E-Commerce: The big picture

Our life and business has already been transformed by E-commerce. However, it is just a tip of an iceberg, and the innovations will create a bundle of opportunities for businesspersons. As happens in all trends, the best way to take benefit of them is to be there in the start, know their growth and what they present, and use them as you need to reap benefits. This article presents 10 revolutionary products approaching the global markets and making a tremendous impact.

Smart cards are small computers built into a wallet-sized piece of plastic. They are similar to credit cards and magnetic-strip cards we are familiar with, but they are in another domain of power. It is like comparing a modern desktop PC to a 20-year old calculator. The importance of smart cards - and the imminent smart-card revolution - is their hidden power to be the medium through which a large group of financial transactions, especially at consumer level, will be conducted. In many arenas, they will stand in lieu of money. As the chips inserted in the card get smarter, they store more information and operate more tasks. Card security becomes almost infallible (see Biometrics below). Smart cards are useful for increasingly complex operations. The card will have worldwide recognition; this card has the capacity to control your cash, credit cards, bankcards, bank accounts, discount cards, club memberships, personal financial data and access to various other personal financial possessions. These tiny pieces of plastic are indisputably becoming the personal building blocks of global e-commerce.

Smart cards are a great idea, but unless they are absolutely secured, the potential for financial tragedy is shocking. Present security methods such as PIN numbers are not sufficient. Biometrics is a technology that determines the identity of an individual by six matchless physical features: fingerprints, palm prints, iris patterns, retina patterns, facial details and voice. Though, fingerprinting is amply used, iris scans are more authentic - and they are miraculously quick, clean and easy to use. To assure your ID, you look into a scanner, which takes an instant reading, makes quick verification against your stored ID and gives an immediate result. This technology is not used much: at international airports in Amsterdam and Paris, airport staff and select passengers have biometric cards that allow speedy pass through security counters. Biometrics is the magic stick that guarantees to make all e-commerce secure, and some think biometrics will ultimately facilitate us to dispose of cards, keys and personal ID. For instance, in a supermarket, all you need to do is look in the scanner, and the cash register will hook up you to your personal bank accounts.

3. Organic chips
If microchips become faster, smarter and cheaper, many developments in e-commerce can be realized. It is not easy to come up with just one of those developments, let alone all three in a single chip, yet that appears possible in the near future. The discovery that is going to make it possible is the evolution of "organic" chips, which are manufactured from semi-conducting polymers instead of silicon. The possible ability of these tools is exceptional. Already some of the polymer materials have enabled device features to scale down to less than 20 nanometres (a nanometre is a billionth of metre, and objects at "nano size" are about 1000th of the thickness of a human hair). 1000th of the thickness of a human hair.) While silicon chips require a complicated, overpriced and time-consuming production course, organic chips can be manufactured quickly and simply, and this makes them inexpensive. An extra advantage: they are flexible, and this offers a good opportunity of some interesting advances. Organic chips are already used in cellular phones and car-audio apparatus, but they have the potential for unparalleled usages such as wearable computers and even flexible display units that can be rolled up and carried around like newspapers or magazines.

Anybody who has used a wireless laptop realizes that one needs to be familiar with a Wi-Fi transmission point for the system to work. Like mobile phones, they cannot be used everywhere. When a new system called WiMAX becomes available, that will be changed. It is a robust transmission system that will strengthen wireless-broadband access even in distant areas. As said by developers, Wimax is far more robust than 3G, which will indisputably have further implications for the evolution of hand phones

To put it in viewpoint, WiMAX is 30 times faster than 3G, and one WiMAX radio mast includes 10 times the area of its 3G equivalent. The chief aim of WiMAX is to take broadband access above the limitations of fixed lines and Wi-Fi, and to set global standards that capacitate complete wireless compatibility for products and technologies connected to the business PC.

