Reputation Model with Forgiveness Factor for Semi-Competitive E-Business Agent Societies

In this paper we introduce a new reputation model for agents engaged in e-business transactions. Our model enhances classic reputation models by adding forgiveness factor and new sources of reputation information based on agents groups. The model was implemented using JADE multi-agent platform and initially evaluated for e-business scenarios comprising societies of buyer and seller agents.

A Semantic Grid Oriented to E-Tourism

With increasing complexity of tourism business models and tasks, there is a clear need of the next generation e-Tourism infrastructure to support flexible automation, integration, computation, storage, and collaboration. Currently several enabling technologies such as semantic Web, Web service, agent and grid computing have been applied in the different e-Tourism applications, however there is no a unified framework to be able to integrate all of them. So this paper presents a promising e-Tourism framework based on emerging semantic grid, in which a number of key design issues are discussed including architecture, ontologies structure, semantic reconciliation, service and resource discovery, role based authorization and intelligent agent. The paper finally provides the implementation of the framework.Comment: 12 PAGES, 7 Figure

Total factor productivity and signal noise volatility in an incomplete information setting

Imperfection information models where agents solve some kind of signal extraction problem are multiplying and developing fast. They have commonly been used to study the impact of imperfect information on the business cycle and the importance of news versus noise shocks. This paper attempts to apply the framework to a di¤erent, albeit related, question: that of the e¤ect of volatility (both in news and noise) on the economy, from a long and short run perspective. An RBC model where the agent faces imperfect information regarding productivity is developed and calibrated in order to address the question, coming to the conclusion that the long run e¤ect is insigni…cant while further development is required to address the short run conclusively.

Soft behaviour modelling of user communities

A soft modelling approach for describing behaviour in on-line user communities is introduced in this work. Behaviour models of individual users in dynamic virtual environments have been described in the literature in terms of timed transition automata; they have various drawbacks. Soft multi/agent behaviour automata are defined and proposed to describe multiple user behaviours and to recognise larger classes of user group histories, such as group histories which contain unexpected behaviours. The notion of deviation from the user community model allows defining a soft parsing process which assesses and evaluates the dynamic behaviour of a group of users interacting in virtual environments, such as e-learning and e-business platforms. The soft automaton model can describe virtually infinite sequences of actions due to multiple users and subject to temporal constraints. Soft measures assess a form of distance of observed behaviours by evaluating the amount of temporal deviation, additional or omitted actions contained in an observed history as well as actions performed by unexpected users. The proposed model allows the soft recognition of user group histories also when the observed actions only partially meet the given behaviour model constraints. This approach is more realistic for real-time user community support systems, concerning standard boolean model recognition, when more than one user model is potentially available, and the extent of deviation from community behaviour models can be used as a guide to generate the system support by anticipation, projection and other known techniques. Experiments based on logs from an e-learning platform and plan compilation of the soft multi-agent behaviour automaton show the expressiveness of the proposed model

Managing travel agency customers in an electronic business environment

The current publication is focused on managing travel agency customers in an expanding electronic business environment, influencing process and models of dealing with customers. As human nature is stated to be a factor to consider when e-technology steps in, the author suggests opportunities to keep the balance by implementing e-business initiatives and avoiding mistakes in managing travel agency clients. The purpose is by revealing some practical approaches to propose working examples in servicing in order to emphasize on the importance of travel agencies’ role and significance to their customers; reveal the integrant relation between technology and proper customer management; and the importance for the travel agent professionals to improve styles in doing e-business, respecting the human nature of the traveller

e-DOCSPROS : exploring TEXPROS into e-business era

Document processing is a critical element of office automation. TEXPROS (TEXt PROcessing System) is a knowledge-based system designed to manage personal documents. However, as the Internet and e-Business changed the way offices operate, there is a need to re-envision document processing, storage, retrieval, and sharing. In the current environment, people must be able to access documents remotely and to share those documents with others. e-DOCPROS (e-DOCument PROcessing System) is a new document processing system that takes advantage of many of TEXPROS\u27s structures but adapts the system to this new environment. The new system is built to serve e-businesses, takes advantage of Internet protocols, and to give remote access and document sharing. e-DOCPROS meets the challenge to provide wider usage, and eventually will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of office automation. It allows end users to access their data through any Web browser with Internet access, even a wireless network, which will evolutionarily change the way we manage information. The application of e-DOCPROS to e-Business is considered. Four types of business models re considered here. The first is the Business-to-Business (B2B) model, which performs business-to-business transactions through an Extranet. The Extranet consists of multiple Intranets connected via the Internet.The second is the Business-to-Consumer (B2Q model, which performs business-to-consumer transactions through the Internet. The third is the Intranet model, which performs transactions within an organization through the organization\u27s network. The fourth is the Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) model, which performs consumer-to consumer transactions through the Internet. A triple model is proposed in this dissertation to integrate organization type hierarchy and document type hierarchy together into folder organization. e-DOCPROS introduces new features into TEXPROS to support those four business models and to accommodate the system requirements. Extensible Markup Language (XML), an industrial standard protocol for data exchange, is employed to achieve the goal of information exchange between e-DOCPROS and the other systems, and also among the subsystems within e-DOCPROS. Document Object Model (DOM) specification is followed throughout the implementation of e-DOCPROS to achieve portability. Agent-based Application Service Provider (ASP) implementation is employed in e-DOCPROS system to achieve cost-effectiveness and accessibility

Applying mobile agents to E-business

[[abstract]]E-commerce and M-commerce can extend the marketing of a company or enterprise to unlimited region. Through Internet and WWW, the limitation of distance and region are broken for business behaviors. Agent technique is one of the important technologies developed to support the Internet applications. Especially, the Internet and WWW technologies broken the limitation of space, and the agent techniques solve the problems of temporality. Even if the users are off-line, the agents are still active in the world of computer network and play the roles that their users assigned. In this paper, a mechanism is proposed for E-marketplace based on agents and mobile agents. Some issues of research are discussed. They include the platform of mobile agents, the types and classifications of agents and mobile agents, behaviors of commerce transactions and processing models, negotiation mechanisms, etc. Moreover, they include the techniques of information retrieval, data mining, and knowledge base, etc. Based on the proposed mechanism of E-marketplace, the applications of E-commerce will be more effective, easier to develop, and more creating the marketing of business.[[notice]]補正完

Constraint-Based Personalization For Business Applications

This paper reports on extensions of previous work applying personalization techniques and constraint-based methods within an intelligent agent framework.  The Wise Net Inc. has developed an intelligent agent framework specifically for providing advanced scalable collaborative capabilities for easy integration with existing web-enabled enterprise applications.  Since the summer of 2001, the author, his colleagues, and his research assistants, have been conducting applied research aimed at discovering the desired personalization models and effects to support collaborative e-business systems.  Intelligent agents are being developed to implement these personalization effects through constraint-satisfaction methods and solvers.  This paper documents the approach, progress achieved to date, and future directions.  This work is being supported by The Wise Net Inc., the BC Advanced Systems Institute (BC ASI), and the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) through the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP)