Chap 10 Pervasive Computing PDF

10 Pervasive Computing Principles Learning Objectives The term ‘computing’ no longer refers to...

10 Pervasive Computing Principles Learning Objectives The term ‘computing’ no longer refers to Identify the range of devices that now incorporate a computer on a desk. Mobile devices are computing power. letting employees access information from wherever they happen to be. In addition, these same technologies are allowing customers to interact with businesses in new ways. Teams made up of people living in Describe the business benefits of mobile devices. different geographical regions are able to Discuss and evaluate the technologies that can be used work together efficiently and effectively, to support teamwork when team members are without ever having to meet. This work is separated by time and/or space. facilitated by a range of technologies. E-commerce and m-commerce can be Describe how to select mobile systems to support used in many innovative ways to improve business objectives. the operation of an organization. 335 Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 336 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Why Learn About The move of information systems from the office desktop into every aspect of our lives is well underway. Many businesses Pervasive Computing? are exploiting this to their advantage, as are their customers. A mobile sales force can stay in touch with head office easily and submit orders faster than before. Employees can take work with them on the plane or train and remain in full contact using text, audio and video. Potential customers are starting to expect to be able to communicate with companies in a number of ways, and if a business fails to recognize this fact, it could lose customers to competitors who offer these communication channels. In addition, customers who have experienced poor service from a company are willing and able to communicate those experiences to other potential customers. This chapter examines some of the technologies that are enabling all of this to happen. New ones are being introduced almost every month. It is important that businesses understand the potential benefits they can bring. 10.1 Introduction Information systems are no longer tied to a desk in an office. As we saw in the chapter on hardware, mobile devices are allowing computing power to be taken on the move. Increasingly, computers look more like the picture shown in Figure 10.1. This change is moving in two directions. New devices are being developed that people are happy to carry with them – tiny devices such as the iPod or a smartphone. Such devices do not have the functionality of a PC, but they are more convenient and can be taken anywhere. The other direction is that rather than a new device, computing power is being incorporated into existing devices pervasive computing A term meaning the move of the computer and objects that are already well known to us, such as a jacket, a pair of away from the desktop and glasses or a car. This move away from the desktop is known as pervasive towards something that is all computing, or ubiquitous computing: ubiquitous because computers are all around us, all the time. around us, even if we don’t always realize it. Perhaps from where you are Figure 10.1 The Conventional View of a Computer The idea that computers must have a monitor, keyboard and 10 mouse is being challenged by pervasive computing. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 337 sitting you can see a laptop, smartphone and a tablet computer. On any one of these devices you could read or post a blog entry, access the web, and pay for goods and services. People are using these devices to do all sorts of things on the move – buy cinema tickets to avoid queuing for them, check in for a flight, pay for a taxi journey. In this chapter we will look at some of these technologies and examine their business potential. We will also meet a particular class of system use, called computer supported computer supported cooperative cooperative work, which is allowing teams to work together on projects, work A term that refers to technologies which allow groups to regardless of where they happen to be. Many of the technologies described work together to achieve goals. in this chapter are waiting for a ‘killer application’ that will allow them to take off. Maybe you’ll be able to think of one! 10.2 Wireless Internet Access Central to being able to access information ‘on the move’ is wireless Internet access. The range of options available for wireless communication was described in Chapter 6, but for many people the options they have currently are wi-fi and 4G with 5G rapidly being rolled out. In the UK, as in other countries, 5G access is currently patchy but even when it is available many users will have to purchase new devices to be able to use it. 1 A wi-fi hotspot is an area where wireless access is hotspot An area where wi-fi available. Many bars and cafés provide their customers with wi-fi. wireless Internet access is available. T-Mobile has set up wi-fi hotspots in many airports, coffee houses and bookshops. 2 This is useful for employees who are away from the office a lot. BT Fon uses wi-fi routers in its customer’s homes to allow others to connect to the Internet. Fon works by having its routers broadcast two wi-fi signals – one private, just for use by the customer who owns the the router, and one public and accessible to registered members of the Fon community.3 A wireless service is now expected by customers in major hotels. Many city centres have free wi-fi access. In the UK, most cities have free wi-fi, as do other cities throughout Europe, such as Oulu in Finland. 4 In Norwich, over 200 antennae are used to provide a hotspot blanket over the city. 5 As a user walks out of range of one antenna and into the range of another, the system seamlessly hands over access between the two, in the same way that the mobile phone network does. Wi-fi access speeds are slightly slower than broadband, although this is perhaps made up for in convenience. The first entire nation to be given free wireless Internet access was the tiny Polynesian island of Niue with a population of just 2,000.6 The local authorities in the town of Knysna in South Africa have installed wi-fi to allow access to residents who have historically been cut off from Internet access because the town is so remote. Computers have been installed in the local library to give access to those who can’t afford wi-fi-enabled devices. The business benefits of wi-fi are clear – mobile access to information; employees away on 10 business can easily send and receive email, using any one of a number of devices, some of which are discussed next. They can access information on company websites or read about local conditions on news services. They could also access sensitive information on company extranets. 10.3 Mobile Devices The list of devices that can make use of wi-fi hotspots is growing. It now includes desktop computers (useful if you happen to live within a hotspot), laptops, tablet PCs, mobile phones, mobile game consoles such as the Nintendo DS, pocket PCs, VoIP phones, smartwatches, e-readers and fitness monitors. As we will see, other mobile devices are stand-alone and do not require Internet access to make them useful. