Volume 3 Issue 4
Authors: Dingwei Wang; Wenjia Wang
Abstract: Developing a multi-viewpoints trust model mainly for the problems existed in the current assessment of trust degree in online auctions. Referencing to various activities of online auctioneers and bidders, the model divides the participants into bidder, auctioneer and the third party/auction websites. Different participants in online auction have different parameters on the trust computation, such as the recent credibility, the time weight, the value of the transaction, the reputation feedback, the behavior analysis, etc. By means of evaluating the assessments of trust degree with multi-viewpoints of different participants, we calculate credibility of participants separately. The multi-viewpoints trust model is able to greatly improve the accuracy of calculation. Furthermore, it is more effective for analyzing the trust degree in online auction.
Keywords: Online Auctions; Multi-Viewpoints Trust Model; Trust Degree; Reputation Assessment; Reputation Feedback; Behavior Analysis
Authors: Javed Iqbal
Abstract: This paper is concerned with an e-billing initiative undertaken in NADRA. Traditional e-billing allows consumer to pay utility bills through the Internet. Since the Internet penetration in Pakistan is low which does not allow utility companies to collect their bills through the net. Therefore, NADRA designed a different strategy to address the issue. The company appointed franchisees who own Internet connection at commercial outlets; open an account with NADRA and prepay some money. The franchisees collect bills from consumers and charge commission at their outlets spread all over the country. NADRA deducts billing amount from each franchisee out of its prepaid deposit of each transaction. The information is sent to utility companies that a particular bill has been collected. The initiative is a success within the socio-technical environment of the country.
Keywords: E-billing; E-commerce; E-government; the Internet; E-service Marketing
Authors: Prof. C. H. C. Leung; Yuanxi Li; W. S. Chan
Abstract: With the rapid development of multimedia technology, digital resources has become increasingly available and it constitutes a significant component of multimedia contents on the Internet. Since digital resources can be represented in various forms, formats, and dimensions, searching such information is far more challenging than text-based search. While some basic forms of multimedia retrieval are available on the Internet, these tend to be inflexible and have significant limitations. Currently, most of these multimedia retrieval systems mainly rely on text annotations. Here, we present an approach for deep concept-based multimedia information retrieval, which focuses on high-level human knowledge, perception, incorporating subtle nuances and emotional impression on the multimedia resources. We also provide a critical evaluation of the most common current Multimedia Information Retrieval approaches and propose an innovative adaptive method for multimedia information search that overcomes the current limitations. The main focus of our approach is concerned with image discovery and recovery by collaborative semantic indexing and user relevance feedback analysis. Through successive usage of our indexing model, novel image content indexing can be built from deep user knowledge incrementally and collectively by accumulating users’ judgment and intelligence.
Keywords: Collaborative Indexing; Multimedia Indexing; Image Information Retrieval; Relevance Feedback; Semantic Search
Authors: Nigel Mc Kelvey; Matthew Clifton; Clara Quigley; Kevin Curran
Abstract: Internet usage has grown at an almost astronomical rate with penetration (per percentage population) rates hitting figures near 80% in certain regions. Africa alone has seen Internet usage growth rates in excess of 2,500% from 2000 to 2011 (Miniwatts, 2011). With such an increase in the user base, coupled with major advances in Internet technologies, it is hardly surprising that ‘cyber’ crimes have increased proportionately (Savvas, 2011). Internet Protocol technologies such as peer-to-peer (P2P) and Torrent have ‘paved the way’ to allow the Internet to become a ‘virtual shop’ – a dodgy market stall is probably a better analogy - where anything (and everything) is freely available is you dig down deep enough. With these new distributed technologies and the increased availability of fast broadband connections, start-up companies such as Napster, along with more ‘seedier’ organisations such as The Pirate Bay, rose from the technological fire to become leaders of the new file-sharing generation (Sydell, 2011). With the current legal framework for regulating copyright infringement and protecting Intellectual Property (IP) being gravely outdated, this paper will examine at the case surrounding Napster and debates whether current Internet copyright laws can be updated to protect digital industries without stifling the underlying freedoms of Internet usage.
Keywords: Online Copyright; Internet Copyright Law; Online Law; Cyber Law; Intellectual Property; Digital Industries
Authors: Wei Huang; Imtiaz Sandia
Abstract: Over the past few years, Cloud computing has becoming one of the revolutionary technologies in ICT which grows in both popularity and importance, both in industry and in academic domain. More and more private companies, government organizations and institutions are convinced and happy to promote Cloud to improve both connectivity and instant social ability. For IT services and solutions for business, Cloud-based platform promises to offer better business intelligence and productive experience by using unified communications, consistent collaborated data and service management. It is well believed that Cloud Computing will also bring a revolution in the healthcare IT sector along with other ICT business. To exploit Cloud computing productivity potential, this paper focuses on adopting Cloud computing technologies with agent-based solutions to support service oriented system control and management. The on-going research and practice demonstrates an application to the management of community care provision, which shows transforming to Software-as-a-Service (Saas) with the combination of a private healthcare cloud and integrated agents can improve business efficiency by providing flexible services scheduling, smarter health care services control and management.
Keywords: Cloud Computing Theories; Service-Oriented Systems; Intelligent Collaborative Agents Based Solutions; Agent System Architecture; Cloud Based Service Engineering and Provisioning
Authors: Bouhnik Dan; Giat Yahel; Gilkis Nitzan
Abstract: E-Government is continuously developing in Israel, which has recently launched the 'GovX' project with the goal of improving the E-Government infrastructures. In this study, we evaluate the usability of twenty-four Israeli government ministry websites using thirty-seven usability variables, which are grouped into six dimensions: Online Services; User-Help; Navigation; Legitimacy; Information Architecture and Accessibility Accommodations. We identify three groups of deficiencies: Absence of adequate online services, deficiencies that limit equal access to the government and errors in information design. We find that the new 'GovX' infrastructure does not adequately solve these deficiencies.
Keywords: E-Government; Israel; Usability; Government Websites
Authors: Dien D. Phan; Douglas R. Vogel
Abstract: The recent proliferation of applications for Business Intelligence (BI) has created many opportunities for natural intelligence theory to be used in business applications. More and more companies today are using Natural Intelligence (NI) to exploit consumers’ herd behavior, crowd wisdom and crowdsourcing in social network marketing. The success and failure and resurrection of a large catalog and on line retailer in the U.S. present an opportunity for a unique case study for NI applications in retailing. This paper uses the experiences of three separate Fingerhut companies to validate the concepts with lessons learned and new insights.
Keywords: Wisdom of Crowds; Natural Intelligence; Social Network Marketing; Business Intelligence