The Web 2.0 as Marketing Tool: Opportunities for SMEs

The new generation of Internet applications widely known as Social Media or Web 2.0 offers corporations a whole range of opportunities for improving their marketing efficiency and internal operations. Web 2.0 applications have already become part of the daily life of an increasing number of consumers who regard them as prime channels of communication, information exchange, sharing of expertise, dissemination of individual creativity and entertainment. Web logs, podcasts, online forums and social networks are rapidly becoming major sources of customer information and influence while the effectiveness of traditional mass media is rapidly decreasing. Using the social media as a marketing tool is an issue attracting increasing attention. The hitherto experience is that large public corporations are more likely to make use of such instruments as part of their marketing and internal operations (McKinsey, 2007).The paper defines the Web 2.0 phenomenon and based on the experience of large corporations examines how SMEs could engage the various Web 2.0 instruments in order to efficiently market their products, improve customer relations, increase customer retention and enhance internal operations

A Phone Learning Model for Enhancing Productivity of Visually Impaired Civil Servants

Phone-based learning in civil service is the use of voice technologies to deliver learning and capacity building training services to government employees. The Internet revolution and advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have given rise to online and remote staff training for the purpose of enhancing workers productivity. The need for civil servants in Nigeria to develop capacity that will enhance knowledge is a key requirement to having competitive advantage in the work place. Existing online learning platforms (such as web-based learning, mobile learning, etc) did not consider the plight of the visually impaired. These platforms provide graphical interfaces that require sight to access. The visually impaired civil servants require auditory access to functionalities that exist in learning management system on the Internet. Thus a gap exist between the able-bodied and visually impaired civil servants on accessibility to e-learning platform. The objective of this paper is to provide a personalized telephone learning model and a prototype application that will enhance the productivity of the visually impaired workers in Government establishments in Nigeria. The model was designed using Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram. The prototype application was implemented and evaluated. With the proposed model and application, the visually and mobility impaired worker are able to participate in routine staff training and consequently enhances their productivity just like their able-bodied counterparts. The prototype application also serves as an alternative training platform for the able-bodied workers. Future research direction for this study will include biometric authentication of learners accessing the applicatio

A Phone Learning Model for Enhancing Productivity of Visually Impaired Civil Servants

Phone-based learning in civil service is the use of voice technologies to deliver learning and capacity building training services to government employees. The Internet revolution and advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have given rise to online and remote staff training for the purpose of enhancing workers productivity. The need for civil servants in Nigeria to develop capacity that will enhance knowledge is a key requirement to having competitive advantage in the work place. Existing online learning platforms (such as web-based learning, mobile learning, etc) did not consider the plight of the visually impaired. These platforms provide graphical interfaces that require sight to access. The visually impaired civil servants require auditory access to functionalities that exist in learning management system on the Internet. Thus a gap exist between the able-bodied and visually impaired civil servants on accessibility to e-learning platform. The objective of this paper is to provide a personalized telephone learning model and a prototype application that will enhance the productivity of the visually impaired workers in Government establishments in Nigeria. The model was designed using Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram. The prototype application was implemented and evaluated. With the proposed model and application, the visually and mobility impaired worker are able to participate in routine staff training and consequently enhances their productivity just like their able-bodied counterparts. The prototype application also serves as an alternative training platform for the able-bodied workers. Future research direction for this study will include biometric authentication of learners accessing the applicatio

A two-way interactive broadband satellite architecture to break the digital divide barrier

September 24-26, 2007, Turin, Ital

A Multi-channel Application Framework for Customer Care Service Using Best-First Search Technique

It has become imperative to find a solution to the dissatisfaction in response by mobile service providers when interacting with their customer care centres. Problems faced with Human to Human Interaction (H2H) between customer care centres and their customers include delayed response time, inconsistent solutions to questions or enquires and lack of dedicated access channels for interaction with customer care centres in some cases. This paper presents a framework and development techniques for a multi-channel application providing Human to System (H2S) interaction for customer care centre of a mobile telecommunication provider. The proposed solution is called Interactive Customer Service Agent (ICSA). Based on single-authoring, it will provide three media of interaction with the customer care centre of a mobile telecommunication operator: voice, phone and web browsing. A mathematical search technique called Best-First Search to generate accurate results in a search environmen

TV-Centric technologies to provide remote areas with two-way satellite broadband access

October 1-2, 2007, Rome, Italy TV-Centric Technologies To Provide Remote Areas With Two-Way Satellite Broadband Acces

Effectiveness of Corporate Social Media Activities to Increase Relational Outcomes

This study applies social media analytics to investigate the impact of different corporate social media activities on user word of mouth and attitudinal loyalty. We conduct a multilevel analysis of approximately 5 million tweets regarding the main Twitter accounts of 28 large global companies. We empirically identify different social media activities in terms of social media management strategies (using social media management tools or the web-frontend client), account types (broadcasting or receiving information), and communicative approaches (conversational or disseminative). We find positive effects of social media management tools, broadcasting accounts, and conversational communication on public perception

Reflections on security options for the real-time transport protocol framework

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) supports a range of video conferencing, telephony, and streaming video ap- plications, but offers few native security features. We discuss the problem of securing RTP, considering the range of applications. We outline why this makes RTP a difficult protocol to secure, and describe the approach we have recently proposed in the IETF to provide security for RTP applications. This approach treats RTP as a framework with a set of extensible security building blocks, and prescribes mandatory-to-implement security at the level of different application classes, rather than at the level of the media transport protocol