It is an idea that has been everywhere before and was to be proved a breakthrough, but did not fulfill expectations. Now it is back, but appears as if it can truly deliver. We are discussing Voice-over-IP or the simpler term is Internet phones. The initial potential was a phone that could be attached to your computer, and software would run it through Internet channels, facilitating cheap voice communication anywhere in the world. The disadvantage was the encoding, transmission and working out the voice signals, a process so slow that it created time gaps between speaker and respondent. In a commercial context, it didn't work, but now the scenario has changed, and the association of broadband, increased transmission speeds and new software not only enable you to make cheap international phone calls through Internet, but you can also use Webcams to enjoy video-conferencing without any extra charge

With the increasing use of Internet phones, software-based phones, often referred to simply as "softphones", have taken the lead of digital phone communication. Also called "SIP-phones", they are the next to the Internet phone, a union of the wireless laptop and the mobile phone. They fortify any broadband-connected computer to act as an Internet phone connection (though you require fast data-package swaps for good sound quality). Using a softphone, so long as you are online, you can make an Internet-connected call directly from your computer, no matter where are you. You do not even require the analogue telephone connector that you usually use to connect a network; and you have all the features and functions of a sophisticated desktop phone at your fingertip. Basic Internet phones do not have these facilities.

Mobile phones are already the heart of the mobile-devices realm, and may soon become supreme leaders. The mobile phone is developing into a powerful, multifunctional platform, which accommodates different devices for different activities. The feature will give liberty to mobile users from the need to carry different devices. Even now, your phone has features like PDA, a digital camera, video camera, MP3 Walkman, handheld games console and portable movie theatre. However, most of these innovations aim to provide entertainment. The big discoveries are yet to play their role in the business arena. Secured biometric ID techniques with fingerprinting and iris scans are opening new avenues for phones functioning as smart cards for financial transactions. But to amplify its capacity as a business tool, the mobile phone needs to have an enhanced hard drive that can be manufactured at an affordable price, something still in evolution. The hard drive will strengthen storeroom of business information, correct software and provide the processing power so that it might be used in any context. Super-fast 3G networks are already driving the need for extra storeroom capacity on mobile devices, so the mobile PC phone will soon be within hailing distance.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a kind of automatic-identification system that uses a miniature transmitting tool - a tag - to broadcast information to a special receiver. The system is especially used by product manufacturers, freight forwarders, wholesalers and retailers wishing to keep record of orders, shipping movements and inventory. The data communicated by the tags generally give identification or location information, particulars about the product tagged, its price, colour, and date of purchase and other needed details.

The information allows the user to find anything from a bunch of bananas to a whole container loaded of fruit, and furnishes real-time information on those actions as well as an excess of appropriate information. Hitachi has devised an RFID chip small enough to be implanted (almost invisibly) into food packages or the inedible pieces of fresh fruits and vegetables. Measuring only 0.4 millimetres square, the chip has an antenna that enables an outer tool to read coded information, enabling the product to be discovered. Retailers employ this technology to keep track of storehouse record effectively.

Though in its primary phases, wearable electronics are capturing eyes of garment and electronics manufacturers. What started many years before with the pocket-sized transistor radio - probably the first popular portable electronic device - have developed into fabrics that conduct electricity and can connect audio-video devices and pocket computers. Wearable electronics are not confined to comic books and fancies: they are serious business. But Nike's integration of digital apparatus like MP3 players into sports wears, and the wristwatch phones manufactured by Motorola and Swatch, are just toys in proportion to what is coming.

Wearable electronics perform by combining conductive textiles, fabric switches, fabric wiring, fabric stretch sensors, high-sensitivity fabric antennas and flexible electro-luminescent displays to make a "personal area network", or PAN: an electronic network knitted into the jacket links several devices just as local area networks (LANs) link computers. The hardware tools are fastened to or embedded where appropriate, and the PAN enables transmission of data, power and control signals within a garment. Various tools can be fastened to a PAN, and a main controller with a tiny display informs the wearer of incoming phone calls, e-mails - or just the title of the next song on the MP3 player. Obviously, the garment - excluding the hardware - has to endure the washing machine and dryer.

10. Clickable cash earners

The Internet has always possessed the potential of riches for anyone smart enough to find a way to turn its power into hard cash. This potential nourished the ill-famed dotcom boost, and when making money on the Internet proved to be more complex than expected, the lack of practicable business ideas created an equally rapid dotcom blast. These days, cyberspace entrepreneurs have brought down their sights and sought profits that are modest, but reachable. One notion that is obtaining advantage is being paid for redirecting visitors from one site to another, a procedure called "clickable cash earners". Various technologies in this section offer a way for a site owner to earn what adds to an introduction fee, and these include clickable hotlinks, sponsored links and banner advertisements. Whichever is employed, the click-through signs up a "request" on the host site's server and the client are charged. It is a small but important step towards making that crucial Website investment pays off for sites that are popular because of the information they cater rather than the products they sell