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 338 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Smartphone Smartphones and tablet computers are now a viable alternative to laptops. These tiny devices are cheaper and more robust than laptops and can be combined with a range of accessories to increase their functionality. Possibly the most useful accessory is a keyboard that can be attached to the smartphone so that data can be entered into it, as it could into a laptop or PC. Both fold up and roll up versions are available. These keyboards can be attached by a cable or wirelessly using the bluetooth protocol described in Chapter 6. South Korean company Celluon manufactures a device that projects a laser keyboard onto a surface such as the tray table on a plane, and detects when you press one of the virtual keys.7 Attaching a keyboard to a smartphone provides an extremely portable word processor. Many workers in the western world would not be satisfied with such a tiny screen; however, such miniature devices are common in the Far East. It is true that you are unlikely to want to type at a smartphone for as long as you would a laptop; however, many people do prefer the light weight of a smartphone and keyboard to that of a laptop. If a smartphone and keyboard are combined with wi-fi access, the smartphone becomes a powerful tool to access all Internet services. Without the keyboard, a smartphone can be cumbersome to use. Another useful accessory is a cable to enable the smartphone to be attached to a projector. Portable projectors8 can be used to project Microsoft PowerPoint slides from a smartphone. The system even comes with a remote control so that the speaker can progress from one slide to the next without having to be beside the device – functionality that few PCs provide. This is an extremely convenient way for business people to take a presentation with them. For example, a salesperson could present to clients all over the world and only have to carry a smartphone with accessories and, unless one was available at each location, a data projector. One drawback to using a smartphone to give presentations is that it is difficult to create or edit PowerPoint slides on them. Therefore they only become an alternative to carrying a laptop if the presentation is not going to change. If it is known that the presentation will not change, and it is known that there is the appropriate hardware at the presentation location, it becomes more convenient to simply carry the presentation files on a flash drive, or even simply upload them to the web, where they can be downloaded for the presentation. global positioning system (GPS) By connecting a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and installing A navigation system that enables map software such as TomTom,9 a smartphone can be used as a powerful a receiver to determine its precise navigational aid, either in a car or, if the GPS receiver is wireless (again using location. the Bluetooth protocol), on foot. Fleet operators use GPS for vehicle tracking, safety and performance monitoring. GPS is also used by breakdown agencies such as the RAC and AA – the location of a broken down vehicle is fed into an information system which uses GPS information on the whereabouts of the fleet to make the decision on which patrol to send to the rescue. The AA now allows stranded motorists to track where their 10 mechanic is via their smartphone.10 A smartphone can also be used to play audio and video files. Many people use one instead of a dedicated music device such as an MP3 player. Some people download news clips each night from a provider such as the BBC, and watch them on the train on the way to work the next morning. YouTube users can download videos to their device when they have a strong wi-fi signal to watch later if Internet access is unavailable. YouTube Premium users can do this via the YouTube app, but others can use third-party software (although note that doing it this way breaks the YouTube terms of service).11 Watching news programmes in this way could replace the traditional activity of reading the morning newspaper, plus it takes up less space on crowded public transport than a newspaper, is cleaner, and arguably easier to digest and more interesting. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 339 Wearable Technology Miniaturizing smartphone technology further allows it to become part of the clothes we wear, for example a jacket or belt. Coupled with other things we are comfortable wearing, for instance glasses with which to receive visual information or earphones for audio information, computing power can become something we routinely take with us and use everywhere. The term ‘wearable technology’ usually refers to computers that are worn wearable computing A term that on the body, although it could also be used to encompass non-computing refers to computers and computing technology such as mechanical watches and glasses. The term wearable technology that are worn on the computing is used to distinguish between the two. body. If a smartphone is attached to a user’s belt, it is being ‘worn’ by that user. However, wearable computing refers to something more than this. The term really means the use of largely invisible computing technology, to seamlessly augment a human’s task. So far, there are few everyday applications for wearable computing, and many of the commercial examples available have more novelty value than business value. However, one application which is often mentioned is navigation, where the clothes you wear somehow tell you where to go. For example, a GPS receiver could be built into a special jacket, which could apply pressure on one side of the body to guide the wearer in the opposite direction, just like a gentle hand was pushing them that way. The interface for telling the jacket where you want to go could be a smartphone with a Bluetooth link between it and the jacket. A research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed an early platform which was used to experiment with potential applications. MIThril had a number of ways of interacting with the body. Suggested uses for MIThril included navigation and accessing the Internet on the move. However, neither of these take the unique nature of wearable computing into account, and using it like this gives little advantage over a smartphone. Google has experimented with wearable computing. Their most famous example is Google Glass, a pair of glasses they thought would replace the smartphone. They haven’t fully given up on this product yet, but it is not currently generally available. Apple has launched a smartwatch which has been described as an iPhone on the wrist. The launch follows a similar product from Samsung. Some other potential applications for wearable computing are recording what the wearer sees and hears and how they move, and transmitting personal information between people, rather like an electronic business card. Indeed another device from MIT, the UberBadge, does exactly that. It can be worn as a name badge and used to transmit personal information. For instance, the system could be used at a business conference to collect information about all the people a delegate has spoken to throughout the day. The same device can collect information useful to conference organizers about where people spent the most time throughout the day. A business could adapt this to be able to locate its employees within its building, so that phone calls could be routed to the nearest 10 phone. Perhaps wearable technology could be used to help judge a fencing or martial arts competition, or for recording dance moves, something that has been difficult in the past. There could also be applications for teaching – gloves that help teach someone how to play the piano. Another technology to come out of MIT, called Kameraflage, allows digital cameras to photograph colours in fabrics that the human eye cannot see. One possible use of this technology is to replace staff cards with invisible markers – a security guard could easily identify people who do not have authority to be in a certain area, by looking at his or her video monitor, which would pick up the marks on their clothes. A wearable application is shown in Figure 10.2. