<p>In this information age, the Internet has found a role in various industries such as transportation, advertising, etc. The travel industry, in which communication between travellers and travel service providers is a very important component, has as much potential as any other industry to make full use of this new medium. Already, most travel agencies and travel service providers promote their products and services using web sites. Searching for information online is now seen by many people as a way to save time and cost, especially in their travel activities. In order to fully deploy the Internet within the travel industry, understanding the use of the Internet in tourism is critical. This research sets out initially to examine the role and the impact of the Internet in the whole of the travel industry. But in order to define an achievable scope of work and because of its importance in South Africa at this time, tourism within the travel industry was chosen as the focus of the work.</p>

No description available.

Most rural areas of developing countries are faced with problems like shortage of doctors in hospitals, illiteracy and poor power supply. Because of these issues, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often sees as a useful solution for these areas. Unfortunately, the social environment is often ignored. This leads to inappropriate systems being developed for these areas. The aims of this thesis were firstly, to learn how a communication system can be built for a rural telehealth environment in a developing country, secondly to learn how users can be supported to use such a system.

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by Ka-Po Ma. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-105). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgments --- p.ii / Abstract --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Web-based Education --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Customized Web-based Learning --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Overview --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Web-based Education --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Impact on Traditional Learning --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Theoretical Perspectives on Teaching and Learning --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Behaviorism Versus Constructivism --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- "Categorization of Individual, Group and Collaborative Learn- ing" --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- On-line Eduation and Web-based Learning System --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4 --- Technologies used in Web-based Learning --- p.17 / Chapter 3 --- General Automated Timetabling --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1 --- Timtabling Problem --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Formulation and Solution Approaches --- p.22 / Chapter 4 --- "Virtual Campus, Customized Web-based Learning Environment" --- p.25 / Chapter 4.1 --- Changing Trend in Learning Process --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2 --- System Design Issue --- p.26 / Chapter 5 --- System Architecture Issue --- p.31 / Chapter 5.1 --- Client-server Model --- p.31 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Server Side --- p.33 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Client Side --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2 --- Functional-oriented Design --- p.35 / Chapter 5.3 --- Private Functionality Issue --- p.37 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Access Authorizing --- p.37 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Availability Updating --- p.40 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Personal Information Querying and Modifying --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3.4 --- Status Selecting --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3.5 --- Current Online User Querying --- p.43 / Chapter 5.4 --- Lecture Functionality Issue --- p.44 / Chapter 5.5 --- Personal Scheduling Functionality Issue --- p.45 / Chapter 5.6 --- Collaboration Functionality Issue --- p.50 / Chapter 5.6.1 --- Chatting Room --- p.50 / Chapter 5.6.2 --- Discussion Board --- p.56 / Chapter 5.6.3 --- Personal URL-bookmark Keeping and Sharing --- p.57 / Chapter 6 --- Web-based Learning Scheduler (WL-Scheduler) --- p.59 / Chapter 6.1 --- "Web-based Customized Timetabling Problem, WCTP" --- p.60 / Chapter 6.2 --- Solution Approach - Local Search --- p.61 / Chapter 6.3 --- Algorithm for Approaching Feasible Timetables --- p.63 / Chapter 6.4 --- Evaluating The Best Timetable --- p.66 / Chapter 7 --- Multimedia Web Presentation System (MWPS) --- p.67 / Chapter 7.1 --- Overview --- p.67 / Chapter 7.2 --- System Components --- p.68 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- The MWPS Server Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- The MWPS Client Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.2.3 --- The Student Machine --- p.69 / Chapter 7.3 --- Presentation Flow --- p.69 / Chapter 7.4 --- Highlighed Features --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.1 --- Slides Sequence Capturing --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.2 --- Audio/Video Capturing --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.3 --- Script-Text On Playback --- p.72 / Chapter 7.4.4 --- Student Feedbacking --- p.73 / Chapter 7.4.5 --- White Board Facility --- p.73 / Chapter 8 --- Illustration via Screen-shots --- p.74 / Chapter 8.1 --- Login Screen --- p.74 / Chapter 8.2 --- Functionality provided for Students --- p.75 / Chapter 8.2.1 --- Personalized Learning Timetable --- p.76 / Chapter 8.2.2 --- Lecture Delivery --- p.78 / Chapter 8.2.3 --- Checking active users in Virtual Campus --- p.78 / Chapter 8.2.4 --- View and Update Personal Information --- p.79 / Chapter 8.2.5 --- Taking An Entry Test for Interesting Subject --- p.81 / Chapter 8.2.6 --- Changing Current State --- p.84 / Chapter 8.2.7 --- Discussion Board --- p.84 / Chapter 8.2.8 --- Chatting Room --- p.85 / Chapter 8.3 --- Functionality provided for Teachers --- p.85 / Chapter 8.4 --- Functionality provided for Administrators --- p.92 / Chapter 9 --- Conclusion --- p.94 / Appendix --- p.106 / Chapter A --- Appendix --- p.106 / Chapter A.1 --- Internet Technology --- p.106 / Chapter A.2 --- Web Server --- p.107 / Chapter A.3 --- Web Client/Server Example --- p.108

