index1.htm).
Web Services vs. ebXML
Authors: Yan Yuhong , Klein Matthias
Published: May 2011

Web services and ebXML are modern integration technologies that represent the latest developments in the line of middleware technologies and business- related integration paradigms, respectively. In this chapter, we discuss relevant aspects of the two technologies and compare their capabilities from an e-business point of view.
E-Business for SME Development
Authors: Moreau Éliane M.F. , Raymond Louis , Vermot-Desroches Bernard
Published: May 2011

In recent years, information communication technologies (ICT) have become accessible throughout the world, and appear to overcome both distance and time (Cairncross, 1997). ICT affects not only individual citizens, but also companies of all sizes and across all sectors. Of all the benefits of ICT use, the most important appears to be the improvement of competitive capacity by removing geographical and time barriers. SMEs that use ICT hope to increase their market share, achieve growth and overtake their competitors. But does better competitive capacity also have an impact on local and regional development (LRD)? And does LRD have an impact on the economy of a country and the limit of a nation? The ICT/regional development challenge is a sizeable one, since the two elements evolve at very different speeds-ICT evolves quickly, while regional development is achieved slowly. Regional development at both the economic and social levels extends over a given area, within a well-identified space. The people living within the region have shared interests, goals and needs. They share, cooperate and collaborate between themselves and with the region’s stakeholders and businesses. The principal concepts underlying their actions are autonomy, partnership, solidarity, a sense of belonging, inter-personal and intercompany networks, creativity, innovation and so on. Regions, like businesses, must live with competitors both near and far. If we look at all these elements, ICT in general and e-business in particular1may well be powerful factors in local and regional development, playing an innovative role in an economic sector where both time and distance have been redefined. E-business can also generate new economic activities, new products and new services. It constitutes a vital part of the new economy, which is composed of high technology, multimedia and dot.com firms. Throughout the industrialized world, a number of ICT and e-business initiatives have been proposed to support and accelerate LRD (EuroCom, 2002). For example, some governments have proposed projects that will enable them to follow the pack, while in other countries projects have emerged from the bottom up, through regional and local economic portals or electronic markets.
Case Study
Authors: Chung Sam , Bylin Zachary , Davalos Sergio
Published: May 2011

The primary objective of this case study is to discuss a retail business information system illustrating an e-business integration example among a biometric attendance system, a surveillance system, and a point-of-sale system. Using a service-oriented architecture allows businesses to build on top of legacy applications or construct new applications in order to take advantage of the power of Web services. Over the past years, Web services have finally developed enough to allow such basic architectures to be built. Each of the components in the system will be designed and developed using a service-oriented architecture that clearly illustrates how such cutting-edge systems can be put together. By designing these components in such a fashion, this example will focus on applying service-oriented development and integration techniques to the retail sector. The result of this project will be an integrated system that can be used by businesses everywhere to learn how their organizations can benefit from serviceoriented architecture. Also, the application of the service-oriented development and integration to systems that were previously stand-alone and heterogeneous is discussed. All previous experiences in object-oriented architectures and design methodology are naturally streamlined with the service-oriented architecture, supporting the loose coupling of software components.
Intelirel's Transition to E-Business
Authors: Kshetri Nir , Jayadev Satya
Published: May 2011

Intelirel is a U.S.-based multinational corporation that produces a variety of items with apparel as one of the business divisions. This case provides an overview of Intelirel’s transition to electronic business (e-business) of its apparel division. The company introduced the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technologies in the mid-1980s. Before starting the implementation of e-business technologies in the late-1990s, the company conducted extensive surveys to assess the attractiveness and convertibility of its various market segments. The analysis of the surveys indicated that a strategic imperative for the company is to optimally combine EDI and the Internet so as to reap the benefits of both technologies.
An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Trust and Power in Shaping the Use of Electronic Markets
Authors: Bunduchi Raluca
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses the role that social relational characteristics, such as trust and power, play in shaping the use of a particular type of e-business application—electronic markets (EM)—to support exchange relationships with suppliers that exhibit predominantly transactional characteristics. The analysis is based on a case study of an EM in the electricity sector. The study finds that the EM is used to take advantage of a superior power position, in order to achieve cost reductions, breeding mistrust and eroding the suppliers’ bargaining power. The findings support the argument that social relational characteristics, such as trust and power, are significant factors in shaping the use of EM in transactional-oriented relationships.
Social Implications of E-Mentoring
Authors: Godshalk Veronica M.
Published: May 2011

