群播技術乃是一種應用在Internet上的資料傳遞技術，其特點是可允許一個來源同時對多個接收端傳遞相同的資料，群播應用散見於如多方會議、財經資訊的推播、IPTV中的廣播電視與分散式互動模擬等。僅管群播應用發展迅速, 但大多數的商用服務架構仍以電信運營商或內容提供商為群播來源，而終端用戶為接收端。本論文嘗試探討以終端用戶端為群播來源，並以此模式從資訊消費的價值鏈中探討其市場的接收度、服務部署的可行性與獲利模式，同時亦將針對目前已提供類似服務模式的業者個案作一比較，希望藉此進一步瞭解隱含其中的創新商業模式與機會。 / In current Internet communication architecture, most of the applications are built upon the unicast model which means there’s a dedicate communication channel between an information source (server) and a receiver (client). One of the challenges of scaling applications based on a unicast model is that both processing overhead at source and bandwidth consumption in the network are proportional to the number of receivers that interested in the information. The advent of IP multicast is thus providing an alternative approach to address the technical issues and scale up the deployment of applications, for example, multiple-party conferencing, info-casting, IP television, grid computing, and so on. In most of the commercial IP networks that offer IP multicasting services today are in a centralized architecture, that is, multicasting sources are provisioned by service provider or content providers, end-users (or subscribers) are receivers that passively consume the information. However, as digital contents sharing is getting popular and the business is getting market traction, there’s a potential opportunity for deploying multicasting services where end-users are acting as multicast sources and share the contents with other end-users (receivers). This paper will propose a business model, or an end-user-based multicasting service, where end-user is encouraged to be a multicasting source and sharing the information with the members within a community of interest. An end-user-based multicasting service, where the end-user is acting as multicast information source, is not yet popular in the commercial networks. However, given that digital content sharing portal on Internet, including YouTube, MySpace and Joost, are gaining market momentum in terms of traffic volume, content diversity and eye-ball duration, end-users are no longer passively receiving the information in an on-demand manner, multicast technologies allow end-user to push contents at the advantages of real-time and network bandwidth saving. Such advantages become the incentives for end-users, and even service and content providers, to embrace multicast technology as an alternative to unicast approach. Based on the observations described above, an end-user-based multicasting service would no longer exist in experimental network, but become the mainstream communication mechanism, as well as unicast, and being a source of profitability. Regarding to this model, five issues from different aspects are presented by asking the following: 1. What are the opportunities for end-user? 2. What are the opportunities for service provider? 3. What are the opportunities for content provider? 4. How to achieve a pricing scheme with fairness and incentive. 5. The strategies of market development and service deployment. This paper will first review the industry background and related multicast technologies include: 1. IGMPv2/v3 2. PIM/SSM 3. MSDP Furthermore, a typical architecture of multicasting network is given for a better illustration to the service deployment, and, for interests of network and service planning. The value-chain associated to this business model includes three major members, or stakeholders: 1. End-users: the information receivers that consuming the information, and also the sources, that co-developing or re-producing the contents. 2. Service provider: the infrastructure provider where multicasting services are based on. It can be incumbent or competitive Internet service providers. A multicasting infrastructure does not only pertain to the functions from a networking perspective, but also from a service perspective, for example, offering a security infrastructure that facilitates the membership management and a admission control mechanism to manage the overall quality of service. 3. Content provider: the major contributor, other than end-user, to multicasting contents. One of the differentiations, as described in this paper, from end-user is that content provider owns a more systematic content creation process, a more strict enforcement of content protection, and a billing system to effectively track the real usages of contents. As analyzed in this paper, each member on this value-chain has both direct and indirect influences to the success to this model whereby business opportunities are also embedded. The innovation of the model proposed in this paper is primarily from the differentiation to current business model. There are five sources of innovation that our model is mapped and elaborated include: 1. Knowledge structure 2. Industry structure 3. Capabilities to lead the design 4. Market requirements 5. Industry cycle To maintain the market momentum, as described in this paper, it’s crucial that all members in the value-chain to share and jointly define the values, rather than the traditional way where values are solely defined by the enterprise or supplier. The essence of value joint-development can be described by the following characteristics: 1. Communication 2. Experience accessibility 3. Risk assessment 4. Transparency The above nine dimensions are used in the analysis of case study and the findings to the first three issues presented. To facilitate the exploration of a feasible pricing scheme, this paper will review related researches on pricing by categorizing the following as the cost drivers to a multicasting service: 1. Information stream characteristics, for example, data-rate in bits per second. 2. The placement of multicast source and receivers in a network. 3. The scale of multicasting service, single-domain, i.e. confining to single network service provider, or cross-domain. Based on the cost drivers, relevant researches spent on approximating the cost of a multicasting network and services include: 1. Single fixed center-rooted tree. 2. Multiple fixed center-rooted tree 3. Multiple dynamic center-rooted tree There are researches taken more factors into the consideration when approximating the cost, include network complexity, delivery delay and quality of service. This can be another interest of researches for business development. Based on the approximation outcomes, two pricing schemes that widely considered: flat-rate and usage-based. Both schemes are employed in the case study presented. The goal of developing a feasible pricing scheme, as indicated in this paper, should provide incentives to every member in the value-chain to achieve an efficient and reasonable usage of network resource in an accountable way. The last issue is exploring the market acceptance, elaborating the deployment strategies and opportunities of profitability based on this model. Three cases will be presented: Verizon Business, Bloomberg and Internet2/Abilene, which provide multicasting services at different market sectors: residential market, financial enterprise market and academic sector. The cases are compared by the service models, deployment strategies and business development, which is further illustrated and compared by information and cash flows. Finally, findings are consolidated from the case studies and conclusions are drawn from these findings. Suggestions are made and further research interests are also highlighted.

