CS1005: Amazon and E-commerce

In this part of the course, you will learn about the general notion of e-commerce and have been introduced to perhaps the most advanced e-commerce system in the world, the Amazon system. I will introduce Amazon as an e-commerce system and discuss the ways in which e-commerce works, including the Amazon recommender systems. I will also introduce cloud computing - the underlying computing platform for the Amazon system and discuss how cloud computing will have a major impact on all aspects of computing services in the next few years.

When you have completed the course, you will:

• Understand the general principles of e-commerce
• Have experimented with the Amazon e-commerce system
• Know how complex computer systems support Amazon's e-commerce operations
• Understand why cloud computing is important

Lectures

There will be two lectures associated with this fragment of the course and you are expected to read additional material associated with the lectures. You may be examined on this additional material. Each lecture will have the same format where material will be presented in 3 short segments and you will be set short practical exercises between each segment.

Lecture 1

1. Introduction to Amazon
2. Practical: Browsing and ordering on Amazon
3. E-commerce systems
4. Practical: Comparison of Amazon and other e-commerce sites
5. Amazon automation
6. Questions

Slides for lecture 1 (Viewing)

Slides for lecture 1 (Printing on monochrome printer)

Lecture 2

1. Amazon technology
2. Practical: Video of Amazon fulfilment operations
3. The Amazon recommender system
4. Practical: Experiment with Amazon recommendations
5. Cloud computing
6. Questions

Slides for lecture 2 (Viewing)

Slides for lecture 2 (Printing on a monochrome printer)

Tutorial questions

Background reading

Essay topic: All you need is a browser! Will cloud computing make PC applications obsolete.