Network applications and Internet services fail all too frequently. However, end users cannot effectively identify the root cause using traditional troubleshooting techniques due to the limited capability to distinguish failures caused by local network elements from failures caused by elements located outside the local area network. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new approach, one that leverages collaboration of user machines to assist end users in diagnosing various failures related to Internet connectivity and poor network performance. First, we present DYSWIS ("Do You See What I See?"), an automatic network fault detection and diagnosis system for end users. DYSWIS identifies the root cause(s) of network faults using diagnostic rules that consider diverse information from multiple nodes. In addition, the DYSWIS rule system is specially designed to support crowdsourced and distributed probes. We also describe the architecture of DYSWIS and compare its performance with other tools. Finally, we demonstrate that the system successfully detects and diagnoses network failures which are difficult to diagnose using a single-user probe. Failures in lower layers of the protocol stack also have the potential to disrupt Internet access; for example, slow Internet connectivity is often caused by poor Wi-Fi performance. Channel contention and non-Wi-Fi interference are the primary reasons for this performance degradation. We investigate the characteristics of non-Wi-Fi interference that can severely degrade Wi-Fi performance and present WiSlow ("Why is my Wi-Fi slow?"), a software tool that diagnoses the root causes of poor Wi-Fi performance. WiSlow employs user-level network probes and leverages peer collaboration to identify the physical location of these causes. The software includes two principal methods: packet loss analysis and 802.11 ACK number analysis. When the issue is located near Wi-Fi devices, the accuracy of WiSlow exceeds 90%. Finally, we expand our collaborative approach to the Internet of Things (IoT) and propose a platform for network-troubleshooting on home devices. This platform takes advantage of built-in technology common to modern devices --- multiple communication interfaces. For example, when a home device has a problem with an interface it sends a probe request to other devices using an alternative interface. The system then exploits cooperation of both internal devices and remote machines. We show that this approach is useful in home networks by demonstrating an application that contains actual diagnostic algorithms.

In the late 1990s a number of law firms and other organisations began to market online products which &quotpackage&quot legal knowledge. Unlike spreadsheets, word processing software and email, these products are not designed to provide efficiency improvements. Rather, online legal knowledge products, which package and apply the law, were and are viewed by many as having the potential to make major changes to legal practice. Many used the term &quitrevolution&quot to describe the anticipated impact. Like any new technology development, many intersecting factors contributed to their development. In many ways they built on existing uses of technology in legal practice. The various information technology paradigms which underpin them - text retrieval, expert systems/artificial intelligence, document automation, computer aided instruction (CAI) and hypertext - were already a part of the &quotcomputerisation of law&quot. What is new about online legal knowledge products is that as well as using technology paradigms such as expert systems or document automation to package and apply the law, they are developed using browser-based technologies. In this way they leverage the comparative ease of development and distribution capabilities of the Internet (and/or intranets). There has been particular interest in the impact of online legal knowledge products on the legal services provided to large commercial organisations. With the increasing burden of corporate compliance, expanding role of the in-house lawyer and pressure to curb costs, online legal knowledge products should flourish in commercial organisations and many have been adamant that they will. However, there is no convincing evidence that anything like a &quotrevolution&quot has taken place. Success stories are few and far between. Surprisingly few have asked whether this &quotrevolution&quot has failed, or seriously analysed whether it lies ahead. If it does lie ahead, what factors, if any, need to taken into account in order for it to take place? If there is to be no revolution, what value should be placed on online legal knowledge products? In this dissertation I use the findings of my own empirical work, supported by a literature survey, to demonstrate that the impact of online legal knowledge products has been modest. I argue that in order to build successful online legal knowledge products it is necessary to appreciate that a complex system of interacting factors underpins their development and use,and address those factors. I propose a schematic representation of the relationships involved in producing an online legal knowledge product and use the findings of some empirical work, together with a review the literature in related fields, to identify the factors relevant to the various components of this framework. While there are many interacting factors at play, four sets of considerations emerge from my research as particularly important: integrating different technology paradigms, knowledge acquisition, usability, and implementation. As a practical matter, the implication of these findings is that some online legal knowledge products are more likely to be successful than others, and that there are other technology applications that may represent a better investment of the limited in-house technology budget than many online legal knowledge products. I also argue that while most of the challenges involved in integrating different technology paradigms, improving usability, and effective implementation can be addressed with varying levels of effort, the problem of the knowledge acquisition bottleneck is intractable. New approaches to knowledge acquisition are required to overcome the knowledge acquisition bottleneck. I identify some potential approaches that emerge from my research: automation, collaboration and coalition, phasing and simple solutions.