M.Ed. / Computers are an integral part of life, and have become integral to everyday functions of work, travel, health, entertainment and study. It is crucial that this technology be utilised to maximum effect. In schools, learners are increasingly required to enhance their computer skills, and at tertiary level students explore ways they can be used to develop and enhance capacity, functions and responsibilities. This study examines ways in which computer technology can be used to teach, so as to benefit all role-players in the learning process, including lecturers, students, the learning fraternity and industry, contributing to a more competent and capacitated workforce. In particular, it looks at an electronic assessment tool implemented by the University of Johannesburg (UJ), intended to enhance and upgrade learning in courses where computers are used. However, with the initial use of system, certain shortcomings were identified which affected its performance. As computer-related testing was considered important in contributing to assessment, it was critical to identify any problems that were inhibiting its optimal performance. To this end, the researcher studied the subdepartment End-User Computing (EUC), located within the department of Business Information Technology (BIT) at UJ. A qualitative phase consisted of two identified focus groups made up of specific individuals from BIT, comprising lecturers engaged in the daily use and activation of the electronic assessment system and supported by information system technical support personnel. A second phase, quantitative in nature, used responses to structured questionnaires delivered to students who had used the assessment tool. The University’s Statcon unit analysed results, and identified problems. Lecturers pointed to the language used in questions and system challenges to teaching and learning, while students highlighted a need for preparing them for the process, particularly calling for a tutorial with class presentation prior to assessment.

<p>This thesis contributes to the knowledge of how computer-mediated communication and information sharing works in large groups and networks. In more detail, the research question put forward is: in large sharing networks, what concerns do end-users have regarding to whom to provide material? A theoretical framework of gift-giving was applied to identify, label and classify qualitative end-user concerns with provision. The data collection was performed through online ethnographical research methods in two large sharing networks, one music-oriented and one photo-oriented. The methods included forum message elicitation, online interviews, application use and observation. The result of the data collection was a total of 1360 relevant forum messages. A part from this there are also 27 informal interview logs, field notes and samples of user profiles and sharing policies. The qualitative analysis led up to a model of relationships based on the observation that many users experienced conflicts of interest between various groups of receivers and that these conflicts, or social dilemmas, evoked concerns regarding public and non-public provision of material. The groups of potential recipients were often at different relationship levels. The levels ranged from the individual (ego), to the small group of close peers (micro), to a larger network of acquaintances (meso) to the anonymous larger network (macro). It is argued that an important focal point for analysis of cooperation and conflict is situated in the relations between these levels. Deepened studies and analysis also revealed needs to address dynamic recipient groupings, the need to control the level of publicness of both digital material and its metadata (tags, contacts, comments and links to other networks) and that users often refrained from providing material unless they felt able to control its direction. A central conclusion is that public and non-public gifting need to co-emerge in large sharing networks and that non-public gifting might be an important factor for the support of continued provision of goods in sustainable networks and communities.</p>

<p>This thesis is a study of a new specification for end user interactivity developed by the Open Mobile Alliance, the specification is called OMA BCAST Service Interaction Function. The specification is one part of the OMA BCAST Service Enabler, which enables service delivery to mobile devices, where the most common service is mobile television. The Service Interaction Function enables end user interactivity related to a service, this could be a poll about the current television program or a chat where every message is presented to the users that are watching the same channel.</p><p>The specification is still of draft version and the scope of this thesis has been to investigate the Service Interaction Function and implement a PC prototype.</p>

