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Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

2009-07-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

A corporate weblog is used by an organization to publish and reach organization goals. What serves as an advantage of corporate blogging is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.

Now most of the major browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari support RSS technology. which allows readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs.

Twitter Blog

Twitter is one of the company that practices corporate blogging.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter blog publishes what information is ongoing in Twitter.

There are two types of corporate blogs, internal blogs and external blogs. Twitter falls under the latter one.

Twitter blog is publicly available where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. Twitter often announce or publish new applications and services such as ExecTweets, TweetDeck, Tweetboard, TweetMeme, Tweetie, BackTweets, Twitterrific, Twhirl, Tweetburner, Twitsig, TwitSkitch, StrawPoll, and Qwitter to the readers or public, so they actually know what's up is going on with Twitter now.

In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts. Twitter blog allows readers to drop their comments, but of course, they will be moderated.

Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. Twitter Blog is listed as one of the Top 10 Corporate Blogs.

This video shows Dr David Vaine of Apparently KM PLC explains how compulsory corporate blogging can be implemented without adversely affecting employee productivity.

Here is an example of the corporate blogging implementation.

Baby Babble by Stonyfield Farm - a company that provides content on child health advice. This is an implementation of thought leadership. From their welcome note: " We invite YoBaby parents to stop in here to The Baby Babble and see what's new in the world of parenting and kids. Here you'll find news of the latest research, the quirkiest fads, and the most frustrating bugaboos in child behavior. Here you can join the conversation--chime in with your comments, ask other parents for advice, or just rant. Our comment line is always open!"

There are Pros and Cons for corporate blogging:

1. Pros:

Helps the organization fulfill a business goal - Every businesses need to keep the best interest of the organization in mind.
Useful extension of the company image in the marketplace - it is however no substitute for bad products or lack of commitment to customers
An opportunity to open a two-way channel between employees and customers - it all comes down to practicing a natural and responsible human voice, one that companies may have discouraged by publishing and enforcing overly strict rules and policies not updated to change with the times.

2. Cons:

Time-consuming to maintain - It takes a great deal of creative energy and regular updating to keep the content fresh. The time it takes to maintain a good company blog might actually end up costing more than the benefits that it generates.
Strong written communication skills - and might not have the right people in positions to produce good posts. For example, if you want to include a CEO blog on your company website, then the CEO needs to possess the right combination of writing skills and wit to pull it off. While a CEO blog is an interesting enhancement to your website, your CEO might not want to take on the responsibilities associated with the task.
Credibility as a source of information is declining - Anyone can compose and post information in the internet these days. Visitors to your website might not view a company blog as a credible source.

References:
http://www.morebusiness.com/corporate-blogging
http://brand.blogs.com/mantra/2004/05/corporate_blog_.html

Posted by: Sin Pui Lin

E-Learning in Malaysia - Pros and Cons

2009-07-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

With the advancement of Information Technology, E-Learning is blooming all over the world including in Malaysia. According to Wikipedia, e-learning is a term for all types of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process. The development of e-learning strategies has been introduced into Malaysian public universities since 1996. In Malaysia, it can be seen in most of the universities such as MARA University of Technology (UTM), University Sains Malaysia (USM), University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and so on.

Is the establishment of e-learning effective?

Let’s look into the PROS and CONS from the students perspective.

PROS

1) Accessibility

E-learning provides easy access for all students from the respective computer with Internet access. This eliminates the restriction of traditional learning whereby students can only get information from their lecturers through face-to-face interaction. Now, besides getting all the course-related information they want, they can search journals from e-library, download subject materials and even communicate with lecturers through the e-learning chat room or forum.

2) Time flexibility

E-learning has the advantage of saving time and resources whereby students can have time flexibility by using the Internet to learn. Moreover, they can access to the information needed anytime, anywhere. Instead of meeting in the university, students can do their own revision at their respective hostel or home. This saves their time travelling to the university to get whatever information they require. Just a click on the computer, information is on hand.

3) Consistent and Efficient

E-learning provides a platform for lecturers and tutors to post or upload all the information to convey to the students in the Internet. With this, the work efficiency will be greatly increased where lecturers and tutors get to minimize their trouble to print out notes and distribute to students. Besides that, it is very consistent as all students will get the same information uploaded in the web. No one gets more or lesser compared to only some of the students approaching lecturers to get extra information while the others might not benefit from it.

CONS

1) Lack of face-to-face interaction

Although E-learning saves time and can be easily accessed, it will lead to lack of face-to-face communication. This is very important as no matter how good online applications can be, it still can’t replace the interaction between lecturers and students through verbal, with non-verbal, face-to-face communication. Direct interaction will increase the understanding of students regarding the course and at the same time improve the relationship of among students and lecturers.

2) Uncertainty of student’s progress

Due to the increase of self-direct and self paced learning, lecturers are uncertain of the student’s progress. Furthermore, the convenience of e-learning might promote laziness among the students. Everything is well prepared and they are not observed by anyone to study and do their work. Other than that, lecturers are not sure whether the students are doing their work themselves.

