Mobile communities: How viable are their business models? An exemplary investigation of the leisure industry

Communities (especially Virtual Communities) of Interest have been the focus of substantial discussion in academic literature. This paper addresses Communities of Interest within the leisure industry and discusses possible business models for the parties operating the platform. The described community platform is an innovative value added service concept for a mobile coordination support for individuals—A Mobile Community Support System. In this paper we extend the discussion about mobile communities to hybrid communities. The communities are hybrid in two ways: they use two different access channels, the Web and mobile devices, and they are built on real-world leisure communities that constitute themselves in the form of buddy lists in the virtual world of an ICT supported platform. We briefly depict the state of the art of IT in the leisure industry and describe the empirical aspects of the project objectives of the MCOR (Mobile Community Online Reservation) system. We conclude with some final remarks about design considerations and a blueprint for future research. Felix Hampe holds a chair for Corporate Communication Systems and is Director of the Institute for IS Research at the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany. He studied at the Free University of Berlin and worked later for the University of Bielefeld and the Philipps-University of Marburg prior to his appointment to Koblenz. In 2004/2005, he spent one year as a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, School of Computer and Information Systems. Beside his research interest in application aspects of communication systems, Professor Hampe started very early research in the area of mobile applications and especially mobile commerce. He was cofounder and board member of the Mobile Application Research Center (MARC), a German network for joint research on mobile business. Professor Hampe authored several international conference articles in the area and served for many international conferences.     

A lean-server foundation for collaborative design

The design framework research community utilizes the Internet as a facilitator for collaborative activities. The ability to support coordination and high-level communication is imperative in any collaboratory. A novel approach using lean-servers is an alternative method for providing a functional server-side computing model that meets the implementation requirements for a collaboratory. The server brokers Internet requests directly within a design application by providing a gateway to the application's programming interface using a HyperText Transfer Protocol compliant layer. This allows requests to be managed directly by the application rather than requiring auxiliary services. Macros are used to provide content and context sensitive responses. A prototype system, called the Systems Programming Architecture for Collaborative Engineering, is described as one scenario for implementing the lean-server technology. Usability of the approach is demonstrated through a Design of Experiments example that is representative of modern design methods. This example also demonstrates coordination because it executes asynchronously with multi-user intervention at any time during the process. In hindsight, the lean-server approach is an enabling technology for collaborative design and focuses future research on methods for communicating reasoning, experience, and other information during design decision-making processes.     

Satisfaction with virtual communities in B2B financial services: social dynamics,content and technology

This study explores satisfaction with Virtual Communities in a Financial Services setting. Based on Expectancy Value Theory and the concept of Experiential Value we hypothesize that three sources of value drive user satisfaction in a B2B-VC: social ties, content and technology. We propose a theoretical model to operationalize these concepts. The hypotheses in the model are tested via a Partial Least Square analysis on data gathered via a survey among participants in a leading Virtual Community in the Financial Services industry. As such, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on Social Media, in particular addressing the relatively unexplored domain of Business-to-Business (B2B) where individuals act on behalf of a company instead of their own interests. Our findings show that user satisfaction in a B2B-VC is driven by the three aforementioned sources of value.     

The co-learning process in healthcare professionals: Assessing user satisfaction in virtual communities of practice

Communities of practice are nowadays an important concept in the healthcare sector. Particularly, the intensive use of ICT has allowed their creation into a virtual environment – Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs) developing optimal conditions to make possible the collaborative learning process. The VCoPs antecedents can be situated on social network phenomenon, where individuals with different traits but a common interest/objective are linked, use ICT potency (especially social media) to interchange information, experiences and contents among them. And as a result, people create and share knowledge, and learn collaboratively. VCoP users have a higher satisfaction level in the collaborative learning process when they can: (1) Achieve benefits related to patient diagnosis and treatment (cost reductions, faster management, quality and accuracy of diagnosis, etc.); (2) Increase the share capital of participants and creating networks of trusted individuals. Given the interest in this topic, the objective of this work is to identify the factors that determine user satisfaction in relation to Community Practice (CoP) and the process of building shared knowledge. For this, a sample of 130 Spanish health professionals participating in an online community, and developed in a virtual community of practice, is discussed. The results obtained from an analysis of logistic regression show evidence of the perception of efficiency and effectiveness in collaboration with the members of the VCoP as positively influencing the perceived satisfaction with the CoP. Also, the degree of individual participation in the community affects the degree of perceived satisfaction. The conclusions provide interesting strategic recommendations in the management process of the CoP.     

