Contemporary Technology

e-Commerce and e-business

E-commerce refers to online transactions, buying and selling of goods and/or services over the internet.

E-business covers online transactions, but also extends to all internets based interactions with business partners, suppliers and customers.

Advantages of e-commerce:

a.  It makes buying selling procedure faster, as well as easy to find products.

b.  It makes buying/selling possible 24/7.

c.  There are no theoretical geographical limitations hence more reach to customers.

d.  It reduces operational costs and provides better quality of services.

e. It does not require physical company set ups.

f.  It is easy to start and manage a business.

Disadvantages of e-commerce:

a. Any one, good or bad can easily start a business. And there are many bad sites which eat up customer's money.

b. There is no guarantee of product quality.

c. Mechanical failures can cause unpredictable effects on the total processes.

d. As there is minimum chance of direct customer to company interactions, customer loyalty is always on a check.

e. There are many hackers who look for opportunities and thus an ecommerce site, service payment gateways all are always prone attack.

Multimedia:

Term multimedia
The term multimedia is simply a combination of multiple forms of media which includes text, graphics, audio, video, animation, etc.

The uses of multimedia

Education: we can see teachers delivering course contents using different multimedia techniques in institutions, colleges and universities which help the students for clear concept and understanding by putting designed text, audio, video, etc.

Entertainment: multimedia technology is widely used in entertainment business. Without this technology, movies, animation, etc.

Business: business houses give the product information to their customers through newspaper, radio, online, television whatever it may be. Multimedia makes information attractively using multimedia tools.

Communication: in the field of communication using different sorts of multimedia tools, we can communicate with each other very easily, like live text chat, audio chat, video chat which makes our daily communication like easy.
Training: we use multimedia tools and techniques for delivering information in the form of text, image, audio, and video for trainee in attractive and effective way so that they can capture the contents easily.

Web pages: Now a days, website of any organization, individuals is quite familiar for presence on NET to provide information for the users. They give the information with user friendly and interactively to the users applying different multimedia tools by using images, video, audio, animation on web page.

Components of multimedia

i.                Text

ii.              Graphics or images

iii.            Audio

iv.            Video

v.              Animation

vi.            Hypermedia

Abbreviations and its full form
WMA: Windows Media Audio
WAV: Windows Audio Video
MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface
WMV: Windows Media Video
MPEG: Motion Picture Experts Group/Moving Picture Expert Group/Moving
AVI: Audio Video Interleave
FLV: Flash Live Video
SWF: Small Web Format

Hypermedia:

Hypermedia is a term used for hyper text which is not constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and sound.

Hypertext + multimedia=Hypermedia

Hypermedia allows links to be embedded in multimedia elements like images and videos. You can tell if something is hypermedia by hovering the mouse cursor over the image or video - if the element is hypermedia, the cursor changes, usually into a small hand.

Although the Internet is the best example of the use of hypermedia, there is a lot of software that makes use of both hypermedia and hypertext. A lot of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software like Microsoft Office allow hypermedia and hypertext to be embedded into the documents created. For example, in Microsoft Word, users can add hyperlinks to any word and even add links to pictures. Microsoft PowerPoint has the same feature for hypermedia..

 E-learning:

E-learning is a new concept of delivering digital contents in learner oriented environment using information and communication technology (ICT). Delivery of the digital content is the main characteristic of e-learning.

Advantages of e-learning:

It maintains the consistency of content.

It is easy for customization.

There is no any geographical limitation for learning.

It is quite favorable for learner as it can happen at any time and anywhere.

It reduces or eliminates travel costs to attend learning events.

It reduces or eliminates need for classroom/instructor infrastructure.

Disadvantages of e-learning:

Learners with low motivation or bad study habits may fall behind

Without the routine structures of a traditional class, students may get lost or confused about course activities and deadlines

Students may feel isolated from the instructor and classmates

Instructor may not always be available when students are studying or need help

Slow Internet connections or older computers may make accessing course materials frustrating

Managing computer files and online learning software can sometimes seem complex for students with beginner-level computer skills

Hands-on or lab work is difficult to simulate in a virtual classroom.

E-governance

E-governance is the application of electronic means to improve the interaction between government and citizens; and to increase the administrative effectiveness and efficiency in the internal government operations.

Despite the government of Nepal has positively giving attention towards the development of ICTs and subsequent implementing e-governance, a number of issues has yet addressed. Some of the challenges for successful implementation of e-governance are presented as:

Information transparency

Legal issues

Resources availability

Infrastructure including connectivity in rural area

Capacity and awareness

Political will and government action

Advantages of E-governance

E-Governance offers many benefits and advantages for the government, corporate sector and society. E-Governance facilitates better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. It simplifies internal operations and improves performance of government departments while helping all sections of society to avail government services at lower cost with maximum ease of use.