However, it is undeniable that E-learning is beneficial and has a great influence to the world with its continual growing. Thus, universities should fully utilize it by having good planning and implementation so that the benefits will be enhanced and the disadvantages will be diminished.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning

http://www.articlealley.com/article_78603_45.html

Prepared by: Tang Yunn Yuan

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

2009-07-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

E-Government is the short for electronic government. It also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or transformational government. It is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

In the world there have various countries including Malaysia haven been implement e-government. The e-government is started since 1996 which is initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor(MSC) by the Malaysian government. The main purpose of implement this system is to improve the government operates internally as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. E-government was one of the Seven Flagship Application introduced by MSC in order to lead the Malaysian towards the objectives of Vision 2020. Therefore, there are seven pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application :

1. Project Monitoring System

This system will provide a mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout various government agencies and statutory bodies. Besides, it provide a platform to exchanging ideas and demonstrate best practices in communication service and information management.

2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

This system will provide a single interface for government employees to perform human resources functions effectively and efficiently. The main objective of HRMIS is to provide transactional functional such as loan processing.

3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)

The main function of GOE is to provide a fully distributed, scalable and integrated office environment that leverages use of multimedia efficient communication, allowing collaboration across all workers, and all information will reach the right worker in the right time.

4. Electronic Procurement (EP)

This system is use to re-engineer, transform and automate current procurement system. Such as central contract, direct purchase, and tender. In addition another purpose of using this system is to increase transparency, saves time and money while encourage suppliers to go electronic and join the K-Economy.

5. Electronic Services Directory(E-services)

This system will benefit both side which is government and citizen. It is because is provide a platform for the citizens to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments. Such as telephone bill.

6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

The main purpose of the system is to improve mobilization of human resources and optimize work force utilization through systematic matching of job seekers to job vacancies.

7. E-syariah

The main objective of implementing this system is to improve the quality of service in Syariah courts.

Comment problems encounter by the consumer

Complexity

complexity of the website will directly affected the users to use the e-government services. If the consumer found that the website is too complex. They may choose to avoid it and try not to use it.

Perceived Security Concern

A major concern among the Internet users engaged in ecommerce activities surrounds the security of theirtransactions. It will make the user feel unsecure and try to avoid to use it.

Perceived Privacy Concern

The vulnerability and threat to customer privacy is growing tremendously. Activities conducted online and transactions can generate detailed electronic footprints that might expose individuals’ preferences, interests, andbehaviors even if the user has never submitted specific personal identifiable information. In a way, Internet has the capacity to observe users and information about users can be gathered both for government and private sector purposes. So it will be a major problem which facing by the users.

Citizen’s adoption strategies

The following is some citizen’s adoption strategies:

1. High levels of satisfaction and security

E-Government adoption requires that citizens show higher levels of satisfaction with the online service provided by the government. A higher level of customer satisfaction will increase the rate of e-Government adoption. It is because the citizens are comfortable of the protected privacy and confidentiality of their information.

2. Service Quality

Online service quality could be measured in terms of quality of content provided on the website and the speed of response to the citizens. Higher quality of service means higher levels of customer satisfaction and will increase the usage rate of e-government services.

3. Website Design and Advertising

Design a friendly usage website to the citizen will increase the internet adoption rate. Such as display wilt different language and others function to lead to easy use. These features give the citizen a sense of control and participation and could potentially enhance their adoption. In addition, the government should do more advertising through radio, TV and other media to create awareness of the citizen.

4. The Importance of Trust and Perceived Risk

Perceived risk, perceived control, internet experience and trust can have a direct impact on internet adoption. The experience of the citizen’s will directly lead to the trust of e-Government. Users with prior experience, especially if satisfied, would be more likely reuse E-Government services. Perceived risk leads to security and privacy issues that could discourage the use of online services. It is important to ensure that citizens can transact online securely and their personal information will be kept confidential to increase the level of trust and the e-government adoption rate.

http://www.mait.com/admin/enews_images/MAIT%20Country%20Intelligence%20eNews96_37.pdf

http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf

Prepared by: Kelvin Hoo Foo Son

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

2009-07-03T05:13:00.000-07:00

For the past 10 years, pre-paid payment cards have been frequently used by the people across America and now it is taking off in UK. Not just that, more and more countries even Malaysia are already in their effort, trying to promote the benefits of pre-paid cash cards to the consumers.

Basically how does it works?

Pre-paid cash cards look like credit and debit cards and they provide the same ability to purchase products and services BUT with a significance difference - consumers can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility as it is not link to a bank account.

Consumers will be given a Pin number when they purchase a pre-paid card, and once their money has been credited, it can be used in the same way as a debit or credit card – for high street, online or telephone purchases, as well as cash withdrawals from ATMs.

The pre-paid cash card can be loaded at a bank, post office, at Payzone or PayPoint terminals such as 7-eleven or via a bank transfer. However, not all pre-paid providers offer these loading options.

What would be the advantages of having a pre-paid cash card?

1. Availability - there will be no credit checks, which also means you can have a card without have to worry about your credit history.
2. Control - Pre-paid cash cards are ideal for consumers who want to budget for themselves or parents who want to control their children's spending. Consumers can also see what has been purchased, who from and where.
3. No debt risk - Consumers would not even be able to over spend as they are limited by the money they have preloaded into the card.
4. Convenience/Good for travelling - Pre-paid cash cards are a good option if user wants to go overseas, especially students who study abroad, parents can load their cards for them.

Here are some examples of pre-paid cash cards (click on the pictures for links):

1. Mastercard® Prepaid Cards (United States)

2. Bank Islam Pre-paid Card (Malaysia)

3. AccountNow Prepaid Visa and Master Card (United States)

4. Sterling MasterCard® Prepaid Card (UK)

5. AmBank NexG Prepaid MasterCard (Malaysia)

The most popular way of using pre-paid cash card is the Touch 'n' Go e-tailing.