Stepwise deployment methodology of a service oriented architecture for business communities

This paper describes the deployment of a Service Oriented Architecture in the specific context of the ‘Business Communities’, i.e. Communities of heterogeneous actors that cooperate in the same business area. The architecture is based on XML and Web Services technologies.More specifically the paper analyzes the structure and the requirements of Business Communities in general, derives the requirements of the architecture and describes its implementation. Finally, a case study is presented to show how the architecture has been implemented for the Business Community of the Port of Genoa characterized by users operating in the cargo and transport business area.     

基于WEB的虚拟教学系统综述

在基于WEB的虚拟教学环境中,学生和老师可以不受时间和空间的限制,进行信息共享和交流,协同合作完成教学任务。文章结合计算机支持的协同工作 （Computer Support Cooperative Work）技术、虚拟现实（virtual reality）技术和IEEE上关于协同合作之间信息传输的标准,从基于WEB的虚拟教学环境的产生需求、特征、结构框架以及协同合作信息的传输这几个方面对基于WEB的虚拟教学系统的研究情况进行综述,讨论了存在的一些问题。     

基于JXTA构建新型虚拟学习社区

系统地分析了虚拟学习社区和P2P模型,提出了利用JXTA技术,构建P2P模式的新型虚拟学习社区的思想,并实现了部分功能。     

Design and evaluation of a high− fidelity virtual reality manufacturing planning system

Virtual Reality - Manufacturing applications of virtual reality (VR) technology are growing. The challenge is to design, integrate, and evaluate VR simulation for manufacturing Systems that...     

The formation of virtual organizations by means of electronic institutions in a 3D e-Tourism environment

In this article we showcase an agent-mediated B2C and B2B e-Marketplace. This e-Marketplace is part of the social and immersive 3D e-Tourism environment “Itchy Feet”. We give an overview of the framework that forms the basis of the e-Marketplace and show how it is used to create B2C-, B2B- and Virtual Organizations that are visualized in a 3D Virtual World. This interface provides users with an intuitive and easy way to interact with humans and software agents by means of a 3D Virtual World. The business logic is realized by autonomous software agents offering services to customers. The e-Marketplace is regulated by Electronic Institutions to ensure that all participants adhere to the rules of the market. The article is concluded with a detailed discussion on bridging the gaps between Multi-Agent Systems and 3D Virtual Worlds and the preliminary results of a conducted usability study of “Itchy Feet”.     

建立以人为本的虚拟学习社区

随着网络信息化的高度发展,虚拟学习社区已经广泛地运用于人们的学习中。当前,探讨虚拟学习社区在实际应用中存在的问题、以及如何建立有效的虚拟学习社区将对网络学习具有重要的意义。该文从概念出发,讨论目前虚拟学习社区中实际存在的一些问题,利用虚拟学习社区的特点,提出了要本着以人为本的科学发展观为原则,建立和谐、平等、有效的虚拟学习环境,使学习者能时时、处处高效地学习,从而促进学习者的全面发展。     

