Newspapers Turning Ideas into Dollars: Four Revenue Success Stories

The report follows a year-long effort to identify newspaper successes in the search for new business models. This report analyzes four such dailies -- the Naples (Fla.) Daily News, the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat, the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News, the Columbia (Tenn.) Daily Herald -- whose executives explained, in detail, the motivation and strategy behind their experiments and shared internal data about the results. Their innovations-ranging from sales force restructuring to rebranding the print product to web consulting for local merchants-are generating significant new income

WSACT : a model for Web Services access control incorporating trust

Today, organisations that seek a competitive advantage are adopting virtual infrastructures that share and manage computing resources. The trend is towards implementing collaborating applications that are supported by web services technology. Even though web services technology is rapidly becoming a fundamental development paradigm, adequate security constitutes the main concern and obstacle to its adoption as an industry solution. An important issue to address is the development of suitable access control models that are able to not only restrict access to unauthorised users, but also to discriminate between users that originate from different collaborating parties. In web services environments, access control is required to cross the borders of security domains, in order to be implemented between heterogeneous systems. Traditional access control systems that are identity-based do not provide a solution, as web services providers have to deal with unknown users, manage a large user population, collaborate with others and at the same time be autonomous of nature. Previous research has pointed towards the adoption of attribute-based access control as a means to address some of these problems. This approach is still not adequate, as the trustworthiness of web services requestors cannot be determined. Trust in web services requestors is thus an important requirement to address. For this reason, the thesis investigated trust, as to promote the inclusion of trust in the web services access control model. A cognitive approach to trust computation was followed that addressed uncertain and imprecise information by means of fuzzy logic techniques. A web services trust formation framework was defined that aims to populate trust concepts by means of automated, machine-based trust assessments. The structure between trust concepts was made explicit by means of a trust taxonomy. This thesis presents the WSACT – or the Web Services Access Control incorporating Trust –model. The model incorporates traditional role-based access control, the trust levels of web services requestors and the attributes of users into one model. This allows web services providers to grant advanced access to the users of trusted web services requestors, in contrast to the limited access that is given to users who make requests through web services requestors with whom a minimal level of trust has been established. Such flexibility gives a web services provider the ability to foster meaningful business relationships with others, which portrays humanistic forms of trust. The WSACT architecture describes the interacting roles of an authorisation interface, authorisation manager and trust manager. A prototype finally illustrates that the incorporation of trust is a viable solution to the problem of web services access control when decisions of an autonomous nature are to be made.Thesis (PhD (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2008.Computer Scienceunrestricte

Extending Moodle services to mobile devices: The Moodbile Project

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are widespread among most education and training institutions. Even though LMS are a mature technology, they have left the vanguard of innovation in e-learning to mobile devices and tablets. Mobile Learning (M-learning)may enhance e-learning by increasing communication and conversation opportunities to convents the learning process more collaborative and learner-centred. This paper describes a way to integrate mobile devices and educational applications with a LMS as Moodle through web services: The Moodbile Project. Rather than just creating mobile apps that replicates LMS functionalities on a mobile device, Moodbile provides to m-learning developers with the necessary tools to allow mobile devices to interact with the LMS. In this paper, we describe our proposal of an open specification of web services to support the integration of mobile external applications with Moodle.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The New News: Journalism We Want and Need

Economic pressures on one hand and continuing democratization of news on the other have already changed the news picture in Chicago, as elsewhere in the U.S. The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times are in bankruptcy, and local broadcast news programs also face economic pressures. Meanwhile, it seems every week brings a new local news entrepreneur from Gapers Block to Beachwood Reporter to Chi-Town Daily News to Windy Citizen to The Printed Blog.In response to these changes, the Knight Foundation is actively supporting a national effort to explore innovations in how information, especially at the local community level, is collected and disseminated to ensure that people find the information they need to make informed decisions about their community's future. The Chicago Community Trust is fortunate to have been selected as a partner working with the Knight Foundation in this effort through the Knight Community Information Challenge. For 94 years, the Trust has united donors to create charitable resources that respond to the changing needs of our community -- meeting basic needs, enriching lives and encouraging innovative ways to improve our neighborhoods and communities.Understanding how online information and communications are meeting, or not, the needs of the community is crucial to the Trust's project supported by the Knight Foundation. To this end, the Trust commissioned the Community Media Workshop to produce The New News: Journalism We Want and Need. We believe this report is a first of its kind resource offering an inventory and assessment of local news coverage for the region by utilizing the interactive power of the internet. Essays in this report also provide insightful perspectives on the opportunities and challenges

Antecedents of Trust in Mobile Banking Amongst Generation Y Students in South Africa

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of perceived structural assurance concerning mobile banking, information and system quality of mobile banking, integrity of the mobile bank, trust propensity and perceived ease of use and usefulness of mobile banking on South African Generation Y students’ trust in mobile banking. The study followed a descriptive research design, using a single cross-sectional approach. A self-administered survey questionnaire was used to collect data from a convenience sample of 334 students registered at three public South African university campuses. The results suggest that Generation Y students’ perceived structural assurance, integrity of a bank, trust propensity and ease of use of mobile banking all have a statistically significant positive influence on their trust in mobile banking. However, their perceived information and system quality, as well as their usefulness of mobile banking has a positive yet non-significant influence on their trust in mobile banking. Understanding Generation Y students’ trust in mobile banking will assist retail banking marketers and strategists in their efforts to formulate strategies that will foster trust in their mobile channels amongst customers of this cohort and, in doing so, promote greater mobile banking penetration. This paper also fulfils an identified need to study the antecedents of trust in mobile banking, especially amongst the South African youth

Floating Liens Over Crypto-in-Commerce

Commercial law and crypto are colliding. Against the backdrop of explosive growth (and discord) in the digital asset market, there has been a series of recent revisions to American commercial law aimed at addressing new and emerging technologies. These changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are designed to facilitate the buying and selling of digital assets as well as their use as collateral. However, to date, the literature exploring these changes has mainly focused on understanding the basics of the new regime. This Essay moves beyond that baseline by showing how the UCC amendments can be used to structure more complex secured credit arrangements that tap into the borrowed capital potential of blockchain technology. Specifically, this study explains how these recent law reforms—in concert with the inherent capabilities of distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and cryptography—can be used to create a floating lien (the quintessential financing device in American commercial law) over crypto inventory