Collaborative Environments. Considerations Concerning Some Collaborative Systems

It is obvious, that all collaborative environments (workgroups, communities of practice, collaborative enterprises) are based on knowledge and between collaboration and knowledge management there is a strong interdependence. The evolution of information systems in these collaborative environments led to the sudden necessity to adopt, for maintaining the virtual activities and processes, the latest technologies/systems, which are capable to support integrated collaboration in business services. In these environments, portal-based IT platforms will integrate multi-agent collaborative systems, collaborative tools, different enterprise applications and other useful information systems.collaboration, collaborative environments, knowledge management, collaborative systems, portals, knowledge portals, agile development of portals

Sustainable Evolution of Business Models: Cases from Scandinavian Internet Portal Market

Portals exist for a large number of topics and they have become quite common on the Internet. So far, researchers have not extensively studied the evolution of portals and only a few portal business models have been reported in the literature. We wonder if Internet portals are following the same evolution path, and what kinds of similarities and differences can be observed. The theoretical references, we drew on for the design of a field study, were derived from a number of theories considering portals, online communities, and network economics. We chose to research six portals, comprising Danish, Finnish and Swedish portals, of which three represent healthcare and three mobile services. We learned that the portals are quite similar in their scope of operation. Furthermore, we noticed that there is a difference between portals hosted by large organizations and portals that existing independently. All six portals are national in their geographical sphere of attention. This stresses that the local language capabilities are important when launching a portal. Finally, existing theories seem to provide an adequate theoretical vehicle for explaining the evolution of these portals. The practical contribution of this paper lays in the set of guidelines that can be applied by portal managers to identify their focus areas. It also provides some guidance about in which direction Internet portals currently develop

Similarities, challenges and opportunities of wikipedia content and open source projects

Copyright @ 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Several years of research and evidence have demonstrated that Open Source Software (OSS) portals often contain a large amount of software projects that simply do not evolve, developed by relatively small communities, struggling to attract a sustained number of contributors. These portals have started to increasingly act as a storage for abandoned projects, and researchers and practitioners should try and point out how to take advantage of such content. Similarly, other online content portals (like Wikipedia) could be harvested for valuable content. In this paper we argue that, even with differences in the requested expertise, many projects reliant on content and contributions by users undergo a similar evolution, and follow similar patterns: when a project fails to attract contributors, it appears to be not evolving, or abandoned. Far from a negative finding, even those projects could provide valuable content that should be harvested and identified based on common characteristics: by using the attributes of “usefulness” and “modularity” we isolate valuable content in both Wikipedia pages and OSS projects

Simulating the conflict between reputation and profitability for online rating portals

We simulate the process of possible interactions between a set of competitive services and a set of portals that provide online rating for these services. We argue that to have a profitable business, these portals are forced to have subscribed services that are rated by the portals. To satisfy the subscribing services, we make the assumption that the portals improve the rating of a given service by one unit per transaction that involves payment. In this study we follow the 'what-if' methodology, analysing strategies that a service may choose from to select the best portal for it to subscribe to, and strategies for a portal to accept the subscription such that its reputation loss, in terms of the integrity of its ratings, is minimised. We observe that the behaviour of the simulated agents in accordance to our model is quite natural from the real-would perspective. One conclusion from the simulations is that under reasonable conditions, if most of the services and rating portals in a given industry do not accept a subscription policy similar to the one indicated above, they will lose, respectively, their ratings and reputations, and, moreover the rating portals will have problems in making a profit. Our prediction is that the modern portal-rating based economy sector will eventually evolve into a subscription process similar to the one we suggest in this study, as an alternative to a business model based purely on advertising

The Quest for Integration: Australian Approaches to Security and Development in the Pacific Islands

With the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands in July 2003, the former Howard Government initiated its robust new engagement with Australia's Pacific island neighbours. Interventions with an initial security focus have been portals to broader and ambitious state-building exercises. The quest to integrate security and development agendas lies at the heart of 'the new interventionism'. This article examines the evolution and character of this approach, as well as reviewing its implementation in the two case studies of Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and Papua New Guinea (ECP). It also discusses the significance for Australia/Pacific relations of the recent change of government in Canberra and the differences (and similarities) to be anticipated under Prime Minister Rudd's Labor Government

The Evolutionary Unfolding of Complexity

We analyze the population dynamics of a broad class of fitness functions that exhibit epochal evolution---a dynamical behavior, commonly observed in both natural and artificial evolutionary processes, in which long periods of stasis in an evolving population are punctuated by sudden bursts of change. Our approach---statistical dynamics---combines methods from both statistical mechanics and dynamical systems theory in a way that offers an alternative to current ``landscape'' models of evolutionary optimization. We describe the population dynamics on the macroscopic level of fitness classes or phenotype subbasins, while averaging out the genotypic variation that is consistent with a macroscopic state. Metastability in epochal evolution occurs solely at the macroscopic level of the fitness distribution. While a balance between selection and mutation maintains a quasistationary distribution of fitness, individuals diffuse randomly through selectively neutral subbasins in genotype space. Sudden innovations occur when, through this diffusion, a genotypic portal is discovered that connects to a new subbasin of higher fitness genotypes. In this way, we identify innovations with the unfolding and stabilization of a new dimension in the macroscopic state space. The architectural view of subbasins and portals in genotype space clarifies how frozen accidents and the resulting phenotypic constraints guide the evolution to higher complexity.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure

Les portails comme "hypermédias"

International audienceThis work presents an analysis of the evolution of portals as "hypermedia", mixing economic, sociological, hypertextual and ergonomic approaches. It shows that this mixed approach is necessary if we want to understand the coherence of these hypermedia, which are among the main sources of information for Internet users today. The reasons underlying the fast evolution of these portals are strategic (maximize information), economic, ergonomic (simplify reading), sociological (deliver practical and playful entertainment) and even graphic. These portals thus reveal at the same time not only some of the main characteristics of the consumer cyberspace, but also the possible evolution of hypermedia.Ce travail présente une analyse de l'évolution des portails généralistes comme " hypermédias " mêlant approche économique (publicitaire), sociologique, hypertextuelle et ergonomique. Il montre que cette approche est nécessaire si l'on veut comprendre la cohérence de toutes les composantes de ces " hypermédias " qui sont aujourd'hui l'unes des principales sources d'information des internautes. Car, de fait, l'évolution rapide de ces portails vers une mise en page multi-écrans tient à la fois à des raisons stratégiques (maximiser l'information), publicitaires (éviter le zapping), ergonomiques (simplifier la lecture), sociologiques (répondre à des attentes pratiques et ludiques) et même graphiques (jouer des cadres). Ce n'est donc pas le moindre intérêt des portails généralistes que de révéler à la fois quelques-unes des principales caractéristiques des cyberespaces grand public mais aussi d'en révéler les enjeux médiatiques et les évolutions possibles

Mall2000 – a B2B e-Marketplace Serving e-Commerce Evolution trough Standardization and Profitability

This paper introduces the concepts of e-commerce, e-business, and e-marketplaces. It follows the evolution of e-commerce and the transformation of e-business models it causes. The paper presents the Mall 2000 portal in the light of the concepts introduced and considers using two internationally accepted trade standards as a basis of integration of data formats of suppliers’ and buyers’ catalogues in the portal. The article briefly describes the functionality of the portal and compares it to similar, currently active portals. Are such portals still vital? What features should an e-marketplace possess to survive in the third phase of e-commerce evolution, in which the question is how to increase profitability? The paper proves that separating buyers form sellers in an e-marketplace gives an opportunity for the portal owner to generate more revenue, and hence, to increase profitabilit

Geocollaborative Portals And Trip Planning: Users’ Perceptions Of The Success Of The Collaborative Decision Making Processes

As more and more travelers wish to create their personalised trip itineraries, the provision of geographical information and services on travel websites is an unavoidable necessity. The evolution of geoportals, geocollaborative portals and web 2.0 present numerous opportunities and services for making the trip planning process less complex and time consuming, more efficient and more social and collaborative for travelers and their travel companions. This paper aimed at exploring the use and impact of geocollaborative portals on the success of collaborative trip planning processes. To that end, the literature was reviewed for analyzing the functionality of geoportals and geocollaborative portals and demonstrating how these can support and facilitate the collaborative decision making processes for trip planning purposes. A framework for measuring the impacts of geoportals’ use on travellers’ collaborative decision making processes was developed and tested by collecting primary data through an experimental study based on students’ perceptions using Yahoo! Trip Planner for planning a group trip. The paper provides useful practical guidelines for designing the functionality of geoportals and/or geocollaborative portals for trip planning purposes

Forming Impressions on Computer-Mediated Healthcare Peer-Support Systems for Informal Caregivers

The rapid evolution of Information technology (IT) has seen its adoption during many aspects of our lives, including healthcare. Healthcare IT provides the public with access to governmental records, electronic health records, healthcare websites, internet-based medical consultation, and more recently, online peer-support portals. These peer-support portals, which are directed not only towards patients but also caregivers, have been found to be a source of informational and emotional support. In addition, for caregivers who cannot leave their loved ones to access in-person support groups, these online support portals are an important substitute. In these online peer-support portals, informal caregivers interact with one another, providing emotional and personal support, leading to a sense of camaraderie and thereby a social relationship. The contributions on these portals are voluntary, with some members contributing more often than others. The first study in this dissertation focuses on understanding the patterns of interaction between these top contributors, referred to here as peer patrons, and other informal caregivers in terms of the information they provide, and the unique characteristics of the top contributors based on these interactions. Several unique interaction patterns related to peer patrons were found along with information about how peer patrons contribute towards the coping mechanism of informal caregivers. Interface design implications based on these outcomes were discussed. With informal caregivers exchanging not only information and emotional content on online peer-support portals but also forming social relations, it is important to understand how these users form impressions of others based on the information they access. The possible consequences of following healthcare and medical advice posted on these portals further emphasize the need to understand how users form impressions of one another on these portals. The second study in this dissertation focuses on impression formation using profiles based on those of the peer patrons who were the focus of the previous study. This exploratory study brought to light the prominence of the comment content and the profile picture in forming impressions on these portals, thereby supporting literature regarding context effects on impression formation. The final chapter is an intervention-based study investigating factors leading to positive impression formation on online healthcare peer-support portals. It supported the findings from the previous study regarding the importance of comment and profile picture and suggested the use of other peer ratings to solidify impressions formed using the former two cues. Additionally, the contribution of this dissertation to the literature and the improvement of online healthcare peer-support portals is discussed