Alexander P. Pons

Global e‐commerce: a framework for understanding and overcoming the trust barrier

As the Internet revolution moves into full swing, those countries that have not embraced e‐commerce technology will face new hurdles as they seek to develop their economies. Standing in the path of these countries’ attempts to adapt e‐commerce technologies are several key issues that can be broadly defined as trust barriers. Rather than think of the trust issues as barriers one must think of them as assets. Presents a conceptual model and framework that highlight the key factors in business trust relationships within developing countries; information security, technical and industrial infrastructure, education, government, and socio‐cultural factors. These factors are considered in the light of different types of e‐commerce business transactions taking place within and across borders such as business‐to‐business (B2B), business‐to‐consumer (B2C), consumer‐to‐business (C2B), and consumer‐to‐consumer (C2C).

Understanding user perspectives on biometric technology

Biometrics has been used for centuries to identify individuals by their own unique physical characteristics. Historically, the fingerprint has served as the most common method of identification. But other properties, which vary in their exactness and in users’ comfort, are also candidates for widespread usage. Today, an increasing number of biometric companies are offering new products to be considered for general deployment beyond security identification systems. Some application objectives for these products include: associating computer users with their computer behavior, linking employees to their workstation performance, managing user-resource usage and activity, and e-commerce. By far, these biometric products have been aimed mostly at providing authentication for an individual to gain access to sensitive information and resources. Biometric technologies are not without problems and come with their fair share of concerns. Some of these concerns are technical in nature, e.g., degradation of biometric features over time, variance in recorded and actual biometric characteristics, and threshold values for authentication. As the technology matures, however, the technical issues will be eventually overcome. On the other hand, many of the technology’s obstacles are based on attitudes and behaviors, related to user acceptance, trust, habits, etc., ultimately presenting a greater challenge for implementation. Previous research found that some of the issues include the domains of privacy, storage and safeguarding of personal identification information, fear of intrusion into an individual’s daily life, as well as concerns related to the relinquishing of personal information.

E-Government for Arab Countries

Abstract This article focuses on the potential of instigating an e-government system within and possibly throughout the Arab world. E-government is currently being adopted in many countries throughout the world to bring more information and at a greater facility to their citizens. Despite its advantages, we analyze the problems and difficulties encountered in promoting the concept of e-government in the Middle East and also highlight the potential opportunities. These prospects are evaluated, along with the adoption of the technology to render advantages to the Arab world. Many countries have and continue to benefit from the acceptance of e-government; understanding its applicability and effectiveness beyond and within the Arab countries is of vital importance to increase and promote its use. Our analysis presents a perspective on regional e-government and utilization of technology within and among Arab countries. We also propose the E-Government System Framework that solves many problems associated with the adoption of e-government in the Arab world

Object prefetching using semantic links

To date the most common means of gaining access to the Internet continues to be via dial-up modem connections. These slow communication channels significantly affect the rendering of the majority of web pages. Higher speed communications channels can alleviate rendering latency but based on the web pages content, delays still are incurred. The technique of web object prefetching can expedite the presentation of web pages by utilizing the current web pages view time to acquire the web objects of future web pages. The proposed Semantic Link Prefetcher utilizes information associated with the current web pages hyperlink set to predict which web objects to prefetch during the limited view time interval of the current web page. The results presented in this paper show that this proposed method can be effective in improving a web browsers cache-hit percentage, while significantly lowering web page rendering latency.

E‐commerce and Arab intra‐trade

This paper focuses on the disparity that exists between Arab and non‐Arab trading blocs and the potential that e‐commerce offers in narrowing this gap. The current Arab intra‐trade state of affairs is analyzed, targeting potential trade opportunities. These prospects are evaluated, along with the adoption of technology to render advantages to the Arab world. Many countries have and continue to benefit from the acceptance of e‐commerce; understanding its applicability and effectiveness beyond and within the Arab trading blocs is of vital importance to increase trade. Our analysis presents a perspective on regional trade and utilization of technology within the global community and broadening trade possibilities among Arab countries.