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 340 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Figure 10.2 Smartwatch Modern smartwatches can be used to make and receive calls and can also run mobile apps. Ethical and Societal Issues Pay Up Or Your Data Gets It! Your files won’t open. Everything appears to be computer systems were unusable for more than a corrupted. In the centre of the misery a dangerous- week until they finally paid about €10,000 to restore looking red screen appears in front of you with access. The hospital was quick to reassure patients the following message: ‘The hard disks of your that medical records had not been accessed computer have been encrypted with a military grade by the criminals, which is probably true – all that encryption algorithm. There is no way to restore the criminals did was to make it so that the data your data without a special key. To purchase your could not be accessed by anyone. ‘The quickest key and restore your data please following these and most efficient way to restore our systems and three easy steps’. You have become the victim of administrative functions was to pay the ransom and ransomware. obtain the decryption key’, said Allen Stefanek, the As the Microsoft Malware Protection Centre hospital’s chief executive. 10 explains it, ‘ransomware stops you from using Firms can pick up ransomware from a variety your PC. It holds your PC or files for “ransom”. of sources, but all involve tricking a user or user’s Ransomware will demand that you pay money computer into installing malicious software. A to get access to your PC or files. There is no common line of attack is an email attachment. The guarantee that paying the fine or doing what the email might announce that the user has won money ransomware tells you will give access to your PC and that to open an attached file for instructions on or files again’. how to claim. Another common route to infection Ransomware is a particularly frustrating virus. To is to visit a website that installs it. Again the user deal with it, victims have to interact directly with the might receive an email tempting them to click on a criminals who caused their misery and the police link. Sometimes you can pick it up from an infected will be powerless to help. In 2016, the Hollywood USB drive, or it could be downloaded with other Presbyterian Medical Center was infected and software, although often this is pirated software. (continued ) Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 341 Security firm Kaspersky has acknowledged Questions what it calls a ‘bitter fact’ – ‘unless precautions are 1 If a firm was infected with ransomware, what taken, victims may not be able to recover their data would your advice be? in any other way than by paying the demanded 2 If your computer was infected, would you pay up? ransom’. IT security writer Brian Krebs has published a 3 Why can the police do nothing to help? guide on how to minimize the chances of becoming 4 Outline a policy you could use in an organization a victim. The backbone of a good defence is data to minimize the threat of ransomware. back-ups. You have to be careful here as you want References to back-up the data and not the ransomware along with it. Rather than using automated systems that Baraniuk, C. 2016. ‘Hollywood Hospital Pays back-up all files, a more thoughtful approach might Ransom to Hackers’. BBC. Available from: be needed. If a computer is infected, back-ups may www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35602527. be the best way to recover the critical data. The Accessed 1 June 2020. back-ups should be secured, perhaps by physically BBC, 2016. ‘Warning Over “Nasty” Ransomware storing them offline (unconnected to a networked Strain’. Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/news/ computer). Krebs says you should scrutinize links technology-35916425. Accessed 1 June 2020. contained in emails and do not open attachments Finkle, J. 2016. ‘Ransomware: Extortionist Hackers included in unsolicited emails. You should also only Borrow Customer-Service Tactics’. Reuters. download software from trusted sites and keep all Available from: www.reuters.com/article/us- operating systems and application software up usa-cyber-ransomware-idUSKCN0X917X. to date by installing the latest patches from the Accessed 1 June 2020. software vendor. Businesses should not forget the Krebs, B. 2016. ‘Ransomware Getting More Targeted, social aspects of computer viruses. Awareness Expensive’. Available from: www.krebsonsecurity. training should be given to employees. Because com/2016/09/ransomware-getting-more-targeted- end users are often targeted, employees should expensive. Accessed 1 June 2020. be made aware of the threat of ransomware, how Lee, D. 2016. ‘Hollywood Hospital Held to Ransom By it is delivered and trained on information security Hackers’. BBC. Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/ principles and techniques. Access should be news/technology-35584081. Accessed 1 June 2020. configured to allow only those with a need for Microsoft Malware Protection Centre website. www. access to actually have access. On the plus side, microsoft.com/en-us/security/portal/mmpc/ and quite astonishingly, there have been reports that shared/ransomware.aspx. Accessed 1 June 2020. the helplines offered by the criminals to assist with Ward, M. 2016. ‘“Alarming” Rise in Ransomware paying the ransom and getting the data restored, Tracked’. BBC. Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/ rival the service in the best call centres provided by news/technology-36459022. Accessed 1 June global companies. 2020. 10 Information Systems @ Work The Blockchain Creates Tamper-Proof Transactions With a value greater than €10 billion, it is amazing bitcoin that has value and can be traded for real to many people that not one cent has been directly goods and services. But we’ll get to that in a moment. pumped into the virtual currency Bitcoin. So where Bitcoin consists of two elements. Multiple copies did the €10 billion come from? The simplest answer of both are stored on computers all over the world. is that electricity has been turned into this thing called The ‘ledger’ stores details on transactions, that is data (continued ) Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 342 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS on the money (bitcoins) that has been spent (how and of themselves. Last, the PREVIOUS text is the much and from where to where). We’re not going output from the last set of processed transactions. to discuss the ledger here. The second is known as This is the key element. It means that no one can go the ‘blockchain’. Blockchain technology is having back to a processed transaction from last week and an enormous impact beyond the virtual currency as delete it. If they did then none of the later processed a means of creating a record of transactions that is transactions would match up and everyone tamper-proof: it is impossible to re-write its history. would immediately know that the chain had been Bitcoin is described as a cryptocurrency, which tampered with. Today’s processed transactions is to say it relies on cryptography. All we need to depend on yesterday’s processed transactions, know about cryptography