International Journal of Information Science and Management
Volume:6 Issue: 2, Jul-Dec 2008

With the present effort, we propose to investigate results of applying the Right-Truncated Index-Based Web Search Engine in order to determine its usefulness for storing and retrieving Arabic documents. The Right-Truncated Index-Based Web Search Engine, being a program for reading any set of Arabic documents accepts a query, and then processes both the documents and the query. Thus, it selects (predicts) those documents most relevant to the query which has been inserted. The program encompasses both a morphological component and a mathematical one. The morphological component allows the researcher to run either a stemming algorithm or a right-truncated algorithm. The chief advantage of the stemming algorithm is that it uses the least possible amount of storage for indexing by mapping the inflected and derived terms into a single, indexed-stem word. On the other hand, the right-truncated algorithm reduces the amount of storage to a lesser degree, but increases the probability of retrieving relevant (user-favorable) documents, compared to the stemming algorithm. One of the purposes of our investigation is to compare the efficiency of these two indexing mechanisms. The mathematical component of the algorithm accepts the output of the right truncation algorithm, and then employs both term-frequency and inverse document-frequency (TF-IDF) in order to establish the relative importance of each document, respective to the terms of the query. This paper also describes building a simple search engine based on a crawler or a spider. The clawer which indexes different types of documents is an algorithm to crawl the file systems from specified folder. A basic design and object model was developed to support single search word results as well as multiple search words results. It is capable of finding data to index by following (tracing) web links rather than searching directory listings in the file system. In this process files are downloaded through HTTP and HTML pages parsed in order to obtain more links without getting into a recursive loop. Also, this paper discusses how to improve indexing mechanism efficiency using a right truncated stemmer in terms of Arabic documents processing.

This paper illustrates the design and implementation of FAIN (Filtering Agent for Internet) based on the Gaia methodology and the AUML notation. The proposed system generates and maintains a user profile by learning from examples that are judged and classified by the user during the training stage. A learning algorithm which is based on the Baldwin effect that combines learning with evolution is applied to judge an online stream of documents and filter it according to the learned profile. The illustration of the design and implementation of FAIN has shown the applicability of Gaia complemented with the AUML notation to the modeling of agent-based system.

Information has numerous potentials and features by which it can be used in various aspects of society. This paper aims to examine some roles and unique characteristics of information and supports the theory that information can be treated as wealth or wealth creator due to its vital impacts. Finally, it is shown that identifying information significance, the roles it plays and making better use of it can lead to personal, organizational, local, national, international and global effectiveness.

In this study the effectiveness of accounting information systems of finance managers of listed companies at Tehran Stock Exchange is evaluated. The results indicate that implementation of accounting information systems at these companies caused the improvement of managers’ decision-making process, internal controls, and the quality of the financial reports and facilitated the process of the company’s transactions. The results did not show any indication that performance evaluation process had been improved.

Present article focuses on service failure and recovery in the online shops in Iran. The article investigates interaction between service failure and online shops readiness for service recovery and resulting impact on customer reaction. The data was collected by an e-questionnaire from 615 Iranian online shoppers. The findings suggest, although many online shops are severely breaching few fundamental business principles, defection is not happening as vast as in other similar studies. Furthermore, winning the customers back via service recovery seems to be depended rather on the process than the outcome of service recovery, which is very similar to the findings of another study in Chinese environment. Discussion of the findings suggests the researchers and managers to be conscious of the possible impact of the culture and environment on customer’s responses to service failure and service recovery states.

This study aims at providing an explanation of Electronic Human Resource Management (E-HRM) and introducing its activities and tools. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of various independent variables such as job satisfaction, professional commitment, organizational commitment… on the effectiveness of HRM as a dependent variable. For this purpose, by cluster sampling from Iranian HR managers, 110 of them were chosen to participate in this study. Then, research hypotheses were examined by deploying multiple linear regressions to the data gathered from specially designed questionnaire. Findings indicate that E-HRM tools are rarely used, however, according to the experts’ judgment if they are used, they would have a positive effect on the HRM output in Iranian organization. Finally, a model for assessing the effectiveness of HRM was proposed.

The steady growing innovations in the area of information and communication technology have raised new concepts and possibilities in different life aspects. In the field of further education and professional training, electronic learning and Web-based education are perhaps the most prominent ones. Proponents of this technology claim that e-learning courses are at least as effective as corresponding traditional ones, and therefore sometimes a very good substitute for it. Although there are so many similarities between traditional and e-learning systems, confronting the extended range of e-learning users -with very different prior knowledge of the domain, backgrounds, learning styles, interests and preferences- is no more possible with the “one-size-fits-all” approach. Hence, creation and management of instructional content would be the major hazard in e-learning industry. Contents should be provided considering social, cultural and pedagogical characteristics of the learners. E-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes. With such an extended scope, covering number of available e-learning tools is extensive. Though, in recent years, features and capabilities of authoring tools have been drastically improved. Concepts such as “adapting to the needs of learners” and “personalized content” make authoring tools play a more prominent role in the process of creating learning contents. In this paper, we propose a new pedagogical perspective in web-based learning environments. This perspective explores the most prominent opportunities of the information technology era, in order to ensure a more meaningful learning. Advantages, limitations and particularly deficiencies of e-learning systems are investigated based on this perspective. Also, in order to cover the importance of authoring tools in the performance of e-learning systems, capabilities and limitations of current available authoring tools are comparatively studied. These comparisons are based on criteria such as compatibility with e-learning standards, the amount of time and cost needed for the instructional design and potential features. Outcomes of the study emphasize on the importance of the learning variables such as cognitive, social and affective learners’ characteristics, which play a critical role in the design and implementation of web-based learning systems. These outcomes would certainly be of significant help with enhancing the decision making procedure for managers and presidents of learning areas, which may be overwhelmed by all the technology decisions they have to make, the number of choices available, and the terminology they may not be familiar with. These outcomes would basically lead to determining basic factors of learner satisfaction and therefore improving educational performance.