Mobile Commerce Applications

Nan Si Shi, University of South Australia, Australia

IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING

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Copyright ‚ 2004 Idea Group Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mobile commerce applications / Nansi Shi, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1-59140-182-8

(cloth) ‚ ISBN 1-59140-190-9 (ebook)
1. Mobile commerce. 2. Application software. I. Shi, Nan Si, 1953-
.

HF5548.34.M627 2004

658.8 ‚ ² 72 ‚ dc22

2003014946

British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher.

Dedication

To My Father's Memory

About the Editor

Nan Si Shi received his Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems Management at the University of South Australia and Master's in Computer Networks at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr. Shi has more than 20 years of experience in the information systems field, including industry practice, academic research, and teaching. Having participated extensively in research projects on information technologies, he has authored and edited a few books ‚ Essential Technologies for E-commerce , Information Technology of E-commerce , and Architectural Issues of Web-Enabled Electronic Business ‚ and published a number of research papers and chapters. He is currently responsible for the areas of corporate IT strategy planning, e-business, m-commerce, IT security policy, information management, innovation management, etc. He is also the adjunct research associate of the Division of Business and Enterprise at the University of South Australia and a member of the international board of editors for the Journal of Information Technology Education . He is a member of the advisory board for the University of South Australia bachelor of engineering in Singapore. His recent teaching experience includes information systems management for MBA.

About the Authors

M. C. Angelides is a professor of Computing in the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University, UK. He holds a BSc in Computing and a PhD in Information Systems, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he began his academic career as a lecturer in Information Systems. He has more than 10 years of research experience in multimedia information systems, where he has published extensively in journal and book format. He is the author of Multimedia Information Systems , which was published by Kluwer. He is a member of the ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the British Computer Society. His home page is at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~csstmca.

Chang Ching Chng received his BS from the National University of Singapore in 2002. His research interests include software agents and electronic commerce.

Nikhilesh Dholakia is a professor in the Marketing, E-Commerce, and Management Information Systems areas at the University of Rhode Island, USA, and a faculty associate at URI's Research Institute for Telecommunications & Information Marketing. He has published extensively in the fields of marketing, e-commerce, and consumer culture and taught in several academic and executive programs in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Dr. Dholakia has won the Charles Slater award of the Journal of Macromarketing . He has also chaired doctoral dissertations that have won the MSI/Clayton and ACR/Sheth Foundation awards and supervised award-winning student essays at the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC). His recent books include Worldwide E-commerce and Online Marketing: Watching the Evolution (Quorum, 2002) and M-commerce in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific: Cases and Readings (Idea Group Publishing, 2003 forthcoming). Dr. Dholakia holds a BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, and a PhD from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

G. Ghinea is a lecturer in the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University, UK. He obtained a BSc (Honors) and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and a PhD, also in Computer Science, from the University of Reading, UK. His research interests span multimedia ( especially perpetual aspects), quality of service, as well as computer networking and security issues. He is a member of the IEEE. His home page is at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~csstggg2.

Arthur Lee Gilbert is an associate professor at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He began his international career as a consultant for SRI International and later served the Institute of Systems Science as deputy director, Harvard Business School as future information systems faculty fellow, the United Nations Secretariat as regional adviser for technology transfer and development, and Nanyang Business School as director of its MBA (international business) program. As an IT practitioner, he assisted a wide range of private- and public-sector clients to acquire and implement effective computing and telecommunications solutions to business problems in many countries . His research focuses on the interactions among emerging technologies, various aspects of electronic business, and behavior.

Sheng-Uei Guan received his MSc and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently with the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the National University of Singapore. Professor Guan has also worked in a prestigious R&D organization for several years, serving as a design engineer, project leader, and manager. He has also served as a member on the R.O.C. Information & Communication National Standard Draft Committee. After leaving the industry, he joined Yuan-Ze University in Taiwan for three and a half. He served as deputy director for the Computing Center and also as the chairman for the Department of Information & Communication Technology. Later he joined La Trobe University with the Department of Computer Science & Computer Engineering, where he helped to create a new multimedia systems stream.

Feng Hua received her BS from Beijing Polytechnic University, China, in 1999. In 2002, she received her Master's of Engineering in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include electronic commerce, software agents, and secure electronic payment systems. She is currently working in the IT industry.