A system design framework-driven implementation of a learning collaboratory

This paper describes a design process to support the development of a learning collaboratory, a distributed, computer-based, virtual space for learning and work. A learning collaboratory, as a distributed distance learning environment, offers great opportunities to expand the way people teach and learn and to broaden educational opportunities to an ever increasing range of learners. The challenge is to design distance learning technologies that engender meaningful learning experiences that take full advantage of the power of computer-mediated communication to support innovative learner-centered and collaborative interactions between students, teachers, subject experts, and resources. First, the paper describes the learning collaboratory design framework (LUCIDIFY), a design process that integrates methods and concepts from cognitive systems engineering, theories of learning and instruction, distributed computing, and computer-supported collaborative learning to guide the principled design of learning collaboratories. Next, the paper describes how LUCIDIFY was used in the design and implementation of the collaborative learning environment for operational systems (CLEOS), a learning collaboratory for teachers, students, and practitioners in the physical sciences. CLEOS features two virtual instrument tutorials, an asynchronous messaging system, a project-based design and management application, and a collaborative multi-user domain infrastructure.     

On the linguistic nature of cyberspace and virtual communities

This paper argues for a linguistic explanation of the nature of Virtual Communities. Virtual Communities develop and grow in electronic space. or cyberspace. Authors such as Benedikt Meyrowitz and Mitchell have theorised about the nature of electronic space whilst Lefebvre. Popper, Hakim Bey (aka Lamborn Wilson) and Kuhn have theorised more generally about the nature of space. Extending this tradition and the works of these authors, this paper presents a language based perspective on the nature of electronic spaces. Behaviour in cyberspace is based on and regulated by hardware, software tools and interfaces. A definition of electronic space cannot be given beyond its linguistic characteristics, which underlie and sustain it. The author believes that the more users and developers understand the relationship between language and cyberspace, the more they will be able to use specific metaphors for dwelling and inhabiting it. In particular, MUDs/MOOs and the Web are interesting places for testing and observing social behaviours and dynamics.     

Community Detection Using Jaacard Similarity with SIM-Edge Detection Techniques

The structure and dynamic nature of real-world networks can be revealed by communities that help in promotion of recommendation systems. Social Media platforms were initially developed for effective communication, but now it is being used widely for extending and to obtain profit among business community. The numerous data generated through these platforms are utilized by many companies that make a huge profit out of it. A giant network of people in social media is grouped together based on their similar properties to form a community. Community detection is recent topic among the research community due to the increase usage of online social network. Community is one of a significant property of a network that may have many communities which have similarity among them. Community detection technique play a vital role to discover similarities among the nodes and keep them strongly connected. Similar nodes in a network are grouped together in a single community. Communities can be merged together to avoid lot of groups if there exist more edges between them. Machine Learning algorithms use community detection to identify groups with common properties and thus for recommendation systems, health care assistance systems and many more. Considering the above, this paper presents alternative method SimEdge-CD (Similarity and Edge between's based Community Detection) for community detection. The two stages of SimEdge-CD initially find the similarity among nodes and group them into one community. During the second stage, it identifies the exact affiliations of boundary nodes using edge betweenness to create well defined communities. Evaluation of proposed method on synthetic and real datasets proved to achieve a better accuracy-efficiency trade-of compared to other existing methods. Our proposed SimEdge-CD achieves ideal value of 1 which is higher than existing sim closure like LPA, Attractor, Leiden and walktrap techniques.     

Wireless Holon Network for job shop isoarchic control

This work introduces a novel perspective in the field of Holonic Manufacturing Systems, based on wireless intelligent control of production systems. The presented control approach uses isoarchic control architecture and considers wireless sensor network technology as support for its implementation. A wireless holon network (WHN) is thus proposed. WHN is an instance of CPPS (Cyber-physical production systems). This allows decision-making capacities to each physical entity of the production system constituting a set of holons. These holons are connected entities of three types (Product, Resource or Order), that interact to bring out a collective intelligence. The formal models of the various holons are described as well as their exploitation via the wireless sensor network technology. An application to the internal logistics of a job shop is presented. A discussion focuses on organizational changes resulting from the exploitation of a WHN to highlight organizational implications of the operationalization of the proposed approach.     

