The economics of mobile payments: Understanding stakeholder issues for an emerging financial technology application

Economic theory provides a unique vantage point from which to examine issues with respect to emerging technologies, where standards and adoption, business process changes and implementation outcomes, information security, investments and business value, and industry impact require care and consideration on the part of senior management strategists and financial services leaders. In this article, we examine a new technology application which is coming into its own around the world, in association with the revolution in wireless connectivity: mobile payments. Although there are likely to be nuances and surprises with this technology application, we caution the reader to recognize that many of the same economic forces will be at work as were with other financial services and related technology applications in the past. We apply a robust evaluative framework that permits identification of the relevant stakeholders and applicable theory in the analysis of consumer, firm, business process, market, industrial and social issues. Our findings are intended to guide senior managers in dealing with the economic aspects of mobile payments, and to help identify some important directions for the research.     

互联网海洋气象预报辅助信息系统设计和应用

中国是世界上海洋灾害损失最严重的国家之一,海洋预报对海洋防灾减灾的作用日益凸显。随着互联网的发展,国内外很多技术先进的海洋气象部门、研究机构纷纷将预报产品、研究成果发布到互联网上,其中有不少具有较高的参考价值,值得省级及以下海洋预报机构和预报员研究借鉴。因此有必要开发一套软件系统,自动整理收集互联网公开发布的各类数值预报产品、实况天气图、卫星云图等资源,并通过简洁高效的方式显示,以丰富预报员的参考信息量,提高预报员工作效率。     

因特网突现行为研究综述

因特网是一个处在不断演化中的开放复杂巨系统,其复杂性对网络管理、网络新技术和新业务开发带来极大的挑战。突现现象是其重要的行为特征,得到众多研究者的关注。研究因特网的突现行为对于深入理解因特网运行规律、更好地进行网络及用户管理、设计高效的新网络协议和新业务有着重要的理论和实践指导意义。分析了因特网不同层面的突现现象和主要特征,介绍了网络突现行为的研究进展及与网络突现行为相关的计算模型,讨论了进一步研究的方向。     

移动因特网中的组成员管理

目前因特网技术和无线技术这两大热点技术结合成最新的一项网络技术——移动因特网计算。基于移动因特网的组成员管理面临新的挑战。组成员管理算法层出不穷,目的是为了简洁、有效地获得正确的组播组成员信息,提高组播通信的服务质量,同时提高网络的资源利用率。该文研究了不同种类的组成员管理,并进行了细致的分类,按各个类别的特点结合算法进行了分析。     

基于搜索的物联网设备识别框架

越来越多的物联网设备接入到互联网中,但由于设计上的缺陷或者缺乏安全防护手段,这些暴露在公网上的物联网设备极容易受到黑客的攻击与利用。研究表明,具有相似产品属性的物联网设备很有可能存在相同漏洞,因此有效的识别网络空间中的物联网设备,对其产品属性,如设备品牌、型号等相关信息进行细粒度识别和标定,对把握网络空间实体设备的安全态势具有重要意义。本文提出一种基于搜索的物联网设备识别框架,利用物联网设备协议标语中富含的产品属性信息,通过自动化网络搜索技术构建物联网设备信息库,进而实现对未知新设备细粒度地自动分级识别和标定。通过公网实验,该框架能够很好识别视频监控和工控设备的产品属性,型号识别准确率均超过90%。     

Policies and procedures to manage employee Internet abuse

Industry analysts estimate that billions of dollars in lost revenue were attributed to employee Internet abuse. Trends also suggest that lost job productivity and corporate liability have emerged as new workplace concerns due to growth of new online technologies and mobile computing. Such employee Internet misuse creates new management dilemmas on how to respond to incidences of such misuse as well poses network security risks and drains on network bandwidth. Within an organization, it is imperative to ensure that employees are using computing resources effectively and appropriately. Utilizing the previous literature in the field, this paper proposed a revised framework to manage employee Internet abuse. The former model proposed did not account for new digital media and recommended screening applicants for Internet addiction, using more of a clinical test than a job performance test. This new model describes both prevention and intervention methods to address incidents of online misuse in the workplace and refocuses hiring decisions into post-employment training. It also examines the new hiring concerns with the new iGeneration of college graduates and it examines how organizations should best utilize acceptable Internet use policies with clear methods of Internet monitoring to enforce that workers are complying with company policies. This paper also talks about the potential benefits of rehabilitation approaches to manage employees who abuse instead of terminating them to decrease job turnover and improve job retention. Implications for current management practices are also discussed.     

Mobile business models: organizational and financial design issues that matter

Designing viable mobile services and business models that capture value for all the organizations involved is a challenge. There are many design issues that can be taken into account, and it is often unclear what their ultimate effect is on the performance of a business model. This paper offers a framework for relating critical design issues to success factors and tests the causal relationship between these core concepts in the organizational and financial domain of mobile business models, based on an international survey among 120 practitioners and experts in the mobile Internet services domain, most of them from EU countries. According to our findings, addressing organizational design issues (i.e. partner selection, governance and relation management) leads to an acceptable division of roles among actors, while addressing financial design issues (i.e., pricing, division of investments and costs among partners) results in risk levels that are perceived to be acceptable. The level of profitability that is perceived to be acceptable is influenced indirectly by these design issues, because the relationships are mediated through the risk level that the actors involved perceive to be acceptable and through the way the roles are divided among the actors.      

