bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Principles and Experiences
Authors: Aktas Mehmet S.
Published: May 2011

The data requirements of e-business applications have been increased over the years. These applications present an environment for acquiring, processing, and sharing data among interested parties. To manage information in such data-intensive application domain, independent enterprise e-business applications have developed their own solutions to information services. However, these solutions are not interoperable with each other, target vastly different systems, and address diverse sets of requirements. They require greater interoperability to enable communication between different systems, so that they can share and utilize each other’s resources. To address these challenges, we discuss principles and experiences for designing and building of a novel enterprise information system. We introduce a novel architecture for a hybrid information service, which provides unification, federation, and interoperability of major Web-based information services. The hybrid information service is designed as an add-on information system, which interacts with the local information services and assembles their metadata instances under one hybrid architecture. It integrates different information services using unification and federation concepts. In this chapter, we summarize the principles and experiences gained in designing and building the semantics, architecture, and implementation for the hybrid information service.
Free and Open Source Enterprise Resources Planning
Authors: de Carvalho Rogerio Atem
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the key aspects of Free/Open Source Enterprise Resources Planning systems (FOS-ERP). Starting by related work carried out by researchers and practitioners, it argues in favor of the growing acceptance of this category of enterprise systems while showing how this subject is not yet well explored, especially by researchers. The goals of this chapter are to highlight the differences between FOS-ERP and their proprietary equivalents (P-ERP) in terms of business models, selection, customization, and evolution; and showing the challenges and opportunities that they offer to adopters, vendors, researchers, and individual collaborators. Therefore, this chapter tries to broaden the discussion around the FOS-ERP subject, currently focused only in cost aspects, bringing more attention to other aspects and pointing out their innovative potential.
The Utilization of Semantic Web for Integrating Enterprise Systems
Authors: Tektonidis Dimitrios , Bokma Albert
Published: May 2011

Integrating enterprise system has become an issue of sharing information rather than transforming information due to the increasing complexity and the heterogeneity of the applications. The transition from application centric to integration centric enterprise application integration (EAI) requires methods and technologies that will enable and facilitate the definition of shared information. The use of ontologies Semantic Web and technologies can improve the existing EAI methods by providing a framework capable to define shared information. Ontologies based Enterprise application integration (ONAR) framework utilizes Semantic Web technologies to define shared information among heterogeneous systems. The present paper presents the utilization of ontologies for the formation of ONAR framework and its application for service oriented application integration (SOAI)
Access and Advancement
Authors: D’Agustino Steven , King Kathleen P.
Published: May 2011

This research studied a professional development technology mentoring program serving approximately 500 K-12 teachers in New York City. The teacher training model, designed to improve student outcomes through the integration of technology into instruction, employed school visits by professional development technology mentors, training workshops and an online collaboration environment for participants. With a theoretical basis in transformative learning, the model focused on developing relationships of trust between teachers and professional developers. Findings in the paper discuss how to improve student performance in mathematics and English Language Arts through technology integration and teacher competence in teaching with technology, and they provide new insights into the potential for professional development initiatives incorporating similar perspectives and practices.
Buddhism and Human Genetic Research
Authors: Promta Somparn
Published: May 2011

What the author is trying to do in this chapter is to explore how Buddhism, especially Theravada Buddhism as adopted in Thailand, responds to the advancements of human genetic research in the modern world. Buddhism has a certain number of doctrinal beliefs normally differing from those in the theistic tradition, making Buddhism respond to genetic research in a certain way. The way Buddhism responds to genetic research could be characterized as a kind of humanistic view. This kind of view is mainly based on human wisdom and rational investigation of the problem. Belief as normally understood in terms of religion plays a lesser role in Buddhist ethics. The following will show the positions of Buddhism on the problems raised by genetic research. As the concept of personhood plays the key role in the debates over human genetic research, the author will start with this point. As human genetic research raises so many issues that it is impossible to explore all of them, the chapter will then focus on some of these issues, namely human cloning and the use of embryonic stem cells in medical practice.
Legal Aspects of Bioethics in Tajikistan
Authors: Nasyrova Firuza
Published: May 2011

The chapter presents a detailed account of the available legal mechanisms on biotechnological issues in her country. Among the issues discussed are biosafety regulations, especially ones concerning the Cartagena Protocol as well as the governance structure in Tajikistan on these issues
Tasmanian Police Call Centre Project
Authors: Thomas Leonie
Published: May 2011