E-mentoring, also known as online mentoring or virtual mentoring, is changing the way that traditional mentor and protégé dyad members interact with each other. Mentoring has been widely known for its ability to enhance the career development, and to provide psychosocial support, for more junior organizational members. Through the use of computer-mediated communication technology, e-mentoring may allow individuals to bridge geographic and time differences. However, there is still much we do not know about e-mentoring and its social effects. This chapter focuses on whether or not computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology will allow for true mentoring relationships to develop, as well as what personal characteristics may be necessary to grow these virtual relationships. A model and proposition for future research are offered.
From ASP to Web Services
Authors: Guah Matthew W. , Currie Wendy L.
Published: May 2011

Value creation from e-business for customers in healthcare is an important topic in academic and practitioner circles. This chapter reports the findings from a two-year research study, which found that disappointing results from the muchhyped application service provider (ASP) business model is currently being replaced by perceived new opportunities from Web services. Yet past failings from ASP do not guarantee future success with Web services models, particularly as evidence shows that accruing value-added benefits from e-business initiatives is often fraught with difficulty. Healthcare is no exception, and is likely to pose more problems given the complexity of the organizational structures, processes, procedures, and activities within this vertical sector. This research study calls for a more rigorous approach in identifying and evaluating key performance areas and indicators from new e-business initiatives involving emerging technologies and platforms such as Web services. Yet the measures and metrics used for healthcare may differ from those adopted in other sectors. Healthcare professionals will therefore need to develop context specific key performance areas (KPAs) and KPIs, and caution against accepting at “face value” the value proposition devised by Web service providers.
A Prototype E-Business Model to Create a Competitive Advantage in SMEs
Authors: Pavic S. , Simpson M. , Koh S. C. Lenny
Published: May 2011

This study explores new ways for SMEs to create a competitive advantage through the use of e-business. It examines the level of ICT use in SMEs and identifies the drivers and barriers which owners/managers face in adopting e-business. Furthermore, it explores the degree of awareness amongst SMEs of the opportunities available to them for developing their employees, their business strategies, and their attitudes toward the range of initiatives and options, on the use of e-business. Industry behaviour and organisational culture in relation to the creation of competitive advantage through e-business also are explored. Case studies and literature review are used to collect information from and about SMEs in the UK. The results of these are employed to propose a prototype business model, named CATE-b – “Competitive Advantage Through e-business.”
Doing International Business Online for the Small and Medium Enterprise
Authors: Edwards Sam
Published: May 2011

This chapter addresses the primary difficulties that small and medium enterprises face when doing business online with international partners. The guidance provided in this chapter is primarily for owners of small and medium enterprises rather than legal for professionals. The two main problems inhibiting online transactions are a lack of trust between the parties and the risk inherent in the exchange. This chapter analyzes ways to address these problems. Many of the practical suggestions in this chapter are inspired not by million dollar deals but by playground transactions between children. Often the simple solutions are the best ones.
Online Information Privacy and Its Implications for E-Entrepreneurship and E-Business Ethics
Authors: Gould Carmen , Zhao Fang
Published: May 2011

This chapter reports the results of a national survey which investigated Australian Internet users’ attitudes and behaviours toward online information privacy using a typology that combines specific demographic and attitudinal measurements with behavioural data. The chapter contains a comprehensive examination of the internal, external/ environmental, and behavioural dimensions of information privacy, incorporating a profile of each of the typologies’ categories along with a general profile of total respondents. The implications of the findings for e-entrepreneurship and e-business ethics also are discussed.
IPR Protection for Digital Media Distribution
Authors: Vassiliadis Bill , Fotopoulos Vassilis
Published: May 2011

Copyright protection is becoming an important issue for organizations that create, use, and distribute digital content through e-commerce channels. As online corruption increases, new technical and business requirements are posed for protecting intellectual property rights such as watermarking, use of metadata, self-protection, and self-authentication. This work is a review of the most important of these methods and analyzes their potential use in digital rights management systems. We focus especially on watermarking and argue that it has a true potential in e-business because it is possible to embed and detect multiple watermarks to a single digital artifact without decreasing its quality. In conjunction with parallel linking of content to metadata, there is true potential for real life copyright-protection systems.
A Basis for the Semantic Web and E-Business
Authors: Li Changqing , Ling Tok Wang
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces how to effectively organize ontology languages and ontologies and how to efficiently process semantic information based on ontologies. In this chapter we propose the hierarchies to organize ontology languages and ontologies. Based on the hierarchy of ontology languages, the ontology designers need not bear in mind which ontology language the primitives exactly come from, also we can automatically and seamlessly use the ontologies defined with different ontology languages in an integrated environment. Based on the hierarchy of ontologies, the conflicts in different ontologies are resolved, thus the semantics in different ontologies are clear without ambiguities. Also, these semanticclear ontologies can be used to efficiently process the semantic information in Semantic Web and e-business.
Patterns for Designing Agent-Based E-Business Systems
Authors: Weiss Michael
Published: May 2011