The application of Octopus pre-paid card is widely recognized for it's touch 'n' go payment whereby it is the first contactless smart card system in the world and has since grown into a widely used payment system for virtually all public transport in Hong Kong.

It is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card used to trasfer electronic payment in online and offline systems in Hong Kong. It is basically used for for payment at convenience stores, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, on-street parking meters, car parks, trains stations, public transports, service stations and even vending machines.

There are various types of on-loan Octopus cards, applicable for different consumers.

The Octopus card was introduced for fare payment on the MTR initially, but it was quickly outspread for multiple different purposes. The Octopus can now be used to pay fares for most of the public transport in Hong Kong and to purchase consumer products at store outlets.

Octopus cards are accepted in well-known businesses such as Parkson, Watsons, 7-Eleven, Starbucks, McDonald's and what's more? it can be used in various soft drink vending machinese, pay phones, photo booths, and parking meters.

Besides, it can be used as a control card to gain access to buildings and schools, which are required for an entry.

Reference:
http://www.octopuscards.com/consumer/en/index.jsp
http://www.thinkglink.com/article/2004/05/09/no-checking-or-savings-account-use-prepaid-cash-card

Posted By: Pearlyn Sin Pui Lin

Mobile Payment Systems in Malaysia

2009-06-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

Would you use your mobile phone to make payments?

Mobile payment is already a part and partial in most of the people’s lives around the world especially for developed countries such as United States, Europe, Japan, Korea and so on.

Is MALAYSIA ready to adopt this new way of payment instead of just using cash, credit cards and contactless smart cards (touch n go)???

Well, although the mobile payment systems in Malaysia is still in the introductory stage, it has a great potential to expand and bring out the trend of paying just using a mobile device in the coming years.

Mobile Money (MM) payment system introduced by Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd was established in February 2005. It complies with the regulator's stringent requirements. MM Mobile Payment platform allows everyone to pay anyone, at anytime from anywhere using a mobile device coupled with a 6-digit security PIN via SMS. Besides, it also allows one to receive money from anyone, from anywhere, at anytime. It is a closed loop payment system and therefore it is secure to be used.

By creating an account and having a bank account with the participating banks, you can pay your bills, friends, banks, merchants, reload prepaids and remit money overseas to a wide range of countries easily.

Some of the advantages of mobile payment are as follow:

1. Convenient –just a click on your mobile device will do, do not require physical presence to the place such

as banks and avoid long queue.

2. Easy- complement to cash, easily reachable especially during

emergencies.

3. Secure-closed loop

payment system with trusted service provider(Maybank, CIMB bank, RHB bank, Hong Leong bank)

By showing all these useful information to consumers, more and more consumers will eventually adopt the system. Most importantly, consumers should be informed about the user guide and terms and conditions to better understand the payment system.

Besides, Maxis, in collaboration with Nokia, Visa, Maybank and Touch ‘n Go, has launched Maxis FastTap, an integrated mobile payment service that utilises near-field communication (NFC) technology in April 2009. The launching increased the awareness about mobile payment services and encouraged consumers to be able to involve in mobile payment systems.

Find out more from Maxis unveils FastTap service

Still not convinced? Watch this...=) MOBILE MONEY

Reference:

http://www.mobile-money.com/

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/4/10/business/3670505&sec=business

Posted by Tang Yunn Yuan

Blooming Florist: A Successful Local E-Commerce

2009-06-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

Blooming Florist, indeed a "blooming" sensation in Malaysia, was founded and managed by May and Martin Cheah. It began its operations in 1981 as a small retail shop and, today, it has five set-up retail outlets in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur and its head office/workshop cum retail outlet in Kelana Jaya. With the help of e-commerce, Blooming is able to grow the into a successful company and has a netowrk of 100,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific Unit Limited. May Cheah was featured in a chinese book titled "Secrets to the Success of Malaysian Women" and shared her experiences and secrets to her succefulness in managing Blooming Florist.

Reviews
Blooming website (www.blooming.com.my) has a very organized homepage where it provided necessary information for the customer. At the front page, customer can straight away look at their online catalog where it shows flowers available for sale and the other details of it. Customer who are interested to buy the product can purchase it through many different payment methods that are available. It has also categorized its products into many differenct occasions categories, such as Happy Birthday, New Baby, Wedding Flowers, Congratulations or Get Well Soon. Customer can pay through their credit or debit card, or using online bank transfer. This is an advantage point for Blooming, because customer has many method choices to pay.

There are many customer services provided for the customer, and some of the examples are, Order Trackings, Refund Policy, Delivery Services, and even Valentine Refund Policy. It is also provide an interactive live support chat in its website where customer can chat directly to its customer service representative immediately. Blooming has a very strong commitment to its mission statement, that is to provide its customers Quality Flowers, and Quality Services. By providing good quality customer services, many customers who bought products from it are greatly satisfied. And almost everyday, customers sent in their positive testimonial to Blooming.

Blooming.com.my is verifiied by VeriSign as a secure website and this further enhance its credibility and security of its ecommerce business. Blooming also provides international delivery which deliver as far as to Europe and South America.

Blooming Florist has won many awards such as the Superbrands Malaysia 2003/2004, Asia Pacific e-Entrepreneur Excellence Award, and also the Golden Bull Award 2005. These has proved Blooming as one of the most successful local e-commerce business in Malaysia.