This case study provides some insight into the development of a Call Centre in the Australian State of Tasmania for Tasmania Police. The Call Centre replaced the existing Criminal Offence Modus Operandi paper based system. The project was reliant on two other projects: Radioi Network project and Project SAMSON ( providing a standard desktop throughout the organisation). The project timeframe from conception to pilot was six months. The project had an operating budget of AUS $166,000 The project was managed by a project team with the development of the system outsourced to external contractors. The management of both the contractors and the internal Information Technology Branch is a significant part of the case study along with system development. The organisation effectively used change management and change agents to help communicate information relating to the projects to the rest of the organisation. The aim of the project was to return as many Police as possible back to their core activity that is, policing.
Web-Based Assessment in Student Learning
Authors: Cucchiarelli Alessandro , Panti Maurizo , Valenti Salvatore
Published: May 2011

Assessment is considered the central part of the educational process. At least five categories exist in which it is possible to classify the evaluation procedures which are singled-out by the common name of assessment: placement, formative, diagnostic and summative assessment (Airasian,1975; Gronlund,1985) and self-assessment. Placement assessment is concerned with the identification of students’ entry level for class enrollment and selection. Therefore, placement assessment is aimed at determining both prerequisite skills and mastery of course contents/objectives. Formative assessment is used to provide ongoing monitoring of student progress which may be used by the teacher to gather feedback in order to adjust the educational process, to insure that learning is occurring and to correct learning errors. Formative evaluation is an integral part of everyday instruction (King and Rowe,1997). Diagnostic assessment begins where formative assessment leaves off. Diagnostic evaluation is concerned with “the identification of persistent or recurring learning difficulties that are left unresolved by the standard correction perspective of formative evaluation” (Gronlund,1985). Diagnostic evaluation may be conducted through two classes of tests: extensive and intensive. While intensive diagnostic tests focus on just one aspect of learning, extensive tests cover a broader range of contents and are characterized by a graded sampling of the concepts and knowledge to be assessed. Broad areas of difficulty may be identified and the points where a student’s understanding falters may be indicated, if the grading of the questions is sensitive. Summative evaluation comes at the end of units or courses and aims to assign grades to certify the students’ global level of knowledge on the topics taught. An important side effect of summative evaluation is the production of useful information on the course such as clarity of lectures, completeness and integration of the proposed concepts and arguments in order to provide the teacher with feedback.
Information Security Framework for Health Information Systems
Authors: Janczewski Lech J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter outlines the major issues related to the security of medical information systems. Medical information systems are unique in this sense that integrity of the records and privacy issues are dominant. The presentation includes the formulation of the basic medical information security tenets as well as the discussion of the major components of the security subsystem: patient identification, access mechanism, reference monitor, communication subsystem and database subsystem. Also examples of privacy law are quoted and discussed.
How to Transform Legacy Systems into Object Oriented Systems
Authors: Cobo Hernan , Mauco Virginia
Published: May 2011

The OO paradigm is the predominant software trend of the 1990s. According to the literature, it provides a unifying model for various phases of development, facilitates system integration, allows prototyping, encourages software reuse, eases system maintenance and provides support for extensibility (Meyer, 1997). An OO system is best developed starting with OO analysis. However, some times this may be difficult because of the existence of so many systems developed 20 or more years ago, which are still used. These systems are called legacy and may be defined as large software systems people do not know how to cope with, but they are vital to organizations (Bennett, 1995). Hence, the decision on how to manage them is crucial because they may represent years of accumulated experience and knowledge. Besides, the software may be the only place where organizations business rules exist. Maintenance costs are a major issue with software (Pressman, 1992). Legacy systems maintenance is a difficult task because it is typical that during the maintenance process the structure and the documentation of the system deteriorate, making the maintenance progressively harder. It is essential to record the understanding of the system before it is forgotten and to structure it in such a way that it can be easily accumulated and retrieved. The development of new architectures and the improvements in programming methods and languages, have caused a need to reverse engineer and reengineer existing program code in order to get as much value as possible from legacy systems while exploiting the latest technology. This chapter describes a project whose aim is to develop a tool to transform legacy systems in order to simplify and improve their maintenance and understanding, taking benefit from OO technology. To achieve this, it is necessary to capture and recover all the knowledge extracted from imperative programs and store it in a higher level structure, which can be analyzed and manipulated. From this structure objects and classes are recognized and extracted to rewrite the program in an OO language. Besides preserving the original functionality, the new code generated should be structured, legible, modular, reusable, and more easily maintainable. The only source of information is programs imperative source code, and its quality has a great influence on the quality of the recovered objects. To minimize this influence, programs are first syntactically restructured and modularized. As part of this research, a prototype has been developed which implements the algorithms to restructure, modularize and extract objects automatically. Human intervention is allowed in order to improve the results.
ICT and Local Governance
Authors: Finquelievich Susana
Published: May 2011