Agents are rapidly emerging as a new paradigm for developing software applications. They are being used in an increasing variety of applications, ranging from relatively small systems such as assistants to large, open, mission-critical systems like electronic marketplaces. One of the most promising areas of applications for agent technology is e-business. In this chapter, we describe a group of architectural patterns for agent-based e-business systems. These patterns relate to front-end e-business activities that involve interaction with the user, and delegation of user tasks to agents. Patterns capture well-proven, common solutions, and guide developers through the process of designing systems. This chapter should be of interest to designers of e-business systems using agent technology. The description of the patterns is followed by the case study of an online auction system to which the patterns have been applied.
E-Commerce and Dispute Resolution
Authors: Takasugi Naoshi
Published: May 2011

When a dispute arises from e-commerce involving parties located in different nations, the parties immediately face conflict-of-laws issues such as judicial jurisdiction, applicable law, and extra-territorial effects of judgments. Taking into consideration that there is no unified conflicts law rules in the global level and, if any, the conflicts rules are usually based on the traditional international transactions, this chapter tries to discuss the dispute resolution systems suitable for e-commerce, especially for computer information transactions. As the result of the discussion, it becomes clear that further enhancement of a worldwide dispute resolution system suitable for e-commerce is desirable. In establishing a new system, the 1999 Guidelines for Consumer Protection in the context of electronic commerce, approved by the OECD, gives much inspiration. It is essential to balance between small-middle sized business entities and consumers, and between freedom and regulation.
Pricing Strategy of Online Knowledge Market
Authors: Zhang Zuopeng (Justin) , Jasimuddin Sajjad M.
Published: May 2011

This article addresses the different levels of pricing strategies for an online knowledge market. Based on the best practice from Google Answers, an online knowledge market is modeled as a marketplace where consumers ask and researchers answer questions to make knowledge transactions. Consumers optimally price their questions to obtain answers, and a firm maintains the online knowledge market by determining the optimal price allocation to researchers. Our study identifies two types of consumers, spin-off and mainstream, based on whether additional utilities will be derived from the market. In addition, we investigate how the firm can use minimal and maximal posting prices to regulate the knowledge market.
A Generalized Comparison of Open Source and Commercial Database Management Systems
Authors: Evdoridis Theodoros , Tzouramanis Theodoros
Published: May 2011

This chapter attempts to bring to light the field of one of the less popular branches of the open source software family, which is the open source database management systems branch. In view of the objective, the background of these systems will first be briefly described followed by presentation of a fair generic database model. Subsequently and in order to present these systems under all their possible features, the main system representatives of both open source and commercial origins will be compared in relation to this model, and evaluated appropriately. By adopting such an approach, the chapter’s initial concern is to ensure that the nature of database management systems in general can be apprehended. The overall orientation leads to an understanding that the gap between open and closed source database management systems has been significantly narrowed, thus demystifying the respective commercial products.
Pattern Mining and Clustering on Image Databases
Authors: Bouet Marinette , Gançarski Pierre , Aufaure Marie-Aude , Boussaïd Omar
Published: May 2011

Analysing and mining image data to derive potentially useful information is a very challenging task. Image mining concerns the extraction of implicit knowledge, image data relationships, associations between image data and other data or patterns not explicitly stored in the images. Another crucial task is to organise the large image volumes to extract relevant information. In fact, decision support systems are evolving to store and analyse these complex data. This chapter presents a survey of the relevant research related to image data processing. We present data warehouse advances that organise large volumes of data linked with images, and then we focus on two techniques largely used in image mining. We present clustering methods applied to image analysis, and we introduce the new research direction concerning pattern mining from large collections of images. While considerable advances have been made in image clustering, there is little research dealing with image frequent pattern mining. We will try to understand why.
Rapid Privacy Preserving Algorithm for Large Databases
Authors: Anbumani K. , Nedunchezhian R.
Published: May 2011

Data mining techniques have been widely used for extracting non-trivial information from massive amounts of data. They help in strategic decision- making as well as many more applications. However, data mining also has a few demerits apart from its usefulness. Sensitive information contained in the database may be brought out by the data mining tools. Different approaches are being utilized to hide the sensitive information. The proposed work in this article applies a novel method to access the generating transactions with minimum effort from the transactional database. It helps in reducing the time complexity of any hiding algorithm. The theoretical and empirical analysis of the algorithm shows that hiding of data using this proposed work performs association rule hiding quicker than other algorithms.
Bioinformatics Web Portals
Authors: Cannataro Mario , Veltri Pierangelo
Published: May 2011

