Exploring the democratic potential of online social networking: The scope and limitations of e-participation

Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Information Systems.The availability and promise of social networking technologies with their perceived open philosophy has increasingly inspired citizens around the world to participate in political activity on the Web. Recent examples range from opposing public policies, such as government funding cuts, to organizing revolutionary social movements, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa. Although online spaces create remarkable opportunities for various forms of political action, there are concerns over the power of existing institutions to control and even censor such interaction spaces. The objective of this article is to draw together different insights on the online engagement phenomenon, highlighting both its potential and limitations as a mechanism for fostering democratic debate and influencing policy making. We examine recent examples from Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Finally, we summarize the implications of our work and outline directions for further research

Performance factors for successful business incubators in Indonesian public universities

Measuring the performance of business processes is already a main concern for both faculty and enterprise players, since organizations are motivated to reach the productivity stage. Employing a performance achievement framework for the relationship between business incubator success factors will guarantee connection with commercial schemes, which support a high level of performance indicators in successful business incubator models. This research employs a quantitative approach, with the data analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 23 and Smart PLS version 3 statistical software packages. Employing a sample of 95 incubator managers from 19 universities which geographically located in Indonesia, it is shown that the image of business incubator factors has a positive effect on incubator performance. The study investigates the relationship between incubator performance and business incubator success factors in Indonesia. It was found that IT, as part of the business incubators’ facets/abilities, partially supports their performance; that the entry criteria directly support the performance of the incubators; that mentoring networks also support the performance, with good infrastructure systems as a moderating factor; that funding supports the performance of business incubators, also with good infrastructure systems as a moderating factor; and that university regulations and government support and protection enhance the performance of business incubators, with credits and rewards as a moderating factor. In addition, a variety of indicators from the local context affiliate positively to promote a community that highlighted the incubators’ strategies.N/

Delay Tolerant Networking over the Metropolitan Public Transportation

We discuss MDTN: a delay tolerant application platform built on top of the Public Transportation System (PTS) and able to provide service access while exploiting opportunistic connectivity. Our solution adopts a carrier-based approach where buses act as data collectors for user requests requiring Internet access. Simulations based on real maps and PTS routes with state-of-the-art routing protocols demonstrate that MDTN represents a viable solution for elastic nonreal-time service delivery. Nevertheless, performance indexes of the considered routing policies show that there is no golden rule for optimal performance and a tailored routing strategy is required for each specific case

A business planning framework for WiMAX applications

Mobile networking refers to wireless technologies which provide communications between devices. Applications for mobile networking have a broad scope as they can be applied to many situations in either industrial or commercial sectors. The challenge for firms is to better match market-induced variability to the organizational issues and systems necessary for technological innovation. This chapter develops a business planning framework for mobile networking applications. This framework recognises the fluidity of the situation when trying to anticipate and model emerging wireless applications. The business planning framework outlined in this chapter is a generic model which can be used by companies to assess the business case for applications utilizing mobile networking technologies

Informatics Research Institute (IRIS) September 2008 newsletter

2007-8 was a very busy year for IRIS. It was a bumper year for visiting Profs with Prof Michael Myers visiting from New Zealand, Prof Brian Fitzgerald visiting from University of Limerick, Ireland, Prof. Uzay Kaymak visiting from Erasmus University Netherlands and Prof Steve Sawyer visiting from Pennsylvania State University, USA. Their visits enriched our doctoral school, seminar programme workshops and our research. We were very lucky to have such a distinguished line up of visiting professors and we offer them hearty thanks and hope to keep ongoing research links with them