Communication protocols based on SMS and e-email are simple and straightforward to implement yet they possess a significant communication overhead and delay. In a large sensor network this would increasingly lead to performance issues and decrease scalability of the overall system, since SMS and e-mail include a significant transmission delay and overhead. Additionally, a communication architecture, where clients communicate directly to the central server requires these to be online all the time, thus decreasing battery time. We replaced the initial SMS and e-mail based communication protocol with a TCP based protocol. Furthermore, we selected a new architecture where sensor groups could communicate to a master node in that group, which in turn communicates to the central server. These changes were implemented in an emulator, since the real sensors could not be reconfigured. We evaluated the improvements and could show that we can reduce the communication overhead and transmission delay as well as that the average battery time for all sensors in a group is increased. / Emulator for complex sensor-based IT system

We have chosen to look closer at the area of security for electronic invoices. The purpose of this inquest is to provide our case study with a security analysis of three suggestions and a recommendation of the best solution, according to our test. The three solutions are ISDN via a third party, X.25 via Internet bank and Mail server. The company in our case study is in this report referred to as X, has a strong market position and a large clientele and therefore we were interested in analysing and improving X?s electronic invoice system. X was in the position of testing an electronic invoicing system towards a selective group of business customers. The major problem with the system was the security issue regarding transferring the file.

De senaste åren har Sverige sett en ökning av nyföretagande och med internets enorma tillväxt så blir det allt vanligare med företag som erbjuder tjänster eller produkter online. Det finns idag relativt mycket forskning om kundsupport men den är ofta äldre och har utförts på större etablerade företag. Forskning om kundsupport i startupföretag är nästintill obefintlig. De enorma resursskillnaderna mellan ett startupföretag och etablerade gör att tidigare forskning om kundsupport kanske inte är applicerbar på startupföretag. Med hjälp av personer från etablerade företag med lång erfarenhet av kundsupport och personer som idag är involverade i ett startupföretag så studien fört forskningen framåt. Studien belyser vikten av vidare forskning inom kundsupport och resulterar i nya insikter.

SMTP, the current protocol for sending electronic mail (e-mail) over the Internet, has for many years suffered from several problems and limitations. When it was designed, well over twenty years ago, the requirements for e-mail were very different from those of today. A message was a text message in English, and both user and machine were explicitly named in the address. The protocol was not designed to transfer other types of messages, and no mechanism was included to verify the identity of the sender. In order to solve these shortcomings, a new e-mail protocol needs to be defined. This report specifies a basis for what such a protocol may look like. The protocol has been designed to be easy to modify and expand, as well as to benefit from more recent ideas and technology. Binary message content is transferred without conversion, sender addresses are verified, and the address format is flexible. Along with the specification of the protocol, a sample implementation has been provided.

The problem considered involved assessing willingness of educators to participate in a study offering monetary incentives. Determination of willingness was implemented by sending educators a packet requesting return of a postcard to indicate willingness to participate. The purpose was twofold: to determine the effect of a monetary incentive upon willingness of educators to participate in a research study, and to analyze implications for mail questionnaire studies. A sample of 600 educators was chosen from directories of eleven public schools in north Texas. It included equal numbers of male and female teachers and male and female administrators. Subjects were assigned to one of twelve groups. No two from a school were assigned to different levels of the inducement variable.

Bakgrund: Företag som huvudsakligen agerar med Internet som kontaktkanal möter sällan eller aldrig sina kunder fysiskt, vilket leder till ett behov av att komplettera frånvaron av fysisk kontakt med andra former av kommunikation. Som lösning på detta problem har företag börjat tillämpa personligt anpassad e-postmarknadsföring vid kontakt med konsumenter för att bättre tillgodose kunders behov av relevant information. Samtidigt som personlig anpassning ger möjligheten att erbjuda kunden mervärde och öka kundens lojalitet kan också kunden uppfatta tekniken som falsk och konstruerad. Otillräcklig kunskap om konsumenters värderingar i frågor som berör personlig anpassning av e-post kan leda till att företag får svårt att knyta sig till potentiella kunder samt behålla befintliga kunder. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka till vilken grad e-handelskonsumenter föredrar personligt anpassade e-postutskick, hur e-postutskick bör framställas samt vilken betydelse konsumentens relation till företaget har. Detta ska resultera i rekommendationer till företag som genom personlig anpassning vill utveckla sin e-handelsstrategi. Metod: För att kunna bekräfta eller förkasta de uppsatta hypoteserna tar uppsatsen ett hypotetiskt deduktivt angreppssätt. En kvantitativ enkätundersökning används för att samla in empirisk data vilken har analyserats statistiskt med hjälp av t-test. Undersökningens population omfattar ett e-handelsföretags kunder. Resultat: Uppsatsens empiriska studie visar att e-handelskonsumenter av manligt kön föredrar personligt anpassade e-postutskick framför opersonliga e postutskick. I allmänhet uppfattas personlig anpassning som relevanshö-jande teknik, särskilt om den personliga anpassningen är genuin och om konsumenten tidigare uttryckligen angett sitt intresse för e-postutskicket. I uppsatsen studeras våra resultat närmare för att identifiera i vilka situationer som e-handlarnas värderingar skiljer sig åt. Företag bör beakta att kunden är mer öppen för personlig anpassning av e postutskick när denne har kontroll över hur företaget tillämpar den personliga anpassningen. Demografiska faktorer som utbildningsnivå och till viss del geografisk lokalisering har ock-så betydelse för hur personlig anpassning uppfattas. / Background: Companies that primarily act with Internet as channel of contact meet their customers in real life very rarely or never, which creates a need to complement the absence of physical contact with other forms of communication. As a solution to this problem companies have begun to implement personalized e-mail marketing in order to better satisfy customers’ need for relevant information. Still, as personalization gives the possibility to offer the customer added value while increasing the customer loyalty, the technology can also be perceived as deceitful and artificial. Insufficient knowledge regarding the customers’ perception of issues that concern personalization can result in difficulties for companies to attract new and retain existing customers. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to study to what extent e-consumers prefer personalized e-mail marketing, how e-mail campaigns should be created and what significance the relation has between consumers and companies. This is expected to result in recommendations to e-tailors that want to develop their business through the use of personalization in their e-mail marketing efforts. Method: In order to be able to verify or to falsify the set hypotheses, the research takes a hypothetical deductive approach. A quantitative survey has been used to collect the empirical data which has been statistically analyzed with the use of t-tests. The research population consists of the customers of an e-tailor. Conclusions: The empirical study shows that male e-consumers prefer personalized e mail marketing more than non-personalized e-mail marketing. Personalization is in general perceived as a technique to increase the level of relevance of the e-mail, thus being looked upon as added value, especially when the technique is genuine and if the consumer explicitly has given his or hers area of interest for the e-mail campaigns. In the thesis the research results are studied closer in order to investigate in which situations opinions part. Companies should also consider that customers are more open towards personalized e-mail marketing when she or he has control over how the companies apply personalization. Demographic factors such as level of education and to a certain extent geographical location also have an impact on how personalization is perceived.