In this article we review main requirements of distributed bioinformatics applications and related bioinformatics Web portals, and report the proposal of a grid-based bioinformatics portal allowing choosing and composing of bioinformatics tools with the help of a domain ontology describing data and software resources.
Large-Scale ASP Replication of Database-Driven Portals
Authors: Mayer Christopher B. , Candan K. Selçuk
Published: May 2011

This article explains issues surrounding the replication of a single full-scale database-driven portal application. In addition to the issues of replicating a single, unsophisticated application, it also anticipates a future in which portal applications offer multiple levels of service to users, and large application service providers (ASPs) host and replicate many portal applications on networks of servers. An ASP must replicate complex portal applications in order to satisfy user demand while minimizing operating costs. ASPs will need mature tools for making replication decisions and deploying and otherwise managing their replication system. To that end, this article highlights two prototype software packages, ACDN and DATE/DASIM, that address some aspects of replica management by ASPs. Using the two prototypes as a starting point and recalling single portal replication issues, a set of features for a mature ASP replication management systems are proposed.
A Preliminary Study Toward Wireless Integration of Patient Information System
Authors: Al-Ali Abdul-Rahman , Ozkul Tarik , Landolsi Taha
Published: May 2011

This paper presents the results of a study toward generating a wireless environment to provide realtime mobile accessibility to patient information system. A trial system is set up where database, Internet, and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) are integrated in such a way that the medical professionals like physicians, nurses, and lab assistants can create, access, and update medical records using wireless PDAs from any location in the hospital, which is covered by wireless LAN. The same services, which can be carried out via fixed terminals with Internet connectivity, can be carried out using wireless PDAs. The implementation has used and integrated many technologies like Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic®, Structured Query Language (SQL) Server, ActiveSync®, IEEE802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology and wireless security concepts. The paper details the architectural aspects of technology integration and the methodology used for setting up the end-to-end system. The proposed architecture, its performance data, and the common implementation barriers are reported.
Enhancing UML Models
Authors: Reinhartz-Berger Iris , Sturm Arnon
Published: May 2011

UML has been largely adopted as a standard modeling language. The emergence of UML from different modeling languages that refer to various system aspects causes a wide variety of completeness and correctness problems in UML models. Several methods have been proposed for dealing with correctness issues, mainly providing internal consistency rules but ignoring correctness and completeness with respect to the system requirements and the domain constraints. In this article, we propose addressing both completeness and correctness problems of UML models by adopting a domain analysis approach called application-based domain modeling (ADOM). We present experimental results from our study which checks the quality of application models when utilizing ADOM on UML. The results advocate that the availability of the domain model helps achieve more complete models without reducing the comprehension of these models.
Categorizing Post-Deployment IT Changes
Authors: Kang David
Published: May 2011

Although it has been widely recognized that postdeployment changes of information technology (IT) are unavoidable, little attention has been paid to the management of post-deployment IT changes. This study intends to advance our knowledge in this area. It first introduces a general framework for technology change in use, developed in an organizational study. Then, through tracking the post-deployment changes of a large workflow application, this study develops an enhanced and expanded categorization of post-deployment IT changes. The findings suggest that even custom-developed software can be plagued by misfit and that a learning-in-working perspective should be added to understand and resolve the misfit between IT and the organization. For future study, the findings of this study suggest that more efforts should be directed toward the issues of balancing system stability and volatility and continuous post-deployment communication between IT management and users.
A Parallel Methodology for Reduction of Coupling in Distributed Business-to-Business E-Commerce Transactions
Authors: Orme Anthony Mark , Etzkorn Letha H.
Published: May 2011

Recently, new standards for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce transactions, to reduce extended record locking, relaxed standard database transaction properties. In this paper, we provide a parallel methodology employing a mobile/intelligent agent framework to alleviate extended record locking, while adhering to standard database transaction properties. Our methodology provides a minimum 30% reduction of record locking compared to new B2B standards.
Countermeasures for Protecting Legally Sensitive Web-Powered Databases and Web Portals
Authors: Evdoridis Theodoros , Tzouramanis Theodoros
Published: May 2011

The issue of the escalation of security breaches in the field of Web systems has caused a great deal of disquiet in the computer security community. The majority of recorded security violations against legally sensitive portals have raised numerous issues both at an individual and at an organizational level. Furthermore, taking for granted the fact that security achieved through the isolation of the targeted systems is a path which no one is willing to follow, it is understood that security countermeasures must be perceived and applied without any alterations in respect of the current operational scheme. The economic and social reasons for using the Internet are still far too compelling (Schneier, 2005). Looking in this direction, the complexity as well as the urgency of the present situation has attracted specialists from other scientific sectors, such as psychology and law, who contribute to the search for an integrated multilevel solution required in this context.