Kary Främling:

Turning tangible products into actors of Digital Economy by
Peer-to-peer (P2P) Information Systems

Digital Economy has lately been the victim of many disappointments 
due to bad results and bankruptcy of recent businesses that have 
invested in e-commerce. Consumers have not received enough added 
value from the services provided. One reason that has been presented 
for this is that the services have been too technology-oriented, 
instead of being consumer-oriented. 

This project aims at adding value to existing "real-world" needs 
of consumers and companies by simplifying access to information 
of tangible products and the transport of them. Many companies 
already have operational pilots for such services, but they tend 
to be proprietary, centralised solutions. Such solutions are not 
as easy to use and maintain as they could be if open standards and 
distributed (Peer-to-Peer) solutions would be employed instead. 
Peer-to-Peer solutions could offer entirely new business possibilities 
to companies of all sizes since they do not require huge computing 
resources nor overwhelming software development and configuration.