Wen-Chen Hu received a BE in Computer Science from Tamkang University, Taiwan, in 1984, an ME in Electronic and Information Engineering from the National Central University, Taiwan, in 1986, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, in 1993, and a PhD in Computer and Information Science and engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1998. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of North Dakota, USA. His current research interests are in the World Wide Web research and applications including information retrieval, especially search engines, data mining, and databases.

Hilda Han Mei Ian is currently a research student of the Marketing and International Business Division of the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her current research interests include exploring disruptive technologies such as data services, as well as the marketing of emergent products and services across cultures. She graduated with a Bachelor of Business Studies (BBus) from NBS in 2002, majoring in information technology. Her unpublished project report in 2002 examines the potential for wireless entertainment in Singapore and how it can be adapted to suit the needs of the different market segments.

Maizatul A. Ismail received her bachelor's degree in Information Technology from Universiti Malaya and later obtained a master's from Universiti Putera Malaysia, specializing in Management of Information Systems. She is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Her research interests include Web commerce, electronic payment systems, and smart card technology. She is currently a consultant for the ICT Literacy Program for secondary-school students in Malaysia.

E.V. Krishnamurthy , professor, is presently with the Computer Sciences Laboratory, Institute for Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. He is the author of several books and numerous papers in computer science, algorithms, chemical information systems, image processing, theory and practice of parallel and distributed computing, transaction processing, and bio-quantum computational paradigms . He has earlier held professorial positions in computational and computer science and at the Indian Statistical Institute (Calcutta), Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), and University of Waikato, New Zealand. Also, he has held visiting professorship positions in computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion, Israel, University of Lagos, Nigeria, Johannes Kepler Universitat, Linz, Austria, Friederich-Schiller Universitat, Jena, Germany, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and University of Brunei-Darussalem.

Chung-wei Lee received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, in 1987, an MS in Computer Science and Information Engineering from the National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1994, and a PhD in Computer and Information Science and Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2001. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Auburn University, USA, and a faculty of Auburn's Center for Innovations in Mobile, Pervasive, and Agile Computing Technologies (IMPACT). He is interested in mobile/wireless networks, mobile commerce, multimedia streaming, IP routing and quality of service (QoS), and network security.

Sunny Marche , CMC, is an associate professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University, Canada, and is a certified management consultant with more than 20 years' experience. He has been on the executive committee for e-commerce at Dalhousie for the last three years and has published a number of articles in the area of e-tailing, online trust, and the impact of the Internet on e-governance and e-government . He has recently prepared a major report for the Canadian Government on the impact of trade, industry, and professional associations on the uptake of e-business technologies among small- and medium- sized enterprises .

Alexander Markhasin received the degree of engineer in Electromechanics and a PhD from the Technical (Mining) University of St. Petersburg (Russia) in 1958 and 1966, respectively, and the DSc(T) from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1990. From 1964 he began developing multiaccess theory. In 1969 he offered and published the multi-access protocols in such classes as Aloha and CSMA, and he determined the positive effect of slotting the packet transmission too. He was a leader of working out the first (1975-1980) packet radio network in Russia called INFRA. In the past 15 years he developed solutions to problems of long-delay dynamic reservation of bandwidth resources, multi-access and long-delay dynamic control of the traffic parameters, and service quality (QoS) for mobile and satellite distributed broadband ATM networks.

Rafidah Md-Noor received her BSc in Information Technology from Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, and obtained a master's degree from Universiti Technologi Malaysia. She is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Prior to that, she worked as a lecturer at a private college in Seremban and Kuala Lumpur for almost two and a half years. Her research interests include designing a wireless network, mobile IP, and Bluetooth technology. She is currently involved in a research project in the area of implementing a wireless network for her faculty.

Nitin Mittal received his Bachelor of Applied Sience in Computer Engineering with honors from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 2002. His interest in mobile technology grew when developing a WAP- and e-Speak-based mobile printing solution during his industrial attachment. He carried on the development work in the mobile arena by studying peer-to-peer and messaging technologies to develop the multimedia messaging peer discussed in this book. He is presently working at Nokia Pte Ltd, Singapore, as a technology expert. His current interests include J2ME- and Symbian-based games , mobile enterprise and personal productivity applications, multimedia messaging, and peer-to-peer communications.

Nadia Nalaningrum Moertiyoso received her BASc in Computer Engineering (first class Honors) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests are wireless enterprise application and mobile gaming. For her final-year thesis, she worked with Motorola to study wireless enterprise application on hand phones. Her experience in Java programming led to her interest for Java 2 Micro Edition, the language for mobile application. She is currently living in Singapore and working as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Her other interests are music and swimming.