Argentina is slowly walking along the path of ICT uses for social and civic purposes. Local governments and community organisations are understanding the potential advantages of Community Informatics, and facing a myriad of prejudices and material obstacles to implement it. This chapter shows the first results of a three-year research on the subject of information technology, local governance, and community networks in the City of Buenos Aires. It deals with two intimately interrelated issues: a) Local government’s use of ICT for local management and communication with citizens: results and obstacles. The government is opening slowly to the use of ICT to decentralise urban functions, increase the flow of horizontal institutional information, update urban management, inform the citizens, and increase public participation in urban affairs. However, prejudices, fear of technology, and above all a resilient institutional culture are still considerable obstacles for informatization. The paper surveys the technological changes implemented by the Government of Buenos Aires City and studies the social actors who were responsible for them, as well as the social processes that made them possible, as a necessary framework to understand the slow development of electronic community networks. b) Emerging Electronic Community Networks. From 1997 onwards, they have multiplied in various sectors: education, culture, community health and wellness, citizens’ rights, participation in urban affairs. The chapter studies the local particularities of community, focusing on the differences between large and small community organisations, and their conceptions of time and space, linked to the use of on-line resources. It finishes by analysing the link between the local governmental context referring the use of ICT and the slow emergence of electronic community networks.
On-Line Discussion Forums in a Swedish Local Government Context
Authors: Ranerup Agneta
Published: May 2011

This text describes experiences of four on-line discussion forums that are used in a Swedish local government context. The main issue is how aspects such as the implementation of the forums, functional features of the forums, and activities to increase access to Internet affect the on-line debate. Furthermore, the debate in the on-line forums is evaluated against the ideal of deliberative democracy. Lastly, three strategies for how the amount of debate in the on-line forums might be increased are outlined. One strategy would be to provide citizen groups with access to technology in order to involve them in the forum and the local government network as such. Another strategy would be to welcome a completely open debate in the forums, in the hope of getting a discussion that also includes issues that are of relevance to local government. Yet another strategy would be to more seriously involve local politicians in the discussion. This group seems to be of strategic importance when aiming at democratic effects of on-line forums.
Security Risk Assessment and Electronic Commerce
Authors: Palmer Jonathan W. , Kliewer Jamie , Sweat Mark
Published: May 2011

The security issue has been a compelling one for many organizations. In two separate studies completed in April 1998, Fortune 1000 companies reported more financial losses due to computer vandalism and espionage in 1997 than they ever experienced before. Several corporations said they lost $10 million or more in a single break-in. And reports of system break-ins at the Computer Emergency Response Team site are the highest they’ve ever been. Management objectives for security reflect the individual organization’s situation. However, there are several common themes in the objectives for security: • Safeguarding the organization’s assets and resources. • Complying with policies, procedures, laws, and regulations. • Utilizing resources economically and efficiently. • Ensuring the reliability and integrity of information.
Electronic Commerce Contracting for Open EDI
Authors: Mitrakas Andreas
Published: May 2011

Open EDI is a concept appropriate to address the needs of commercial business-to-business relationships in an open environment. While open EDI, an open electronic commerce technology, can be used for ad hoc commercial transactions, delivering it over public open networks poses a challenge that contains a substantial legal component. How can the pre-transaction delay time be shortened in a way that allows for the speedy conclusion of the commercial part of the deal? Legal shortcomings can pose a potential danger for trading partners if not properly underpinned before initiating business transactions. Dynamic contracting procedures preceding the endorsement of an interchange agreement are a viable alternative to face-to-face negotiations. Recon is an on-line system to make available such a functionality over an open network by means of a repository of negotiated legal terms.
Economics of EDI Investments
Authors: Sarker Rahul A. , Syed Mahbubur Rahman
Published: May 2011

