Sharing large data collections between mobile peers

New directions in the provision of end-user computing experiences mean that we need to determine the best way to share data between small mobile computing devices. Partitioning large structures so that they can be shared efficiently provides a basis for data-intensive applications on such platforms. In conjunction with such an approach, dictionary-based compression techniques provide additional benefits and help to prolong battery life

A fair payment system with online anonymous transfer

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-27).Physical cash can be anonymously transfered. Transferability is a desirable property because it allows for flexible, private commerce where neither the seller nor the buyer must identify themselves to the bank. In some cases, however, anonymity can be abused and lead to problems such as blackmail and money laundering. In 1996, Camenisch, Piveteau, and Stadler introduced the concept of fairness for (non-transferable) ECash, where a trusted authority can revoke the anonymity of certain transactions as needed. To our knowledge, no current ECash system supports both anonymous transfer and fairness. We have designed and implemented such a system. Also, we formally describe a set of desirable properties for ECash systems and prove that our system meets all of these properties under the Strong RSA assumption and the Decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. Furthermore, we provide extensions for our system that could allow it to deal with offline payments and micropayments. Our system has been implemented in java. Tests have shown that it performs and scales well, as expected.by Bin D. Vo.M.Eng

Clash of the Titans: Regulating the Competition Between Established and Emerging Electronic Payment Systems

This article equates the providers of traditional electronic payment services with the Titans of Greek mythology, and the providers of new electronic payment technologies with the Olympians. Professor Winn concludes, however, that unlike the Titans of Greek mythology, these modern Titans appear to be winning in their battle with the upstart Olympians. This article describes the fundamental characteristics of payment systems, reviews the applicable law, and describes the new technologies that were, until quite recently, expected to displace older electronic payment systems. Professor Winn finds that consumers and merchants, by and large, are happy with the existing regulatory structure. And, because of the failure of new technologies to gain significant market share yet, regulators have not yet been obliged to revise existing regulations to take account of these new technologies

Micropayments platform

Projecte final de carrera realitzat en col.laboració amb EPFL-LBD Database LaboratoryCurrent web payment systems are not suitable for transferring very small amounts of money, such as 0.001 Euros. Because of that it is currently not possible to ask users to pay little prices for small services, such as searching once in an online catalog. In addition, current payment procedures require a large number of steps to be performed. This project consists in designing and developing a platform targeted to micropayments, with the corresponding website and web API, and create a user-friendly, fast and reliable payment procedure, easy to implement for merchant

Efficient data representation for XML in peer-based systems

Purpose - New directions in the provision of end-user computing experiences mean that the best way to share data between small mobile computing devices needs to be determined. Partitioning large structures so that they can be shared efficiently provides a basis for data-intensive applications on such platforms. The partitioned structure can be compressed using dictionary-based approaches and then directly queried without firstly decompressing the whole structure. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes an architecture for partitioning XML into structural and dictionary elements and the subsequent manipulation of the dictionary elements to make the best use of available space. Findings - The results indicate that considerable savings are available by removing duplicate dictionaries. The paper also identifies the most effective strategy for defining dictionary scope. Research limitations/implications - This evaluation is based on a range of benchmark XML structures and the approach to minimising dictionary size shows benefit in the majority of these. Where structures are small and regular, the benefits of efficient dictionary representation are lost. The authors' future research now focuses on heuristics for further partitioning of structural elements. Practical implications - Mobile applications that need access to large data collections will benefit from the findings of this research. Traditional client/server architectures are not suited to dealing with high volume demands from a multitude of small mobile devices. Peer data sharing provides a more scalable solution and the experiments that the paper describes demonstrate the most effective way of sharing data in this context. Social implications - Many services are available via smartphone devices but users are wary of exploiting the full potential because of the need to conserve battery power. The approach mitigates this challenge and consequently expands the potential for users to benefit from mobile information systems. This will have impact in areas such as advertising, entertainment and education but will depend on the acceptability of file sharing being extended from the desktop to the mobile environment. Originality/value - The original work characterises the most effective way of sharing large data sets between small mobile devices. This will save battery power on devices such as smartphones, thus providing benefits to users of such devices