Reference:
www.blooming.com.my

Posted by: Kevin Tan Shyh Ann

Credit Card Debts: Causes and Prevention

2009-06-26T01:24:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, the standards of living is keep on increasing, but our salaries and purchasing power still remain the same. So it have creates many problems towards many people. So that, these have lead to many people using credit card to fulfill their financial need. Therefore, these have made the numbers of credit card debts increased and these also causes many major problems of bankruptcies. It is because many people have not realized the consequences from financial and non-financial perspectives. The followings are some of the causes and prevention of using credit card.

Causes of credit debt:

1. Gambling

Gambling is one of the main causes of credit debt. As we know that, gambling is part of the entertainments for our life. Once addictive , is hard to stop. So many people will try to use credit card to withdraw money to gamble. So it will lead to financial disaster to them.

2. Poor money management

This is another reason why many people have accumulated many credit card debts. It is because nowadays people like to buy thing until they never realized their spending on the items that are useless and do not have any value for them. In addition, they also didn’t conduct a monthly spending plan and do not keep track of monthly bills. So that, they will not know how much they have spend.

3. Unemployment

While during the economic crisis , many people is being unemployed. In order to help them to maintain their current lifestyle using credit card is an alternative choice for them. So this have lead to the household over spend and increase the credit card debts.

4. Banking on a windfall

Nowadays, many people like to spend future money but they never realized that they don’t have the capabilities to pay back the debts.

Prevention:

1. Cut off your credit card

Cut off the credit card which have high interest and keep the lowest interest as an emergency purpose.

2. Making a budget

Keep all your receipt and bill to form a budget for all your expenses. Just spend according your budget stated. This will prevent overspending.

3. Self control and discipline

This is the major problem for many people. So the user must learn how to control and discipline to avoid overspending. The user can control themselves by follow the budget which have been planed and limit their credits cards amount.

Conclusion that, credit cards should be used for emergencies only, unless you plan to pay the entire balance off immediately. Never pay the minimum amount due unless you truly can’t afford any more.

Prepare by: Kelvin Hoo Foo Son

E-Currency: The future currency

2009-06-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

Paper money are used as a medium in our daily transaction of buyings and sellings and it has made our transaction much more convenient, rather than using the old Barter system. Internet boomed more than a decade ago, and has made tremendous impact in our lifestyle. Majority people in this world starting to use Internet as their way to purchase and sell items. And some even make a business out of it! Big companies like Amazon.com, Ebay.com and not to forget our local company lelong.com.my serve as a platform/market for people to buy and sell items.

Obviously, paper money could not be used in this online transaction, and electronic currency has to be used.

Electronic currency or also known as Electronic Money is money that are interexchanged only through electronically. For example, it can be exchanged using the computer networks, internet and also digital stored value. Some of the examples of electronic currency are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)

and direct deposit.

Electronic currency is also, technically, a system or a representation of debits and credits that are used to exchange value with another system or itself, through online or offline.

Many systems will sell their eCurrency directly to the end user such as Paypal whereas some

system such as

Liberty Reserve sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

Paypal

An internet business that allows payments and money transfer to be made via the Internet. It serves as an Electronic currency, or an alternativeto the paper money.

An online user can sigh up for a free account in its

website paypal.com. The paypal account can be funded from a bank account or by credit and debit card. After funding the user paypal account, the user can make payment on their purchase from an

e-commerce website. Ebay.com uses Paypal as its main intermediary for its auction or buying/selling transaction. It is fast and efficient and also able to safeguard the users financial information from sharing.

E-Gold

E-Gold is operated by Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. under e-gold Ltd.

Unlike Paypal where it's currency is backed by credit/debit card, E-Gold is a company that provides electronic currency

backed by gold. This E-Gold system is desgined to be absolutely free of any financial risk. There can be no debt or liabilites associated with e-gold and for this, e-gold company doesn't possess any national currency of any nation and has no bank accounts.

Touch 'n Go

Touch 'n Go is an example of our local Malaysia company that is using the ecurrency concept. It is an electronic currency that can be used at all highways in Malaysia, major public transports in Klang Valley and also selected parking sites and theme park. People can buy the Touch 'n Go card from many associated outlets, and when the credit in the card is used up, it can be reloaded.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ecurrency has made a tremendous impact in the online business world and it will make a further impact in the future. The vision of "paperless money" might come true and people will only be using plastic cards in the time to come.

Reference:
www.paypal.com

www.e-gold.com

www.touchngo.com.my

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_money

Posted by: Kevin Tan Shyh Ann

Phishing and its Prevention Methods

2009-06-24T04:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever come across or experience something fishy/suspicious when you saw an e-mail, for example, from Citibank, asking you to verify something by logging in your online bank account?

What does phishing means?

It is actually a fraudulent criminal process that attempts to acquire a person's sensitive or confidential information such as passwords, PIN number, bank account number, credit card details, answer to your security question and so on.

In another words, it can be explained as an act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely and claim themselves to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.

The e-mail thus will direct the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.

There are many examples of phishing. The common and popular ones are:

1. Citibank phishing scam

Surprisingly, there is no shortage of alliteration in the Citibank phishing example above. The attacker claims to be acting in the interests of safety and integrity for the online banking community. Of course, in order for them to attack users, you will be instructed to visit a fake website and enter crucial financial details that the attacker will then use to intrude the safety and integrity they claim to be protecting.

2. eBay phishing scam

As for eBay, the e-mail includes the eBay logo in an attempt to gain credibility and trust. The e-mail warns that a billing error may have been accidentally made on the account and urges the eBay member to login and verify the charges.

This is the other common type of eBay fishing e-mail.