Spreadsheet languages are the most commonly used end-user programming paradigm, yet spreadsheets commonly contain errors. Research shows that a significant number of spreadsheets (20%-40%) created by end users contain errors. In an attempt to reduce this error rate, this work presents an assertion propagation system for an end-user spreadsheet programming language, along with proofs of correctness, and complexity analysis. In addition to the traditional benefits of assertions (dynamic error checking and the documentation of programmer assumptions) this system deductively propagates the implications of assertions. This propagation adds two benefits, the cross-checking of program logic, and additional immediate visual feedback about the range of behavior of the program code for the end-user. / Graduation date: 2002

E-commerce has begun to evolve beyond simple web pages to more sophisticated ways of conducting e-business transactions, such as through electronic advertising, negotiation, and delivery. However, to participate in these advances requires the skills of professional programmers, and end-user owners of small businesses often cannot justify this expense. In this thesis, we present FAR, an end-user language to offer and deliver e-services. The novel aspects of FAR are its support of small e-services and its multiparadigm approach to combining ideas from spreadsheets and rule-based programming with drag-and-drop web page layout devices. / Graduation date: 2002

Graduation date: 2006 / End-user programmers, because they are human, make mistakes. However, past research has not considered how visual end-user debugging devices could be designed to ameliorate the effects of mistakes. This paper empirically examines oracle mistakes mistakes users make about which values are right and which are wrong to reveal differences in how different types of oracle mistakes impact the quality of visual feedback about bugs. We then consider the implications of these empirical results for designers of end-user software engineering environments.

This study focuses on the effects of Mild Cognitive Impairment and other minor memory impairments on a person’s ability to successfully use the Internet. Participants over sixty-five years of age were recruited from retirement communities and were selected based on self-reports of Mild Cognitive Impairment or other cognitive difficulties when using the Internet. Interviews with the participants focused on their abilities to use Email, Chat/Instant Messenger and the World Wide Web. Participants were then asked to step through several Internet-related tasks in order to further identify problem areas. Seven participants were interviewed, and six of them completed the optional observation session. The data collected from the interviews and observation sessions were then broken down into different categories, based on the type of difficulties experienced during Internet use. Finally, recommendations were made for good Web design practices intended to overcome the difficulties identified during the study.

The business environment nowadays becomes much more dynamically and tensely than the past driven by the trend of globalization and free trading. Therefore, any enterprise in the world has to face competition from everywhere in the world. Under such complicated business environment, it¡¦s dangerous to make decision based on past experience or instinct. If some key message is missed or not collected, a disaster caused by logical decision, but far away from the reality might just happen. In last couple decades, software providers launched DSS(Decision Support System), BI(Business Intelligence), ¡K, etc. based on current enterprise IT infrastructure like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), MRPII(Manufacturing Resource Planning), ¡K, etc. to help enterprise for decision making. However, such systems are not popular in Taiwan, not to mention the successful stories. While I studied the lesson ¡§information technology and competitive advantage¡¨ conducted by Profession Kuo, I concluded from classmates¡¦ discussion that the root causes were as follows. 1. Most Taiwan manufacturers¡¦ strategy is to launch product at lower cost to allow them to win business via price war. Therefore, they are willing to invest tangible hardware, not intangible software. 2. The branches of international companies can¡¦t develop their own information system due to Corporate policy or security concern. Based on above mentioned, I started thinking if we could have a BI system that doesn¡¦t need to spend money, is easy to implement, and no need for Corporate approval. Such BI system could help management to retrieve effective and enough information for precise decision making. After evaluation, I think Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software is the most suitable solution. It¡¦s because almost all enterprises have it, it can contain 1M units of data in a file, and useful tools of macro, pivot table, sorting, filtering, VBA(Visual Basic for Application). Furthermore, the nature of spreadsheet is similar to database structure, so it can be easily integrated with database like SQL database, Microsoft Access. Thanks to Profession Kuo¡¦s coaching, I started doing research, and studied necessary tool like VBA, ¡K, etc. to warm up for this thesis. After months, I finally finish it, and I hope it can contribute to the ones that have similar problem with me.

This paper proposed a revised technology acceptance model for measuring end user computing (EUC) acceptance. An empirical study was conducted to collect data and the revised model was evaluated by structural equation modeling, and then confirmatory factor analysis was applied to test if the empirical data confirmed to the presumed model. The results demonstrated that the model explained 56% of the variance. The finding contributes to an expanded understanding of the factors that promote the EUC acceptance.