News Blog 12

What I learned from class:

From team C's presentation: An optical fiber is a glass or plastic fiber designed to guide light along its length. It is widely used in fiber-optic communication, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher data rates than other forms of communications. Fiber to the premises (FTTP), also called fiber to the home (FTTH) - architecture based on fiber optic cables carried all the way to the customer's home (or premise).

Relevant article:

I Want My Web TV
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/technology/20online.html

More quickly than many people had thought, the number of people who watch TV shows online has doubled in the last year, according to a report issued by two research organizations, TNS and the Conference Board. Close to 16 percent of American households now watch some programs online. Is this means that the big time for Web TV is coming? Chris Albrecht of the blog NewTeeVee asked whether putting full-length shows online was a “waste of time.” His readers answered with a resounding no, three-quarters of them indicating an interest in full-length shows. The migration of television to the computer will have "a huge impact on the way brands and advertisers communicate with viewers." However, the author still has some doubt of this tendency. "Futurism," the author cited, “has a tendency to take the products of today and merely extrapolate them. Thus TV becomes 3-D TV, cars become flying cars and telephones become video telephones.” But often, people just don’t want them.

Individual Assignment Blog 4

Suggest two other business cases in which this method can be used to collect information.

Electronic market can be used to
(1) estimate the price of securites or a new product.
(2) forcast the profit of certain company.

What problems do you see besides the ones mentioned in the Background information section?

In my opinion, there are more problems with electronic market other than those discussed in the background information section.

First, the nature of business information is two-sided. An one-sided decision is much easier to grasp than is a decision in a two-sided reactive market. Participants can easily grasp the notion of themselves facing (alone) a sea of potential "customers", and trying to attract their interest. In such a scenario, the unknown market demand represents various states of nature, and participants readily grasp the usefulness of information about market demand. But the presence of competition radically alters the nature of the decision-making and the role of information. The problem becomes reactive and it becomes a problem of markets and equilibrium behavior. Therefore, the role of information would be much more complex.

In addition, these markets are implemented as Information Systems, i.e. the software is the market. The market behavior and the value of various kinds of information can be radically altered just by changing a software parameter. Market behaviors can turn upside down because of a "software" change, e.g. a change that eases the comparison of prices, or a change in an auction's time limit. Information systerm professionals, in collaboration with the owners of business and markets, are making design decisions with far-reaching industry implications.

What kind of information system do you need to design to support this method of collecting information? Provide a simple hardware/software configuration.

An electronic market information system or “EMIS” shall contain real-time access to information concerning the transfer capability of the transmission grid and the market clearing prices. It should also be able to target deadline for reply. All market participants should have access to the EMIS on a nondiscriminatory basis. Here is a simple hardware/software configuration. (I have very limited information system knowledge background. Here I just try my best.)

1. The SQL Server. This is the database server where most data manipulations take place, and most business rules are enforced. There is normally only one of these.
2. The Client Software. This is the Graphic User Interface to specific electronic market. There are normally many of these.
3. The Application Server (or Reports Server). The Application Server generates reports and performs other resource intensive tasks. There are normally a few of these.
4. The Web Server (optional). The Web server is used to give access to managers and ordinators.
5. The TCP/IP Network connecting these parts.

Please check the link below for video.

Will HP be defeated? (For those who buy green in CIS class)

News Blog 11

What I learned from class:

From the presentations this week, I learned quite a few new stuffs. Here are two examples of them. Keysurvey: Online survey software for easy and robust data collection. It provides survey tools and offers enterprise and private label solutions. Digital rights management(DRM): an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices.

Relevant Article:
The Customer Is Always Wrong: A User's Guide to DRM in Online Music

The variety of options for purchasing music online is increasing. However, thicket of confusing usage restrictions is also growing. This is what the author of this article talks about. Many digital music services employ digital rights management (DRM) to protect copy rights, preventing customers from doing things like using the portable player of their choice or creating remixes. In other words, "in this brand new world of 'authorized music services', law-abiding music fans often get less for their money than they did in the old world of CDs". The article "translates" the marketing messages by the major services, giving the real deal rather than spin. It is very helpful and we should be sure to understand how the service might limit the ability to make lawful use of the music we purchase before buying DRM-crippled music from any service.

News Blog 10

What I learned from class:

In class this week, the professor talked about Facebook, MySpace, and instucted us to do mock product promostion. I haven't used Facebook before, now I know it is is a social utility that people can use to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. Besides, from Team I and Team J's presentation (which I belong to), I learned more about how to resolve the online pharmacy issue and product promotion problems of Duane Reade.

Relevant Articles:
Opening up

As a Chinese student who is studying in USA, I always miss my old friends back in China and try to keep up with them. Actually there are many options that I can choose. Maybe this time, I should check Facebook out. The Facebook makes it possible to establish connections and interact with all sorts of things in the world in new and interesting ways. By opening up the kinds of things that can participate in Facebook beyond just people, and opening up the kinds of actions that appear on the site beyond just those that happen inside of Facebook.com, we hope Facebook will be even more useful in helping people keep up with all the meaningful things that are happening in their lives.

News Blog 9

What I learned from class:

Auction sniping is the process of watching a timed online auction (such as on eBay or Yahoo!), and placing a winning bid at the last possible moment (often seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. Sniping softwarea are software designed for the purpose. I also learned about some auction strategies such as english strategy, dutch strategy and so forth.

Relevant Article:
Auction Strategies
http://www.agorics.com/Library/Auctions/auction8.html

This is a very helpful article to learn more about auction strategies. Based on the experience of the mock auction on Monday, I can’t agree more with the author’s remarks. First, it is worth understanding the rules of an auction thoroughly. In fact, the one piece of information available to all is the rules. Buyers really do bid differently depending upon the rules of an auction. Second, a seller, on the one hand, is faced with choosing an auction type, and so he must predict the behavior of bidders. On the other hand, a bidder tries to predict the behavior of the other bidders. Each bidder makes an estimate of his own value of the object and also an estimate of what others will bid on it. Good bidding is often the result of correct predictions about the behavior of others and sometimes that means guessing the extent of someone else's information correctly.