How Do We Build Trust into E-commerce Web Sites?

Trust is a subjective, user-centric, context-dependent concept, and is thus difficult to define universally. On the Internet, several factors make trust more difficult to build, explaining why some successful brick-and-mortar retail chains have been unable to translate their reputation to the virtual platform the Web offers. Researchers in many fields have been interested in how to build trust in e-commerce sites. To address this issue, the authors reviewed the available literature on the topic, examining 28 relevant publications in depth to identify relationships among factors that impact trust.     

How Long Do We Expect to Live? A Review of the Evidence

How long people expect to live sets an important context for longevity risk in retirement planning and may contribute to the acceptability of policies to raise pension age. However, there have been few studies representative of a national population on subjective longevity. This paper reviews the available evidence. It finds that despite some studies reporting that subjective longevity is close to average measures in population life tables the prevailing tendency is to underestimate lifespans. Men generally reflect that they have lower actual longevity than women on average, but men are more optimistic, so that women are more likely to underestimate their likely longevity. People may take account of some mortality risk factors in estimating their own longevity, but appear not to understand the true extent of risk. There is little data on how people think about longevity or why they choose a particular estimate of their own likely lifespan. Thus, international evidence suggests potential for longevity risk in individual retirement planning and raises significant questions about the policy implications which can only become more acute in ageing populations.     

Will vector graphics finally make it on the Web?

Multimedia technology is an increasingly important part of the Web. Because of this, multimedia vendors are always looking for a competitive edge, as well as a better way to present content. And now, these vendors are looking closely at an important technology: scalable vector graphics (SVG). Currently, the Web mainly runs on bitmap-image formats like GIF (graphics interchange format), PNG (portable network graphics), and JPEG (designed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group). However, bitmap files can run large, even with data compression, and don't scale well. Vector-graphic formats don't experience these problems but never caught on because the technology consists of incompatible proprietary standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), though, may have eliminated this concern recently when it released an open SVG standard with broad industry support     

Will the Overseas Expansion of Facebook Succeed?

Social networking sites (SNSs) are becoming mainstream and are spreading worldwide. Here, the authors review Facebook and Orkut, two major SNSs, and analyze a recent survey conducted among Indian and Pakistani Orkut users. They aim to investigate Orkut users' experiences with Facebook, which has a stronghold in the US and is expanding globally to compete with Orkut. The survey indicates that the conservative and anticommercial Indian and Pakistani cultures might be a major challenge for Facebook in competing with Orkut in these societies.     

Reusing Scientific Data: How Earthquake Engineering Researchers Assess the Reusability of Colleagues’ Data

Investments in cyberinfrastructure and e-Science initiatives are motivated by the desire to accelerate scientific discovery. Always viewed as a foundation of science, data sharing is appropriately seen as critical to the success of such initiatives, but new technologies supporting increasingly data-intensive and collaborative science raise significant challenges and opportunities. Overcoming the technical and social challenges to broader data sharing is a common and important research objective, but increasing the supply and accessibility of scientific data is no guarantee data will be applied by scientists. Before reusing data created by others, scientists need to assess the data’s relevance, they seek confidence the data can be understood, and they must trust the data. Using interview data from earthquake engineering researchers affiliated with the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), we examine how these scientists assess the reusability of colleagues’ experimental data for model validation.     

How Can We Deter Cyber Terrorism?

ABSTRACT

In order to deter cyber terrorism, it is important to identify the terrorists, since punishment may not deter them. The identification probability relies heavily on tracking cyber terrorists. However, there are legal and technical challenges to tracking terrorists. This paper proposes suggestions and insights on overcoming these challenges. Three types of infrastructures must be present in order to deter cyber terrorism: technical, policy, and legal. We list some of the key items that academics as well as practitioners need to focus on to improve cyber-terrorism deterrence.     

Eigenbackground Revisited: Can We Model the Background with Eigenvectors?

Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision - Using dominant eigenvectors for background modeling (usually known as Eigenbackground) is a common technique in the literature. However, its results...     

Will credit cards cut the cost of government purchasing?

Governments hope that ‘corporate cards’ will prove to be a cost effective way of ordering and paying for low price official purchases and for travel and subsistence on public business. We report on two government credit card programmes — in Canada and in the UK.     

e-Infrastructures: How Do We Know and Understand Them? Strategic Ethnography and the Biography of Artefacts

In health research and services, and in many other domains, we note the emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with multiple users and uses. These e-infrastructures are becoming more widespread and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those attempting to establish them. By contrast, this paper is inspired by concerns about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology and work organisation—particularly the dominance of relatively short-term, often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies. We explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what we call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspective—which emphasises the value of strategic ethnography: theoretically-informed, multi-site and longitudinal studies: We seek to draw insights here from a programme of empirical research into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are particularly relevant to understanding the current and ongoing difficulties encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures.     

Will big data algorithms dismantle the foundations of liberalism?