A scammer will send out thousands or even millions of emails to his email list. Then, end users will click on the link in the email and is taken to a site designed to look like eBay. The user attempts to login and by doing so he or she will send out his username and password to the scammer.

How do you protect/prevent yourself from this phishing scams?

Please do not reply to any email claiming to be eBay or paypal user member. AND DO NOT click on any link claiming to be from paypal. What you should do is type out the url address into your browser window, and go there directly. For your information, eBay/PayPal will never ask their users for personal information. If you are still concerned do contact ebay directly at 1-800-322-9266.

Here is a video presenting about Phishing and how to prevent it.

Some tips on how to spot a fishing scam:

You’ll want to look at the message carefully to see if it is a phishing scam. Are words misspelled?
Sometimes scammers operate in a second language and they give themselves away by using poor grammar. E.g. Deer Valued Customer
Examine the link provided in the e-mail. Does it really go where it appears to go? The best way to prevent this is to copy and paste the link (don’t click it) or type it to your address bar, check and see it's genuineness.

How Can You Actually Prevent Phishing Scams?

If you receive a suspicious email, report it. You can either send it to the US Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov or you can just click the “Report as Junk” (or similar) button on your email program.

Besides, you can Keep Your Email and Instant Message Addresses Private. The best way to keep yourself from being tempted to respond to a phishing scam e-mail is to prevent them from landing in your e-mail box in the first place. Do everything possible to keep the address you use for financial transactions as private as possible.

Reference:

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Prevent-Phishing-Scams&id=1147318

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci916037,00.html

Posted by: Pearlyn Sin Pui Lin

Revenue Model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

2009-06-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Revenue Model is described as how an organization earns revenue, produces profits and able to receive a great return from its products and services.

It basically throws a very simple question: How do you plan to make money with it before you launch a website?

Google Revenue Model

Google offers a great wide of targeted advertising solutions and Internet search solutions globally. Here are Google's principal products and services:

1. Google AdWords

It is a pay per click (PPC) advertising program of Google, which is specifically designed to let advertisers present their advertisements (for both text and banner ads) to the public with instant when the people are looking for the information related to the advertisements.

It is Google's main source of revenue ($21 billion in 2008), and it is distributed locally, nationally and internationally.

For example, when an online user searches in Google's search engine, the ads for relevant words will be shown as "sponsored link" on the right side of the screen. Thus, users who click on the advertisements will directly benefit Google which advertisers have to pay them on every click.

Besides, it is the best way to send immediate, targeted traffic to your own website and can be defined as an online advertising payment model, which the payment is made based on qualifying click-throughs.

2. Google AdSense

As for Google AdSense, it serves as an ad serving application run by Google. The owners of the website can enroll this program to enable text, image and, video advertisements on their particular sites. How does the revenue is generated then? It is based on a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis and they will be administered by Google. Of course.

It includes AdSense for search adn AdSense for content.

It is reported that in the forth quarter in 2008 financial year, Google's revenue jumps to $5.70 billion. The $5.70 billion revenue for forth quarter in 2008 represents no less than a growth of 18% compared with the same period of the previous year ( $4.83 billion), and an increase of 3% over Q3 2008 ($5.54 billion).

Google company had net income of $1.31 billion, or $4.12 per share, compared with $1 billion, or $3.18 per share, in 2007's first quarter.

eBay Revenue Model

There's alot of talk and speculation going on right now at eBay. "What's going on in ebay" is one of the question that most of the people are asking.

In 2006, they made some bizarre moves by raising fees which previously said they wouldn't. Most importantly, they raised the fees for store owners (not for auction listing). Secondly, they came out with disagreements with Google and Yahoo! for advertising.

Come on. The only revenue growth model eBay can achieve is from the seller fees. In terms of advertising, it had yet to achieve a great return from it. And is there a sustainable revenue model in eBay? I personally think that, they just can't keep up raising seller's fees forever. There will be at some point seller achieve a diminishing return whereby they couldn't afford for the fees anymore.

The revenue growth has slowly declined from Dec 06 - Dec 08, which has created alot of questions and assumptions on eBay whether they should consider breaking itself up.

Amazon.com Revenue Model

Amazon.com began as an online bookstore with the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books.

The company remains profitable. In 2003 its net income was $35.3 million, $588.50 million in 2004, $359 million in 2005, and $190 million in 2006. However, the firm's cumulative profits remain negative.

As of September 2007, the accumulated deficit stood at $1.58 billion. Its revenues increased thanks to their own product diversification and an international presence:

$3.9 billion in 2002,
$5.3 billion in 2003,
$6.9 billion in 2004,
$8.5 billion in 2005,
and $10.7 billion in 2006.

The domain of amazon.com has attracted at least 615 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. This was twice the numbers of walmart.com!!

Below is a revenue model of Amazon.com in terms of shipping.

The table below shows a comparison of some financial data of Internet bigcos:

Company	Net Profit Margin (%)	2006 Annual Revenue ($M)	Market Capitalization ($B)
Google	29.02	10,604.92	210
eBay	18.86	5,969.74	50
Yahoo	9.96	6,425.68	45
Amazon	1.77	10,711.00	37

Amazon.com shows a total of $10,711.00 million annual revenue in 2006, which considers the highest among the other Internet company eg. Google, eBay and Yahoo!.

References:

Posted by: Pearlyn Sin Pui Lin

How safe is our DATA?

2009-06-22T03:20:00.000-07:00

Today, Information Technology is constantly improving and changing the world especially in the field of businesses, education, government and many more. Nevertheless, at the same time, the vulnerabilities of Internet Security are continuously increasing and evolving.