now is that plain text gets which depend on the day before yesterday’s and turned into meaningless text and that the process is so on back to 2009 when bitcoin was introduced. one way. It is impossible (or at least impossible within This is the blockchain and copies are stored on any sensible timeframe) to go from the meaningless thousands of different computers. text to the plain text without the correct cryptography Why does this have value? Anything has value keys. People are rewarded with bitcoins (which is if someone (or enough people) believe it has value. to say bitcoins are created and given to them) in Let’s not say anything more about that here. exchange for ‘processing’ the blockchain. This is Certainly the value of bitcoin has fluctuated widely. known as ‘mining bitcoins’ and requires electricity The technology is perhaps more interesting to us – to run the computers needed to do the processing it could be used to produce a tamper-proof record. (hence why we said ‘turning electricity into money’). Wikileaks for instance have expressed an interest This process of mining creates the blockchain, the in using it to make their leaks tamper-proof. Notice secure record of transactions. Here’s how. that the inventor or inventors (no one knows who he, Each transaction has a unique identifier – a string she or they are!) of bitcoin did not invent anything – of text that is different from the string of text used by they used what already existed in new ways. all other transactions. Who the transaction is from and to, and how much it is for, are stored elsewhere Questions in the ledger – all that happens in the blockchain 1 Would bitcoin be a sensible financial invest- is the processing of these identifiers. A bunch of ment? Explain your answer. transaction identifiers (those belonging to the most 2 Is becoming a bitcoin miner a sensible career? recent, unprocessed transactions) are grabbed by Explain your answer. the computer of a bitcoin miner. The identifiers are in plain text. Two things are added to this: another 3 Could we (humanity) make better use of the item of plain text which we’ll call PREVIOUS for now, wasted calculations? and a random string of text which is referred to as the 4 What applications for the blockchain in a large NONCE. All of this is run through standard encryption organization can you think of? software to produce output. Any computer output can be represented as a number, and so the output References 10 is a number. If that number is less than X, then the The Economist, 2015. ‘The Great Chain of miner is given their bitcoins worth many thousands of Being Sure About Things’. 31 October 2015. euros, and the transactions are processed. That’s it! Available from: www.economist.com/news/ There are a few points to note. First, the number briefing/21677228-technology-behind-bitcoin- X is created by the bitcoin community so that not too lets-people-who-do-not-know-or-trust-each- many or too few bitcoins are created. They adjust other-build-dependable. Accessed 12 June 2020. this every two weeks. Second, it’s much more likely Reese, F. 2016. ‘Rethinking Bitcoin’s $10 Billion that the output will be greater than X. When it is, Market Cap’. CoinDesk. Available from: www the miner must adjust the NONCE (randomly) and.coindesk.com/rethinking-bitcoin-market-cap/. go again. This process is repeated many millions of Accessed 1 June 2020. times before a successful output is produced. This is why some people say that bitcoin is wasteful – ‘How Bitcoin Works Under The Hood’. YouTube those millions of calculations are wasted in the video available from: www.youtube.com/ sense that they don’t produce anything useful in watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE. Accessed 1 June 2020. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 343 E-Money E-money refers to the transfer of funds happening electronically rather than e-money The transfer of funds by handing over physical coins and notes. It can be implemented in a number electronically rather than by of ways. The most common is paying for goods and services over the Internet; handing over physical coins and notes. however, it does take other forms. Mobile phones are now also being used to pay for goods and services. Contactless payment using near field communication, as described in Chapter 6, is becoming more common. Barclays Bank now offers customers a PayTag which they can stick on their wallet or phone and can be used to pay for goods costing less than about €20. The same technology is used to pay for public transport. An example is Hong Kong’s Octopus card, originally intended to be used to pay for public transport, but now used throughout Hong Kong in a range of shops. When used on the city’s train service, a passenger ‘swipes’ their card when they enter the train station and they ‘swipe’ it again when they leave. The correct fare is then debited from their prepaid account. ‘Swiping’ the card merely involves waving it near a reader – direct contact is not required. In fact the card doesn’t even have to be removed from the passenger’s wallet! Octopus gadgets are now available such as the Octopus watch or Octopus ornaments. Whether using the card or a gadget, a chip in the device stores the amount that has been paid into the account. Similar systems have now been implemented throughout Europe and elsewhere, for example the Oyster Card in London. Systems such as these that implement the concept of e-money make paying for goods fast and convenient. LUUP12 is a payment system (the developers call it a ‘digital wallet’) that works using the text feature on mobile phones to transfer funds from buyer to seller (see Figure 10.3). The buyer sends LUUP a text with the format ‘PAY USERNAME AMOUNT’. LUUP then transfers the specified amount from the buyer’s account to the seller’s account. For example a buyer might text ‘PAY 10943933 EUR10’. This would cause a transfer of €10 to be transferred to account 10943933. Both buyer and seller then receive a text message when payment has been made. Contactless payment (and its flexibilities) proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic to minimize direct contact between people. LUUP and systems like it have the potential to negate the need for exact change when paying for things like taxi journeys. In Norway, where the system was developed, users can pay for food, public transport and shopping bills. Figure 10.3 Contactless Payment Payment is made just by holding a smartphone near the reader. 