Semantic prefetching objects of slower web site pages

The structure of most web sites consists of a composition of web pages that require varying amounts of time to render. Typically, web pages with large amount content (text/images/code) require more time to render than web pages with a smaller aggregate content size. Most users expect this discrepancy among web page rendering times. In this paper, we will describe a semantic link prefetching technique that uses object bundling to expedite the rendering time of slower web pages, at the cost of extending the rendering speed of faster web pages within an established threshold value limit. Study results show that our approach enhances the overall rendering time of slower web pages with imperceptible time extension to other, faster rendering web pages.

Improving the performance of client Web object retrieval

The growth of the Internet has generated Web pages that are rich in media and that incur significant rendering latency when accessed through slow communication channels. The technique of Web-object prefetching can potentially expedite the presentation of Web pages by utilizing the current Web pages view time to acquire the Web objects of likely future Web pages. The performance of the Web object prefetcher is contingent on the predictability of future Web pages and quickly determining which Web objects to prefetch during the limited view time interval of the current Web page. The proposed Markov-Knapsack method uses an approach that combines a Multi-Markov Web-application centric prefetch model with a Knapsack Web object selector to enhance Web page rendering performance. The Markov Web page model ascertains the most likely next Web page set based on the current Web page and the Web object Knapsack selector determines the premium Web objects to request from these Web pages. The results presented in the paper show that the proposed methods can be effective in improving a Web browser cache-hit percentage while significantly lowering Web page rendering latency.

Realization of a Universal Patient Identifier for Electronic Medical Records Through Biometric Technology

The technology exists for the migration of healthcare data from its archaic paper-based system to an electronic one, and, once in digital form, to be transported anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. The advent of universally accessible healthcare data has benefited all participants, but one of the outstanding problems that must be addressed is how the creation of a standardized nationwide electronic healthcare record system in the United States would uniquely identify and match a composite of an individuals recorded healthcare information to an identified individual patients out of approximately 300 million people to a 1:1 match. To date, a few solutions to this problem have been proposed that are limited in their effectiveness. We propose the use of biometric technology within our fingerprint, iris, retina scan, and DNA (FIRD) framework, which is a multiphase system whose primary phase is a multilayer consisting of these four types of biometric identifiers: 1) fingerprint; 2) iris; 3) retina scan; and 4) DNA. In addition, it also consists of additional phases of integration, consolidation, and data discrepancy functions to solve the unique association of a patient to their medical data distinctively. This would allow a patient to have real-time access to all of their recorded healthcare information electronically whenever it is necessary, securely with minimal effort, greater effectiveness, and ease.

Data Protection Using Watermarking in E-Business

In the past decade, the business community has embraced the capabilities of the Internet for a multitude of services that involve access to data and information. Of particular concern to these businesses have been the protection and authentication of digital data as it is distributed electronically. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines the reactive rule-based scheme of an active database management system (ADBMS) with the technology of digital watermarking to automatically protect digital data. The ADMBS technology facilitates the establishment of Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules that define the actions to be triggered by events under certain conditions. These actions consist of the generation of unique watermarks and the tagging of digital data with unique signatures. Watermarking is a technology that embeds, within the digital data’s context, information identifying its owner and/or creator. The integration of these two technologies is a powerful mechanism for protecting digital data in a consistent and formal manner with applications in e-business in establishing and authenticating the ownership of images, audio, video, and other digital materials.

Case study: The furniture company: deductive databases and the scheduling problem

In this paper we address the possibility of utilizing a deductive database solution to assist a furniture company to solve its delivery scheduling problems. We first present the companys current approach to scheduling furniture deliveries using their present computing facilities. Then, we discuss their search for an off-the-self solution, resulting in the proposed solution employing the capabilities of a deductive database application. An evaluation of the current state of commercially available deductive database is conducted and presented to assess the possibilities and availability of the technology to focus on an alternative for the furniture company.