Everyday, there are about 23.8% of the world’s population is using the Internet. Most of the organizations, universities and even users like you and me understand that Internet is already part and partial of our daily lives.

It is undeniable that Internet is useful and important. However, did we ever concern or think of the safety of our data while surfing the Internet? Is it 100% secure to have the liberty to go into any websites and do anything we want to all the time?

Although we might not be the victim of all the online security threats, there are thousands and thousands of security risks and threats are spreading as a result of users losing or leaking their date through various types of threats every single hour.

3 categories of online security threats

1. Accidental actions

This is mainly arises from the lack of knowledge regarding online security and issues created from accidental disclosure of private information, unintended business transactions or transfer of information, poor password choices and using outdated software.

Prevention:

Education and prudence needed to prevent the occurrence of these actions.

2. Shocking attack

Attacks by hackers, crackers, and corporate spies who intentionally destroy or steal private and confidential data through computer viruses and Denial of Service (DOS) attacks.

For example,

1. The May 2000 "I LOVE YOU" virus

-- a small piece of code attached to electronic mail. Double-clicking on the

executable caused it to send an e-mail to everyone in an address book,

subsequently damaging victims' machines. Fast-spreading viruses like "I LOVE

YOU" cause e-mail servers to overload and businesses to shut down email

correspondence.

2. Distributed Denial of

Service attacks (DDOS), were witnessed in a number of large corporate

computer shutdowns in 2000.

Prevention:

Use trusted anti spyware programs to safeguard the data and always keep the programs updated.

3. Online Fraud

Covering Internet transactions that involve identity theft and data theft.

For example,

Furniture retailer IKEA’s website was broken into, exposing thousands of customers’ personal identifying information.

Prevention:

Implement firewalls and intrusion-detection systems to reduce the risk of losing private and confidential information. Apply Enterprise Data Encryption Software in the computer to protect data from being intruded.

As a conclusion, threats of online security should not be underestimated as the little and small actions could trigger enormous loss especially data which is important and private. Thus, precautions should be taken before exposing to the risk of threats in the Internet.

Interesting video about Identity Theft

References:

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

http://www.bsagovernment.com/downloads/MajorOnlineThreats.pdf

Posted by: Tang Yunn Yuan

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

2009-06-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, people are heavily relying on internet to help them to exchange/transfer information or even do E-banking or etc. It is because using internet is fast, easy and also helps the user save a lot of time. But internet is a public network that connecting millions of computers throughout the world. Information transmitted over the Internet is more vulnerable and has a higher degree of security risk than internal networks because they are open to anyone. Therefore, some proper prevention in needed.

The following is some suggestion ways for you to safeguard your data:

Usernames and passwords protection

It is used to ensure security. Longer passwords provide greater security than shorter ones. Once you select a password, change it frequently. In addition, must avoid using passwords that are easy for someone to guess, such you’re I/C No or your son name. Beside, never write this information down and never carry it in your wallet.

Biometric device
Biometric device is access control to help the user to protect their personal and financial data. the Biometric devices grant access to programs, computers, or rooms using computer analysis of some biometric identifier. For examples of this devices and systems which include hand geometry systems, voice verification systems, signature verification systems, fingerprint scanners, and etc. Recently this device is become more popularity which is due to they are a virtually foolproof method of identification and authentication.

Fingerprint scanners and Hand geometry systems

Install antispyware and antivirus software
Install an antispyware and antivirus software program is very important. It is because it help you to protect yourself against viruses and Trojan horses that may modify or steal the data on your own computer and use for others purpose. Some of the antivirus program such as Symantec, Norton and Avg antivirus. In order to get fully protected from you antivirus software, you must make sure to keep your virus definitions up to date.

Turn on your Windows firewall
It is a network security barrier and is a device that guards the entrance to a private network and keeps out unauthorized or unwanted traffic. People talk about a corporate or enterprise firewall, they normally assume a series of devices guarding all points of entry, thus creating a secure environment "behind" or "inside" the firewall. Users can use firewalls to protect their computers and data from unauthorized intrusions.

Avoid accessing financial information in public
Try to prevent from using the public computer to check your private information such as financial information. Because you may not know the public computer have the capable protect against all the hackers to steal private information from you.

Applications: Malaysia 3rd party certification programme

2009-06-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hackers. Looters. Spammers. Cyber-stalkers.

These are the examples of many crime cases happen in the Internet and if we, the Internet user are not careful, we might expose ourselves to these unnessecaries. But often enough, we are helpless to protect ourselves from these threats. And even if we are protected by anti-virus program etc, it is still not enough.

Many websites are unsecured and these will make the Internet users doubtful and not wanting to go into the sites. There's where the third party certification programme comes in. This certification programmes are to protect Internet users from identitiy theft, phishing scams etc when visiting a certain sites.

They are also called Certificate Authorities (CAs). One of the biggest CA providers is VeriSign which was founded in 1995. It has now more than 3 million certificates in operation for everything included military, financial services and many other more. It is also well known for its VeriSign Secure Seal which is usually posted in the customers' websites to authenticate the websites. In Malaysia one of the authorities is MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd. It is established in 1999 under the Digital Siganture Act 1997 and it provides many digital certification services such as digital certificates, crptographic products and software development.

