M Commerce Crash Course

In this volume, P.J. Louis offers a technical insider's view of the Internet in its evolving mobile business incarnation, m-commerce. The author aims to take the mystery out of the Internet business space by breaking it down into its fundamental components - he provides a quick tour of basic Internet technologies, then discusses the wireless Internet, and the evolution from e-commerce to m-commerce.

Shows service providers how to efficiently manage their technology advantages and back-end operations to survive in this challenging economic climate.

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The expectations for M-Commerce are very high. The mobile user seeks for facilitation of his daily habits and companies anticipate generating high revenue stream through new mobile applications. After telecommunication companies have paid high prices for the UMTS licenses in Europe M-Commerce has started to be the new hype. In those countries which did not have auctions but beauty contests M-Commerce has been also shifted into the spotlight. Although M-Commerce is still in its infancy, it predicts to have a huge impact on many ways of people s lives. New buzz words like anywhere and anytime have evolved in order to describe the great potential of M-Commerce. Growth opportunities in terms of new arising mobile business models seem promising but only the future will be able to answer the question of success. Mobile devices offer a broad range of opportunities from entertainment service e.g. music, games or video up to transactions e.g. banking, shopping, auctions. It is still unclear if all the emerging opportunities can be commercialized successfully. Nevertheless, many scenarios of how the world could be like in the future have been made. Below an excerpt of the daily routine of a future mobile user is presented: Nancy D`Amato prepares to leave her office just before five o clock. She uses her mobile phone for a quick check of the local weather forecast, sees that fines conditions are expected for the evening, and decides to leave her umbrella by her desk. Nancy is due to meet her boyfriend Peter at seven o clock, so she has two hours in town to waste. As soon as the clock reaches five, she receives a text message telling her that the bar across the street has a happy hour when drinks are cheaper. Nancy deletes the message almost without reading it. She has given her mobile service provider permission to send her unsolicited local promotional messages after five - otherwise she would have to pay a higher subscription rates - but that does not mean she actually has to read the message, does it? Five minutes later another message arrives, with a coupon offering a discount at the local branch of her favorite coffee bar. She shows the coffee-shop attendant the numbered message on her phone s screen, and he keys in the number on the till when charging for the coffee. Now comfortably seated with her cappuccino, Nancy begins to plan her evening. She uses her mobile to check which movies are showing nearby after seven [...]

Mobile commerce is based on the rapidly growing applications of wireless technologies and mobile communications. This study collects holistic perspectives to explore strategic considerations regarding potential opportunities and issues in mobile commerce.

2.1 E-Government: e-Governance and e-Democracy The term Electronic Government (e-Government), as an expression, was coined after the example of Electronic Commerce. In spite of being a relatively recent expression, e-Government designates a field of activity that has been with us for several decades and which has attained a high level of penetration in many countries2. What has been observed over the recent years is a shift on the broadness of the e-Government concept. The ideas inside e-Governance and e- Democracy are to some extent promising big changes in public administration. The demand now is not only simply delivering a service - line. It is to deliver complex and new services, which are all citizen-centric. Another important demand is related to the improvement of citizen's participation in governmental processes and decisions so that the governments' transparency and legitimacy are enforced. In order to fulfill these new demands, a lot of research has been done over the recent years (see Section 3) but many challenges are still to be faced, not only in the technological field, but also in the political and social aspects.

The digitisation of traditional media formats, such as text, images, video, and sound provides us with the ability to store, process, and transport content in a uniform way. This has led the formerly distinct industries of media, telecommunications, and information technology to converge. Cross-media publishing and service delivery are important new trends emerging in the content industry landscape. Mass-media organizations and content providers traditionally targeted content production towards a single delivery channel. However, recent economic and technological changes in the industry led content providers to extend their brands to cover multiple delivery channels. Following the content industry trend to "create once and publish everywhere"-COPE, a number of architectures, technologies, and tools are currently being developed and deployed to facilitate the automatic conversion of content to multiple formats, and the creation of innovative multi-platform services. This new approach enables the seamless access to information over different network infrastructures and client platforms. This work aims to bring together a cross-disciplinary core of contributors to address the technical and business issues of cross-media publishing and service delivery. The volume is based on papers presented at the conference on Cross-Media Service Delivery-CMSD-2003 that took place in Santorini, Greece in May 2003. Each contribution was reviewed by at least two reviewers-typically three. From the 30 papers that were submitted 20 were selected for presentation at the conference. Those were further "shepherded" by programme committee members to be improved according to the review suggestions.

NetLibrary named the Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology as their September 2008 e-book of the month! CLICK HERE to view the announcement. The Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is a comprehensive resource describing the influence of information communication technology in scientific knowledge construction, with emphasis on the roles of product technologies, process technologies, and context technologies. Through 111 authoritative contributions by 93 of the world's leading experts this reference covers the materials and instruments of information technology: from ICT in education to software engineering; the influence of ICT on different environments, including e-commerce, decision support systems, knowledge management, and more; and the most pervasive presence of information technology, including studies and research on knowledge management, the human side of ICT, ICT in healthcare, and virtual organizations, among many others. Addressing many of the fundamental issues of information communication technology, the Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology will be a top-shelf resource for any reference library.

AN UNCONVENTIONAL, FUN WAY TO MASTER THE BASICS OF CRYPTOGRAPHY Cryptography is not just for specialists. Now every wireless message, wireless phone call, online transaction, and email is encrypted at one end and decrypted at the other. “Crypto” is part of the job description for network designers, network engineers, and telecom developers. If you need cryptography basics—but dread the thick tomes that are your only other option—help is at hand. Cryptography Demystified puts the fundamentals into a 35-module, learn-by-doing package that’s actually fun to use. You must read this book if— * You prefer your simplifications from an expert who understands the complexities * 6 years of success as a short course for students and professionals works for you * you enjoy hearing the phrase “nothing to memorize” * ecommerce, email, network security, or wireless communications is part of your bailiwick * cracking cryptography means a jump up the career ladder * the words “public-key cryptography,” “channel-based cryptography,” and “prime numbers” pique your interest * best-practices cryptography is the only secure way for you—and your company—to go One of the most complex subjects in Information Technology, cryptography gets its due in this down-to-earth, self-teaching tutorial—the first to make the basics of the science truly accessible.