10 A similar system is being used in developing countries to provide financial services to the least well off. While the physical infrastructure in Kenya (road and rail) is in a poor state, in contrast the country has excellent mobile phone coverage, provided by two companies, Celtel Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 344 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS and Safricom. Safricom, part owned by Vodafone, provides a service called M-Pesa. M-Pesa lets customers borrow, withdraw and pay money using text messaging. In a culture where many people are unable to open bank accounts and must therefore carry cash, it has the potential to revolutionize lives.13 The system gives security, and allows easy and safe transfer of cash from relatives in the developed world. According to the World Bank, money sent to low- and middle- income countries reached a record high in 2018.14 Another form of e-money is virtual currency such as bitcoin. There is a debate whether virtual currencies are a form of money or more like valuable collectibles – like old Star Wars toys or bottles of wine or similar objects you might collect and trade. Some big websites do accept bitcoins as a form of payment. Basically users are given bitcoins in exchange for using their computer to process the system that records bitcoin transactions. There is no physical unit – a bitcoin is literally just an entry in the transaction log (it’s called a ‘blockchain’). Whether these actually have any value is decided by the market, and bitcoins have seen huge swings in what they are worth, leading some economists to warn against them. E-money has two implications for businesses. There is the convenience of employees using it themselves when on business trips. Perhaps more importantly, depending on the type of business, it may be that customers will come to expect to be able to pay for goods and services using e-money in the future. When this happens, the retailer needs to be ready for it. Tangible Media A new and interesting way to represent information stored on a computer is through the use of physical objects. Very few applications are currently commercially available; however, imagine that you have a bowl of plastic pebbles in your living room and each represents one of your favourite films. To view the film, you pick up one of the pebbles and wave it at your television screen. A moment later the film starts. This is more an artistic application than something most people would want; however, a ‘killer application’ is perhaps just around the corner which will make this technology take off. Perhaps you could think of one yourself and capitalize on your idea. Most people are comfortable with the concept of icons. An icon on your computer screen represents a file. The icon isn’t the same thing as the file, it’s more like a pointer to it. Double clicking on the icon opens up the file. The plastic pebble representing the film is the same idea, only the pebble phicon Phicon stands for is a physical icon, or phicon (pronounced fi-con). The technology has been ‘physical icon’ and is a physical available for several years, but a ‘killer application’ for phicons has not yet representation of digital data, in the same way that an icon on a been found. Some ideas are a business card which opens a personal home computer screen represents a file. page automatically whenever it is held near a computer. Or a brochure, 10 marketing literature for instance, that also contains additional electronic information within it. In the future your lecture handouts could also contain electronic resources built into them! This research area is known as tangible media. Some companies are experimenting with sending touch over long distances. Such devices currently only have novelty value, but perhaps someone will soon come up with a useful business application. The Kiss Communicator and the Hug Shirt are two such devices. The Kiss Communicator allows you to blow a kiss to someone wherever they are. The Hug Shirt allows you to send them a hug. To do this requires two hug shirts. You put on one of them and hug yourself. Sensors in the shirt detect what you have done and send the information needed to recreate this feeling via Bluetooth, to your mobile phone. Your phone then transmits the information as a text message to the receiver of the hug. They get a text asking if they want to accept the hug. If they do, the signal gets passed to their hug shirt, again via Bluetooth, which squeezes them in the same way that you hugged your own shirt. These devices both represent new ways of connecting people. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 345 Personal Robotics Robotics has been mentioned before in this text, mostly in the context of assembly plants, manufacturing and space exploration. In this section, we will look at some of the robots that are used, and could be used, in our everyday lives. The Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner costing around €250. It can be released into a home where it spends its time continuously cleaning. When it needs a battery recharge, it can go to a base station and recharge itself. It cannot yet, however, empty itself, although it can navigate around furniture and other obstacles. A potential business application of this technology is in cleaning offices – an army of Roombas could be let loose overnight. However, at present, the technology is not really good enough for this. Those interested in studying robotics should consider that the Roomba gives a cheap platform to experiment with – the makers of the Roomba, who are products of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, have made it so that you can install your own software on it and modify its behaviour. Quite a few attempts have been made to develop robots that have personality, to give them a more natural interface to interact with people. Minerva was a talking robot designed to accommodate people in public spaces. She was active in 1998 offering people at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History tours and leading them from exhibit to exhibit. Minerva had moods – she could be happy and sing or get frustrated and blare her horn. Minerva was a personal robot. One of the world’s leading centres in personal robotics A term which personal robotics is the Robotic Life Group (also known as the Personal refers to robotic companions that people socialize with. Robotics Group) at MIT, led by Cynthia Breazeal. This team builds robots to study our socialization with them. The term personal robotics refers to robots that become part of our everday lives. While currently of little relevance to most businesses, we shall see in the next section that this might change, when we examine, among other things, one of the most loved personal robots, Sony’s Aibo. Virtual Pets During the late 1990s, Sony released Aibo, a robotic puppy intended as a replacement for a real puppy. Aibo explored its environment, and got tried, hungry, grumpy and sleepy. It sometimes craved attention and could get over excited. Sony sadly no longer manufactures Aibo, but many cheaper versions inspired by it remain on the market. Aibo is an example of a virtual pet. Virtual pets started to gain worldwide popularity in the late 1990s when virtual pets An artificial Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai released the Tamagotchi. About the size companion. Could be screen based, i.e. the pet is animated on of a key ring, a typical Tamagotchi had a small black and white screen, three a computer monitor, or a robot. 10 buttons, a speaker, a motion sensor and a microphone. Users could feed, clean and play with their Tamagotchi, call it via the microphone and chase away predators by shaking the unit. The pet would evolve over time and would eventually either die or fly away. Many users became emotionally attached to their pet, which was the ultimate goal of the software designers. Virtual pets are perhaps unique among information systems in that their goal is to get users to feel a sense of responsibility towards the system and become attached in some way to it. Virtual pets are very popular at the moment. One of the most popular games for the Nintendo DS mobile games console is Nintendogs, which is essentially a more sophisticated version of the Tamagotchi. So why might businesses be interested in virtual pets? Some business tools (or at least software that could be used by businesses) have a ‘virtual-pet-like’ personality built into them. ‘Clippy’ or ‘Clipit’, the Microsoft help agent, was one of the first. Clippy would Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 346 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS cheerfully offer to help users with their tasks. It was almost