MyKad

The government of Malaysia has put in place a smart National Identity Card also known as MyKad for every citizen. In MyKad, it has the PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) capability where it allows the holder to do online transaction with government agencies and also provate sectors. Third party certification allows for safer transaction and any other online activities when using MyKad. Government has entrusted Trustgate as the prime PKI developer and integrator for MyKad.

Online Banking

All banks in Malaysia which provide online banking service must have certification programme in their websites. This is to ensure safety and security for the online users to do transaction via Internet. Online users will usually be warned not to enter their personal identity in an unsecured w

ebsite. There are certain websites which may appear to be "real" to obtain online users personal information.

Government Intermediary Websites

There are many government intermediary websites nowadays and one of the examples are www.myeg.com.my. MyEG Services Berhad provides the electronic link between the Malaysian Government and citizens and business, allowing them to interact with many agencies within the Federal, State and the Local Government. By going to the website, you can see that there is a logo on the bottom-right of the website showing it is a secure site approved by the VeriSign.

Conclusions

Third party certification programme in Malaysia has been successful to protect Malaysian Internet users from the threats of hackers. It is also allowing a safer, and smoother internet surfing among the users.

Reference:

http://www.msctrustgate.com/

http://www.myeg.com.my/

Posted by: Kevin Tan Shyh Ann

ebay - The Success of E-Commerce

2009-06-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

ebay , one of the most successful e-commerce websites in the world is owned by eBay Inc., an American Internet company. It is an online auction and shopping website where people could sell and buy items and services online.

Also known as the best auction website or the pioneer of online auction, EBay has around 250,000 new items put up for auction every single day which allows users to have never-ending assortment of items to hook on.

Why EBay could stand out and reign over e-commerce and the Internet world?

Well, there are a few reasons behind the story of success for EBAY…

1. EBay has the ability to transform an online website which initially focusing only on local market into a global well known website at a relatively low cost to its users.

People will have the interest to sell or buy items which are used, surplus, or collected either to get rid of them or to convert them into cash. Whatever the reason is, it is hard and limited to complete a transaction as the buyers and sellers might come from different parts of the world.
EBay serves as the platform for buyers and sellers to meet and engage in transactions without the need to have face-to-face interaction.
The website eases the buyers and sellers to crack their minds to either where to sell or buy the product they want. Besides, the cost to sell or buy from the website is much cheaper than having physical store.

2. EBay gives the assurance to its users to have trusted and insured transactions.

EBay as the leading online auction website realized that trusts play a very important role in e-commerce.
It strongly encourages buyers to rate the sellers to promote secured transactions so that users do not need to worry about fraud.
Furthermore, there is a set of law and regulation which apply to buyers and sellers. Moreover, any items can be offered for sale as long as it does not violate the eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.

Items which are banned and prohibited are as follow,
i. Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are accepted.)
ii. Alcohol (alcohol-related collectibles, including sealed containers, as well as some wine sales by licensed sellers are allowed)
iii. Drugs and drug paraphernalia
iv. Nazi paraphernalia
v. Bootleg recordings
vi. Firearms and ammunition, including any parts that could be used to assemble a firearm as well as (as of July 30, 2007) any firearm part that is required for the firing of a gun, including bullet tips, brass casings and shells, barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, firing pins, trigger assemblies, etc. Crossbows and various types of knives are also forbidden.
vii. Used underwear (see Panty fetishism) and dirty used clothing
viii. Teachers' editions of textbooks including home school teacher's editions.
ix. Human parts and remains (with an exception for skeletons and skulls for scientific study, provided they are not Native American in origin)
x. Live animals (with certain exceptions)
xi. Certain copyrighted works or trademarked items.
xii. Lock-picking tools, accessories, and practice locks fall into the category of burglar tools.
xiii. Lottery tickets, sweepstakes tickets, or any other gambling items.
xiv. Military hardware such as working weapons or explosives.
xv. Virtual items from massively multiplayer online games, restrictions which vary by country
xvi. Many other items are either wholly prohibited or restricted in some manner.
xvii. Non-physical items no longer can be sold through eBay. They can only be advertised through classified ads on eBay and do not get feedback.
xviii. Ivory products.
xix. Knives, other than cutlery, are prohibited in the UK following media pressure about the sale of items assessed by police to be 'illegal'.

3. EBay makes money by charging Listing Fees and Transaction Revenue.

Its revenue comes from the fees for sellers to list their product in the web and the commission received in percentage of the selling price of items for every successful transaction.
Besides, eBay also owns PayPal- an online payment transaction system, Skype- an internet communication software program, and Stubhub- an online ticket scalper market.

All of these makes EBay achieved an outstanding result in the e-commerce world. With its significant growth potential in the market, it successfully brings a large number of sellers and buyers in a marketplace and surpasses other online auction websites by meeting its customer’s needs better than other competitors.

Want to know more??

Here is an additional site that you can get interesting information about EBay- The Economy According to EBay

Enjoy!=)

References:
1. http://www.time.com/time/digital/reports/ecommerce/25best.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

Posted by: Tang Yunn Yuan

The history and evolution of E-commerce

2009-06-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

What is E-commerce

E-commerce can be defined as the online transaction of business, featuring linked computer systems of the vendor, host, and buyer. Electronic transactions involve the transfer of ownership or rights to use a good or service. in addition, it also a modern business methodology that addresses the needs of organizations, merchants, and consumers to cut costs while improving the quality of goods and

services and the increasing speed of service delivery, by using Internet. E-commerce allows the user to buy or sell

anything they want at anytime of 24/7 basic.