Virtual Reality (VR):

Virtual reality is a new computational paradigm that redefines the interface between human and computer becomes a significant and universal technology and subsequently penetrates applications for education and learning.

Application fields of Virtual reality

Virtual Reality in the Military: A virtual reality simulation enables them to do so but without the risk of death or a serious injury. They can re-enact a particular scenario, for example engagement with an enemy in an environment in which they experience this but without the real world risks.

Virtual Reality in Education: Education is another area which has adopted virtual reality for teaching and learning situations. The advantage of this is that it enables large groups of students to interact with each other as well as within a three dimensional environment.

Virtual Reality in Healthcare: Healthcare is one of the biggest adopters of virtual reality which encompasses surgery simulation, phobia treatment, robotic surgery and skills training.

Virtual Reality in Business: Many businesses have embraced virtual reality as a cost effective way of developing a product or service. For example it enables them to test a prototype without having to develop several versions of this which can be time consuming and expensive.

Virtual Reality in Engineering: Virtual reality engineering includes the use of 3D modeling tools and visualization techniques as part of the design process. This technology enables engineers to view their project in 3D and gain a greater understanding of how it works. Plus they can spot any flaws or potential risks before implementation.

Virtual Reality and Scientific Visualization: Virtual reality is being increasingly used in the field of scientific visualization. This field is based upon using computer graphics to express complex ideas and scientific concepts, for example molecular models or statistical results.

Virtual Reality Programming Languages: For virtual reality to be truly effective, it must have a good sense of realism. Just on its own this is a technical challenge and, as such, virtual reality is highly demanding on many resources. From hardware performance to the intellectual ability of the implementer of the system, how these are managed is a massive issue.

Augmented Reality (AR):

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality is the technology that expands our physical world, adding layers of digital information onto it. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), AR does not create the whole artificial environments to replace real with a virtual one. AR appears in direct view of an existing environment and adds sounds, videos, and graphics to it.

A view of the physical real-world environment with superimposed computer-generated images, thus changing the perception of reality, is the AR.

The term itself was coined back in 1990, and one of the first commercial uses in television and military. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones, AR rolled out its second wave and nowadays is mostly related to the interactive concept. 3D models are directly projected onto physical things or fused together in real-time, various augmented reality apps impact our habits, social life, and the entertainment industry.

AR apps typically connect digital animation to a special ‘marker', or with the help of GPS in phones pinpoint the location. Augmentation is happening in real time and within the context of the environment, for example, overlaying scores to live feed sport events. Example Microsoft hololens.

There are 4 types of augmented reality today:

·        marker less AR

·        marker-based AR

·        projection-based AR

·        superimposition-based AR

E-medicine

E-medicine refers to an approach that provides medical services whenever and wherever required using information and communication technology.

With the help of this approach, even small number of doctors can provide medical service to large number of people scattered in different locations. The people of rural areas who are unable to get service of doctors can be benefitted from this approach. The patients share his/her medical problems to the doctors. This approach is now getting more popularity among the doctors too. They can post their experiences and issues in the online discussion forum. Without good facility of information and communication technology, e-medicine cannot be effective. This is the problem facing in the developing countries like Nepal.

 Robotics:

What Is Robotics?

Robotics is the intersection of science, engineering and technology that produces machines, called robots, that substitute for (or replicate) human actions.

Impact of Robotics in human life

Positive Impacts:

Robots can provide a wide variety of benefits to society. The most prominent benefit of robots is that they allow physical tasks to be performed at a greater speed than humans could reasonably achieve, and that tasks can be performed by robots that are beyond the reasonable physical capabilities of humans. For example, in manufacturing, mechanized processes allow production to take place at a great speed, with little human effort required. This allows for the low-cost mass-production of goods. These manufacturing processes allow for great precision, and can allow products of a very high quality to be produced.

Negative Impacts:

As they are out to use to do common tasks, Humans are increasingly becoming lazy, and thus their health is adversely affected. Also, as robots become more and more autonomous, the chances that they commit a mistake are very high. These mistakes can lead to serious problems if unchecked. Also, as self-learning Robots evolve, they may make decisions that are harmful to Human beings. From another perspective, If the robots are not self-learning, they will do jobs only which they are programmed for. Updating their functions will thus require more expertise.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it's application areas:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science which is concerned with programs that solves and analyze problems intelligently.