Where did the Internet go? [user census]

What happened to the Internet after it grew up? Where did it go? This is not like trying to identify a former child star after his cherub cheeks fade with adulthood and then find his home. But Internet technology's form is far more malleable and far more capricious in its movement from location to location. To create value, this technology must be embedded in investments at firms and households. So, by definition, each user of Internet technology always has a physical location. When the Internet first commercialized, many predicted it would bring the development of a new virtual world. Some predictions were ridiculous, a by-product of hype and self-interested soothsaying. Today, I am interested in examining the more serious of these predictions, particularly those about geography.     

The future of e-commerce: integrate and customize

Internet technology allows companies to overcome many of the physical constraints that often prevent them from doing business in distant markets, which means that an e-commerce market is fundamentally global. Despite the increasing market reach, however, certain emerging trends fragment the Internet-enabled marketplace into countless niche markets. As network and distributed computing technologies advance, killer applications for consumers will be those that allow mixing and matching of products and services on a personal basis and in real time. The author discusses integration and customization as the future of e-commerce     

有关Internet安全问题的思考

随着Internet技术的发展,以及应用的日益普及,国家、企业、服务提供商、个人等对Internet安全上的需求更加强烈。传统的Internet体系结构由于内在的缺陷,很难有效地解决这个问题。目前,网络安全面临着新的挑战。论文首先论述了当前Internet体系结构中存在的一些问题,然后从交通管理观点出发,提出了未来Internet安全体系结构的新设想-主动网络模型。     

EWS-Based Management Application Interface and Integration Mechanisms for Web-Based Element Management

Web-based network element management provides an administrator with the ability to configure and monitor network devices over the Internet using a Web browser. The most direct way to accomplish this is to embed a Web server [Embedded Web Server (EWS)] into a network device, and use that server to provide a Web-based management user interface constructed with HTML, graphics, Java and other features common to Web browsers. In this paper we present EWS-based management application interface mechanisms for use between embedded management applications and embedded Web servers. We propose a guideline for choosing an efficient interface mechanism, which is based on the characteristics of management information and Web documents. A Web-based management user interface through embedded Web servers has many advantages such as ubiquity, platform independence and user-friendliness. In order to be truly useful, a Web-based management user interface must have a low development cost and a short development time. We provide effective integration mechanisms for each interface. We validate these mechanisms by implementing them in an Internet router.     

The design and evaluation of an intelligent sales agent for online persuasion and negotiation

Online purchases from e-stores are getting popular among Internet users. Although many e-commerce activities, such as auctions, bargaining, and recommendation services are available, most e-stores lack clerk-like mechanisms to persuade potential buyers into buying products and to bargain with them for making a good deal. The objectives of this research are to design a lab prototype of a sales agent with persuasion and negotiation capabilities and to evaluate its effectiveness as a virtual clerk in an e-store. The prototypical intelligent sales agent (ISA) is equipped with reinforcement learning capabilities and an abstract argument framework. We conduct both laboratory and Internet experiments to assess ISA’s performance. The experimental results reveal that an e-store embedded within such a sales agent can improve a seller’s surplus and increase a buyer’s product valuation, willingness-to-pay, and satisfaction with the e-store.     

The Strategic Impact of Internet Technology in Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Firms: Insights from a Knowledge Management Perspective

This paper conceptualises the strategic impact of new Internet technology in biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms. It argues that competitiveness of modern, agile pharmaceutical businesses depend on their ability to create and commercialise new knowledge as much as on their ability to produce new products. Hence, knowledge production and intellectual property management provide a strong foundation for emerging, successful e-commerce strategies. The authors suggest Knowledge Management (KM) plays a key role in determining organizational performance levels and value creation. KM refers to technologies for processing information and generating and distributing knowledge, but also to organizational structures (such as virtual enterprise designs) that increase strategic fit and effectiveness of KM implementations. The Internet is seen as core technology enabling the creation of organizational networks (virtual teams; virtual customer-supplier communities). More specifically, this paper devises a new classificatory framework that categorises the strategic impact of Internet technology in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, which is based on three key dimensions: converting information into knowledge, the redesign of the innovation process, and knowledge-oriented organisational structuring. The authors extend their framework beyond the boundaries of the firm to include relationship with customers, suppliers, intermediaries such as specialist biotech companies and healthcare professionals.     