Electronic data interchange (EDI) technology gives organizations an opportunity to exchange their information and messages electronically, instead of with paper documents, and leads to a new way of doing business known as electronic commerce (EC). The benefits of EDI include less delay in data handling and labour savings in the areas of data transcription, controls, and error investigation and correction. As a result implementation of EDI improves the following: • the internal operations of a firm by reducing the process-cycle time, • responsiveness to customers, • trading partner relationships, and • the ability to compete, both domestically and internationally.
Internet-enabled Smart Card Agent Environment and Applications
Authors: Poh Teoh Kok , Guan Sheng-Uei
Published: May 2011

The introduction of smart card technology offers an alternative for user authentication and storage medium for data that require both high security as well as location transparency. With a considerably large storage that can be protected from unauthorized access and tampering, and the ability to compute custom software routines including cryptographic algorithms, smart card represents a trusted medium for self-identification and secured information storage that we can carry around with us (Effing and Rankl, 1996). On the other hand, intelligent software agents represent a new software methodology that starts to gain wide acceptance. While they are possibly the best candidates as an end user’s personal assistant in the computer world, they usually are not designed with high security and location transparency in mind. This has greatly limited their ability to function as ‘personal representatives’ in the world of the Internet. The proposed smart card agent environment is an effort to bridge these two technologies to produce a viable solution for personalized Internet-based services and solutions. Introduction of software agent technology into traditional smart card applications will bring in new intelligence to make it smarter. The level of security and location transparency in the smart card technology will greatly enhance the usability of agents in the Internet world. With the combination of these two technologies, many Internet-based applications can provide a personalized services with minimum user interactions. This will promote the utilization of Internet-based services and solutions.
Addressing Prescription Fraud in the British National Health Service
Authors: Pouloudi Athanasia
Published: May 2011

Prescription fraud constitutes an important drain of health service resources, but one that is difficult to detect and therefore to prevent or rectify. It is expected that the use of information technology in the prescribing process could enhance fraud prevention and detection. For example, electronic prescribing or networking between prescribing stakeholders could facilitate audit. However, the implementation of several computerized solutions in the British National Health Service (NHS) has been problematic. Computerized support for prescribing and fraud prevention is likely to face similar challenges unless the implementation of a technical solution is considered with due attention to the organizational and social context. This chapter presents the problem of prescription fraud in Britain and some of the technological alternatives available for dealing with the problem. The main focus of the chapter, however, is to consider such technological ‘solutions’ in their broader context and examine how technology may limit or may be limited by organizational and social factors, such as the interests and political considerations of the various stakeholders of the prescribing process. In this respect, the chapter provides a useful analysis within which other information systems security issues can be considered.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage from Information Technology
Authors: Nelson Mark R.
Published: May 2011

The strategic benefit of IT (information technology) in supporting business functions is often seen as the basis for competitive advantage that is sustainable. The value chain concept has been a handy tool widely utilized in business strategy analysis to match firm competency in performing business activities with the achievement of sustainable marketplace advantage. When it comes to the assessment of the competitive value of information technology, the value chain concept seems to either categorize IT as a support activity or to overly narrow the scope of ITs role in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. This chapter reviews the concepts of the value chain and sustainable competitive advantage. Short case studies from a number of industries are presented in order to illustrate the limitations of using the value chain to describe information technologys role in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. These examples demonstrate the subtle and often complex relationship between information technology and competitive advantage.
Outsourcing Decisions
Authors: Powell Anne L.
Published: May 2011

It is no longer questioned that the management of information systems (MIS) is an important variable when studying organizational effectiveness and competitiveness. There have been numerous studies on how information systems (IS) can be used by organizations for strategic purposes, yet actual experiences of an organization’s use of IS have often been less than satisfactory. Problems with cost, quality, and IS performance, as well as unfavorable end-user—IS relations are frequently reported. Partially because of these problems, the outsourcing of IS functions has become increasingly common. Outsourcing IS functions provides advantages to an organization but it may also create a new set of problems if the impact of the outsourcing decision to the organization as a whole is not fully considered. This chapter reviews the strategic use of IS in organizations, discusses the growing popularity of outsourcing IS functions, and uses Porter’s model of five competitive forces to provide a different viewpoint on the decision to outsource.
Data Mining for Supply Chain Management in Complex Networks
Authors: Singh Manoj K. , Raisinghani Mahesh S.
Published: May 2011

