December 16th, 2009 by Icestorm

Have you ever think of how e-Commerce should be if taken into account of our shopping experience from real life? Let’s get into details and have fun while experience this.

You have something in your mind that you would like to have for this Christmas as reward to yourself for all the hardworks and commitment to your life. You have no clue what to buy for yourself, but you decide to walk down the street into the shopping mall to shop for something special for yourself.

While you walk into the mall, you get attract by those advertisement banner surrounding the mall, Nike, Adidas, Apple, all the big brand is triggering your emotional satisfaction of ‘it will be great to have these as my presents’!! You decide to walk into the Shoe store to look for a sport shoe to replace your current one. You walk to the directory board and locate the shoe store, and you walk to the floor in the shopping mall that full with all the shoe store. You look around there and you notice that there are many shoe stores in a mall, and your mind start to do the computation, working at the speed of 1000 times faster than the current computing capabilities inside your brain micro processors, to give the scoring and ranking of the shops from your vision and help you to make your decision which shop to walk in. In instant with less than a second, the shop with highest ranking and scoring get your attention, all calculate from the combination of factor of internior design, shop name, coloring of the shop, the brand of the product selling inside the shop, and start to zoom down into few criteria such as your budget concern, your brand interest, and you get a list of 2-3 shops you will walk into.

At the moment you walk into the shop, the sales girl come to you and attend your needs. As usual, the sales girl start to execute her profiling program and calculating your buying scoring base on her own experience and association you to those past customers look similiar to you that she attend before. While her brain executing the processing of profiling you, she make some survey on you by asking you some question like ‘what you looking for, and your budget’. You response with your unclear image about what you wish to have, normally by describing very virtually about what you look for to her. Her brain again response with instant real time response and lead you to the shoe rack where hundreds of shoe are display over the rack. She choose a few product that match your query to you. While you look at the product, you also get attract to the advertisement banner beside the shoe rack, as you see Nike introducing the latest Air line of product with higher capability. You feel interest and ask the sales girl to bring you to have a look at the product. She happily show you the new line of product and she immediately response with some promotion you can enjoy if you ‘BUY NOW’, triggering you with your emotion needs to buy it now. You make your decision, and you spend your money to buy this new gift for yourself happily with emotionally satisfy. Happy ending.

This sounds familiar to everyone of us who ever go for our wishlist shopping, but we also experience some kind of emotion disastifaction ever, when we back from shopping, we normally buy the product we dont even needs, or appear different from our emotional description during the early day before we go out for our shopping. In short, we get into surprise when we realise that we want something and get something we dont really want. No matter what, this is shopping experience, as long as the sales girl successfully sell the product to you!!!

When we translate this experience into online, this is not the case, you get no attention, the webstore look ordinary and all the same from one to another, no close touch, no understanding on your needs, and always push with with the ads of the products you not even interest on.

What if, when you walk into the webstore, it customize the webstore design to trigger your interest, to make your emotional attach to it, having the coloring scheme you like most, posting the contents you interested at your common viewing spot. The webstore will able to understand you as much as your friend can understand you. The webstore response to you with the line of products that meet your spending budget, and close match to your experience to the brand you purchase before. The webstore will also able to introduce the ads of product that you will like to click and read on, including the review from the other users. And while you considering the purchasing, it response to you with good bargain and promotion that you cant resist and have to buy it now… Welcome to the Semantic e-Commerce.

I am currently assemble a team to work on this project, and I am really passionate to make this happen! Welcome to the future of e-Commerce. What’s next in 2012 e-Commerce outlook! Message me if you find interest in this project…

e-Commerce, future e-Commerce, Semantic

November 30th, 2009 by Icestorm

Since 1990s when Internet been introduced to the market, Sir Tim B. Lee had the vision that one day Internet will able to understand human needs, and feed information right exactly what we want at the shortest time. Same goes to e-Commerce, if we can just key in the product we want to buy without too many parameters, and the Internet will able to supply us with the product that has most closest match to our needs base on our shopping behavior, our brand preferences and so on.

For instance, when you walk in to a sports ware shop in physical retail outlet, the sales personal will come and greet you. Next, she will learn your shopping pattern instantly and know your budget, brand profile and interest through asking you a few questions. She will then recommend you some product at that line, while at the same time try to upsell you some other products that have the same quality or standard as your prefered brand (base on her sales agenda and interest). You make your decision, and you buy the product she recommend base on your budget and interest level. You pay and checkout, and you walk away happily. This is the real-life scenario. However, how can the system on Internet or e-Commerce execute this kind of human interaction especially to teach the computer to learn and make judgement base on what to recommend? Well, one thing for sure this is not something will happen now cause it will take alot of computer power to calculate your interest, your shopping behavior and match with right products and return the details in Instant or Real Time manner, but what if in 2 – 3 years down the road? Something worth to think about!

Here is a slide from MyOntology that demonstrate the Semantic e-Commerce solution for your interest review.

November 28th, 2009 by Icestorm

Semantic Web was introduced long ago, and was the initial agenda of introduction of Internet by Tim B. Lee, the father of Internet.

While many of us may confuse with the term of Semantic web, it is described as the Web that can learn human langauge, can understand human word and most important element – to react on what it learn from human that giving instruction and query from internet. For very simple example, when we search for Cyberjaya, base on the user profile that constantly collected by the computer, it will able to understand that Cyberjaya is the name of a location located in Malaysia, and it is the ICT city of Malaysia, and base on the user profile and behavior information collected from Internet (with knowledge learn from other Internet users that been searching this word and their response on ‘click-through’ to the content reply from search engine, the Semantic Web wil lable to response with a series of search result that close to users needs. In short, instead of responding millions of search results (some even billions of result) where alot of web pages may be not close match to user’s need, now the user will able to get the results close to the needs. Because the user is a business executive, he often travel around the world for meeting, the results return are the content of location of Cyberjaya, the hotel and public facilities of the Cyberjaya and etc.

Above is a simple explanation of Semantic web, and there are many more sites that provide very detailed explanation and usage of Semantic Web to improve future Web experience. Mostly commonly use, explain Semantic Web as Web 3.0, with the combination of A.I. technology into Internet, we get Semantic Web.

General explanation, Web 1.0 is the Read only web, web 2.0 is the Read/Write Web, while Web 3.0, is the combination of Read/Write/Execute + A.I. elements to able to understand, analyse and response. Wikipedia has more explanation in details about Semantic Web as usual, and one of the successful Web 3.0 aplication, is call Twine, the web portal that provide information in search engine format base on Web 3.0 technology, close to human language. Techcrunch has introduce about this company Twine for a few time in the blog.

Here are some of the collection of Slides Presentations about Semantic Web to share.

Semantic, Web 3.0