New products continue to launch quickly but many of them are converged products. The "new product" is not a completely new thing to consumers and the basic features stay the same. As a result, the added functions or fancy design can't explain why consumers adopt the new media. Past studies have examined perceptions of innovations or user…

The granting of credit is a necessary risk of doing business. If companies only accepted cash, sales would be negatively impacted. In a perfect world, all consumers would pay their bills when they become due. However, the fact is that some consumers do default on debt. Companies are willing to accept default risk because the value of defaults does…

This paper focuses on three main subjects: (1) monitoring quality of life (QoL) in old age; (2) international and interdisciplinary collaboration for QoL research; and (3) computer-based technology and infrastructure assisting (1) and (2). This type of computer-supported cooperative work in the social sciences has been termed eHumanities or…

Complex and expensive systems' development suffers from a lack of method for making good system-architecture-selection decisions early in the development process. Failure to make a good system-architecture-selection decision increases the risk that a development effort will not meet cost, performance and schedule goals. This research provides a…

In various research areas, the availability of open datasets is considered as key for research and application purposes. These datasets are used as benchmarks to develop new algorithms and to compare them to other algorithms in given settings. Finding such available datasets for experimentation can be a challenging task in technology enhanced…

Web browsers are plagued with vulnerabilities, providing hackers with easy access to computer systems using browser-based attacks. Efforts that retrofit existing browsers have had limited success since modern browsers are not designed to withstand attack. To enable more secure web browsing, we design and implement new web browsers from the ground…

The rapid evolution of System-on-Chip (SoC) challenges academic curricula to keep pace with multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary system thinking. This paper presents a curricular prototype that cuts across artificial course boundaries and provides a meaningful exploration of diverse facets of SoC design. Specifically, experimental contents of a…

This research investigated the impact of automated cognitive assistants, specifically, the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL), on situational awareness, efficiency and effectiveness of decision making in the brigade combat team. PAL was recently commissioned by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to enhance decision making with…

Current technology enables schools to provide remote or virtual computing labs that can be implemented in multiple ways ranging from remote access to banks of dedicated workstations to sophisticated access to large-scale servers hosting virtualized workstations. This paper reports on the implementation of a specific lab using remote access to…

The convergence of web-enabled smartphones, the applications designed for smartphone interfaces, and cloud computing is rapidly changing how people interact with each other and with their environments. The commercial sector has taken the lead in creating mobile websites that leverage the capacities of smartphones, and the academic community has…

A desirable characteristic for an e-learning system is to provide the learner the most appropriate information based on his requirements and preferences. This can be achieved by capturing and utilizing the learner model. Learner models can be extracted based on personality factors like learning styles, behavioral factors like user's browsing…

Describes interconnection methods, speed, and comparative equipment costs of networking starter kits. These kits supply network-connection devices that plug into or connect to each computer that is part of a network; they may also provide interconnection cables and installation software needed to set up a network. Reviews 20 kits that use a…

This paper provides an overview of thin-client/server computing in higher education. Thin-clients are like PCs in appearance, but they do not house hard drives or localized operating systems and cannot function without being connected to a server. Two types of thin-clients are described: the Network Computer (NC) and the Windows Terminal (WT).…

Purpose: To identify cases related to design of ICT platforms for industrial alliances, where the use of Ontology-driven architectures based on Semantic web standards is more advantageous than application of conventional modeling together with XML standards. Design/methodology/approach: A comparative analysis of the two latest and the most obvious…

Presents a study of Archimedes as a HyperCard reference tool at the University of Michigan, and compares uses to similar projects. Results from studied points (i.e., system design and use statistics) support Archimedes: the system sees more use during reference hours when a librarian is unavailable, and user time is comparable to time spent with a…