Architectural Requirements for Cloud Computing Systems: An Enterprise Cloud Approach

Cloud Computing is a model of service delivery and access where dynamically scalable and virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. This model creates a new horizon of opportunity for enterprises. It introduces new operating and business models that allow customers to pay for the resources they effectively use, instead of making heavy upfront investments. The biggest challenge in Cloud Computing is the lack of a de facto standard or single architectural method, which can meet the requirements of an enterprise cloud approach. In this paper, we explore the architectural features of Cloud Computing and classify them according to the requirements of end-users, enterprises that use the cloud as a platform, and cloud providers themselves. We show that several architectural features will play a major role in the adoption of the Cloud Computing paradigm as a mainstream commodity in the enterprise world. This paper also provides key guidelines to software architects and Cloud Computing application developers for creating future architectures.     

Network Quality of Service for the Enterprise: A Broad Overview

One of the biggest challenges facing the Internet today is to scale to an infrastructure that can provide quality-of-service (QoS) to a wide variety of applications and traffic types. As the Internet continues to grow at a rapid pace and new applications emerge, the task of managing bandwidth becomes more important. This implies that the traditional best-effort service that is provided by TCP/IP is no longer sufficient in many cases. The concept of QoS has evolved to meet the increasing need for bandwidth management. This paper provides an overview of what QoS is why we need it, and what the current approaches for implementing it are. The paper also compares some existing vendor products in the QoS space and finally provides insights into some of the vexing problems that still remain difficult to solve for QoS designers.     

物链网综述:区块链在物联网中的应用

物联网设备数量的激增和中心化的管理架构给物联网的发展带来了严峻的挑战，区块链技术的去中心化和不可篡改等特点可以用来解决物联网的上述难题，故此将区块链技术应用到物联网领域成为研究热点。随着区块链技术在物联网应用中的深入研究，出现了一个新的概念："物链网"。本文首先介绍了物联网的行业痛点和区块链相关技术，然后分析了将区块链技术应用到物联网领域的论文和白皮书，把融合文献分为平台架构和应用场景两类后，进行归纳总结，并调研了应用领域的典型公链和商业项目，指出了将区块链技术应用于物联网领域所面临的挑战与机遇，讨论了相应的解决方案，最后展望了"物链网"未来的发展趋势，提出未来研究方向应侧重于数据存储和数据管理方向。     

Can Efficiency of Returns Be Considered as a Pricing Factor?

We add to the investments literature by employing new techniques to estimate asset performance. We estimate a data envelopment analysis based efficiency score that allows for direct comparison between ex-post efficiency rankings and test the ex-ante relevance of such scores by including them into asset pricing models. We find that knowing the fund efficiency score can help explain time-series returns. When efficiency is included in an asset pricing model, the absolute value of the average mispricing error is decreased, which we take as evidence of the explanatory power of efficiency scores. But more importantly, we show that efficacy scores can be used as next period predictors of stock returns. In addition, we further use the efficiency scores to differentiate between the performance of constrained and unconstrained investment assets, as in the case of socially responsible investments. Our findings give robustness to the literature on constrained investments showing significant underperformance of socially and responsible investments.     

基于B/S架构的新型办公自动化系统设计

随着Internet技术的推广,基于Web的应用系统得到了迅速发展。.NET框架为Web应用系统提供全新的计算平台,已成为开发Internet应用程序的一大主流技术,基于该平台开发的应用系统具有执行效率高、扩展性强等优点。本文设计与实现了基于B/S架构的办公自动化系统,系统的开发采用了.NET框架技术,实现了文档管理、邮件传送、日程管理、重点工作管理、公共信息管理、系统管理等功能。     

互联网治理及相关学科发展研究

在互联网的推动下,一个无形的虚拟社会正逐步形成,呈现出一些比较独特的规律和特点,给新时期的社会治理带来新问题、提出新挑战。顺应互联网和时代发展,近年来,出现了一系列与之相关的新理论、新学科,在互联网治理中起到了积极的指导作用,其中,许多理论和学科尚处于萌芽状态和发展初期,有待进一步梳理、讨论和深入研究,以便为未来的互联网治理及其体系建设提供更好的指导。本文对与互联网治理关系比较密切的哲学、政治学、社会学、法学、伦理学等主要学科及其发展状况进行了论述。     

A new approach to systematization of the management of paper-based clinical pathways

The present study was performed to explore a new approach to systematization of the management of paper-based clinical pathways by developing a new system requiring little capital investment. A new system was developed and incorporated into an existing network at a hospital with a paper-based clinical pathway management system. The effectiveness of this new system was examined by comparing the management efficiency of clinical pathways before and after its introduction, and by comparison of the new system with other such systems currently in place at other medical institutions with regard to efficiency. In addition, the acceptability of the system for other medical institutions was examined by providing free access to the software on the Internet. The development costs of the new system were low. Although the new system has been in place for more than 3 years, no problems have yet been encountered in either the existing network system or in the management system itself. The new system allows the processing of statistics and analysis of circulation or variance automatically, neither of which were possible in the original paper-based system. We provided open access to the system as free software on the Internet, and it has since been downloaded by many medical institutions and enterprises in Japan. This system is very useful for institutions where it is difficult to introduce expensive new systems for systematic management of clinical pathways, such as electronic medical records, because of problems regarding capital or system management, and it may also be useful in other countries.