universally hated, but it is clear that Microsoft and others have not yet given up on software with personality. Other attempts have been made to infuse personality into everyday software. PostPet by Sony was an email application where an on-screen puppy would fetch your mail, just as some real dogs do for their owners, but only if you were nice to it. The Nabaztag Rabbit is a personal companion that sits beside you and reads you the news and tells you when you have a new email. Mrs Dewey was a human interface to the Windows Live Search who would tell jokes to the user while they were running their search. Virtual pet designers are still trying to find new applications for them. Case One in this chapter showcases a recent example, and other developers are experimenting with using them as companions for the elderly. It is clear that some software developers are interested in giving their products personality. It is also clear that today’s teenagers are perfectly comfortable interacting with devices that have personality. It may be that in the future when they become employees, they will expect their business software to come with personality built in. 10.4 Computer Supported Cooperative Work Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) refers to technologies that allow groups to work together to achieve goals. Individuals in the groups can be co-located (in the same place) or geographically separated. The work can happen synchronously (individuals at work at the same time) or asynchronously (they work at different times). Different CSCW technologies exist to support these different modes of work. In global companies, CSCW technology is a powerful tool enabling a company to make the best of its human resources no matter where they are located. In this section, we will look at some CSCW tools. Videoconferencing For a long time in science fiction, the public has seen the future of the telephone call where both audio and video are transmitted. The technology now exists to achieve this easily and videoconference A simultaneous cheaply, Skype and Zoom being two examples of this. A videoconference is a communication between two or simultaneous communication between two or more parties where they both see more parties where they both see and hear each other. A videoconference can be set up using instant messaging and hear each other. software. For businesses, videoconferences are useful to hold global meetings. Visual cues are available to help everyone understand what other people are really feeling – a yawn, a nod of the head, a smile, etc. None of these can be transmitted down a telephone line. However, running a videoconference does take discipline as it is easy for more than one person to talk at 10 once and even a slight delay in transmission time can cause chaos. When COVID-19 became a pandemic, businesses, universities, schools and individuals immediately switched to meet via videoconferencing, with Google Hangouts, Google Meetings, Microsoft Teams, Whereby and Zoom rapidly becoming very popular. During the 2020 “lockdowns” prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies such as Zoom (the free videoconferencing platform) suddenly became a phenomenon and household name, with families and businesses all using it to interact with one another. Even pop and rock artists used it to create music videos for their fans. Messaging Messaging technology includes email, instant messaging and web chat rooms. Email has been discussed before. It is useful for asynchronous text-based communication. Instant messaging is used for synchronous communication – two (or more) people are communicating at the same Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 347 time, usually typing short sentences to build up a conversation. Instant messaging is extremely useful and can be used by employees to work on a problem together. Instant messaging versus a telephone call is largely a matter of personal preference. One advantage messaging has is that the text can be easily saved and re-read at a later date. A chat room is a facility that enables two or more people to engage in interactive ‘conversations’ over the web. When you participate in a chat room, dozens of people might be participating from around the world. Multi-person chats are usually organized around specific topics, and participants often adopt nicknames to maintain anonymity. Instant messaging technology is now being used by a diverse range of companies including Zurich Insurance and Ikea, as an alternative to making customers telephone a call centre. Customers often prefer clicking on the chat icon on a company website and waiting for the ‘operator’ to respond, than having to phone and wait in a queue. When phoning a call centre you often have to hold the phone to your ear, so at least one hand is tied up, and listen to (usually awful) music until someone answers. With messaging technology you can continue working at your computer until someone answers. You know when this happens as the task bar on your computer screen will start flashing. Interactive Whiteboards interactive whiteboard This Essentially, an interactive whiteboard is a combination of a whiteboard and term can be used to mean a PC. It can be used in a number of ways. Users can write on the whiteboard slightly different technologies, but and then save what has been written as an image on their computer. This essentially it is a combination negates the need to take notes about what has been written after a meeting of a whiteboard and a desktop computer. has finished. What is saved on the PC needn’t be a static image – it could be an animation of everything that was written, including things that were rubbed out. Alternatively, two whiteboards at different locations could be used by people at these different locations to see what the other is writing. Combined with videoconferencing, this can be a powerful way of running meetings when not everyone is present. An interactive whiteboard is shown in Figure 10.4. Figure 10.4 Interactive Whiteboard What gets written on the board can be saved, printed and sent to other whiteboards. 10 Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 348 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Wikis wiki A web page that can be A wiki is a web page that can be edited by anyone with the proper authority. edited by anyone with the proper The most famous example is Wikipedia, which can be edited by any web authority. user – very few restrictions are put in place. To see the usefulness of wikis, have a look at Wikipedia. Its content is breathtaking, considering that all of it was created by volunteers. There are strict protocols to follow and very militant moderators who police Wikipedia and flag up or revert changes that are suspect or do not meet strict criteria. Having said that, there is no guarantee that erroneous material will not get through. You might try editing an article you know something about; however, consider this: there is no way to know if the information has been edited by an expert or by a joker, so think twice before you rely on anything you read there. Wikis are clearly a good way of sharing knowledge and are being used by a large number of research groups and businesses to allow employees to share their thoughts and ideas, and post up good practice. MMOGs Look for information about MMOGs using a search engine and you may be hit with a confusing array of acronyms including MMORTS, MMOFPS and MMORPGs. MMOG stands for ‘massively multiplayer online game’. They have a long history, but today they exist as virtual worlds A computer-based 3D virtual worlds. Users are represented in the world by an avatar, which environment where users’ avatars interacts with other avatars typically by text, but voice is starting to be used. can interact. From a business point of view, we are not primarily interested in virtual worlds as games, but as a platform for holding meetings and for their marketing potential. Probably the best virtual world for these activities is Second Life. Owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, Second Life is a huge virtual world where residents meet socially and commercially. It has its own currency, the Linden dollar, which has a floating exchange rate with the US dollar. This means you can make (and spend) real money in Second Life. Several people are making a good living there (mostly by land speculation and by creating and selling animations), and big businesses are starting to get involved. IBM and Dell have already held global meetings in Second Life, and you can test drive Toyota cars there. 