History of E-commerce

During prehistoric period before invention of electricity, transactions of all the business were done face to face or via letters. Later on this was substituted by telegraph, telephones a

nd in mid 1980’s by fax machines. As large companies invested vastly in researching in order to develop more reliable electronic means of transaction, old technology was replaced by new technologies that were more consistent and spread much faster than the previous technology. Typically there are main type of e-commerce. The first type is call business to consumer which is known as B2C. This type of e-businesses providing goods and/or services to end consumers such as E-bay.com. the second type is business to business which known as B2B. This is electronic transactions between multiple businesses, and does not involve common products or consumers

The Evolution of E-Commerce

The evolution of e-commerce can be attributed to a combination regulatory reform and technological innovation. Through Internet (which played an important role in the evolution) appeared in the late 1960s, e-commerce now took off with the arrival of the World Wide Web and browsers in the 1990s. E-Commerce was first developed in the early 1970s with innovations like Electronic funds transfer (EFT) which funds can be routed electronically from one organization to another. After that it come to the Electronic data interchange (EDI) which used to electronically transfer routine documents, that expanded electronic transfers from financial transactions to other types of transaction processing. Furthermore, there is another system call Interorganizational system (IOS) which allows the flow of information to be automated between organizations in order to reach a desired supply-chain management system, which enables the development of competitive organisations. The follow is the time line of evolution of E-commerce:

Year	Event
Year	Event
1984	EDI, or electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.
1992	Compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.
1994	Netscape arrived. Providing users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.
1995	Two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched: Amazon.com and eBay.com.
1998	DSL, o Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Interne service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money, online.
1999	Retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion, according to Business.com.
2000	The U.S government extended the moratorium on Internet taxes until at least 2005.
2002	Niche retail companies CSN Stores and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
2007	Fortune magazine have ranked Dell as the 34th largest company in the Fortune 500 list and 8th on its annual Top 20 list of the most successful and admired companies in the USA in recognition of the company’s business model.
2008	US E-commerce and Online Retail retained a success which the sales projected to reach $ 204 billion.

Source:

http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is the term use to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web(WWW) that is focused on the ability for people to share and collaborate information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users. Other improved functionality of Web 2.0 includes open communication with an emphasis on Web-based communities of users, and more open sharing of information Blogs, wikis, and Web services are all seen as components of Web 2.0.

Conclusion

In conclusion, E-commerce is the most important facets of the Internet that have emerged in the recent times. It have bring out a great impact involves carrying out business over the internet with the assistance of computers, which are linked to each other forming a network. The benefit of E-commerce is to allow people to perform any task such as E-banking, buying or selling goods, communicating and etc. At anytime anyway by a single click. In future we believe that-commerce will dominating the whole market and bring up a E-world.

Flooz.com: A dot-com flop

2009-06-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

Internet wasn't a mean to do business back in 1980s and after a long period of "revolution" in the world of IT and computers, where everything seems to be made so convenient and fast, people started to embrace it. New business ideas started to pour in using the power of Internet, and many have made insurmountable profit out of it. Internet is so vast that it covers the whole Global market demand and the business can be operated anywhere anytime in the world. Some of the successful e-commerce companies that use Internet are the Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Barnes & Noble, and the current one is the Facebook.com.

Of course, not all e-commerce made through and one of the examples is Flooz.com. And here we will further discuss and review the causes of its failures.

Flooz was launched in 1999, co-founded by CEO Robert Levitan, who also earlier co-founded iVillage. Flooz.com raised a USD50 million round led by Oak Investment Partners. Ms. Whoopi Goldberg was Flooz spokeperson and sponsor.

Flooz.com was introduced in the Internet, and the business of it is to sell online currency to the Internet users. Like physical currency, online currency is used to purchase products or service through only in the Internet. Flooz money also can be purchased in a form of gift certificates for friends and family. An advantage of using Flooz currency is that customer can purchase products or services from e-commerce website without revealing his or her personal credit card information, which means a safer Internet transaction.

Limited Merchants
However, Flooz has very limited sites that accept the currency and can be only used at designated stores. Usually the e-commerce that subscribe to Flooz were mostly high-end stores with very little to offer the thrifty shopper. In January 2001, it only has over 60 different stores that subscribe to Flooz currency.

High-end stores
As stated, most of Flooz online-partners were high-end stores and products that can be purchased from other website are cheaper than them. One customer complaint that an eye pencil which can be bought at a reasonable price from Drugstore.com or Planetrx.com, are sold for USD16 from Tony & Tina, one of Flooz merchant partners.

Poor Customer Service
Flooz was lacking in their customer service department and it is said there is a severe lack of communication on the part of the staff between Flooz and its online partners. One of the examples are, a customer made a purchase at the Barnes & Noble website for USD30.70 but there was a problem at the BN.com website and the order processing didn't go through. After many emails, and telephone conversations with the customer service, it is only resolved after 2 months.

Fraud Problem
Flooz executives were informed by the FBI that there's a Russian organized crime syndicate was using Flooz and stolen credit card numbers as part of a money laundering scheme. And the rate of fraudulent purchase increased to 19 percent of consumer credit card transactions in June and July 2001. In May 2001, the fraud problem snowballed and Flooz was unable to generate sufficient revenue to sustain. Executives cut operation expenses and lay off half of the staff. And finally, in September 2001, Flooz ran out of funds and has to cease operation.

Reference:
1) http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/21/where-are-they-now-flooz
2) http://www99.epinions.com/content_36390997636

Posted by: Kevin Tan Shyh Ann

Testing

2009-06-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Testing