Currently, reliable and appropriate medical information is difficult to find on the Internet. The potential for improvement in human health by the use of internet-based sources of information is potentially huge, as knowledge becomes more widely available, at much lower cost. Medical information has traditionally formed a large part of academic publishing. However, the increasing volume of available information, along with the demand for evidence based medicine makes Internet sources of information appear to be the only practical source of comprehensive and up-to date information. The aim of this work is to develop a system allowing groups of users to identify information that they find useful, and using those particular sources as examples develop an intelligent system that can classify new information sources in terms of their likely usefulness to such groups. Medical information sources are particularly interesting because they cover a very wide range of specialties, they require very strict quality control, and the consequence of error may be extremely serious, in addition, medical information sources are of increasing interest to the general public. This work covers the design, construction and testing of such a system and introduces two new concepts - document structure identification via information entropy and fuzzy ontology for knowledge representation. A mapping between query terms and members of ontology is usually a key part of any ontology enhanced searching tool. However many terms used in queries may be overloaded in terms of the ontology, which limits the potential use of automatic query expansion and refinement. In particular this problem affects information systems where different users are likely to expect different meanings for the same term. This thesis describes the derivation and use of a "Fuzzy Ontology" which uses fuzzy relations between components of the ontology in order to preserve a common structure. The concept is presented in the medical domain. Kolmogorov distance calculations are used to identify similarity between documents in terms of authorship, origin and topic. In addition structural measures such as paragraph tags were examined but found not to be effective in clustering documents. The thesis describes some theoretical and practical evaluation of these approaches in the context of a medical information retrieval system, designed to support ontology-based search refinement, relevance feedback and preference sharing between professional groups.

Business information systems have been targets for rapid application development because potential productivity gains can translate into huge returns on investment for organizations. However, to realize the perceived productivity improvement presents a major challenge to today?s information systems managers and requires new development approaches. End user computing is an approach to reduce the backlog of user requests for information needs through which end users are given the software tools to create their own reports and extract the information they need. Some end-users attempted to build their own information systems with fourth generation language (4GL) but failed partly due to the programming skills required of them. Although fourth generation languages have been promoted as a means to enhance programmer productivity by an order of magnitude more, later studies by researchers showed less dramatic results. The many problems and deficiencies of 4GL created obstacles to achieve spectacular improvement in productivity as promoted. A new knowledge-based approach to rapid business information systems development is attempted in this study to overcome the shortcomings of 4GL. A prototype system consisting of a knowledgebase is integrated with an object-oriented application generator to alleviate the need for conventional programming skills. Typical information system functionalities of database creation and updating are provided through a framework of reusable business information system components. These are object classes arranged and instantiated in a certain way directed by a specification language. The knowledgebase enables the translation of user requirements via the specification language that explicitly avoids the prerequisite programming skills required of the developer. The specification language is non-procedural in that specifications can be specified in any order. It does not follow the basic programming language constructs of sequence, decision and repetition. Additionally, the customizable rules allow the developer to validate the specifications before generating the desired application. Maintenance and enhancement of the generated application is modified by regenerating from the modified knowledge-based facts and rules, at a higher level than conventional programming languages or even 4GL. Experiments with small groups of end-users and developers found this approach to be viable. Although the specification process is tedious, no programming skills were ever required other than spreadsheet like expressions. The absence of programming logic prevents most of the errors caused by newly constructed information systems. Testing is still required, but the remedies are much easier. In conclusion, the study has demonstrated the feasibility of a knowledge-based approach to rapid system development of business information systems. This approach enables technical and end-user alike to rapidly develop such systems without programming. The application generator is built with reusable business information system components that can be added and extended to support more capabilities. The knowledgebase can be enhanced with corresponding new rules and facts to enable the user developer to build new functionalities into existing or new systems. Business information system development can be lifted to a higher-level than procedural specifications, and assisted by knowledge-based inference to achieve spectacular productivity improvements. / thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2012. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-251)