E-Commerce Agents

Among the many changes brought by the Internet is the emergence of electronic commerce over the Web. E-commerce activities, such as the online exchange of information, services, and products, are opening up completely new opportunities for business, at new levels of productivity and profitability. In parallel with the emergence of e-commerce, intelligent software agents as entities capable of independent action in open, unpredictable environments have matured into a promising new technology. Quite naturally, e-commerce agents hold great promise for exploiting the Internet's full potential as an electronic marketplace. The 20 coherently written chapters in this book by leading researchers and professionals present the state of the art in agent-mediated e-commerce. Researchers, professionals, and advanced students interested in e-commerce or agent technology will find this book an indispensable source of information and reference.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
Dr. Jiming Liu is the Head of Computer Science Department at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). He leads the AAMAS/AOC Research Group (i.e., Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems / Autonomy-Oriented Computing) at HKBU. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Physics from East China Normal University in Shanghai, an M.A. degree in Educational Technology from Concordia University in Montreal, and an M.Eng. and a Ph.D. degrees both in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal. In Feb.-July 1999, Dr. Liu was an invited Visiting Scholar in Computer Science Department, Stanford University, where he was associated with the AI & Robotics Laboratory and taught advanced graduate classes on topics related to Robot Learning, Neural Robots, and Evolutionary Robotics. He is Guest Professor at University of Science and Technology of China, East China Normal University (Software Engineering Institute), and Beijing University of Technology, as well as Adjunct Fellow at E-Business Technology Institute (ETI - a joint partnership institute between IBM and University of Hong Kong). Dr. Liu is the co-founder of Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), an international organization dedicated to promoting world-wide scientific research and industrial development in the era of Web and agent Intelligence. He has founded andserved, or is serving, as Program, Conference, Workshop, and General Chairs for several international conferences and workshops, including The IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI) series and The IEEE/WIC International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT) series, and is presently serving as the Senior Program Committee Member, Program Committee Member, and Steering/Planning Committee Member for many major international conferences.

Inhalt
to E-Commerce Agents: Marketplace Marketplace Solutions, Security Issues, and Supply and Demand.- to E-Commerce Agents: Marketplace Marketplace Solutions, Security Issues, and Supply and Demand.- Marketplace Solutions.- A Generalized Platform for the Specification, Valuation, and Brokering of Heterogeneous Resources in Electronic Markets.- Economics of Dynamic Pricing in a Reputation Brokered Agent Mediated Marketplace.- An Electronic Marketplace Architecture Based on Technology of Intelligent Agents and Knowledge.- Modelling Broker Agents in Electronic Commerce of Multimedia Products and Services.- A Brokering Protocol for Electronic Trading.- Price Formation in Double Auctions.- Negotiating Agents in Manufacturing Decision Making Processes.- Evaluating Resource Bundle Derivatives for Multi-agent Negotiation of Resource Allocation.- Security Issues.- Conversational Speech Biometrics.- Secure Communication for Secure Agent-Based Electronic Commerce Applications.- MA/LMA Architecture for Dealing with Malicious Agents in Agent-Mediated Electronic Markets.- Secure Mobile Agent Digital Signatures with Proxy Certificates.- Agent-Mediated Secure Electronic Transaction for Online Interdependent Purchases.- An Agent-Based Micropayment System for E-Commerce.- Security Issues in MCommerce: A UsageBased Taxonomy.- Supply and Demand.- Towards Distributed Workflow Enactment with Itineraries and Mobile Agent Management.- Enterprise Federation and Its Multi-agent Modelization.- User-Centered Agents for Structured Information Location.- Using a Speech Technology Agent as an Interface for E-Commerce.