Many services are available online. You can research or browse products to purchase at a brick and mortar store, or you can order the product right online! In this episode we learn more about these services, as well as how to use them safely.
Guests
Fred Riggins
Fred Riggins
Fred Riggins is an assistant professor in the Carlson School of Management. He researches new business models for internet based commerce. Before coming to the University of Minnesota, Professor Riggins worked at Georgia Tech with executives on e-business strategies.
Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson has spent 16 years at the University of Minnesota in the Technology Center. Currently he is managing changes in services from traditional face-to-face operations to on-line operations.
For Your Files
Fred Riggins Carlson School of Management Business Professor defined the difference between e-commerce and e-business:
"E-commerce was really where a lot of the hype was. When we think of e-commerce we’ll think of buying things online at say Amazon or eBay. Those are a lot of the internet startups, the dot com bubble which came about because of that. But really e-business is much broader, it’s doing all of your business online, interacting with suppliers, vendors, trading partners, internal uses of the intranet would be part of e-business. So, e-business encompasses e-commerce, but it’s much more."
You’ll find that many e-business sites use cookies. Dave Johnson with the University Technology Center said that a cookie is just really a tiny string of text that’s stored in a file on your machine, which is encoded and has your machines IP address. In addition to the information stored on your machine, they might also track some of this information on their side in a database. If you commonly come from the same address, they might track that address, and even what pages you looked at on their Web site. This is how some Web sites show you products similar to those you've purchased before.
Dave Johnson also told us how to tell if we're at a secure Web site. You’ll see a little padlock in the bottom right of your browser window. When you’re at a secure site the padlock is locked, if it’s insecure it’s unlocked. You'll also see "https" in front of the site's address in your location bar when you're at a secure site.
We asked Dave who it is that says the site is secure.
"When Web browsers are shipped by the different companies that make them, they have in them what are called certificate authorities. These are [from] the three or four places that will sell you a certificate that has your Web name in it. They validate it so that when your Microsoft Web browser comes there and it sees the certificate that says it’s good for University of Minnesota Bookstores, it does a checksum or authentication against the certificate that it has in the browser. And that’s how it confirms that this really is a site with the name that they’re claiming it to be."
These digital certificates are purchased by the company that has their Web site up there, and they’re authenticated by this separate company that says this site is okay.
Digital Certificate
Certificates stating that a Web site is secure. These are purchased
from authorities, and validated by a user's browser.
Digital Divide
The education and economic gap between those who have access to
the Internet, and those who don't.
E-Business
Doing all business online, including interacting with suppliers,
vendors, trading partners, internal staff, and
consumers.