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that technological advances of the twenty-first century will usher in a significant shift in how humans make important life decisions. Instead of turning to the Bible or the Quran, to the heart or to our therapists, parents, and mentors, people will turn to Big Data recommendation algorithms to make these choices for them. Much as we rely on Spotify to recommend music to us, we will soon rely on algorithms to decide our careers, spouses, and commitments. Harari also predicts that next, the state will take away individuals’ rights to make their own choices about their lives. If Google knows where your children would flourish best in school, why should the state allow a fallible human parent to decide? Liberalism—which, as Harari uses this term, refers to a state of society in which human freedom to choose is respected and championed—will collapse. In this paper, I argue that Harari’s conception of the future implications of recommendation algorithms is deeply flawed, for two reasons. First, users will not rely on algorithms to make decisions for them because they have no reason to trust algorithms, which are developed by companies with their own incentives, such as profit. Second, for most of our life decisions, algorithms will not be able to be developed, because the factors relevant to the decisions we face are unique to our situation. I present an alternative depiction of the future: instead of relying on algorithms to make decisions for us, humans will use algorithms to enhance our decision-making by helping us consider the most relevant choices first and notice information we might not otherwise. Finally, I will also argue that even if computers could make many of our decisions for us, liberalism as a political system would emerge unscathed.     

How Can We Observe and Describe Chaos?

We propose a new approach to define chaos in dynamical systems from the point of view of Information Dynamics. Observation of chaos in reality depends upon how to observe it, for instance, how to take the scale in space and time. Therefore it is natural to abandon taking several mathematical limiting procedures. We take account of them, and chaos degree previously introduced is redefined in this paper.     

How Should We Measure an Ancient Structure?

The author examines the questions of precision and accuracy in the measurement of ancient buildings, taking into account the separate requirements of both scholarship and preservation. Modern technology has changed matters significantly and promises to continue to bring change. Whereas the problem was once measuring as precisely as possible or as precisely as a scaled drawing could display, the problem is now to measure and record as precisely as required for the particular project. For each survey project, the answer must be unique, but it must be well and carefully argued with respect to the tools at hand and the subject. It is no longer appropriate to assume that the most precise measurements are necessary. Technology has advanced; now the decisions are ours.     

How is the Semantic Web evolving? A dynamic social network perspective

Finding how the Semantic Web has evolved can help understand the status of Semantic Web community and predict the diffusion of the Semantic Web. One of the promising applications of the Semantic Web is the representation of personal profiles using Friend of a Friend (FOAF). A key characteristic of such social networks is their continual change. However, extant analyses of social networks on the Semantic Web are essentially static in that the information about the change of social networks is neglected. To address the limitations, we analyzed the dynamics of a large-scale real-world social network in this paper. Social network ties were extracted from both within and between FOAF documents. The former was based on knows relations between persons, and the latter was based on revision relations. We found that the social network evolves in a speckled fashion, which is highly distributed. The network went through rapid increase in size at an early stage and became stabilized later. By examining the changes of structural properties over time, we identified the evolution patterns of social networks on the Semantic Web and provided evidence for the growth and sustainability of the Semantic Web community.     

Data Mining: How Research Meets Practical Development?

At the 2001 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining in San Jose, California, on November 29 to December 2, 2001, there was a panel discussion on how data mining research meets practical development. One of the motivations for organizing the panel discussion was to provide useful advice for industrial people to explore their directions in data mining development. Based on the panel discussion, this paper presents the views and arguments from the panel members, the Conference Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs. These people as a group have both academic and industrial experiences in different data mining related areas such as databases, machine learning, and neural networks. We will answer questions such as (1) how far data mining is from practical development, (2) how data mining research differs from practical development, and (3) what are the most promising areas in data mining for practical development.     

How do we inspire people to contact aboriginal culture with Web2.0 technology?

Culture right have become a newly emerging human rights around the world after 1980. From a long term perspective of culture protection, it is very important to focus on culture propagation and preservation. Under the erosion of mainstream culture, the preservation issue of aboriginal culture has become a particular important issue. For the sake, this study explores how information technology can be used to effectively help preserve, promote and revitalize traditional Formosan aboriginal cultures through the implementation of digital archives, which can make a culture to be more readily accessible to the general public. To have a better understand about what factors prompt users to continually access the digital culture archive. This paper first presents an adaptation of ‘Web 2.0’ to build a digital archive for the Atayal Culture Museum in Taiwan. Then, explores correlations between constructs such as Web 2.0 site characteristics, media richness, para-social presence, user experience, user satisfaction and user intention. The results could be useful in developing integrated platforms or tools for educational purposes, allowing teachers and students to effectively share and apply cultural and educational resources. Another objective is to revitalize and commercialize the cultural industry, using the digital archive's content as the basis for collaboration with teachers and other relevant professionals to achieve maximum creativity and create practical and innovative digital learning products.