The applications of AI are as:

Game playing: Ai emerges and gives new height for dull machines on the field of game playing. Some intelligence programming is far better than human brain.

Expert systems: it is computer programming to make decisions in real life situations. AI based computer system can decide and think itself for desired result what is to be happened.

Pattern detection: it detects most common patterns for authentication, for example thumb detection, iris detection, etc. This is most widely used tools for security purpose which once stored in database.

Natural Language Processing: NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with analyzing understanding and generating the languages that human use naturally in order to interface with computers in both written and spoken.

Automated operation: AI is used to automate satellite, space shuttle, airplane without pilot, etc. Without any technical human being, the system automatically handles and controls the systems that are already set in that corresponding instruction with logics and mathematics.

Robotics: robots are used in many fields like in space, medicine, and research etc. Now a days, robots are broadly using in surgery for operation micro level surgery for operation micro-level surgery.

Components of AI:

Search: this intelligence is used to search solution of particular problem like possibilities of moves on chess playing game. Searching is very important and needs to be very fast and must search with accuracy. So AI based system is useful for particular problem oriented search easily.

Pattern reorganization: it is used to recognize some type of figures, images or audio sounds. Its application is used for the authentication like face detection, iris detection, voice reorganization, etc.

Logic generate: as the name suggest, AI is intelligence with creating logic in different problems. Logic in terms of predicate basis or whatever, this system creates logic for solving the any kind of related problems as per the AI related system and software.

Common sense and reasoning: the main goal of AI is to produce good reasoning power and produce logic. This reasoning power and logic made machines like human.

Learning from experience: AI programming is built to learn from the experiences like human being. Learning is limited with comparison to the human beings and also depends on the programming language used.

Genetic programming: AI programs are used to solve relationship between humans. As we see in genetically there is inheritance properties that can help the future prediction.

Neural network: AI technique that mimics the operation of the human brain that refers to nerves and neurons, and comprises of densely interconnected processors working simultaneously that means parallel.

Ethical aspect of AI

AI can be used for good or bad. This is why it's important to think about what AI is, and how we want it to be used.

Some ethical aspects of AI are:

AI builders have an obligation not to exploit people's ignorance and make them think. AI is human.

Robots are not really your friends. They may be harmful for individuals. So developers should be ethical. Use of AI must obey the social norms and values.

Use of AI should be under the intellectual property rights

Ambient Reality(AMI):

What is Ambient Intelligence (AmI)?

Electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of a user, which disappear into surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users. The ambient intelligence paradigm builds upon pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design.

GIS(Geographic Information Systems):

What is Geographic Information Systems (GIS)?

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) store, analyze and visualize data for geographic positions on Earth’s surface. GIS is a computer-based tool that examines spatial relationships, patterns and trends. By connecting geography with data, GIS better understands data using a geographic context.

The 4 main ideas of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are:

§  Create geographic data.

§  Manage it in a database.

§  Analyze and find patterns/ways.

§  Visualize it on a map.

Because viewing and analyzing data on maps impacts our understanding of data, we can make better decisions using GIS. It helps us understand what is where. Analysis becomes simple. Answers become clear.

Every day, GIS powers millions of decisions around world. It makes a big impact in our life and you might not even realize. For example, some applications(uses) of GIS are:

§  Pinpointing new store locations

§  Reporting power outages

§  Analyzing crime patterns

§  Routing in car navigation

§  Forecasting and predicting weather

Bitcoin:

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a whitepaper by the mysterious and pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified. Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and is operated by a decentralized authority, unlike government-issued currencies.

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency. Balances of Bitcoin tokens are kept using public and private "keys," which are long strings of numbers and letters linked through the mathematical encryption algorithm that was used to create them. The public key (comparable to a bank account number) serves as the address which is published to the world and to which others may send bitcoins. The private key (comparable to an ATM PIN) is meant to be a guarded secret and only used to authorize Bitcoin transmissions. Bitcoin keys should not be confused with a Bitcoin wallet, which is a physical or digital device which facilitates the trading of Bitcoin and allows users to track ownership of coins. The term "wallet" is a bit misleading, as Bitcoin's decentralized nature means that it is never stored "in" a wallet, but rather decentrally on a blockchain.

Style notes: according to the official Bitcoin Foundation, the word "Bitcoin" is capitalized in the context of referring to the entity or concept, whereas "bitcoin" is written in the lower case when referring to a quantity of the currency (e.g. "I traded 20 bitcoin") or the units themselves. The plural form can be either "bitcoin" or "bitcoins." Bitcoin is also commonly abbreviated as "BTC."