Scalable distributed Louvain algorithm for community detection in large graphs

Community detection (or clustering) in large-scale graphs is an important problem in graph mining. Communities reveal interesting organizational and functional characteristics of a network. Louvain algorithm is an efficient sequential algorithm for community detection. However, such sequential algorithms fail to scale for emerging large-scale data. Scalable parallel algorithms are necessary to process large graph datasets. In this work, we show a comparative analysis of our different parallel implementations of Louvain algorithm. We design parallel algorithms for Louvain method in shared memory and distributed memory settings. Developing distributed memory parallel algorithms is challenging because of inter-process communication and load balancing issues. We incorporate dynamic load balancing in our final algorithm DPLAL (Distributed Parallel Louvain Algorithm with Load-balancing). DPLAL overcomes the performance bottleneck of the previous algorithms and shows around 12-fold speedup scaling to a larger number of processors. We also compare the performance of our algorithm with some other prominent algorithms in the literature and get better or comparable performance . We identify the challenges in developing distributed memory algorithm and provide an optimized solution DPLAL showing performance analysis of the algorithm on large-scale real-world networks from different domains.

     

Community-Engineering Systematischer Aufbau und Betrieb Virtueller Communitys im Gesundheitswesen

Community-Engineering — Systematic Design and Operation of Virtual Communities in Healthcare Virtual communities offer anytime/anyplace access to information and multi-directional exchange with peers in similar situations. They can be beneficial for members and operators. VCs seem especially useful for chronically ill patients since they have strong information and interaction needs. Astonishingly few VCs can be found throughout the German healthcare system and literature neglects that VC could be created and operated systematically. This article presents an approach to community engineering that is grounded in literature on VCs and innovation research. It is the basis for piloting a VC for cancer patients in Germany. This approach and its underlying design elements and success factors are evaluated longitudinally considering user acceptance, perceived usefulness and emerging virtual social networks. The results show that successful community engineering is possible and the presented approach offers support for the systematic design, implementation and operation of virtual communities in general and in healthcare in particular.     

学术交流虚拟学习社区诚信问题研究

构建虚拟学习社区出发点就是为了探索一种在非正式群体虚拟群体环境下促进高水平研究型人才学术交往的理想模式。尤其以学术交流为主的虚拟学习社区,其学术性、创新性、平等性的特点,为学习者开展协作学习、知识建构和学术交流发展提供了一个有效的学习环境。但正是由于它的虚拟性,带来了很多很难避免的诚信问题。该文就是在虚拟学习社区涵义的研究上,从虚拟学习社区存在的信任问题出发,通过认真研究和系统分析,从不同的层面对学术交流虚拟学习社区的诚信问题进行了论述。     

网格计算中面向虚拟组织的多级授权机制研究

由于虚拟组织的分布性和动态性,在网格计算系统中实施面向虚拟组织的授权服务十分困难。本文分析了网格计算系统中的授权服务需求和已有授权机制存在的问题,提出了多级授权架构MLA。该架构基于门限闭包机制,具有较强的策略描述能力与可扩展性,因而能够更加灵活高效地在网格计算系统中实施授权服务。     

Viewing geometric protein structures from inside a CAVE

We have developed general modeling software for a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE); one of its applications is modeling 3D protein structures, generating both outside-in and inside-out views of geometric models. An advantage of the CAVE over other virtual environments is that multiple viewers can observe the same scene at the same time and place. Our software is scalable-from high-end virtual environments such as the CAVE, to mid-range immersive desktop systems, down to low-end graphics workstations. In the current configuration, a parallel Silicon Graphics Power Challenge supercomputer architecture performs the computationally intensive construction of surface patches remotely, and sends the results through the I-WAY (Information Wide Area Year) using VBNS (Very-high-Bandwidth Network Systems) to the graphics machines that drive the CAVE and our graphics visualization software, Valvis (Virtual ALpha shapes VISualizer)