Keywords: Mobile Learning, Pervasive Learning.

Abstract: This paper reviews the evolution of learning technologies in general, and recent advances in mobile learning and pervasive learning in particular, and discusses some design and market issues which may be generalized and be exploited in mobile commerce applications, in general.

Keywords: Ontology, Mobile Commerce, Context-Aware Application.

Abstract: The widespread use of handheld devices significantly motivates the growth of mobile commerce (m-commerce) that enables end-users to access, buy and sell goods and services whilst on the move. The pervasive nature of m-commerce applications renders context-awareness as an essential characteristic that enhances their ability to flexibly adapt to changing conditions and dynamic environments. Using ontologies to model context information and reason about context at a semantic level has attracted a lot of attention in the research community. However, developing m-commerce applications in a fast and effective way is in itself a very challenging task, due to the complexity introduced by the multiplicity of devices and heterogeneity of platforms and implementation technologies. Augmenting this development process with the adoption of ontologies introduces additional burden by the further work required for ontology specification and management. This paper studies the use of OMG's Model Driven Architecture in the development process of pervasive services with intent on reducing this burden. It presents a Context Ontology Model (COM) and a Model Driven Integration Architecture (MDIA) for ontology-based context information modelling and Context-Aware Application (CAA) development. It also introduces a model transformation mechanism for the generation of the CAA logic. Finally, a case study is presented, focusing on the development of a context-aware m-commerce tourist application that demonstrates in detail how the proposed approach works in practice.

Keywords: Non repudiation, digital signatures, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Biometrics.

Abstract: Legislation does not always succeed in reflecting effectively real world conditions and addressing its requirements and needs. The scope of this paper is to show this gap between legislation and practice regarding the operation of digital signatures specifically supporting the non repudiation principle in electronic communication. United States and European law will be taken into consideration. Specifically for United States, 'Utah Digital Signature Act' and for European legislation, European Directive 1999/93/EC [European Commission, 1999]. 'Utah Digital Signature Act' [Utah Digital Signature Act, 1999] was the first law which supported the current subject after which relevant legislation was adopted by several other states [Thomas J. Smedinghoff , Ruth Hill Bro of Baker & McKenzie, LLP, 1999]. Similarly, the European Directive 1999/93/EC has been adopted by European Member States and has been transferred to local legislation (in Greece, Presidential Law 150 [Presidential Law 150, 2001]). Both legislations support the operation of electronic signatures and define that this technology should be accepted for the provision of non repudiation in electronic communications. The 'Utah Digital Signature Act' (from now on referred as US law) and the EU directive 1999/93/EC (from now on referred as EU directive) will be reviewed, analyzed, and compared in order to identify their weaknesses relating to the provision of non repudiation. Recommendations will be made on the improvement of existing legislations in combination with the technological model which they support and a new model will be presented to address the identified gaps and vulnerabilities.

Keywords: Federated IAM Systems, Security, Privacy, Enterprise Solutions, SOA.

Abstract: It is acknowledged that the latest stable XML technologies, standards and specifications may build real interoperable and secure enterprise privacy-aware implementations. However, existing implementations do not address the users' need to easily handle their identifiers and credentials while providing pluggable modules for interconnecting their pre-existing business applications and platforms. This article proposes a constructive, targeted, user-centric, standards-based, open federated Identity and Access Management (IAM) system, the OpenIdAM, with which trust relationship among the involved entities is established in a secure and interoperable way, enabling end-users to easily e/m-access advanced business services, and Service Providers (SPs) to effectively enhance their infrastructures by easily plug-in existing modules, to secure and manage their enterprise systems without having to implement complex and multiple IAM mechanisms for each one of them.