The existance of spam email has gone from a fairly small amounts of afew hundred in the late 1970’s to several billions per day in 2010. Thiscontinually growing problem is of great concern to both businesses andusers alike.One attempt to combat this problem comes with a spam filtering toolcalled TRAP. The primary design goal of TRAP is to enable tracking ofthe reputation of mail senders in a decentralized and distributed fashion.In order for the tool to be useful, it is important that it does not haveany security issues that will let a spammer bypass the protocol or gain areputation that it should not have.As a piece of this puzzle, this thesis makes an analysis of TRAP’s protocoland design in order to find threats and vulnerabilies capable of bypassingthe protocol safeguards. Based on these threats we also evaluate possiblemitigations both by analysis and simulation. We have found that althoughthe protocol was not designed with regards to certain attacks on the systemitself most of the attacks can be fairly easily stopped.The analysis shows that by adding cryptographic defenses to the protocola lot of the threats would be mitigated. In those cases where cryptographywould not suffice it is generally down to sane design choices in the implementationas well as not always trusting that a node is being truthful andfollowing protocol.

RSS is a format for easy information sharing between computers. A RSS-file, also known as a feed or a channel, consist of a list of items. The items are structured with XML-tags and have to be processed in some way before it can be read. RSS¬readers, web-browsers with RSS support and e-mail-clients with RSS support can be used to display the feed. This thesis is focused to investigate if RSS can be used within an enterprise for internal communication. We look at different computer based communication tools that are available today and compare them with RSS. All the different tools has there advantages as well as disadvantages, we have tried to find out if there is room for one more information channel within an enterprise. Our study shows that RSS is not suitable as a stand alone solution for internal combination. RSS main strengths lies in mass information that has to be pushed out in one direction.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for Masters in Management Sciences specialising in Public Relations, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa. 2017. / In South Africa the National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE, 2001) brought with it distinct changes to the higher education landscape. Amongst the major changes were the mergers of various higher education institutions. In 2005, the Walter Sisulu University for Technology (WSU) was established through the merger of the former Border Technikon, Eastern Cape Technikon and the University of Transkei. The University caters for students from the Eastern Cape’s Border and Kei regions resulting in communication with a large number of stakeholders. Effective communication as well as developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders therefore become pivotal. This study set out to examine the perceived effectiveness of communication strategies between the Walter Sisulu University and students. A mixed method approach found that although respondents felt that communication was satisfactory, concerns were however, raised about the effectiveness of the communication strategies being utilised. The study recommended e-communication as a key strategy to facilitate communication with students. / M

At present, the average employee is being bombarded with an ever-increasing number of messages information on his/her company, its products and services, as well as information on its strategy all flooding in from a myriad of sources, including internal vehicles such as e-mail, the intranet, management memoranda, internal publications, as well as the external media, such as the Internet, the local newspaper, television news and national business and industry magazines. The term “information overload” is usually understood to present a state of affairs where an individual’s efficiency in using information in his/her work is hampered by a surplus amount of relevant and potentially useful information available to him/her. The principal aim of this study, therefore, is to establish the extent and impact of information overload on the knowledge worker in the banking industry, with special reference to the part that e-mail technology plays in the creation of such overload. Broadcasting, the telephone and the Internet have revolutionised the way in which workers communicate around the globe. Electronic-messaging systems such as e-mail have become the medium of choice in many organisations, and hold significant and valuable business data, information and knowledge. These systems have had a profound impact on the way in which personal and business communications are effected in the office. With e-mail having acquired mission-critical status, a number of concomitant circumstances and consequences have arisen that present organisations, such as banks, with a variety of challenges, among which • the impact on employees’ productivity, owing to the time spent on e-mailing activities • employees’ attitudes towards e-mail • compliance with corporate policies, such as those policies governing electronic communication and computer use • surveillance and monitoring of e-mail • the quest for finding formal archiving solutions. / Prof. C.W. Rensleigh