The concept and philosophy behind supply chain management is to integrate and optimize business processes across all partners in the entire production chain. Since these are not simple supply chains but rather complex networks, tuning these complex networks comprising supply chain/s to the needs of the market can be facilitated by data mining. Data mining is a set of techniques used to uncover previously obscure or unknown patterns and relationships in very large databases. It provides better information for achieving competitive advantage, increases operating efficiency, reduces operating costs and provides flexibility in using the data by allowing the users to pull the data they need instead of letting the system push the data. However, making sense of all this data is an enormous technological and logistical challenge. This chapter helps you understand the key concepts of data mining, its methodology and application in the context of supply chain management of complex networks.
A Review of Research Issues in Evaluation of Information Systems
Authors: Serafeimidis Vassilis
Published: May 2011

Information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) have become an organizational necessity in order to support routine data processing operations, initiatives for competitive advantage, business transformation exercises in products, organizational structures, work-roles, and patterns of relationships between organizations. IS are critical components of business, taking part in increasingly complex organizational changes, redefining whole markets and industries, as well as the strategies of the firms that compete within them (e.g., increasing focus on the use of the Internet). As information becomes embedded in organizations, in their products and services and in their relationships with partners and customers, IS cannot be separated from human intellect, culture, philosophy and social organizational structures. The cost of IT has plummeted dramatically since the 1960s, while its potentials have increased, generating enormous investment and increasing the pace of IT adoption by organizations. According to the Gartner Group, in 1998 the average IS budget was 4.17% of the organizational revenue. This trend is expected to continue, as most organizations have passed ‘unharmed’ the Millennium landmark and attempt to conquer the arena of eBusiness (KPMG Consulting, 2000).
A Modeling Methodology for Intelligent Agents
Authors: Park Sooyang , Sugumaran Vijayan
Published: May 2011

The unprecedented growth of the internet and web-based applications has necessitated the deployment of intelligent agents to facilitate some of the tedious and time-consuming activities on the Web. Consequently, there is an increasing demand for agent-oriented systems, which are soon becoming large and complex. To support a systematic development of such systems, an agent-oriented software development methodology is necessary. This chapter focuses on the modeling phase of agent-oriented software life cycle and, presents an approach for agent modeling consisting of Agent Elicitation, Intra, and Inter Agent modeling methods. Agent Elicitation deals with identifying and extracting agents from “classes” in the real world. Intra Agent Modeling involves expressing agent characteristics such as goal, belief, plan and capability, whereas, Inter Agent modeling incorporates agent mobility and communication.
MESH
Authors: Lemahieu Wilfried
Published: May 2011

The term hypermedia denotes an approach to computer data organization in a manner similar to the functioning of the human brain. In essence, human cognition is organized as a semantic network in which related concepts are linked together. New information we come across is integrated into our mind’s semantic structures of existing knowledge. These structures allow for the stored information to be accessed by association. A precursor of current hypermedia systems was mentioned as early as in 1945, i.e. long before the introduction of the modern computer, by (Bush, 1945). He described an imaginary device called Memex as “a sort of mechanized private file and library … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory”. One of the key concepts of Memex was said to be its ability to link items together such that they could be accessed by association, rather than through indexing.
Gigabit Internet to Every Home and School
Authors: St. Arnaud Bill
Published: May 2011

One of last great impediments to wide-scale and rapid deployment of the information society is the "last mile" issue. This chapter outlines some of the issues and history of the last mile problem and proposes a research and development program leading to early deployment of extreme high speed Internet access to schools and libraries (GITS), which will then underpin an architectural framework for high speed Internet access to the home-Gigabit Internet to the Home (GITH). The proposed strategy calls for the deployment of a third residential network service operating in parallel with existing telephone and cable delivery mechanisms and thereby avoiding the regulatory and technical hurdles of integrating traditional telephone and cable services into one common delivery mechanism.
Telecommunications in Transition
Authors: Yan Xu , Thong James Y.L.
Published: May 2011

In this article, we seek to provide a deep insight into telecommunications reform strategies by studying the Chinese experience in the international context. We argue that, while the telecommunications sector generally has been moving towards full liberalization and deregulation on the global scale, there is great variation in how this has been achieved in individual countries. Countries have adopted a variety of transitional mechanisms in their telecommunications reform process. We suggest that an efficient reform program should be formulated by correctly analyzing the context, including the development stage of the telecommunications sector, and the economic and political environment. China presents one such experience.
Satisfaction, Frustration, and Delight
Authors: Escalas Jennifer Edson , Jain Kapil , Strebel Judi E.
Published: May 2011