15 (Note, however, that IBM and Dell were researching the usefulness of using this platform to hold meetings – they were not actually holding a board meeting there; that has yet to happen.) Some commentators are saying that 3D interfaces such as this will become the main way we access information over the Internet in the future. As an example of the direction Linden Lab may be planning for their technology, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is one of the financial backers of Second Life, and Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, has pointed out that whenever someone 10 visits Amazon, there are thousands of other shoppers on the site with them. He has expressed the opinion that it would be a good thing if all those shoppers could both see and interact with each other. Business uses of virtual worlds have tailed off recently as the initial hype has worn off, but some commentators are still predicting they will play a part in future business communications.16 Blogs, Podcasts and Live Streaming While not strictly a CSCW technology, blogs still allow for the sharing of blog An online diary, a combination information from one to many people. A blog, short for ‘weblog’, is a website of the words ‘web’ and ‘log’. that people create and use to write about their observations, experiences and feelings on a wide range of topics. Technically, it is identical to any other web page, although the content of a blog is updated much more frequently, typically every day. The community of blogs and bloggers is often called the ‘blogosphere’. A ‘blogger’ is a person who creates a blog, while ‘blogging’ refers to the process of placing entries or ‘posts’ on a blog site. A blog is like a diary. When people post information to a blog, it is Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 349 placed at the top of the blog. Blogs can contain links to other material, and people can usually comment on posts. Blogs are easy to post to, but they can cause problems when people tell or share too much. People have been fired for blogging about work, and the daughter of a politician embarrassed her father when she made personal confessions on her blog.17 Blog sites, such as www.blogger.com, include information and tools to help people create and use weblogs. The way blogs are structured, with the most recent post appearing at the top, can make it extremely difficult to read and understand what it is all about – imagine you visit a blog, which you know (from an Internet search) talks about a product you are having problems with. Let’s say the first post you come to starts: ‘Today’s fresh hell – ABC company rep John replied and said it would work. I tried it and ended up breaking the stupid thing. Just my luck’. The blogger is presumably making reference to something written about yesterday or before. It may take you a while to track down what they did to break the product, something you probably want to know about to avoid doing yourself. Go to blogger.com, select a blog at random (there is a feature to do this) and you will see the problem – it can be difficult to start reading a blog. If you keep a blog, you might want to think about this and how you can keep new and irregular readers interested. Microblogs are currently extremely popular, with Twitter being the most common example. They have much the same goals as the blogs described above except that posts are limited in size. In the case of Twitter’s, the limit is 280 characters. Microblogs have many uses. They are often used by celebrities to keep in close contact with their fans. A podcast is an audio broadcast over the Internet. The term ‘podcast’ podcast An audio broadcast over comes from the word iPod, Apple’s portable music player, and the word the Internet. ‘broadcast’. A podcast is essentially an audio blog, like a personal radio station on the Internet, and extends blogging by adding audio messages. Using a computer and microphone, you can record audio messages and place them on the Internet. You can then listen to the podcasts on your computer or download the audio material to a music player, such as Apple’s iPod. You can also use podcasting to listen to TV programmes, your favourite radio personalities, music and messages from your friends and family at any time and place. Finding good podcasts, however, can be challenging. Apple’s new version of iTunes allows you to download free software to search for podcasts by keyword. People and corporations can use podcasts to listen to audio material, increase revenues or advertise products and services.18 Colleges and universities often use blogs and podcasts to deliver course material to students. Many blogs and podcasts offer automatic updates to a computer using a technology called Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is a collection of web formats to help provide web content or summaries of web content. With RSS, you can get a blog update without actually visiting the blog website. RSS can also be used to get other updates on the Internet from news websites and podcasts. Live streaming technology allows users to record and publish videos at the same time, essentially creating a live broadcast. YouTube, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter all have live streaming facilities or apps. YouTube live streams allow viewers to comment in real time on 10 what they are seeing and there is an option for viewers to donate money to the video’s creators, again all in real time. The donation appears on the video for everyone – the video makers and the video viewers – to see. It can be fun to watch the creator’s reaction when it appears. Live streaming technology has many applications in entertainment and education. Cloud Tools Cloud computing software spans much of what has been discussed up to this point in this chapter. Users access this software via a browser on any of their devices making it fully mobile, and the software connects users allowing computer supported cooperative work. The software can do this because of strong web standards – if developers created web browsers to work any way they wished, one person’s browser could not interface with another person’s web tool (as it is, popular browsers follow the World Wide Web Consortium standards to different amounts). Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 350 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS A good example of cloud software is G Suite, Google’s package of productivity tools.19 For example, Google Slides allows users to store their presentations in one place and access them from anywhere on any Internet connected device that runs a browser. Documents can be shared with other users allowing two or more people to work together on one set of slides. G Suite includes a full package of office applications (as well as slides there is a word processor (Docs) and spreadsheet (Sheets) package), a calendar (Calendar), email client (Gmail), video conferencing (Hangouts) and storage (Drive). Other software developers have similar products. Microsoft Office 365, and Zoho by Zoho Cooperation are well known competitors to G Suite. Although they may compete, again the existence of standards is good for users. Mobafone is a media and technology company that develops mobile apps. They use Zoho Books as an accounting solution that manages multiple accounts through multiple countries. The software also easily shares data with G Suite, which is important as the company mostly uses Google software. 10.5 More Applications of Electronic and Mobile Commerce Lastly in this chapter we will examine how e-commerce and m-commerce are being used in innovative and exciting ways. This section examines a few of the many B2B, B2C, C2C and m-commerce applications in the retail and wholesale, manufacturing, marketing, investment and finance, and auction arenas. Retail and Wholesale electronic retailing (e-tailing) E-commerce is being used extensively in retailing and wholesaling. Electronic The direct sale from business retailing, sometimes called e-tailing, is the direct sale of products or services to consumer through electronic by businesses to consumers through electronic shops, which are typically storefronts, typically designed around an electronic catalogue and designed around the familiar electronic catalogue and shopping cart model. Tens shopping cart model. of thousands of electronic retail websites sell a wide range. In addition, cyber shopping centres, or ‘cybermalls’, are another means to support retail shopping. A cybermall is a single website that offers many products and services at one Internet location. An Internet cybermall pulls multiple buyers and sellers into one virtual place, easily reachable through a web browser. A key sector of wholesale e-commerce is spending on manufacturing, repair and operations (MRO) of goods and services – from simple office supplies to mission-critical equipment, such as the motors, pumps, compressors and instruments that keep manufacturing facilities running smoothly. MRO purchases often approach 40 per cent of a manufacturing company’s 10 total revenues, but the purchasing system can be haphazard, without automated controls. In addition to these external purchase costs, companies face significant internal costs resulting from outdated and cumbersome MRO management processes. For example, studies show that a high percentage of manufacturing downtime is often caused by not having the right part at the right time in the right place. The result is lost productivity and capacity. E-commerce software for plant operations provides powerful comparative searching capabilities to enable managers to identify functionally equivalent items, helping them spot opportunities to combine purchases for cost savings. Comparing various suppliers, coupled with consolidating more spending with fewer suppliers, leads to decreased costs. In addition, automated workflows are typically based on industry best practices, which can streamline processes. Manufacturing One approach taken by many manufacturers to raise profitability and improve customer service is to move their supply chain operations onto the Internet. Here they can form an Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  CHAPTER 10 PERVASIVE COMPUTING 351 electronic exchange to join with competitors and suppliers alike, using electronic exchange An electronic computers and websites to buy and sell goods, trade market information forum where manufacturers, suppliers and competitors buy and run back-office operations, such as inventory control, as shown in and sell goods, trade market Figure 10.5. With such an exchange, the business centre is not a physical information and run back-office building but a network-based location where business interactions occur. operations. This approach has greatly speeded up the movement of raw materials and finished products among all members of the business community, thus reducing the amount of inventory that must be maintained. It has also led to a much more competitive marketplace and lower prices. Private exchanges are owned and operated by a single company. The owner uses the exchange to trade exclusively with established business partners. Public exchanges are owned and operated by industry groups. They provide services and a common technology platform to their members and are open, usually for a fee, to any company that wants to use them. Figure 10.5 Model of an Electronic Exchange Shoppers Requests for information, purchase orders, payment information Information about raw material Manufacturer's needs, purchase orders, Manufacturers orders, shipment Suppliers information notices, payment about raw requests material needs Customer orders, Shipment notices for supplier shipment manufacturers, payment notices requests Electronic exchange Payment approval, Payment electronic transfer of funds 10 request Payment Payment approval, request electronic transfer Payment of funds approval, electronic Payment transfer of Manufacturer’s bank request funds Supplier’s bank BANK Shopper’s bank Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 352 PART 3 BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS Several strategic and competitive issues are associated with the use of exchanges. Many companies distrust their corporate rivals and fear they might lose trade secrets through participation in such exchanges. Suppliers worry that the online marketplaces and their auctions will drive down the prices of goods and favour buyers. Suppliers also can spend a great deal of money in the setup to participate in multiple exchanges. For example, more than a dozen new exchanges have appeared in the oil industry, and the printing industry has more than 20 online marketplaces. Until a clear winner emerges in particular industries, suppliers are more or less forced to sign on to several or all of them. Yet another issue is potential government scrutiny of exchange participants – when competitors get together to share information, it raises questions of collusion or antitrust behaviour. Many companies that already use the Internet for their private exchanges have no desire to share their expertise with competitors. At the US shopping giant Walmart, the world’s number- one retail chain, executives turned down several invitations to join exchanges in the retail and consumer goods industries. Walmart is pleased with its in-house exchange, Retail Link, which connects the company to 7,000 worldwide suppliers that sell everything from toothpaste to furniture. Marketing The nature of the web allows firms to gather much more information about customer behaviour and preferences than they could using other marketing approaches. Marketing organizations can measure many online activities as customers and potential customers gather information and make their purchase decisions. Analysis of this data is complicated because of the web’s interactivity and because each visitor voluntarily provides or refuses to provide personal data such as name, address, email address, telephone number and demographic data. Internet advertisers use the data they gather to identify specific portions of their markets and target them with tailored advertising messages. This market segmentation The practice, called market segmentation, di