Adopting Web Feed and Agent Technologies for Supporting Asynchronous Web Interactions and Constructing E-Commerce Applications

隨著電子商務的發展以及網路經濟的起飛，越來越多的使用者除了使用網際網路(Internet)取得 所需的資訊外，亦開始透過各式手持裝置進行多樣化的網路交易(如：Amazon/Yahoo!/淘寶網線上 購物、Apple iTunes/App Store 線上數位內容…等等)而獲取各形式之資訊、產品及服務。在使用者進 行網路交易的過程中，若電子商務的服務因為伺服器軟硬體故障或網路連線問題而導致服務中斷， 原可取得的訂單將隨之消失，亦無法取得消費者的信任。本研究以網路供餵技術為基礎，搭配代理 人的使用設計出一套能夠應用在可攜式裝置上，並具有使用簡單、高度可用性、輕量化，可用以支 援非同步式網路互動之電子商務容錯服務架構。採用此架構可以改善企業服務並提高電子商務網站 的彈性及可用性，讓企業把握住每一個可能的交易機會。With the continuous development of e-commerce and Internet economy, more and more people not only obtain necessary information through the Internet but also adopt various portable devices to conduct online transactions (such as Amazon/Yahoo!/Alibaba online shopping, Apple iTunes App Store, etc.) to acquire various information, products, and services. However, if the service is interrupted due to any server or network connectivity or availability problems while performing online transaction tasks, an e-commerce website might lose business opportunities and even their customers’ trust. The main purpose of this study is to utilize the Web Feed technology together with agent technology to design a simple, highly available, and light weight e-commerce fault tolerant service architecture applicable in a multimodal pervasive environment for supporting asynchronous Web interactions. This framework may be utilized to enhance enterprise services and improve the flexibility and availability of e-commerce websites, thus retaining more business opportunities

Blockchain in Health Care Innovation: Literature Review and Case Study From a Business Ecosystem Perspective

Background: Blockchain technology is leveraging its innovative potential in various sectors and its transformation of business-related processes has drawn much attention. Topics of research interest have focused on medical and health care applications, while research implications have generally concluded in system design, literature reviews, and case studies. However, a general overview and knowledge about the impact on the health care ecosystem is limited. Objective: This paper explores a potential paradigm shift and ecosystem evolution in health care utilizing blockchain technology. Methods: A literature review with a case study on a pioneering initiative was conducted. With a systematic life cycle analysis, this study sheds light on the evolutionary development of blockchain in health care scenarios and its interactive relationship among stakeholders. Results: Four stages-birth, expansion, leadership, and self-renewal or death-in the life cycle of the business ecosystem were explored to elucidate the evolving trajectories of blockchain-based health care implementation. Focused impacts on the traditional health care industry are highlighted within each stage to further support the potential health care paradigm shift in the future. Conclusions: This paper enriches the existing body of literature in this field by illustrating the potential of blockchain in fulfilling stakeholders' needs and elucidating the phenomenon of coevolution within the health care ecosystem. Blockchain not only catalyzes the interactions among players but also facilitates the formation of the ecosystem life cycle. The collaborative network linked by blockchain may play a critical role on value creation, transfer, and sharing among the health care community. Future efforts may focus on empirical or case studies to validate the proposed evolution of the health care ecosystem

Blockchain Meets Sharing Economy: A Case of Smart Contract Enabled Ridesharing Service

The ideas of the sharing economy have facilitated innovative business applications, such as Uber and Airbnb. As an example of a sharing economy application, ridesharing services take advantage of underutilized resources to create economic value. However, the unruly design of ridesharing systems may make urban traffic more congested and cause other technology-organization-environment issues. This study explores the application of blockchain and smart contract technologies to enhance ridesharing services by harvesting the blockchain benefits of transaction traceability, process transparency, system automation and disintermediation. After presenting system design and implementation details for building and deploying a blockchain-based system to support the reengineered ridesharing service with required business functions, we conduct functionality/performance tests and theory-based comparative analysis to confirm its feasibility and applicability. The results reveal that our system with blockchain-enabled benefits is superior to incumbent ridesharing systems. Moreover, while prior research rarely reports the design and implementation details of blockchain-based systems to support sharing economy services, this paper primarily contributes to extant literature by not only proposing a layered system architecture adapting blockchain and smart contracts into the desired ridesharing service but also demonstrating the design and implementation details, covering the development tools, the deployment environment and the deployed smart contracts