This research project develops a framework for understanding how consumers interact with Web sites on the Internet. Our goal is to understand the interaction of individuals and Web sites from the perspective of the marketer, or third-party, who has created the site. Internet technology enables marketers to customize their interaction with consumers in order to better meet consumer needs. We are interested in whether and how this works. Our framework builds on four interdependent elements: first, the individual Internet user’s mindset as he/she enters a particular Web site, which includes, importantly, the user’s expectations; second, the Web site itself (consisting of four components: structure, content, connectivity, and malleability); third, the individual/Web site interaction; and fourth, the user’s evaluation of the Web site, which affects behavior.
A Multimedia Document Retrieval System Supporting Structure- and Content-Based Retrieval
Authors: Jin Du-Seok , Chang Jae-Woo
Published: May 2011

Recently it is common for users to acquire through the World Wide Web a variety of multimedia documents. As the number of Web documents is dramatically increasing, we need to develop a multimedia document retrieval system that can support both structure-based retrieval and content-based retrieval. In order to support structure-based retrieval, we design efficient index structures (i.e., keyword, structure, element and attribute) and implement those by using the o2store storage system. For the content-based retrieval, we implement high-dimensional index structure for color and shape feature that is based on X-tree. Finally, we do the performance evaluation of our multimedia document retrieval system in terms of system efficiency, such as retrieval time, insertion time and storage overhead, as well as system effectiveness, such as recall and precision measures.
Consumer Trust and Confidence in Internet Commerce
Authors: Hameed Shahul
Published: May 2011

The Internet network is rapidly becoming more and more popular among companies as an avenue to do business. It has made it easy for them to advertise, market their products and services, and communicate with their customers. Advertising and marketing on the Internet offers the promise of huge profits. Sellers, though, are not the only ones to reap benefits from the Internet. Purchasing products over the Net has also become extremely beneficial. It is faster than the traditional process of mail ordering, and various on-line support forums provide advice that is not found in manuals, catalogs, or brochures. Over the last few years, retail and computer experts have called the Internet the hottest marketing trend and the new consumer market. There are a number of benefits which Internet commerce could potentially deliver to consumers—convenience, wide choice of products, better product information, new types of products and services, and even lower prices. Nevertheless, the actual volume of consumer buying on the Internet is still small, a tiny fraction of worldwide consumer purchases. At the heart of this phenomenon of Internet commerce are the most essential concerns of the consumer—trust, confidence, and protection. Trust, itself, represents an evaluation of information, an analysis that requires decisions about the value of specific information in terms of several factors. Methodologies are being constructed to evaluate information more systematically, to generate decisions about increasingly complex and sophisticated relationships. In turn these methodologies about information and trust will strongly influence the growth of the Internet as a medium for commerce. In this new business environment, consumers find themselves increasingly in the driver’s seat, holding a tremendous amount of purchasing power over providers and sellers. They are empowered because they now have access to a worldwide assortment of suppliers—the Web gives them the power to buy from anyone, anywhere, anytime. The consumers, therefore, want to have control over the collection and use of their personal data and to have appropriate redress mechanisms available in the event of a problem.
Intelligent Agents for E-Commerce
Authors: Warkentin Merrill , Sugumaran Vijayan , Bapna Ravi
Published: May 2011

A characteristic feature of the explosive growth in electronic commerce is the rapid innovation and adoption of new technologies, which results in the creation of new business relationships between consumers, firms, and markets. One such technology that is profoundly changing the dynamics of the electronic marketplace is ‘intelligent agent’ technology. Agents have the ability to autonomously carry out various activities on behalf of their principals. At a micro-economic level, agents can help buyers and sellers achieve greater efficiencies of information exchange in the electronic business-to-consumer and business-to-business domains. Additionally, they facilitate the creation of vertically integrated portals that have a significant impact on the macroeconomic landscape. Using many real-world examples, we characterize the different roles that software agents play in the various e-commerce business models and also touch upon their impact on creation of new market structures. We address price-matching versus price-comparison agents. We highlight the various purchase decision criteria evident in various vertical markets and suggest the need for a cross-industry product (and service) attribute data representation model, based on the expanded capabilities of XML. We contrast the autonomous price comparisons enabled by agents with the expanded criteria comparisons facilitated by the e-commerce rating sites. We discuss the public policy implications of these second-generation e-commerce agents with regard to data representation standardization and consumer information privacy. We present future directions for intelligent agent functions that encompass standard representation of decision criteria such as delivery and payment options, return policies, service, quality, trust, and reputation.
Measures of the Business Value of IT
Authors: van der Zee Han
Published: May 2011

