Arnold Depickere

Success of digital ecosystem depends on a reliable supporting infrastructure that offers and transports services and information thereby empowers the business system to function properly. This implies the utmost importance to maintain the reliability, confidentiality and integrity of the network and communication systems. This paper reports an initial pilot study on the use of a simulation game called CyberCIEGE for raising the awareness and knowledge on Information Security among a small group of Thai students. The paper provides an overview of the software, the experiment and results, and, a discussion on the next phase of this proposed project

Complex engineering applications demand powerful computing resources. An object based distributed system is suitable for such applications due to the inherent parallelism nature in the object based computing model. As the model is based on message passing, which in turns relies on location transparent object names, an efficient name translation system is therefore required to map the object names to the corresponding physical addresses dynamically. In this paper, we propose a heuristic distributed search algorithm, the hierarchy random walker (HRW), to take advantage of the locality of object communications thereby increasing the overall system performance. Analysis of the simulation results from a number of benchmark programs have demonstrated that the benefits of the proposed algorithm are in terms of flexibility and efficient to locate the most used objects. The approach will be applied to intelligent techniques for engineering problems.

In 2002, the Thai government has endorsed an information technology policy framework entitled Thailand Vision towards a Knowledge-Based Economy (IT 2010). The policy emphasises the roles of information technology for the enablement and facilitation of economic and social development. One of the objectives is to develop the ability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to compete in the world market. Although there are successful cases, majority of the companies among the Thai SMEs sector are still in an early stage of utilising e-commerce technologies to reap benefits from new opportunities. Therefore, there is a need to understand, to extract and to acquire knowledge about the adoption and use of the e-commerce technologies by SMEs in Thailand. Technology acceptance model (TAM) has been applied to many studies on the adoption and use of innovation and technologies. This proposed study intends to use a modified TAM named TECTAM (Thai E-commerce Technology Acceptance Model), as a research tool and model to study e-commerce acceptance among the Thailand's SMEs sector. The predominant dimensions of this study are based on TAM perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). In terms of PU, the near-term and long-term usefulness are considered. On the other hand, the PEOU will be concerned with the social influence processes and the cognitive instrumental processes. In addition, this study will investigate how to increase the benefits from the relationship between TAM and other approaches. Finally, the study aims to apply the use of TECTAM model in terms of e-commerce technologies acceptance and how they could be used While the project is in a preliminary stage, the paper will detail the proposed methodology and approach of this project.

This paper presents an overview of a research project concerning the investigation and development of a Thai Dance Training-Assist Robot. The initial phase of the project consists of literature review on backgrounds of robots, robotic applications and human-robot interaction (HRI) as a recently emerged discipline. The paper also describes the technical specifications of Robosapien, the most popular humanoid robot series ever sold. Discussions on dance, dance robots and finally Thai dance are also covered in this paper. The paper also provides the initial design and specifications of the research. Preliminary investigation in other relevant research work done is also explored.

In this paper, we examine the readability of the human-machine conversation transcripts in the instant messaging environment based on the Gunning-fog index. The study is based on an embodied conversational agent (ECA) called artificial intelligent natural-language identity (AINI) which was designed to mimic human conversation. The ECA is also expected to supply answers with a sense of humour. We report on the collection and analysis of a corpus containing over 3,280 utterances in a series of real instant messages exchanged between AINI with 65 online buddies.

Search engine is one of the reasons for e-commerce success in today's world. They are playing an important role in supplying both international and local communities with various dimensions of business information for the customers and other interested parties. In Thailand, two of the most popular and successful Thai search engines are Sanook.com and Hunsa.com at httv://www.sanook.com and httv://www.hunsa. com respectively. This study aims to analyse their business strategies and models including related aspects through a qualitative approach. The study was based on interviews with the CEO or CIO of the companies and individuals who have particular interests in search engines and assessment of the Websites. The research outcomes cover the search engine companies' background, business strategies and models; industry, competitors and environmental analysis; key business drivers and threats. The study also covers innovation factors and adoption including Website assessment through evaluation of the search engines and their future development.

In this paper, we propose a domain metric knowledge model for Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) for human computer interaction. In our research, we have found that by incorporating Open-Domain and Domain-Specific knowledge, a new generation of ECAs will be able to demonstrate intelligence and to increase trust by the users. The proposed system is aimed at advancing the scholarly field of artificial intelligence and to offer assistance to queries on real-world issues. The experimental system we have developed aims to provide answers to questions on pandemic threat. The focus is on Bird Flu as the Domain-Specific knowledge together with the support of multiple open-domain knowledge bases. We also present a scheme for selecting specific websites as the input knowledge bases for our conversational system based on reputability, creditability, reliability and trustworthiness.

In times of crisis, an effective communication mechanism is paramount in providing accurate and timely information to the community. In this paper we study the use of an intelligent embodied conversational agent (EGA) as the front end interface with the public for a Crisis Communication Network Portal (CCNet). The proposed system, CCNet, is an integration of the intelligent conversation agent, AINI, and an Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent (AKEA). AKEA retrieves first hand information from relevant sources such as government departments and news channels. In this paper, we compare the interaction of AINI against two popular search engines, two question answering systems and two conversational systems.