V.K. Murthy is at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia. His current research contributions are in the areas of distributed, mobile, and multimedia computing, transaction processing, e-commerce, and mobile agent programming. He has extensive software engineering experience with Fujitsu on the design and development of various software systems including proprietary products. Also he is the author/coauthor of many journal and conference publications and book chapters and the book Transaction Processing Systems (Prentice Hall). He is the recipient of several competitive research grants and holds program committee membership in several international conferences. He has held a visiting associate professor position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Richi Nayak holds a PhD (2000) in Information Technology from the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, and a master's by research degree (1995) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. Currently she is working as a lecturer in the School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests are knowledge discovery and data mining and artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks technologies. She has published more than 15 refereed papers in conferences proceedings , books, and journals.

Stephan Olariu received an MSc and PhD in Computer Science from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. In 1986, he joined the Computer Science Department at Old Dominion University, USA, where he is now a full professor. He has published extensively in various journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His research interests include wireless networks and mobile computing, parallel and distributed systems, performance evaluation, and medical image processing. Prof. Olariu serves on the editorial board of several archival journals, including IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, Journal of Supercomputing, International Journal of Computer Mathematics, VLSI Design , and Parallel Algorithms and Applications .

Mazliza Othman received a BSc in Computer Science from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and later obtained her postgraduate degrees from the University of London. Currently, she is a lecturer at the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Her research interests include mobile computing, wireless networks, and intercultural experiments.

Morten Rask is an assistant professor in International Business, Marketing, and E-business in the Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. He holds a PhD in International Business from Aalborg University. His research interests are in the areas of m-commerce, e-business portals, e- marketplaces , and e-books. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Rhode Island, USA, and has worked in the Silicon Valley on issues of market and competitive analysis.

Lawrence Seow , School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

Sin Lip Tan received his BS from the National University of Singapore in 2002. His research interests include electronic commence and software agents. He is currently working in the IT industry.

Petia Todorova received an MS degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD (1980) in Computer Networks from the Technical University of Sofia. Upon graduation, she joined the Research Institute of Telecommunications in Sofia, where she worked until 1987. She was involved in the development and evaluation of routing and flow control mechanisms for PSDN and in the investigation of data transmission using ISDN. From 1987 to1988 she was a visiting scientist with the University of West Berlin. Since 1988 she has been with GMD-FOKUS, Berlin, now Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FhG-FOKUS) as a senior scientist working in the area of advanced networks technologies and protocols. From 1989 to 1997 she participated in the ETSI and ITU-T SG 13 standardization efforts as a DEUTSCHE TELEKOM expert member. She was also an active participant in a large number of international projects within the EURESCOM and ACTS Program on ATM signaling, integration of B-ISDN and intelligent networks, broadband multimedia services, mobility in broadband environments, and satellite networks. Dr. Todorova's recent research interests include network management, resource management, and performance analysis of wireless and ATM-based LEO satellite communication systems. She has published extensively in various conference proceedings and journals.

Carolyn Watters , is a professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, Canada. She has been on the executive committee for e-commerce at Dalhousie since its inception and was the director of e-commerce programs. She is currently codirector of the Web Information Filtering Lab and associate dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. She has published widely on issues related to designing and using systems for use over the Web. Current topics include usability of data access on small screens, peer-to-peer collaboration, and user studies. Her research into interactive mathematics for children has led to the formation of a successful spin-off company.

Jyh-haw Yeh received his Bachelor of Science from National Chung-Hsin University, Taichung, Taiwan, in 1988. He received his Master of Science from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1993. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, in December 1999. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science of Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA. His research area is computer systems with specialties in network security, network access control, and Internet technologies.

Kin Choong Yow received his bachelor's in Electrical and Electronics Engineering with honors from the National University of Singapore in 1993. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998. He is presently serving in the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, as an assistant professor, and he is currently the sub-dean of the School of Computer Engineering. He has worked closely with the Motorola Singapore's iDEN subscriber group to build enterprise applications on J2ME-enabled devices. His current research interests include multimedia communications, wireless communication technologies, and mobile ad hoc networking.

Fangming Zhu received his BS and MS from Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, in 1994 and 1997, respectively. After graduation, he joined Shanghai Ricoh Facsimile Co. Ltd. as a research engineer. He is now a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore. His current research interests include intelligent agents, evolutionary computation, and agent-based electronic commerce.