In any business a “dashboard” of vital performance indicators is needed to gauge how the company is faring. Such a dashboard, consisting of the appropriate measures to indicate strengths and weaknesses, provides a guide for management and forms the core of planning and control. A dashboard of performance indicators allows management to valuate the contribution of several factors that impact the overall performance of the organization. One of these factors is the application of IT. To valuate IT, a dashboard of relevant performance indicators for IT must be developed. The BtripleE framework offers the structure of the dashboard and identifies the distinct but interdependent levels of Business value of IT, Effectiveness of IT, and Effectiveness and Efficiency of IT supply. This chapter aims at developing the appropriate performance indicators (the gauges) at the first level within this structure: measures of the business value of IT.
E-commerce Taxation Issues
Authors: Raisinghani Mahesh S. , Petty Dan S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter is designed to give the reader a balanced perspective on some of the issues surrounding the current discussions related to state and local taxation of Internet access fees and sales transactions on the Internet. It will attempt to describe the issues being discussed and present several viewpoints from interest groups on both sides of the issue. This chapter is being written at an interesting time since the proponents of Internet taxation are searching for technological as well as administrative ways to met their goal. The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce released its final recommendations to Congress in April 2000, after its four in-person meetings in Williamsburg, Virginia; New York City, New York; San Francisco, California; and Dallas, Texas. Taxation of Internet access and transactions on the Internet is one of the most complicated public policy issues of our time, affecting over 30,000 state and local taxing jurisdictions and literally thousands of businesses and customers worldwide. The proposal receiving the majority vote of the commissioners is based on the conclusion that existing, internationally accepted tax rules should be applied to e-commerce with no new taxes being levied and with an emphasis on simplification, neutrality, greater certainty and avoidance of double taxation. This chapter will develop a next-steps strategy to be considered by policy makers.
IP Multicast
Authors: Gomez-Skarmeta Antonio F. , Ruiz Pedro M. , Mateo-Martinez Angel L.
Published: May 2011

Without doubt, multicast communication as a means for one-to-many or many-to-many delivery of data has become a hot topic in multimedia environments. A lot of people are interested in multicast: the research community, standards groups and Internet Service Providers (ISP) among them. Although IP multicast is a very good solution for Internetworking multimedia in many-to-many communications, there are still issues that have not been completely solved. Protocols are still evolving and new protocols are constantly coming up to solve these issues because that is the only way for making multicast become a true Internet service. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the evolution of IP multicast from the obsolete MBone (Multicast Backbone) and intra-domain multicast routing to the actual inter-domain multicast routing scheme. We will pay special attention to the challenges and problems that need to be solved, the problems that have been solved and the way they were solved. We will make a complete picture of the state of the art explaining the idea behind each protocol and how all those protocols work together.
Predictors of Internet Usage for Work Tasks
Authors: Stiller-Hughes Lyndal , Robertson Ivan T.
Published: May 2011

Introducing and capitalizing on the Internet for business gain is engulfing modern day business thought. Yet little is available to guide the decisions of organizational leaders on issues around workforce usage. This chapter begins to close the gap by presenting the findings of a new empirical study, which specifically targets the factors associated with Internet usage for work tasks. A framework is presented to help organizations manage the usage of the Internet. It contains both person and situation factors which are associated with higher Internet usage. This work is based on the view that implementation of the Internet into the workplace is analogous to other forms of organizational change, in that people form a key success criteria.
An Accounting Framework for Identifying Internet Abuse
Authors: Anandarajan Asokan , Srinivasan C. A.
Published: May 2011

Current accounting methods used by companies do not charge departments appropriately for Internet usage. The problem is compounded because information technology (IT) departments have lacked the ability and process to track Internet usage. Currently time and costs for Internet usage by departments are often allocated based on head count or perceived usage. This crude allocation method could result in disproportionate allocation and charges, some departments being attributed more than their share while other departments get “free rides.” This paper recommends the use of an activity-based costing system for budgeting the costs associated with Internet usage. The costs thus budgeted can then be compared to actual costs to arrive at a variance. If such variance is unfavorable, and it is significant, then managers should be penalized as this could reflect abuse with respect to Web usage. Penalization could take the form of reducing departmental incomes by the variance. If managers are evaluated on departmental earnings, then there will be an incentive to investigate the problem and take remedial action.
Using Tutored Video Instruction Methodology to Deliver Management Education at a Distance in China
Authors: Murray L. William , Efendioglu Alev M.
Published: May 2011

This chapter summarizes a report of a systematic study of distance education programs whose audience was middle- and upper-level managers employed full-time at two Chinese companies. These programs were evaluated in terms of their educational effectiveness; i.e., did these students, and the companies who paid for their education, receive good value for their investment of time and money?
A Planning and Scheduling Methodology for the Virtual Enterprise
Authors: Frederix Florent
Published: May 2011

Virtual enterprises consisting of geographically dispersed, independent units are a reality in the global economy. These units concentrate on core technologies and create partner networks for the design, manufacturing and sale of their products. This chapter documents a methodology, more flexible and efficient than the more traditional techniques, to schedule activities in virtual enterprises and enterprise networks. The presented technique that stepwise searches for improved activity schedules has the advantage that in any stage of the iteration process a resource-feasible schedule is available. Investing in network and computation capacity will result in more efficient schedules. The virtual enterprise unit will view the platform as a time-phased capacity trading marketplace.
An Ant Colony Algorithm for Classification Rule Discovery
Authors: Parpinelli Rafael S. , Lopes Heitor S. , Freitas Alex A.
Published: May 2011

This work proposes an algorithm for rule discovery called Ant-Miner (Ant Colony-Based Data Miner). The goal of Ant-Miner is to extract classification rules from data. The algorithm is based on recent research on the behavior of real ant colonies as well as in some data mining concepts. We compare the performance of Ant-Miner with the performance of the wellknown C4.5 algorithm on six public domain data sets. The results provide evidence that: (a) Ant-Miner is competitive with C4.5 with respect to predictive accuracy; and (b) the rule sets discovered by Ant-Miner are simpler (smaller) than the rule sets discovered by C4.5.
Multicast
Authors: Chakraborty D. , Chakraborty G. , Shiratori N.
Published: May 2011

The advancement in optical fiber and switching technologies has resulted in new generation high-speed networks that can achieve speeds of up to a few gigabits per second. Also, the progress in audio, video and data storage technologies has given rise to new distributed real-time applications. These applications may involve multimedia, which require low end-to-end delay. The applications’ requirements, such as the end-to-end delay, delay jitter, and loss rate, are expressed as QoS parameters that must be guaranteed. In addition, many of these new applications may involve multiple users, and hence the importance of multicast communication. In this chapter we discuss the basics of multicasting, its routing protocols and algorithms, along with different QoS-based multicast routing.
Wavelet Transforms and Multirate Filtering
Authors: Rao Raghuveer
Published: May 2011

One of the most fascinating developments in the field of multirate signal processing has been the establishment of its link to the discrete wavelet transform. Indeed, it is precisely this link that has been responsible for the rapid application of wavelets in fields such as image compression. The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the wavelet transform and develop its link to multirate filtering. The birth of the field of wavelet transforms is now attributed to the seminal paper by Grossman and Morlet (1984) detailing the continuous wavelet transform or CWT. The CWT of a square integrable function is obtained by integrating it over regions defined by translations and dilations of a windowing function called the mother wavelet. The idea of representing functions or signals in terms of dilations can be found even in engineering articles dating back by several years, for example, Helstrom (1966). However, Grossman and Morlet’s formulation was more complete and was motivated by potential application to modeling seismic data. The next step of significance was the discovery of orthogonal wavelet basis functions and their role in defining multi-resolution representations (Daubechies 1988; Meyer 1992). Daubechies also provided a method for constructing compactly supported wavelets. Mallat (1989) established the fact that coefficients of orthogonal wavelet expansions can be obtained through multirate filtering which paved the way for widespread investigation of using wavelet transforms in signal and image processing applications. The objective of the chapter is to provide an overview of the relationship between multirate filtering and wavelet transformation. We begin with a brief account of the CWT, then go through the discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) followed by derivation of the relationship between the DWT and multirate filtering. The chapter concludes with an account of selected applications in digital image processing.
University/Community Partnerships
Authors: Roberts Ann , Boyle Roger
Published: May 2011

The University of Leeds is the largest campus-based university in the United Kingdom in terms of student numbers. The School of Computing has, in recent years, sought to share its academic and technical advantages with schools in economically deprived inner-city areas. This chapter describes some of the projects which have been initiated and managed by the School of Computing. We discuss how these have benefited both the schools and our participating undergraduate students. The chapter concludes with a discussion on some of the difficulties encountered and those factors that, from our experience, help to achieve success.